If you had to sum up season six with a single overarching theme, what would it be?
Daniel Abraham said that normal people have to do good things in order to get us through. I mean, so much of this is about more than just one hero, it is about everyone being a little bit better in order to make things better.
Naren Shankar thinks that recognizing the inherent humanity in others is part of the season. We wrote on the board in the writer's room. We always wrote the theme.
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Normally, we would have had a theme looking at us as we worked. This was the first year we didn't do that. We are just fumbling around like dumbasses.
Is that because of covid?
We weren't able to be in the same place at all this season. This is the first time I have been in a room with these guys in two years. We were not able to go to Toronto and be with the actors. The writer's room was virtual.
The season was only six episodes. Is that also related to covid-related reasons?
It was a decision between Amazon and Alcon Television. You always agree on how much money you will commit to the production of the show. The decision was made. It took six episodes to make it. It is always a negotiation. We could have done 10. Absolutely. We could have done eight. Certainly. I don't think we would have been able to tell the season in six.
If we had gotten 13 we would have been in trouble.
Yeah, that's right. Too many episodes can be bad. We were told that we could tell this story in six episodes, but we wanted to think about it. We talked about it and said we can do it, but we have to downsize the sixth episode. That one is like an episode and a half.
These are not cheap episodes.
Did they come at you with a six-episode plan before you started planning?
We had talked about it, but we weren't officially back at that point. I think it was also a desire to make sure that we were able to finish it and get the episodes done to be back on the air after a year off. I think that the way these cycles work on the streamers probably led to the situation.
The answer to your question is that there is never one planning session. There are multiple stages of planning. There is always an early plan where Naren or Daniel and I will talk about what we would do next season. We have to revise the plan at every step of the way as new constraints or new possibilities are laid out. We have to add more information. At some point we had a plan and then they said six episodes. We had to revise the plan and do a six-episode version.
Were there storylines that you wish you could have explored more?
We had a bigger part for Prax in season two and for Pastor Anna in season three. It became clear that we couldn't do justice to the stories in the amount of time we had as we were doing the season breakdown and figuring out what we were going to do six episodes on. The point of the story in the cameo is still there even after we trimmed them down. There are a lot of decisions like that, where we realized we didn't have the space to do the big version of the story. We would trim it down to a small version.
There was at least one storyline that left some dangling threads at the end of the season, but we won't be getting into any details. Some characters might be worth a revisit. Is there a chance that we could pick them up again?
Abraham always says there are three more books. There is more to be told. Big world! Things could happen.
The Expanse almost lost it's life after the third season, but fans are going to be sad about only six episodes. Do you think there will be a similar fan movement after the finale?
Is there more to come from The Expanse going forward? I leave that to them. Great.
Abraham loves working with these guys. I enjoy working with this cast. I would show up if the universe allowed me to do that more.
It is rare to get a show through six seasons. That is a miracle in the current era. I think we got great support from Amazon and Alcon to get the show to the end of book six, which is a possibility because there is a satisfying conclusion at that point. The door is not closed. If the stars align, you would find a lot of people willing to participate.
Including the fans, I am sure. Have you ever watched The Expanse series and had a favorite moment?
I go back to Julie and Miller. It is a beautiful scene.
My answer is that I like when Amos and Bobbie get to fight. I look for opportunities.
Abraham can't tell you his because it's a season sixSPOILER. This season is the one that I am most happy about.
We get to see Amos and Bobbie become better friends this season. You can imagine them as a dream team with their own adventures.
You get a little Amos-Bobbie X-Ray adventure with one of those. There are five X-Rays for each episode. They illuminate individual characters or pairs of characters. If you click on an x-ray at the end of the show, it will take you to that content.
Is that new for this season? How did those happen?
Yeah, that's right. Amazon wanted them.
The X-Ray team at Amazon has been wanting to do this for a long time, and this is the first time they could make them. I am very pleased with how they turned out.
The idea of doing these little short things was something we had talked about before, but we never had the time or resources to do it. This year Amazon gave us all the resources we needed to make these.
They are cohesive. There is a thread that goes through them. They reflect the narrative and illuminate it in a lot of ways. People are going to get kicked out of them.
There will be an episode of Bobbie and Amos.
The first one is about Naomi and the drummer. The other ones are Amos and Bobbie, Clarissa, and Holden.
What do you hope people take away from The Expanse as a whole, and what do you think about sci-fi on TV?
Abraham: I am going to botch it now, but there is a quote from Camus that is very much in line with the idea that there is more to admire in humanity than to despise. The books and the show look at humanity and find it worth loving and all. To see that we are still a pretty amazing species, despite all of the violence and prejudice. We did some amazing things. For all of the horror, kindness is still more common. The tribes are getting bigger. I hope that there is a message that comes through.
Its legacy isn't something that people who make the thing get to decide. Fans who don't exist yet decide that. Future fans can make that decision. We don't get to pick.
The sixth season of The Expanse is on Amazon Prime. We will have more Expanse coming up on io9 this week.
Wondering where our feed went? The new one can be picked up here.
