In this era of binge-watching, waiting to see the next episode of a traditional weekly show can really test a viewer’s patience. Right now, I’m really enjoying The Expanse, currently airing its second season on Syfy, but new episodes only show up once a week on Wednesday nights. That means I have to endure six days that are woefully devoid of The Expanse content.
Fortunately, as I was failing to patiently wait for Wednesday night to roll around, I learned about Flickr user Shannon Sproule‘s fantastic LEGO spaceship creations based on The Expanse universe. These seem to have satisfied my cravings, if only for a little while. Here are his first three unique and thoughtful designs.
UNN “Coelacanth”
The first ship Shannon designed was this blocky United Nations Navy vessel, what he calls an expeditionary fast transport, employed by the UNN to “bust up some Belter scum.”
Small Gas Miner “Immaculata”
This small ship is used to mine hydrogen around Saturn. Its crew extracts the gas using the ship’s dorsal vents and stores it in the forward bulkheads. After transport, these are off-loaded onto the Ceres Station docks.
MCRN Destroyer “Gazsardt”
This design, the sleekest of the three, is a Martian attack craft. When it comes to planetary defense, the MCRN (Martial Congressional Republic Navy) doesn’t mess around, and this destroyer-class ship is ready for a fight wherever fighting needs to be done.
Right now Shannon has only revealed these three vessels, but he’s working on more Expanse-themed designs. So while you’re waiting for new episodes of the show to air, check out his Flickr photostream for more images of the three ships seen here as well as updates on his future creations.
[Via Brothers Brick.]
I’d like to add that if you are a fan of the Expanse television show and have NOT read the books, you are missing out. Yes, the books will spoil some of the upcoming plots and twists, but the books are too good to ignore.
Right on, James. They’re so good.
IMO, there;s no need to read the book(s). The Expanse series (now running into Season 4) has done an admirably fantastic job at depicting the intricacies of this story, both the political machinations and the individual character development as well as the technical aspects of this “hard” Sci-Fi genre.
Understandably, the writers had deep and continuous interactions with the TV series production team throughout the development of Expanse.
Basically, Expanse was a unique story-development model – an industry first, whereby the authors had set out right from the outset to write the book(s) almost as if it was meant for a movie script. Hence, the movie story-line rarely detracts from the original, unlike most other screen adaptions of Sci-Fi novels.
In other words, doing a movie marathon on the Expanse is a far faster way to complete this storied universe than reading the book series. had a fun time thinking about the realism of the Expanse. You’d enjoy it too!