I liked that conflict amongst the Roci crew because their reactions and philosophies felt true to each character while still highlighting the larger cultural differences between them. Amos is an Earther, Alex is a Martian, and their inherent prejudices and grudges rankle to the surface when intersolar tensions get heated. What I thought was the best display of how deep planetary loyalty goes was the ruffled feathers between Amos and Alex. Also, they made that monster beautifully creepy. The Martian Marine crew are always griping about Earth, but in this case the griping was functional because it set up the wild firefight between the Martian and UN forces on Ganymede at the end of the episode. Chrisjen is wonderful, as ever, in that she refuses to take presumed Martian aggression at face value.

Mars is known for revolutionary technology and the UN, of course, would be antsy to find a reason to be belligerent towards them. The UN briefings were trying to put Eros’ erratic behavior down to a new Martian technology because that would be the easy and expected solution. For the characters who are actually on Earth or in the Martian military that animosity is a given, but it even extended to the Rocinante crew. One thing I thought was a particularly nice touch was the antagonism between Martians and Earthers threaded through every storyline. It only gave mildly further insight into his thoughts. I could have gotten pretty much all the information that the guy was telling me just from watching what was happening. But beyond that it suggested something about the Epstein drives would have a much larger role to play in this installment of the story. It was a good way to mention how technology is often the cause of a huge paradigm shift, as the title of the episode calls out. I liked the background information but I both have no idea what relevance it has to the rest of the story we were told in this episode and I found the voice-over narration hackneyed. The bit of this episode that I found most off-putting was actually the flashbacks of the guy testing/inventing the Epstein drive which is the technological advance that opened up colonization of the solar system. The episode generates plenty of conflict within the character groups allowing everyone to demonstrate where they stand on moral issues and international politics with bonus incorporation of commentary on how technology drives social change.

THE EXPANSE delivers a somewhat messy but ultimately satisfying episode with “Paradigm Shift,” featuring technology, social strife, and interplanetary warmongering.

Paradigm shift the expanse