Although I have greatly enjoyed seasons 1 - 4, I was immensely disappointed with the most recent season. Here's my summary: Spoiler 1. Amos barely did anything all season. He helped a terrible person escape from prison and he was able to leave Earth. This could have been written into two or three episodes, not an entire season. And I don't like how they've made "Peaches" into less of a villain. 2. James Holden didn't do anything all season. 3. Alex Kamal didn't do anything all season. 4. Bobbie Draper barely did anything all season. Yeah - she found the black market channel for stealth tech early in the season and she rescued Naomi at the end... and that's it. 5. Naomi Nagata - OMG... SO MUCH SOAP-OPERA! The same old Hollywood garbage. "He's my ex, but now he's evil, and we had a kid together, but he's got the kid, and I'm going to save the kid, but the kid has turned evil"... blah blah blah. They strung this out ALL SEASON LONG. SLOOOOOOOWLY. What a load of crap. 6. Drummer - actually had some good character development 7. Marco Inaros - They built a great bad guy, but the added soap opera with Naomi just detracted from his character. 8. Avasarala - very little character development here. She Was out of power, then she got it back. Then she resigned. Then she got power back. The only real contribution she made to the story was when she stopped the additional asteroids from hitting Earth. 9. Half of the last episode was Naomi spinning around in space. Why did they have so much filler when they could have expanded on better plot lines? WHAT THEY DIDN'T DO... What about the Ring? thousands of systems now available to everyone and they didn't expand on this at all?!?! The Ring makes the terra-forming on Mars completely pointless and makes Mars obsolete. They touched on this briefly at the beginning of the season and never did anything with it. The Ring makes the "inner's" dependence on the Belt obsolete, considering that there are other worlds with natural resources available. They didn't do anything with this plot element. The protomolecule was barely used at all. They teased it at the beginning of the season, and they teased it at the end, but it was never really used for anything at all during the season. What about the beings that created the Ring? Who were they? How did they get destroyed? The end of S04 was asking these questions and there was ZERO development of that in S05. At the end of the season, what was accomplished? NOTHING. Marco is still in power and there really isn't much different now than there was at the beginning of the season. Also - why would they build a great "Scooby gang" of characters and then have them SEPARATED for the entire season?!? What happened to "Holden, Amos, Alex, and Naomi, kicking ass in the Roci again" ? Overall, they stretched three or four episodes of content into an entire season, left a lot of great storyline untouched, focused entirely on standard Hollywood soap-opera garbage, and didn't utilize their great characters. What the hell happened to the writers?!?
I agree with all that but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, I just like living in that world. And it seems all series come to a point where they just put up a season of transition. I think anything would be anti-climatic from the four season mystery build up to the protomolecule. Human interactions just aren't as exciting as the prospect of the unknown, it went from science fiction to soap opera. I think we get more in December. The Martian's are going to screw up with the proto, and anything can happen through The Ring. I assume we are going to meet another lifeform that may not be happy with the Belter presence.
I really loved this season because it wasn't so bombastic and tropey. Spoiler Naomi's story line was amazing and the payoff really pulled on me emotionally. What's amazing about this series is what happened to Naomi. Any other sci-fi series, there will be some convienient way to communicate to your friends and be saved. Maybe it takes one episode of struggling but the solution is quickly found. Here, everything makes tangible sense. In really life, Holden and Alex could never guess that her ship is rigged to explode based in proximity of another drive signature. In a tropey tv show, they would guess correctly the moment Niaomi successfully alters the transmission with some magical "ahah moment". Not in this show. It took Niaomi jumping out of a spinning ship with basically no oxygen in a extremely aggressive desperate attempt. It really shows how difficult simple communication can be in this universe. Other shows just gloss over that stuff. That's why this is an amazing sci-fi series.
I very much like the universe that they've created. But season 6 is going to be the final season (which is also a bummer). Knowing this, I hate, even more, that they've wasted an entire season with S05. I liked very much, the details of how Naomi got rescued. But I felt like they strung it out for way too long.
The writers said season 6 isn't the last season. It's just a pause. I mean there ris a chance that it won't be renewed after 6 but from the way the writers explained it, they were pretty optimistic that it will go past 6 seasons.
Also I loved Amos' arc this season because he had to figure out his own moral compass without the crew which culminated in that moment of self awareness when Mao was discussing the morality of shooting that prepper.
To me the weak part of the season was Holden's arc as the other characters had much more development. That's probably because Holden already had his past fleshed out unlike Amos, Alex and Naomi.
If the paving of the show is constant moving forward with constant solar system/galaxy scale battles, the playoffs wouldn't be as amazing as you wouldn't be nearly as invested with the actual characters. This type of pacing allows us to have bigger payoffs when **** does hit the fan like in the season finale and what I assume is going to happen in season 6.
I agree. Waste of a season. We're left at the end of the season ALMOST where we were at the beginning of the season in terms of character development except for a couple spoilery things. SLOWWWWW.... I used the skip forward button a lot on this season.
After watching I couldn't believe the writers devoted a whole book to this season's plotline. Should've condensed two books to one for tv. From Cool Alien Portal to Bo Ring
Yes this was a meh season that had a few stellar episodes. That fact that the space scenes are basically as good as they’ve ever been makes it even more disappointing. They could have filled the season with lots of space fights/chases/etc but instead we got a lot of the stuff you complained about. Le sigh.
I love the universe, but I never really fully got on board with this show and the plot. The 3rd season was my favorite season. The 3rd season has been the only season I actually enjoyed. I watch this guys vidoes because I feel this show doesn't explain stuff enough. I haven't started season 5 yet. Spoiler
