The series is one big spaceship explosion away from becoming the most visually and narratively compelling work of fiction I have seen all year.

The Expanse is to this decade what Battlestar Galactica was to the previous one.

It felt good to slip back into the space opera. The new season does an excellent job of continuing the character development that was expertly executed last season.

Not one frame on The Expanse passes without asking you to take note of what it's doing, and what, in the long run, it means.

The Expanse isn't perfect television, but entering Season 3 it is undeniably confident about the story it's telling, and more importantly the kind of stories it wants to tell.

The shift in motivation and purpose for all of the characters sets up the new chapter beautifully, leaving everyone anticipating a great third season for this most epic of space dramas.

It can be grim and unsettling, but it presents a universe in which it is still possible to be a hero. You just have to be willing to face what happens next.

Because The Expanse, really, is a show that you have to directly experience. It's one part TV drama, one part an actual place to embed in and explore. It's smart and dense, but just as accessible and exciting.

If The Expanse can keep this up through the remaining episodes this year, the series may well be on its way to delivering the most engaging season yet.

With the first episode of The Expanse's third season, Fight or Flight, everything has changed but the series still feels the same. Same snare-tight plots. Same boiling tension. Same gorgeous interplanetary scenery. Same Avasarala mic drops.

Alex's message to his long-neglected family on Mars was both poignant and perfect.

The Expanse understands better than most that big, twisty moments shouldn't make or break a story, and that when those moments do arise, they should be genuinely shocking.