There’s no debating that Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck’s Expanse novels changed the space opera game. This works fine for the first book, as the world-building of the Belt is slowly revealed through fairly narrow POVs. But nothing about the show would work, even a little bit, without the commanding and brilliant presence of Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala. 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. 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.