*THE EXPANSE* Reaction 2x06 - "Paradigm Shift" - so... what happens now?

For EARLY ACCESS and FULL LENGTH REACTIONS, check out my Patreon: / neiltalks
Hope you enjoy my first time watching Episode 6 "PARADIGM SHIFT" of Season Two of The Expanse.
Please watch the original content on Amazon Prime Video.
Follow Me:
Twitter: / neiltalksnow
*Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. All rights belong to their respective owners.

[@Aaron46L]

“Then Solomon Epstein had built his little modified fusion drive, popped it on the back of his three-man yacht, and turned it on. With a good scope, you could still see his ship going at a marginal percentage of the speed of light, heading out into the big empty. The best, longest funeral in the history of mankind.”

[@MagentsAreFun]

The Solomon Epstein story is from a short story outside the novels written by The Expanse authors. You could read it in one sitting and it wouldn't spoil anything else. I recommend it. I found it very moving, and it gives you a taste of just how awesome the books are. It's called "Drive" and I think it's like 99 cents for a digital copy of the story. Check it out - it's a great way to get more of a foundation into this world.

[@PsychoMuffinSDM]

Neil; I second this.

[@Conorp77]

Epstein meets his future wife in a bar and comes on strong. "Woah, moving a little fast there, Sol." 😮

[@zammmerjammer]

Scientific discoveries are made by accident all the time. I remember reading somewhere that the phrase that most often accompanies great scientific advances is not "Eureka!" but rather "huh... that's funny..."

[@Garryck-1]

Bingo! I was about to post the very same saying!

[@Sinewmire]

Solomon Epstein was a Martian scientist, working on propulsion. He was testing a private project he'd been working on, a proptotype he'd been fiddling with in his own ship, a beat up old jalopy he'd spent his life savings on. It worked much, much better than he'd been expecting. It's also not the speed - it's the fuel efficiency. He wasn't worried because he thought that at worst he'd run out of fuel and have to be rescued, but as he looked at the fuel usage, it was clear that nobody would be able to rescue him. Deactivating the voice command didn't have anything to do with that, it just meant he couldn't turn it off.

[@kirkdarling4120]

I would say it's all the fuel efficiency. Accelerating for short periods at high gee was always something their ships could do. His improvement enabled them to accelerate continuously, which is what really made the difference.

[@lazygenie5616]

Well no turning off the voice commands is what doomed him. He went to touch controls but the g force was so strong he couldn’t move his arms. If he had fixed it and set it to English he would have been able to turn it off or so it would seem?

[@Sinewmire]

@lazygenie5616 like I said, it just meant he couldn't turn it off. Which wouldn't have been a problem if his drive wasn't so efficient - he'd have been in danger, but someone with a bigger ship with more fuel could have rescued him.

[@gexwing]

The Epstein Drive is based on fusion technology. As far as we currently are able to do Fusion, it takes a whole lot of Energy for the magnetic confinement vessal. We are just scratching the boundary of being able to control net positive fusion. So it kind of makes sense that a little efficiency improvement could lead a massive increase of resulting output power. Really interesting research going on TODAY. Afaik many of the Martian settlers were also pioneering scientists and engineers, not just dudes tuning up their muscle cars 😂.

[@BrunoBarata78]

Just like to add that in the expanse universe they were already using fusion drives. The Epstein drive was an evolution to that. But it didn't happen because he turned off the voice commands. He was tweaking the drive. In reality as far as the science of it goes, even though the expanse is very realistic in it's portrait of space and how things, travel etc, would work if we had an Epstein drive. It is effectively magic. There is actual theory for the use of fusion drives in space travel, there is nothing that to suggest that an Epstein drive (energy output and efficiency) would be possible at all. On the contrary, we have a lot to tell us it isn't. Doesn't detract from the story in my opinion, the Expanse is still miles ahead as far as portraying space right when compared to other science fiction works. Scott Manley has a great video breaking down the rocketry in the Expanse.

[@Nyx_2142]

​@@BrunoBarata78"We have a lot to tell us it isn't." Lol. No, we don't. We have only just barely glimpsed net positive (from the reaction itself, not the whole system) fusion reactions. We don't have anywhere near the knowledge to make confident declarations on this and only idiots would do so, so it's telling coming from you. You are the typical pseudo-intellectual that learns a tiny twisted fragment of something and spreads it around a fact. People like you are an embarrassment to the scientific community and do more harm than good. And Scott Manley isn't a source on nuclear physics. He's never even touched a real career remotely related to actual rocket science (a video game with shoddy physics doesn't count), let alone nuclear physics. He got his degrees 30 years ago and has only worked in software for tech firms since. He regularly makes mistakes in his rocketry and astronomy videos and is a science communicator for laymen, not a subject matter expert. He has done great work in popularizing the fields (outside of the Kerbal "hobbyists") but a subject expert in groundbreaking fields, he is not.

[@xtifr]

As a fan of the books, the two characters I was most worried about in the show were Amos and Chrisjen. Both were tricky roles. This is the episode that convinced me for once and for all that they had the right actor for Chrisjen! That hellfire speech is _so_ good, it sends shivers down my spine, every time! I can't imagine how anyone could not be a Chrisjen fan after that! ☺ Hollywood almost never has badass grandmas! As the descendant of a badass grandma, I love finding rare exceptions like _The Expanse_ and the brilliant _Orphan Black_ (which, like _The Expanse,_ is good for a lot of other reasons too).

[@dorcas9370]

Your feedback is incisive, and your enthusiasm for the series certainly echoes our own! We love how the complicated interactions make it seem more authentic - the universe in the future isn't the utopia we wish it might be, but just as grubby, fallible, awkward and noble as the people in it.

[@mmattson8947]

From what I heard, Chrisjen (and the Earth viewpoint) wasn’t introduced until the 2nd book. Can you imagine not meeting her until this episode? It would be an impressive introduction, but I can understand wanting to have Avasarala (played by Aghdashloo) from the beginning.

[@gemsdirtykitchen3658]

And that's why the first book is just "good", while the second is Great :) Also Bobbie's story starts here on Ganymede in the second book.

[@jamiecordell3133]

You are now getting into some of the best episodes of any show ever written. I hope you enjoy it as much as most of us do. Look forward to your reactions!

[@mcallisterwill]

Although this is hard sci-fi there is also the idea to contend with that 'any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic'. The events of the series take place around 300 years time from now; current technologies such as nuclear power, modern telecommunications and modern medicine would certainly be beyond the scope of understanding to 1700s scientists still grappling with the nature of light and gravity so it stands to reason that there will be at least some things in the 2300s which are beyond our scope of understanding, even the writers are trying to limit the application of handwavium.

[@kevintipcorn6787]

I think a large source of his confusion is that he thinks the voice commands being turned off was part of the upgrades made to the drive, instead of incidental.

[@thontor]

There are plenty examples of things being stronger or more efficient than expected when designed. One example I recently heard about was an early nuclear test using a new fuel where scientists expected the explosion to be 5 megatons but when they conducted the test it was 15 megatons.

[@michaelmanville89]

I'm so glad you chose this show. This is my most anticipated reaction video every week now. Crazy that the show keeps getting better.

[@sociallyferal4237]

I think one thing that stands out with the martian marines post cut away is that their armour shows slashes/slash type rents more than what looks like bullet holes.

[@kirkthomas1124]

One of the many things I love about this show is the strong women. Naomi, Avasarala Bobbie and Drummer are just examples. This show just keeps getting better. Enjoy.

[@scambammer6102]

The name of the first episode of Expanse (1/1) is "Dulcinea". In Don Quixote, Dulcinia is an imaginary princess, the ideal woman, who guides the hero on his quest.

[@blackpaw29]

Small detail - Miller last instruction to Diago :) He left the bar with the woman bartender who blew him off earlier in the season.

[@tjerkkorving]

"What the...." exactly what I thought many times since I started watching the Expanse a few months ago. It just makes you want to start the next episode.

[@MyLordRock]

Fun Fact, In the Books Solomon Epstien reached precentage of the speed of light exiting the solar system, its know as the longest Funeral in History.

[@WUStLBear82]

Epstein was played by Sam Huntington, Jimmy Olson in _Superman Returns_ and the werewolf in the North American version of _Being Human_ . Yes, Amos had a rough life (it will be quite some time before we find out just how rough), and it shaped his simple worldview. At the beginning he accepted Holden because he trusted Naomi and used her as his moral compass; gradually he's been moving towards Holden as also a person worthy of trust. Chrisjen will continue to grow on you--and what a shift from the early episodes--and it's fortuitous that Shohreh Aghdashloo saw that a character in a SyFy show could be the role of her life. But it is a TV adaptation, so she like most of the other actors is younger and better-looking than the books portray their characters. Book Holden was a world-weary, paunchy, middle-aged guy; Steven Strait used to side-hustle as an underwear model between acting roles.

[@LeeCarlson]

The Epstein Drive is the only "magic" that the writers (and then showrunners) allowed for humanity in The Expanse and it is never explained (like Star Trek's phasers). Basically, Epstein was an Einstein-level genius who created an emergent condition. And 137 years later Solomon Epstein's "tomb" continues out of the Sol System at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. And it is against this backdrop that we encounter the protomolecule which seriously demonstrates Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law.

[@ImAlsoMerobiba]

One part I think that they don't emphasize enough is that Holden is former UN Navy. It was mentioned very earlier on but not really talked about much afterwards. So this adds another element to the differences between the two Earthers, and another perspective to our crew.

[@kirkdarling4120]

Joseph Campbell, the magazine editor one can say created the divide between "science fiction" and "science fantasy" had the rule for his writers that they could have only one handwave in a science fiction story...and everything else had to follow logically with known science from that one handwave. With regard to the Protomolecule, is it likely humans would ever be able to understand that level of advanced technology? Rather like a donkey figuring out a laptop. The fact that Amos had been immediately aware of the change in Holden and Naomi's relationship, even though they tried to keep it from him in particular, is what psychologists who are fans of the show call "hyper-vigilance," a symptom of a severely abused childhood. The fact that Amos could have casual sex with someone he considers like a sister is a symptom of a sexually abused childhood, probably involving an incestuous relationship. But the fact that Amos recognizes those he must follow and those he must protect proves he is not a sociopath. The Belters used mining nets (we saw Mateo and Diego using one) woven together.

[@madux42]

In the first scene, time goes backwards. You start seeing Mars with its atmosphere from the terraforming process of the last 100 years, many lights on the surface, and the debris of what was once the Moon Deimos. Time then goes backwards, Deimos is back, there are less and less lights and the atmosphere is getting thinner, until you see it how it looked 137 years ago.

[@Pebbe496]

About the books: It's two books until the end of season 3. The second book ends partway through season 3, similar to season 2. So the third book takes less than one season. From then on, it's one season per book.

[@epluribusunum3596]

Thank you Neil for another enjoyable reaction. One of the few shows cancelled by the Syfi Channel after season 3 and saved by another network, Amazon. The emotional downer for the show's fans and the rescued celebration was a special time in the existence of this series.

[@suedonym8467]

The setting aims to be realistic in a lot of ways, but there's still some hand-waving to get the ball rolling. How does the Epstein Drive work? It works very well, thank you.

[@Timmayytoo]

Something the show downplays to an extent is that the Epstein Drive was simply a huge improvement in fuel efficiency, not speed - that's the paradigm shift. But it would be a really boring show if they spent half a season just flying through the solar system to get to where the action is. So as you say, keeping how the drive works a bit cloudy serves to make a better adaptation. Same with the Roci itself - because in the books it has many more decks than the TV version because the decks are perpendicular to the direction of thrust - but that would make for a much more unwieldy, and boring, TV set. So magboots do some heavy lifting in the show. None of these are complaints - I consider The Expanse to be one of the finest examples of adapting a written work ever made.

[@dylanmonaghan3342]

@@Timmayytoo The floors of the Roci are still like floors in a building on the show with the main ladder connecting them all. The operations positions are different with Alex and Amos being in different areas but that doesn't change the orientation of the floors.

[@garethneller8239]

Avasarala is my favourite character in the whole franchise (books and series) and could not have been cast better!

[@osnatashtaralevin8944]

First of all, when Solomon Epstein says he bought "a yacht" - he meant a space yacht. That was the thing about the voice interface being in Chinese so he had to shut it down.. Secondly, as far I understand (and people can correct me if I'm wrong) the thing about the Drive was that he was tinkering with it to boost fuel efficiency, but he didn't count on what that would do to the speed he was traveling in. If you start you're accustomed to a 20 year old, 1400cc 100horsepower car and then suddenly go into a.. I don't know.. a new 2200cc 306hp race car from 2022 - you'd probably kick the accelerator a bit too harshly out of habit, and that can definitely throw you into a high gear quickly. If my analogy holds, the only problem Epstein had here was that by "kicking the accelerator" he immediately went into a high G burn, and he had trouble moving, especially, as we've seen, as the speed got higher and higher. Other than the porotomolecule, the Epstein drive is probably the only thing that is really "fiction" in this book series and TV adaptation. there was just _something_ that the writers had to invent in order to make the conflict real and plausible. It won't make such a huge thrill if it took 12 years for the Cant to make one round trip to Jupiter to collect ice.. Side note - If you want to get really really nitpicky - I found a youtube that tried to calculate the probability of making Eros spin in order to get it to have enough gravity for humans to live in it - and they got to the conclusion that it would probably break the rock in pieces to try it - by our technology.. so technically there's another piece of "fiction" in the story in Mars engineers somehow getting it to be hollow, and spin fast enough without breaking in under a 10 years time, but that's just for us nerds.. =P

[@Aeolusdallas]

The last episode was the end of the first book. This is the beginning of the second

[@mathias6185]

Book 2 goes from this episode to Season 3 Episode 6, IIRC. The rest of season 3 is book 3. Seasons 2 and 3 have 13 episodes each. Season 4 is book 4, with 10 episodes. The splitting of seasons vs episodes is a bit weird. Book 3 is covered with only 7 episodes, which makes the 2nd half of season 3 very packed full of story & action.

[@MagentsAreFun]

Book 1 is s01e01 - s02e05 Book 2 is s02e06 - s03e06 Book 3 is s03e07 - s03e13 Book 4 is s04 Book 5 is s05 Book 6 is s06 *Hopefully* we will get book 7-9!!!

[@caseyshultz5447]

season 4 also carries some elements of book 5, teasing events to come in seasons 5-6. I'm skeptical about getting the last three books owing to the time skip (their stated reason for not continuing the series), but then it doesn't make sense that they explored the Laconian elements in season 6.

[@MagentsAreFun]

@@caseyshultz5447 I've heard rumblings that they are waiting on Amazon's streaming contract to expire. Alcon still owns the production rights and they want to bring the last three to the screen. Amazon was done with the show. I've heard HBO is a possibility. Might just be pipe dreams, but they did lay the groundwork for the time jump to be shorter in the show.

[@Dendood]

I'm not much of a scientist but when I do science I watch PBS Space Time on a regular basis. The most plausible rationale I can imagine: The ships run on fusion reaction. Unlike fission, sustained fusion requires incredible energies going in before you get energy coming out. Very inefficient. Solomon reworked the mechanics of the system so fusion occurs with minimal energy input, vastly improving the over all ratio of energy in vs energy out. Which made him 'the most interesting dead man in the world.'

[@jerome1lm]

Amos is basically a psychopath and I love him.

[@naynay3710]

Murder Snuggles 😁

[@Xanderj89]

He's very difficult to watch, I feel everything characters are feeling when they're on screen and boy does he make you feel gross as fuck. Sometimes I wish I could dispassionately observe shows because I've never been able to handle awful people on screen, that's not who I want to immerse as, not into feeling like a psycho.

[@daxeah8472]

Amos is amazing and I love watching his story unfold. I wouldn't call him a psychopath though, he is far more complicated than that. The show goes more into why his is the way he is.

[@Aaron46L]

Hold on tight! The show is about to start a hard burn, all the way to the end of S3! Here comes the juice!

[@obelisk21]

The authors released novellas and short stories between the books and some of them were integrated into the series. You have seen two of them already with the first being "The Butcher of Anderson Station" which had Fred's backstory and now "Drive" which is the story of the invention of the Epstein Drive. A few more are integrated in later seasons but I will refrain from saying which ones and their plots as it will be spoilerish.

[@LeeCarlson]

In the first and second seasons of The Expanse, the showrunners interwove the first two novels (Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War) in order to introduce all of the central characters as quickly as possible to the viewers.

[@sharinel]

Book 1 - Season 2 episode 5 Book 2 - Season 3 episode 6 Book 3 - Season 3 episode 13 I can't remember if they knew that it was ending while writing Season 3 end episodes or not, but they really did pack a full book into half a season, madness :)

[@jamesholland5761]

Great reaction Neil! So much happened in this episode! Introduced to the tech that allowed Mars to mine the belt and gain independence from Earth. At the same time creating a culture known as Belters. Holden telling Amos and Alex about him and Naomi! Naomi betraying her new family by not destroying the sample. The conflict between Amos and Alex. Remember what Amos said " there's only kinds of people, bad ones, ones you follow and ones you protect." Which does that make Amos? Chrisjen's rampage about JP Mao wasn't just for him but indirectly on Erinwright as well! The actress playing her is amazing! The emotions at the end in her eyes tells you she almost lost her home because people playing with toys they don't understand! The UN being chased into the MRCN and what happened to Drapers team? Looking forward to the next one!

[@hebijirik]

The way I always imagined Epstein's invention is that while tuning some of the many parameters of a fusion torch engine he accidantely hit a configuration of variables that gives an unexpected balance that gives it way too much power so somethign automatic starts dosing much less fuel to keep the thing from overheating and exploding. And now what you have is a drive that runs at the power setting that used to be the maximum power you only use for short emergencies to conserve fuel but now it can run like that constantly. A possible analogy I can think of: imagine you are trying to improve a directional sound output of a siren and you just know from experience that putting a big cone on it makes it lowder in one direction. You play with the shape of the cone, slowly tweaking the best shape and then suddenly instead of a further small improvement the whole thing is now resonating so nicely you get 10x the sound in the desired direction for the same energy input. Until someone does some analysis of the result and comes up with the math to describe why this shape does what it does such a dicovery would look like weird magic.

[@sallyshipwreck4315]

They probably got the net idea from Farscape! 😉Bet you got questions now! heh heh

[@mmattson8947]

I understand that Neil wants to know more about the tech (Epstein drive or protomolecule), but getting caught up with wanting an explanation is wrong dramatically. That way leads to technobabble, pointless and annoying. I like this show because it zeros in on what matters: the rules/limits, and how does it affect what people do. The 3rd Newtonian Law limits travel in our solar system. Crossing distances in space, speeding up and slowing down at the destination in reasonable time, means a tiny payload with the rest being propellant. (That is even with a 100% efficient “light drive”, where photons are directed backwards to push the object forwards.) Until this episode it didn’t make sense how ships were zipping about without exhausting the fuel. At least this episode acknowledges that it would require this level of “magic” breakthrough, and I should just accept that compromise in order to appreciate the stories it makes possible. (When I read LeGuin’s “The Dispossessed”, I was impressed how she handled the genius physicist in a spacefaring society. I wasn’t sold by what he invented, but by how he thought, his mental approach to problems. It rang true to the scientific thought process, and how creative types are unconventional.)

[@mmattson8947]

The level of breakthrough of the Epstein Drive was definitely a dramatic liberty (in magnitude, time required, and manpower involved). I'm guessing the writers were thinking of the exponential growth of computing power when trying to dramatize technological progress. Your smartphone has on the order of a million times the processing power and memory than the computers on Apollo 11.

[@garethking5322]

Yea my understanding is an epstein drive based on a fusion reactor is possible, it just would require huge radiators to get rid of excess heat, so the ships wouldn't look like they do at all. Although interestingly we have just had a breakthrough in cooling technologies in rocket engines - see SABRE rockets - enabling space planes - so who knows what could be invented in a few hundred years

[@caseyshultz5447]

the books are a little better about mentioning the need for reaction mass from time to time, implying that ships do carry a fuel supply. the revolution of the Epstein drive was just crazy efficiency, making constant acceleration travel not just plausible but economical. Ships do still need to pickup more fuel pellets for their drives from time to time

[@Garryck-1]

I'd give you a second 'like' for mentioning LeGuin’s “The Dispossessed”, if KZbin would let me.

[@minkalampinen9519]

Yep! Here we go again! The engines are hot and we're picking up speed! We're nowhere close to done with the story :D

[@aka.radstatic]

Really enjoying your reactions to the series, and your take on the Epstein drive only made me realize the show was telling us that things change when we cross a line. The Epstein drive brought the belt and Martian Independence. The Protomolecule is their lifetimes disruptor.

[@ldkinbote]

I always viewed Epstein's discovery of a happy accident of tweaking, but sadly ironic. There have been many instances where people in history have done trial and error and expected certain results but actually got very different results. Most times it's considered a happy accident (math miscalculation or whatever) but for Epstein himself, not so happy. His family and the rest of the human race benefited from it, but his accidental discovery was the end of his life. I was hoping he'd be able to get it shut off and reap the benefits of such a huge discovery, but sometimes it don't work out that way. The voice activation thing was just a bit of ironic thing because he turned it off, not expecting his tweaks to work SO well, but he then couldn't shut it down through voice when he couldn't move his arms. His decision to shut it off didn't affect the tweaks to efficiency he was running, it is what killed him though, but he couldn't have known that beforehand.

[@TheSimJoh]

Yes, we come here because we enjoy you reacting. Having given you that, the media you are watching is equally important - may I politely point out (again) that the show volume is way too low in comparison to your own. C'mon, Neil - as an AD there's no way you'd be happy with a sound guy on set operating with 2 principal actor audio levels SO far adrift.

[@obelisk21]

They never really talk about it on the show and I think it is a bit of a miss when compared to everything else they got right with the science, but a belter would never be able to beat up someone from Earth and Mars. Their bone and muscle density would be nothing compared to someone from the inner planets and you could see that Earth's 1G gravity is completely debilitating to someone born and raised in the belt. The scene where the belter punches Alex was never really believable to me let alone what Amos could do to those guys.

[@brauliob]

Mars' gravity is much less than Earth's but still somewhat higher than what most Belters who live at .3 G have to grow up in. Mars is rich enough to provide their citizens with advanced medicines and such to help them maintain strength and bone density.

[@kirkdarling4120]

The Belter was not really getting the best of Alex. Neither the punch nor even the broken bottle actually injured Alex..he was barely harmed. He was just caught by surprise.

[@durere]

Holden will actually outmaneuver Avasarala politically at one point, but I'm not gonna tell you when :p

[@dylanmonaghan3342]

yay for spoilers! Hope he doesn't read the comments or get them filtered to him.

[@tjerkkorving]

"What the...." exactly what I thought many times since I started watching the Expanse a few months ago. It just makes you want to start the next episode.