 After editing this video three times to try and prevent any copyright strikes and having little success, I've decided that I'm just going to play this clip of Holden smashing a coffee machine on a loop while I talk. I've said it before and I'll say it again. All art is political in some way, and science fiction is a particularly conscious genre. For over a hundred years, it's been used to comment on various social ills. So if you're here to leave an angry comment about how I'm trying to inject politics into your space show, it was always there, you just had your blinders on. That out of the way, what sort of messages is the expanse trying to get across? The setting is a fascinating one, essentially just taking our current society and thrusting it a few hundred years into the future. Most of the problems are the same, the people just have spaceships now so we can be horrible to each other on Mars too. Issues like overpopulation, income inequality, racism, and authoritarianism are all still big in this world. But just acknowledging that these exist doesn't mean much, what does this series say about them? Just to clarify, the show has a few differences from the books, but nothing that changes the themes or messages, so I'll be referring to both interchangeably here and less otherwise specified, and obviously spoilers for the whole series through Tiamat's wrath ahead. Let's start by looking at the three big regions in the solar system. There's Earth, Mars, and the Belt, which usually refers to both the asteroid belt and the people living on the outer planets beyond it. Earth is the center of humanity still, home to around 30 billion people, capital of the United Nations, and source of a thousand things that can't be grown anywhere else. However, around half the population is unable to work because there's simply not enough jobs to go around. Machines perform most of the labor. Billions of people are forced to subsist on basic assistance, which gives them cheap housing, food, and not much else. Leaving basic assistance requires not just intelligence and hard work, but a huge helping of luck. Mars is the second power in the system, and they're doing much better than Earth. Their economy is, by all accounts, booming and their citizens are well off, at least at first. Most of their resources go to terraforming the planet and making sure they would win any war with Earth that broke out. The Belt is the slum of the solar system. It's made up of a series of protectorates and colonies of Earth and Mars. The people living there, in addition to being economically disadvantaged, have to put up with poor infrastructure, corrupt governments, additional taxes and tariffs, and abuse from the military. There's a loose coalition of independence groups called the Outer Planets Alliance, but at the beginning of the series their influence is limited. Modern concepts of race seem to have completely gone out the window in favor of humans dividing themselves into the previous three groups. There are some physical differences due to gravity. Earthers look just like modern humans, Martians are taller and skinnier, and Belters are even more so. This setting has all the stuff you'd expect from racial divides, slurs, discrimination, ethnic nationalism, the works. One of the authors of this series has explicitly compared the plight of Belters to that of black Americans, so, you know, it's not like I'm plucking these themes out of thin air. But just having parallels to the real world doesn't mean much on its own. It doesn't say anything or send a message beyond, look, this is like that real thing. What is this series trying to say? Let's start with the racial stuff. It seems a little weird at first to think that people who we would look at as black, white, Chinese, etc. would view themselves as one in the same while simultaneously viewing other humans as a separate race. But, well, this is accurate to real history. For starters, what we view as a race or ethnic group varies depending on your location. In the United States, Japanese people, Korean people, Chinese people, and others tend to get lumped together as Asian. But if you were to go over to China or Korea or Japan, they'd see themselves as separate races. Plenty of them even hate each other or view each other as lesser. Various groups of immigrants who came to the US during the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Italians, Irish, and Poles, were not considered to be white at the time. They were considered Italian, or Irish, or Polish. They were separate categories that only merged in the past 70 years or so. Then look at race wars between different groups of white people in the Balkans or different groups of black people in Somalia or Rwanda. I could go on forever, but you get the idea. What I'm saying is that by replacing our current racial divides with the new, completely arbitrary ones, the expanse exposes them as the social constructs they are. And since I can already hear some of you angrily smashing the dislike button, I'm not saying that no differences exist between different groups of people. I'm pointing out that the way we categorize them is based on the society we live in. Now let's move on to something less controversial and arguably more important. The protagonist, James Holden. Holden comes across as a fairly liberal guy. He sees the injustice in how the powerful treat the less advantage and attempts to correct it. Sort of. He grew up comfortably middle class on a farm in Montana. While he isn't part of the ruling class, he's definitely better off than an average earther or belter. He certainly has sympathy for them, seeing as how he refused to enforce the UN's arbitrary laws on a belter ship and assaulted a superior officer to attempt to stop it. But after he's discharged, he goes to being just another space trucker, unconcerned with the less advantaged. He winds up becoming involved in politics only because his ship gets blown up and he publicly blames Mars for it. He goes to the OPA more out of desperation than anything. He views them as extremists, terrorists even. And he's not totally wrong, there are some factions that would totally fit that mold. In the show, the Black Sky faction straight up attempts to assassinate one of the leaders of the UN government. Then later, the Free Navy tries to kill the Martian Prime Minister and nearly commits a genocide on Earth, but we'll get to that in a minute. Holden deeply sympathizes with the belters, yet he thinks that those who are trying to make their lot in life better are the bad guys. He seems to believe that making their lives better without changing anything about the current system and power structure is possible. Basically, he wants to help the belters without taking any sort of action or making any sacrifice to do so. Even though he dislikes the UN government and will actively criticize them, he seems to resist anything but tiny incremental change. This seems to be due to some lingering sense of patriotism or nationalism depending on your viewpoint. He was part of their military for a while, which suggests a certain level of attachment to the state, and while he obviously dislikes certain parts of it, he always seems to act in Earth's best interests, or at least not actively against them. The idea of completely revamping the system is intolerable to him. To clarify, this doesn't make Holden a bad person, he still goes out of his way to protect the innocent. It's just something to keep in mind. Holden is like Americans who will criticize the handling of the Iraq or Vietnam wars, but not the wars themselves. In their minds, those were still totally justified, it was just the way they were conducted that was bad. Part of me wants to believe that Holden is meant to be a criticism of this sort of mindset. The type of person who wants to appear, and I hate saying this but there really isn't a better term for it, woke, and be an ally to marginalized groups but doesn't want to change themselves or sacrifice anything to actually help them. Most of the main cast is critical of Holden at some point, after all. The rest of me thinks that I'm reading too much into it. His views get a little weirder when you look at his response to the Free Navy, though. During the events of Nemesis games, it's revealed that an extremist faction of the OPA has determined that belters have no place in the new colonies, and so they've decided to take over all of space by, among other things, sending two gigantic asteroids to Earth. The entire planet gets, to put it politely, fucked in the ass. Cities get rocked by tsunamis and earthquakes, ash blocks out the sun, infrastructure is destroyed, agriculture is put on hold. It's easily the worst disaster in human history. So many people die that they have to estimate the number of casualties by measuring the amount of formaldehyde released into the atmosphere by decomposing bodies. When Earth and Mars manage to get themselves together enough to fight back, they completely wipe the floor with the Free Navy, who are forced to constantly retreat to the edges of the solar system. The justification given is that they'll force the interplanet navies to spread themselves too thin with an occupation to fight properly. Uh, this doesn't wind up working very well for them. And then enters Holden again. When he reaches the belt, he fears, rightfully so, that the people of Earth are going to be demanding some sort of payback. To try and prevent this, he broadcasts a series of interviews with average belters in occupied territory, just showing them talk about their lives, playing with their families. He's trying to humanize them, in other words. Let's not forget that the Free Navy killed literally billions of Earthers, and a not insignificant portion of the belt was either happy about that, or ambivalent towards it. I'm not advocating for collective punishment here. I'm just saying that maybe the Earthers aren't the only ones who needed to understand the humanity of their enemies. This is clearly meant to parallel real-life treatment of certain racial and religious groups as terrorists, and I can't be upset about that. The execution just left a lot to be desired. Holden's views also seem to change in regards to altering the political and economic system that human space operates on. After the Free Navy is destroyed, he proposes creating an organization to control trade in space that will allow belters to not only continue to exist in the colonies, but bring themselves to a social status on par with those who live planet side. This new organization, called the Transport Union, does exactly what it's supposed to do, and while it's not perfect, it makes things more egalitarian. Holden goes from criticizing the status quo without doing anything about the problems he sees to slapping neoliberalism across the face. Sort of. That's character development. But by far the most prominent viewpoint of Holden's is his desire to see information spread to everybody. When the Canterbury gets blown up, he sends out a message to all of humanity explaining that he thinks Mars did it. In the show, this is portrayed as an act of self-preservation. He tells everyone so that the Martians can't just make him and his crew disappear. In the book, this is twofold. He sends out the message as a way to let everyone know what happened for its own sake too. In either case, it causes rioting throughout the belts and small attacks on Martians. Later, after he escapes a Martian battleship that's under attack, he finds data that implicates Earth in the attack and releases that too. This leads to the Earth and Mars navies shooting at each other and an unspecified number of casualties. And for the sake of brevity, this pattern repeats a couple of times. Holden always releases whatever information he has to the public and believes that he should let the chips fall where they may because people deserve to make their own decisions. He constantly gets criticized for this by his friends and allies who say that people have a tendency to jump to conclusions without all the available facts, a viewpoint that is further reinforced by people becoming violent every time he does it. This bites him in the ass especially hard when Clarissa Mow blows up a ship and blames it on him in Abaddon's Gate. Yet he persists. In this case, it seems like the authors are trying to say that maybe certain bits of information should be hidden away from the public because when it's divorced from context, it paints an incomplete picture and we can react inappropriately. Based on how the internet reacts to... everything. I feel that this is an accurate portrayal of humans. Whether you agree or not with their conclusion, at least this is a controversial theme to push. There's a discussion to be had here. Now we're going to get scholarly. Let's talk about the idea of a philosopher king. This is something that goes way back to Plato, if not earlier. In the Republic, he wrote about an ideal society which was the ultimate dictatorship run by someone who loves wisdom and learning. Other people would not have an input into the way things are run. They'd be expected to just go along with the leader's wishes because if he was truly enlightened, he would be working for the good of the state. Plato argues that in a regular totalitarian state, everything will go poorly because the leader is out for his own gain, and in a democracy or oligarchy, everyone will be out for their own gain which leads to total chaos. I'm oversimplifying a bit, but this is the general idea. You should already see where I'm going with this. Winston Duarte. He was a Martian admiral who, when the gates to the other solar systems opened, decided that humanity needed to unify in order to fight back properly against whatever killed the protomolecule creators, and who better to lead everyone than himself. He caused all of the Free Navy's actions as a distraction for him to take his followers to a new planet that he dubs Laconia. For those unaware, Laconia is the name for the region of Greece where Sparta was located. Subtle. Duarte makes himself immortal because he believes that, in addition to him being the only one who can properly lead all of humanity, no one else will be able to fill his shoes after he's gone. No one else gets to be immortal though because that would create an elite class that would wield too much power and miss the point of having an enlightened despot. Except for Duarte's daughter, of course, she gets to become immortal too because reasons. The dude literally calls himself a philosopher king in the prologue of Persepolis Rising. If you couldn't figure out he had an ego and thought himself above the rules by then, you were never going to figure it out. When the Laconians come back, they manage to take over all of human space and extend their enlightened, totalitarian state to include everyone. And it sucks for most everyone. Any criticism is suppressed or punished. All laws come directly from Duarte. Their enforcement is brutal. All resources are poured into government projects that get citizens killed. You get the idea. Basically, it's just one big refutation of the philosopher king idea. That's not all, though. Partway through Tiamat's wrath, Duarte is left incapacitated and none of his supporters know how to react. They're forced to sequester him away and take action in his name, but none of them are used to cooperating or coming up with ideas on their own. They're used to doing what they're told, so they screw up everything. This is exactly the reason Duarte gives for making himself immortal. He might be a god in human form, but others aren't. Here's a quote from Persepolis Rising. The best governments in history have been kings and emperors, Duarte said. The worst ones, too. A philosopher king can manage great things in his lifetime, and his grandchildren can squander it. What's a little more interesting is how quickly the Laconian Empire falls When Naomi and the rebels managed to wreck the machinery they used to make their proto-molecule ships, the Laconian military might is completely gone. And after that, every system and planet with a human presence on it just stops doing what they say. Military force is the only true way for this sort of government to stay afloat. It only inspires loyalty in a small percentage of its population, and it doesn't bring real benefits to most of its citizens. At first, collaborators were willing to work with them because they were promised greater autonomy, and when they didn't get that, they only continued their support due to fear. People generally don't care about things like the good of humanity or patriotism unless they feel as though it affects them personally. If Duarte had been able to spend a few generations building himself up in everyone's minds as a perfect leader, and he tied their identities to Laconia in a way that made them angry whenever the Empire was insulted or attacked, the collapse would not have happened, at least not as fast. Long story short, dictatorships are bad and unstable, whatever delusions of grandeur the leaders might have. In the end, most of the political messages of this series are extremely milk toast. We need reforms, but they should be done slowly, democratically, and non-violently within the existing system isn't exactly unpopular. Neither is racism is bad, or dictators are bad too. And you know what? I find that disappointing. Not because it disagrees with my personal politics, although some of it does, it's just not that interesting. Dune came out over 50 years ago and people still remember it, partially because it's a well put together book, mostly because it's weird. It has such weird ideas about religion, ecology, government, and society at large that it's just fascinating to explore. Same with other old sci-fi works like Foundation and Starship Troopers. To put it bluntly, Frank Herbert was a fucking weirdo. Most old sci-fi and fantasy writers were. Ty Frank and Daniel Abraham are normal guys with normal outlooks on things, and as good as their books are, they lack the big ideas that would give them staying power. Obviously I don't have a crystal ball that tells me whether or not people will still be reading The Expanse in 50 years. If I had to guess though, I would say they won't. As much as I love it, the series doesn't take a strong enough stance to have a timeless message. It'll probably vanish into obscurity, only being known by big fans of space operas. I've said before that every genre is 70% crap, 29% good but forgettable, and 1% stuff with staying power. As much as I hate to say, I think The Expanse falls into that 29%. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the rest of the series will be strong enough to make people tell their kids and grandkids about it. Or maybe its message of moderation will strike a chord with people in the future, after climate change and the ensuing resource wars have rendered most of the Earth's surface uninhabitable, forcing the remnants of humans to turn to a variety of extreme ideological positions in an effort to ensure their own survival. But they probably won't have time for reading. I don't say this very often, but I want to hear your opinions in the comments. Not that I needed to say that because people who have an opinion will almost certainly let you know before the video is even over. I want to see if there are any interpretations of this that are more radical or even more interesting. As much as it may seem otherwise, I don't find any satisfaction in the idea of my favorite contemporary sci-fi franchise fading into obscurity. I'd like it to be something timeless. Other perspectives might help me believe otherwise, and I think this community is generally pretty good, so I'm not afraid of what you'll bring to the table. Besides, if you want to see a real shitstorm, wait until I release my video on the fascism of military sci-fi. Thanks for waiting, and thanks to all my patrons, including, but not limited to, Oppo Savalainen, Christopher Hawkins, Joseph Pendergraft, and Melanie Austin. If you want to do stuff like vote for video topics or get early access to my content, consider donating. Or if you can't do that, then just remember that YouTube loves to bury content creators beneath a tsunami of Jimmy Fallon clips and copyright strikes. Liking the video and sharing it on social media helps to prevent that, so please do. Anyways, bye.