The Expanse: Season One

The most ambitious original sci-fi series created by the Syfy network since their award-winning Battlestar Galactica reboot, The Expanse delivers a dense mix of space opera, political conspiracy, and galactic mystery based on the bestselling novels by James S. A. Corey (the pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). The debut season, which essentially adapts Leviathan Wakes (the 2011 first novel in the series), reaches from Earth to Mars to the asteroid belt, covering a frontier society of space stations, mining ships, and independent-minded settlers (known as Belters) under the jurisdiction of Earth's government. In the opening episode, an ice mining ship survives an attack by a powerful weapon, and the crew goes into hiding as they become a target. Other stories follow a Belter cop (Thomas Jane) gone rogue in order to find a runaway girl who has joined the resistance, and a U.N. diplomat (Shohreh Aghdashloo) who suspects a Mars conspiracy but discovers a more insidious plot. The Expanse serves up a complicated story with an expansive scope. Along the way, the series creates a rich social and political culture, with the frontier society of the Belters resembling that of the original American colonies, a culture of independents and individualists fomenting revolution against long distance rule by a rich mother country that treats them as second class citizens. Compiling all 10 episodes from the 2015-16 debut season, extras include deleted scenes. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)