The Expanse: Naomi Nagata Deserves All The Awards

SyFy Channel I am in love, and I don’t say that lightly. TV had disappointed me so many times, I had stopped messing with her. I was heartbroken. Into this empty, non-episodic life, came a weekend when I was allergic to everything, leaving me pumped full of DayQuil (I’m a mom, I still have to function), stuck on the couch surrounded by tissue boxes and unfulfilled plans. This was the weekend I binged the entire first season of The Expanse (currently available for free on Amazon Streaming and showing season 2 on SyFy). This was the weekend I met the crew of the Rocinate — accidental ship captain James Holden (Steven Strait), engineer and tech genius Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), pilot Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar), and bruiser Amos Burton (Wes Chatham). I’m hooked, y’all. Binge-drunk in love. These guys are no Firefly, but they are a crew, and a fascinatingly tight one at that. They form one-third of the plot threads of the show, with Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), the sharp-tongued United Nations politician who’s trying to start, or maybe stop, a war, holding down her third mostly by herself with her clothes (because GOOD BAST ALMIGHTY ARE HER CLOTHES GORGEOUS). The third thread is that of failing spacestation cop Josephus Miller (Thomas Jane). He’s looking for a lost rich girl, and getting in way over his head in the process. What got me was the crew of the Rocinante — a crew that had been flying together for a while on the ice freighter Canterbury, but doesn’t actua…