10 Years Ago, One Epic Sci-Fi Show Smartly Improved On Its Source Material

There’s no debating that Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck’s Expanse novels changed the space opera game. Starting with Leviathan Wakes in 2011, the complex story of a future version of the solar system redefined what mainstream, fast-paced epic science fiction could be like. Quickly, those books were saddled with the slightly unfortunate tag of “Game of Thrones in space,” which was really only true because there were a lot of characters and factions. And, in a world in which Battlestar Galactica had just ended in 2009, it made sense that the SyFy Channel would be looking for what was, in essence, the next Battlestar Galactica.

And yet, the two point-of-view characters in the very first novel, James Holden and Joe Miller, are not, in the grand scheme of characters, the most exciting or original; one is a self-righteous space guy, and the other one an old-school detective. This works fine for the first book, as the world-building of the Belt is slowly revealed through fairly narrow POVs. But, when the TV version of The Expanse debuted on December 14, 2015, the series correctly made one major change: Introducing a crucial character from the second book much earlier, and making her central to the larger story.

People love to talk about the various younger, more conventionally badass characters in The Expanse: Naomi (Dominique Tipper), Amos (Wes Chatham), Drummer (Cara Gee), and Bobbie (Frankie Adams). But nothing about the show would work, even a little bit, without the commanding and brilliant presence of Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala.

Though she doesn’t appear at all in the story of Leviathan Wakes — which is the novel that The Expanse Season 1 adapted — Chrisjen’s presence in the second book, Caliban’s War, gives the series a larger political dimension. As the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Chrisjen is the kind of sci-fi politician that the Star Wars prequels only really dreamed of giving us. In fact, if you really want to get real, even Andor’s sci-fi political intrigue is baby stuff compared to the schemes and machinations of Chrisjen. From the jump, this character feels like as much of the star of the show as any of the scrappy crew of the Rocinante.

To be clear, Aghdashloo’s take on the character in The Expanse Season 1 is pretty faithful to the novels; Abraham and Franck were super-involved in the writing of The Expanse, even when the show switched from being a SyFy series to one on Prime Video in 2018. But what Aghdashloo adds is not just a duplicitous and interesting politician to the mix, but also one that is funny as hell and ready to drop a surprising F-bomb.

Make no mistake, The Expanse would not work at all, and Season 1 would be borderline unwatchable without Aghdashloo in the role of Chrisjen. Which is interesting, considering that her character, in theory, shouldn’t have appeared until Season 2. A version of The Expanse without Aghdashloo’s presence in Season 1 would be like thinking about the modern Battlestar Galactica without Mary McDonnell’s Laura Roslin. There’s a kind of macho energy to much of The Expanse’s space opera, spaceship action, which isn’t limited to just the male characters.

But thanks to Aghdashloo being a bit older, and specifically not an outer space badass, there’s a layer of realism and scope to the show which is established right away. This idea, of having a story told on multiple levels, with different types of power, is what made The Expanse such a groundbreaking and solid sci-fi series. But, like all good narratives, it all comes down to characters, and in Chrisjen Avasarala, the TV sci-fi world was gifted one of the greatest and most hilarious characters of all time.

The Expanse streams on Prime Video.