I really ought to revisit it. I watched the first season and was mostly left disappointed that it wasn't the modern reboot of Babylon 5 that it superficially resembles.
I quite enjoy
The Expanse, but like anything with a series of books, I sort of expect it to be cancelled at the most inopportune point.
If you want really bad sci-fi though, so bad it's actually just bad, try
Another Life, which I managed one entire episode at the weekend, and it really was one more than I wished. It starts off as an
Arrival-lite with an alien spaceship arriving on Earth to do something mysterious and might be quite promising. It isn't.
Firstly, they set off to visit the aliens, really on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. Led by that woman off Battlestar Galactica whose acting ability seems mainly confined to running around in a bra top and flexing her abs while looking like she might be trying to deal with a prolonged bout of constipation. She leaves her immensely stupid husband behind the
Arrival communicate-with-the-aliens bit (which you think they may have sussed out before hopping in a spaceship) and deal with their kid, and like all men, of course, he had no idea how to raise a child. His main strategy for communicating with the aliens seems to combine pigeon sounds and classical music.
The mission to the aliens has a crew of halfwits (so halfwitted that they give the crew of
Prometheus a run for their money) that look like they're from reality TV central casting led by Captain Unsuitable, recently usurped for the mission by Captain Constipation. They just happen to have an FTL spaceship sitting in a garage somewhere, despite the rest of the technology pegged pretty much to what I have sitting on my desk now. Possibly I to have an FTL space ship in the garage, behind the old Ikea furniture and the ladder.
None of the crew of halfwits seem to have been on a spaceship before and have an average age of about 20. Remember this is a critical first contact mission. One plays on social media all day, the others compete to look the most vacant while wearing the strappy tops and heels that will shortly become
de riguer for space missions. They'll probably have sex with each other at some point, but it's hard to really care, it's like predicting the sex lives of rabbits. Anyway, they manage to mutiny in episode one because Captain Unsuitable is just that and, of course, him and Captain Abs have some history. Anyway, they make a wrong turn in space because of 'dark matter' (which despite not interacting with anything you can't fly a spaceship through) so have to slingshot around a sun by going 'into orbit' around the sun. I'm not exactly an expert on angular momentum, but I don't think that's the best plan. Also, FTL drive. Either have a magic device or play by the science rules. And writers, have a clue, this shit is on Wikipedia.
There's a holographic AI to look after this school outing. He manages to look suitably horrified. Whether that's because of the crew or he's murdered his agent isn't made clear in episode 1.
It's seriously so bad I feared I may have imagined it, but Google says its real.
