Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeffzilla" data-source="post: 9730084" data-attributes="member: 6925169">The books were released mostly before, but also during, the run of the show.The show used visual elements not explicitly called out in the books to convey ideas in shorthand which the books explained in detail.  For example, the books explain in great detail how a ship's crew only experiences gravity in space when the ship is accelerating or decelerating; while the show mentions in passing that a ship's thrust creates its gravity, it also reinforces this concept from scene to scene with visual cues-- things like establishing shots, showing whether a ship's drive is active, or other cues like lit indicators on magnetic boots.  Once viewers understood how the show telegraphed the presence or absence of gravitic thrust through small details like this, they could generally tell at a glance whether scenes take place 'on the float' or not and how the physics of life in space should operate for the rest of that scene. I'm not sure that a showrunner who lacked Naren Shankar's background in science and engineering would have put so much thought into how to visually convey scientific and engineering concepts to a show's viewing audience-- or so much effort into keeping each scene internally consistent with the visual cues presented-- and that's what I mean when I say that the show's 'reality' was probably improved by having a physicist and engineer run things, because he was already thinking of those aspects when it came time to storyboard and block scenes.I don't know that shows like Star Trek or Babylon 5, which hand-waved a lot of those same physics and engineering elements away, needed or would been improved by having a physicist or engineer run production. They had their own visual styles, and it was enough for Gene Roddenberry to tilt the camera and have everyone lean in the opposite reaction whenever he wanted to convey impact. 'Artificial gravity' explained why the bridge crew didn't splat against the viewscreen (or even need seat belts) and that was enough for space combat in Trek to be glorious on its own terms. And I'm not suggesting that The Expanse didn't do its own hand-waving-- but it strove to at least depict, with some degree of accuracy, realities of life in space which usually aren't addressed at all in science fiction television.</blockquote>

Verification