[Among all the technical and narrative achievements of The
Expanse, none are as remarkable as the way the women on the show
dominate and lead the storytelling. There are women of all ages,
races, body types, and sexualities in the universe.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE WOMEN OF ‘THE EXPANSE’ WILL BE THE SHOW'S GREATEST LEGACY  
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Naomi Elias
December 15, 2020
FIlm School Rejects
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_ Among all the technical and narrative achievements of 'The
Expanse', none are as remarkable as the way the women on the show
dominate and lead the storytelling. There are women of all ages,
races, body types, and sexualities in the universe. _

,

 

Set 200 years in our future, _THE EXPANSE_ is as much a sci-fi
series as it is a political drama. Everyone wants to colonize the
solar system and it’s a race to the start line. Earth is run by the
United Nations, Mars is an independent nation terraforming its way to
a greener future, and factions along the asteroid belt known as
Belters are looking to gain more power on the interstellar stage.

The show has drawn wide praise for its stunning visuals (most sets
were built-out
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the largest available stages of Pinewood Toronto Studios instead of
heavily relying on green screens, and in Season 4, an active quarry
helped create a desolate frontier-planet look
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It’s also famously scientifically accurate
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doubt by showrunner NAREN SHANKAR who has a Ph.D. in electrical
engineering and previously worked as a scientific consultant
for _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_.

Perhaps most impressively, though, from the beginning, the show fought
for purposefully inclusive casting that is revelatory for the
genre. As pointed out by Tasha Robinson at The Verge
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“There’s no reason to assume, sight unseen, that any given
referenced characters, regardless of their position in the world, will
be white men.”

Still, among all these technical and narrative achievements, none are
as remarkable as the way the women on the show dominate and lead the
storytelling. There are women of all ages, races, body types, and
sexualities in the universe of _The Expanse_, in positions of
authority, representing the working class, pilots, soldiers,
scientists, refugees, community leaders.

Even more impressive than their numbers is the fact that none of them
fall into the usual tropes women in genre shows are typically confined
to, such as the Girl Boss, the Mary Sue, and the Born Sexy Yesterday
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term coined by YouTuber Jonathan McIntosh who uses it to describe the
sci-fi trope found in movies like _Tron_, _The Fifth Element, _and
the original _Planet of the Apes_, where women are sexy and helpless,
externally Barbie-like but internally child-like).

The minds of the women of _The Expanse_ are always whirring, and the
show delights in showing us how they work. As season five unfurls, it
becomes clearer and clearer that their stories are the beating heart
of the show. So let’s give them their due recognition.

Naomi Nagata

[Dominique Tipper]

Naomi, played by British-Dominican actress DOMINIQUE TIPPER, is
officially the _Rocinante_’s executive officer. She’s also its
chief engineer, conscience, and the love interest of its captain, Jim
Holden. That order is significant. Her most important role is as the
ship whisperer, making sure to repair it post-battle and generally
help improve the quality of its flight and operations. Her skills are
showcased daily as she attends to the problems, small and large, that
spaceflight entails, and the respect she commands is evident in the
way Holden regularly defers to her for major decisions concerning the
crew.

Naomi is also the conscience of the _Rocinante_, but she is not an
infallible angel immune from having crises of conscience of her own.
She was formerly a member of the OPA (the Outer Planets Alliance), a
Belter collective seen as either terrorists or freedom fighters
depending on whom you ask, and fell in love with one of the group’s
most brutish members, Marco Inaros, a man who has kept her from her
son for years. Inaros’ actions at the end of Season 4 set him up as
the Big Bad of the fifth season, giving Naomi the greatest personal
and political motives out of anyone for going after him.

“I think sometimes when we talk about representation, we forget
about the flawed-ness of humans,” Tipper said in a conversation
with _TV Guide_
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the image her character provides. “We don’t just want to see a
strong Black woman trope. We want to see a Black woman who is ripped
from her family, and is navigating that, and has privilege, and that
makes wrong decisions and does the right thing, and you’re still in
love with her at the end of it. Because I think too often when we try
to diversify in Hollywood or on shows, we try and portray the most
wholesome version of that or the most palatable version of it, and
that’s where you run into problems.”

Naomi is a Black woman who is the brains of the operation, a friend, a
mother, a lover, someone who has been wronged and done wrong but is
striving to right it all. As Samantha Olthof writes in FSR’s review
of _The Expanse_ Season 5,
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strong all-around performances this season are crowned by Tipper’s
heart-wrenching delivery of Naomi.”

Camina Drummer

[Drummer]

Drummer, played by Canadian actress CARA GEE, is a no-nonsense Belter
captain. A lot of her fire comes from a personal connection to the
material. Gee is Ojibwe and one of the few Native actors currently
working in television let alone a science-fiction series.
She explained to _Entertainment Weekly_
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New York Comic-Con that Drummer’s passion for Belter justice reminds
her of the struggles indigenous people are going through now.

“In real life, I’m an indigenous woman,” she says, “and so for
me, in particular, the questions about access to clean air and water
and who has access to that is one that is extremely relevant given
that so many reserves don’t have access to clean water even in
Canada and in the United States, and that, to me, is just so
mindblowing: that we can exist in such luxury, some of us, and others
so oppressed.”

Although she is both strong and smart, Drummer is not the strongest
fighter or the smartest engineer on the show. She is, however, one of
the most powerful people in any room she enters because of her innate
ability to read people and ascertain their desires. She uses this gift
to plot. She’s not too proud to work under someone — she served as
a prized lieutenant to two different OPA faction leaders proving her
adaptability — or to work with past enemies because she sees its
utility.

She’s not too squeamish to take out people aboard her ship who
attempt a mutiny because she isn’t clouded by idealism about how the
groups can someday all get along. And when her legs are injured in the
middle of a massive crisis, she powers through the pain and builds a
solution while in her hospital bed so that she can return to help her
shipmates ASAP. She is the most present of all the characters. Her
mind is goal-oriented and always-active: _In this moment what do I
need, whose resources can I leverage to achieve my goal? _

Drummer’s friendship with Naomi is one of the highlights of the
show. Both Belter women share a goal but have two very different
perspectives on how to achieve it. In one exemplary scene the two talk
about a drug dealer aboard their ship who is supplying incapacitating
drugs to skiff drivers. Naomi is worried about handing over the guy to
Drummer for fear of letting her down but also because she doesn’t
want him to be violently punished. This changes when his actions cause
another shipmate to lose his life and damage much-needed equipment.
“I don’t expect you to be perfect. Or anyone,” Drummer tells
Naomi. “That skiff driver was free to put whatever he liked into his
body — we all are — until that freedom puts others at risk. And
then we act accordingly.”

It’s a very enlightened leadership approach that demonstrates
Drummer’s nuanced understanding of human behavior while also
displaying her pragmatism: things that get in the way of her goal must
be dealt with quickly and unsentimentally. With every scene she
appears in, Drummer continues to prove she is one of the most unique
women to appear in any sci-fi series.

Roberta “Bobbie” Draper

[ Bobbie]

Bobbie, a Martian soldier played by Samoan actress FRANKIE ADAMS, is
a trope-busting character in a genre prone to racist stereotypes where
Asian characters are concerned. This September, a tweet went viral
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dissecting the harmful trope of the nonverbal woman that many women of
color are forced into on-screen. Within the thread, it was
particularly evident that this trope is especially common for Asian
female characters (Karen Fukuhara appears twice on the list for two
different nonverbal roles). In addition to being nonverbal for largely
unexplained reasons, Asian characters are also typically depicted as
unfeeling and expendable (author Paula Young Lee wrote about this
specific trope, The Expendable Asian Crewmember
[[link removed]],
for Salon).

In _The Expanse_, Bobbie is the antithesis of these harmful
stereotypes. She has a lively personality, is purposeful but not
mechanical, and is definitely not expendable to the show. Since her
introduction in Season 2, Bobbie has been given the most prized arc on
any genre show: a hero’s journey.

In a memorable sequence that could have easily been cut (or would
never even be filmed on another show), Bobbie escapes from her room in
the Mars embassy using her know-how in order to MacGyver an exit.
Instead of nailing it on the first round, she noodles around until she
finds a tool made of strong enough material to penetrate her window:
fittingly, the purple heart Mars awarded her for parroting propaganda
instead of standing in her truth. We watch her work through the
problem. Methodical, logical, relentless. Her attributes aren’t just
buzzwords to satisfy a demand for more feminist storytelling, they are
provable because of the material the character is given.

The show’s writers also avoid the infamous Mary Sue trope by showing
us how she achieves her wins and also letting us see her lose. We know
Bobbie is a force of nature not because of her cool Martian war suit
but because we’ve seen her kick ass with or without it. An
interrogation scene shows she has the moral fortitude to stand up to
her military command when she smells something rotten even if it means
breaking from the Good Little Martian she was groomed to be her entire
life.

In another scene, she and two other characters get ambushed, and
Bobbie has to figure a way out. She connects to the ship’s site plan
and comes up with a daring escape. We watch as she makes her way
through a shaft John McClane-style and takes out some gunmen. The
sequence isn’t all adrenaline, though, because while she can bluntly
take out a series of men, she isn’t a machine, so she knows she
doesn’t _have_ to. When she encounters an electrician who stands
between her and her goal, she uses her words to find a peaceable
solution.

Bobbie’s humanity is textual and is always present even in fight
scenes. Her journey from blunt instrument for Mars to free-thinking
agent of change has been one of the most rewarding on the show.

Clarissa Mao

[Women Of The Expanse Clarissa]

Clarissa, played by NADINE NICOLE, was introduced as the older sister
of Julie Mao, the missing person who set off the events of the first
season. The uber-privileged daughters of early-season antagonist
Jules-Pierre Mao have very different trajectories on the show. While
Julie turns her back on her father and his nefarious plans for
weaponizing a lethal alien protomolecule, aligning herself with the
Belter revolutionaries, Clarissa is at first glance a blindly loyal
daughter.

In the third season, she begins a methodical attack against
Team _Rocinante_ in an effort to seek justice for her father, whose
ill-doings the crew helped bring to light. Clarissa is so committed to
this assignment that she adopts an alter ego, goes undercover, and
gets non-reversible modifications to her body that turn her into a
lethal machine when activated. Her plans set off one of the tensest
sequences in the show thus far: a multi-spaceship chase through an
unexplored alien ring. Her fate seems sealed until, in a crucial
moment, she overhears Holden and Naomi discuss how they need to save
everyone from a potentially extinction-level event, and Clarissa’s
view of him and of herself shifts. Her change of heart helps
Team _Rocinante_ thwart a hasty call from a captain who is seconds
from killing them all.

After a season’s worth of evidence pointing to her as the most
cunning and unapologetic villain the team has yet faced, Clarissa ends
up being a hero in their hour of need. Instead of killing her off
after one redeeming heroic act (one of the tropiest tropes ever), the
show decided it was more interesting to let us watch her change and
grow, and it was right. Clarissa has plenty of time to stew on her bad
life choices because she ends up receiving a life sentence for
committing multiple homicides.

Nicole was bumped to series regular for Season 5, and her arc in this
season and on the show overall is evidence of the way _The
Expanse_ tries to complicate our understanding of simple television
tropes like “good guys” and “villains.” On this show, doing
something bad doesn’t make you a villain — at least, not
permanently. Similarly, doing one good thing doesn’t mean you’re a
good person. Clarissa’s character arc is a microcosm of the moral
struggle that everyone on the show is going through in their own way.

Chrisjen Avasarala

[The Expanse Women Chrisjen]

Avasarala, played by Iranian-American actress SHOHREH AGHDASHLOO, is
a shrewd and incredibly fashionable 
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who eventually becomes the UN Secretary-General, a.k.a the leader of
Earth. She sees the world as a chessboard. In the third episode of the
first season, there’s a scene between Chrisjen and Frank, an old
friend, in which he recounts a story about the time a young Chrisjen
was tasked with coming up with a card game for some friends to play.

“You said we each get five cards, you dealt them out, then you
pointed to the far end of the yard, and you said, ‘Now whoever gets
to the tree first, wins.’ You dropped your cards and were halfway
there before anyone else realized what was happening.” Frank
explains that that was the moment he became terrified for her because
it was the moment he realized she would do anything to win. The story
neatly summarizes Chrisjen’s character. Imagine the ruthless
political maneuvering of _Game of Thrones_‘ Cersei but used for
good instead of evil.

In Season 4, Chrisjen faces a challenge to her seat as UN
Secretary-General, and the election advisers she hires to help secure
the win ask her to appear more maternal to voters, to exercise soft
power rather than the blunt and sweary force
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wielding, and she all but laughs in their faces.

_The Expanse _liberates Chrisjen from one of the worst constraints to
which a female character can be chained: the prison cell of
likeability. She is canonically and iconically unconcerned with
whether people like her or not as long as she gets the job done. She
is noteworthy because she is a powerful female character who is not
simply a carbon copy of male leaders who came before her. This is
foregrounded in the very first episode of the series, in which she is
depicted as equally at ease torturing a man for information at a UN
black site as playing with her grandson.

She’s the most complex character in the series, capable of extreme
warmth and coldness, both manipulative and caring, at times the most
arrogant and at others the wisest. Though she begins the fifth season
fresh off of losing the election, she is not diminished by the loss
but fortified by it. If future genre writers are looking for a way to
nimbly write about women and power, hers is the mold they should cut
from.

Naomi, Camina, Bobbie, Clarissa, and Chrisjen are just five of the
many complex female characters that populate _The Expanse. _There
are a lot of shows set in space, but_ The Expanse_ has distinguished
itself in a classic and oft-explored genre by making sure that women
are given, at minimum, equal standing with men on the show. Women are
heroes and rogues, they can save the world, and they have just as much
power to end it.

In the mythology of _The Expanse_, society has already moved past the
-isms that are still plaguing our world, like racism and sexism, but
the series’ insistence that that’s not just a line in the
proverbial show bible but a real, critical, and undeniable part of its
writing, will undoubtedly be its greatest legacy.

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