We had started this episode of Road To Avonlea last Friday but hadn't finished it so we watched the second half last night. In it, Marilla Cuthbert lands herself in hot water when, growing weary of the sewing circle ladies frequently speculating about why she never married, she decides to give the gossips what they want: a tale of lost love. She spins a false story about meeting a handsome man in New Brunswick while visiting relatives when she was in her twenties. They fell deeply in love, but could not marry because Marilla was a Presbyterian while he was a Methodist. The man (Marilla tells the ladies that his name was Duncan McTavish, inspired by a surname she glimpsed in a newspaper ad) then left New Brunswick for the west and she never saw him again. The ladies are agog at the idea of staid and proper Marilla having such a blighted romance and to her dismay, her fictional relationship becomes the talk of Avonlea for a time. This is nothing to her dismay- or rather, horror- when a man comes to town whose name actually is Duncan McTavish and everyone assumes that he is Marilla's long lost beau.
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Okay, I'm in- at least for now. I've finished the first series of The Expanse, and became steadily more interested in the intersecting story lines as I watched successive episodes. The Expanse is based on a series of science fiction novels written by James Corey, which is actually a pseudonym for two collaborating writers- Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. The show started out on the SyFy channel but is now on Amazon. The Expanse is set in the future, when other parts of the solar system have been colonized. And things aren't going particularly well. Of course, I knew that right from the opening scene when we're informed that Earth (and moon station Luna) is now governed by the United Nations- that's a dystopian nightmare all on its own. Talk about a wretched hive of scum and villainy... but I digress. A lot of people have left Earth for space because it's apparently a stagnant, slowly fading, mismanaged power- uh, yeah, it's run by the U.N. Hello. Mars has been colonized and is a center for innovation and is a technological and economic powerhouse. A lot of people living there have never been to Earth, never breathed actual fresh air. They are, however, working on terraforming Mars to make it habitable without the domes. There's a good deal of mistrust, resentment, and outright hostility between Earth and Mars; the term 'Cold War' is occasionally thrown about. Then there's the "Belt"- the asteroids and bases on other moons where the "Belters" live and work, supplying ores, minerals and ice mined from the Belt to Earth and Mars. There is a lot of resentment among the Belters towards both Earth and Mars; most Belters are poor, live and work in hazardous conditions, and experience significant health problems from being in zero gravity for extended periods of time. They feel powerless and exploited, at the mercy of the big companies of Mars and Earth who care little for the lives of the Belters. Life expectancy on Earth and Mars has now increased to something like 130 years; in the Belt, it's 68. Some Belters have joined a resistance group called the Outer Planets Alliance to try to force Earth and Mars to give them political power. On Earth, we mostly follow U.N. official Chrisjen Avasarala (farthest right in the picture) who, when we first see her, is overseeing the torture of a captured Mars spy. As the season progresses however, her character becomes increasingly complex as we come to understand that she is geninely trying to prevent the cold war with Mars from becoming an actual war. On the asteroid Ceres, we meet police detective Joe Miller who is assigned a missing person case: Julie Mao, the rebellious daughter of a wealthy executive who ran off to join the OPA and has disappeared. The last four members of the main cast are crew members of the space freighter Canterbury who are the only survivors after their ship is attacked and destroyed while they are answering a phony distress call. At first it appears that this was an unprovoked attack by Mars but it turns out that Mars was framed for the destruction of the Canterbury by an unknown party, presumably to set a spark to the tensions between Earth and Mars for some reason. The four crew mates- James Holden, Naomi Nagata, Alex Kamal and Amos Burton- are inadvertently caught up in what has become an interplanetary incident and don't know who to trust, or even if they can trust each other. Gradually, as all of these character' story lines intersect, we realize that someone is deliberately stoking unrest to make sure everyone is looking the other way while they construct some sort of terrible bio-weapon which they test on the population of Eros, one of the asteroids in the Belt, with horrific results. This is where series one ends, with the four crew members and Miller- whom they've met up with- escaping Eros in the nick of time. It took me a few episodes to really get into the show, but it did slowly draw me in and I enjoyed trying to figure out what was going on and why, and also observing the quite complex characters. Thomas Jane hits it out of the park as Detective Joe Miller, despite his unfortunate haircut (thank goodness he usually wears a hat). As far as I can tell, the police in the Belt are a private force hired by the companies to keep some semblance of order. Miller is himself a Belter, and many regard him as a traitor, working for their oppressors. He's cynical, occasionally corrupt, and conflicted, with a foot in at least two worlds. He gradually becomes fascinated with the missing girl Julie; there's a bit of a Laura vibe going on here. The character of Chrisjen Avasarala is an interesting one. She's a loving wife and grandmother, yet also a bureaucrat capable of unflinchingly ordering the torture of a spy or throwing an old friend to the wolves if the situation demands it. She is haunted by the death of her son, apparently killed in some conflict between Earth and Mars, and works tirelessly- and sometimes outside the lines- to keep war from breaking out. It becomes increasingly obvious to her that some in the U.N. (no surprise there) and elsewhere have a vested interest in stoking unrest and perhaps even a war. The four remaining crew members of the ill-fated Canterbury (there are originally five survivors but one gets killed off a few episodes in) are a bit of a motley crew. James Holder, was the Executive Officer on the Canterbury: he's originally from Earth and used to be an officer in Earth's military before being kicked out for refusing an order to fire on a ship smuggling humans. Naomi Nagata was the Canterbury's engineer; she's smart and competent, but also a bit of an unknown quantity and it seems probable that she either is- or was- a member of OPA. Amos Burton, the Canterbury's mechanic, comes off as a bit of a sociopath; he's capable of acts of extreme violence when the situation demands it- and sometimes when it doesn't- and doesn't seem to ever be emotional or regretful about it. Still, you get the feeling that there's more going on with him. From the first, Amos always defers to Naomi's judgement, almost as though he doesn't trust his own, though towards the end of the series this trust in her starts to get a little frayed. Alex Kamal was the Canterbury's pilot. He's originally from Mars and tried to become a pilot in their military but was told that he didn't have what it takes. This is probably because he has a tendency to get panicky in dangerous situations though, as the show goes on, he begins to show his mettle as a skilled- and sometimes even brave- pilot. As I said, The Expanse was a bit of a slow starter for me, but it grew on me and I'm now looking forward to starting series two. The characters and plot are interesting, and I appreciate the fact that there's not, as of yet, any tiresome identity politics going on in the show. The characters are who they are, warts and all, without their race, sex, or any other irrelevant traits coming into play. Thank goodness. Also, I appreciate that the show has some strong female characters that it doesn't feel it has to make into action heroes to prove that they are strong. I'm so tired of movies and shows which seem to think that women can only be strong if they can karate chop their way through ten guys twice their size without breaking into a sweat. But that's a topic for another day; right now, The Expanse is off to a good start and I definitely recommend it. Let's see what Series II brings. Related Posts:Leaving for work yesterday morning: “You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there--the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.” ― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
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