Prime Video's Ambitious New Sci-Fi Series Will Be Star Trek Meets The Expanse

While Prime Video’s upcoming sci-fi series has a plot that could make the show feel like Star Trek meets The Expanse, it will be tough for the series to live up to these two iconic small-screen franchises. While the Star Trek franchise has numerous iconic shows to its name, including The Next Generation, The Original Series, and Strange New Worlds, Prime Video’s The Expanse has only one show so far.

The acclaimed six-season series will soon be followed by its upcoming sequel of sorts, The Captive’s War. However, even if this follow-up weren’t happening, The Expanse can already go toe to toe with Star Trek as one of the greatest small-screen sci-fi franchises ever, even though it only has one show to its name. Based on author James S.A. Corey’s novel series of the same name, The Expanse was so great that its 68-episode run already rivals Star Trek’s entire long history.

Set in a future where the solar system’s planets have been colonized, The Expanse starts out as a murder mystery where Thomas Jane’s detective Josephus looks into a conspiracy implicating members of both the United Nations of Earth and Luna and the Martian Congressional Republic on Mars. However, like the similarly acclaimed The Wire, The Expanse takes this seemingly simple setup and uses it to establish a sweeping, polyphonic story told from dozens of perspectives that offers an immersive vision of the show’s future reality. This gives Prime Video’s upcoming Mass Effect show a lot to live up to.

Mass Effect Will Be Like A Star Trek Series With The Expanse’s Tone

Technically, Prime Video’s Mass Effect series isn’t directly canonically related to The Expanse or the Star Trek franchise. Instead, the show will bring the popular military sci-fi game series of the same name to the screen for the first time, hoping to live up to recent hit video game adaptations like Arcane, The Last of Us, and Fallout in the process.

However, it doesn’t take a genre expert to work out why Mass Effect’s upcoming adaptation is already earning comparisons to both The Expanse and Star Trek. The Mass Effect franchise’s premise centers on a federation of different planets, including both human and alien delegates, who must uneasily collaborate to run the galaxy together. So far, so similar to the set-up of most shows in the Star Trek universe.

Since Star Trek: Beyond’s Doug Jung was announced as the show’s showrunner, the Mass Effect series clearly isn’t trying to sidestep its similarities to the franchise. However, the Mass Effect games also have a lot in common with The Expanse in terms of their storylines. In The Expanse, humans discover protomolecule ruins that uncover ancient technologies, and this results in an interstellar arms race.

The Mass Effect TV Show Faces A Tough Job Living Up To Either Sci-Fi Franchise

The cast of Star Trek: The Original Series

In the Mass Effect games, players discover Protean ruins that offer evidence of aliens that predate humanity, as well as the advanced technologies they left behind. The similarities between the two franchises are clear in terms of story, even if the Mass Effect franchise’s Federation owes as much to Star Trek: The Original Series as it does to Prime Video’s earlier hit.

However, regardless of which franchise viewers are reminded of first, Mass Effect’s adaptation will struggle to emerge from the long shadow cast by both fan favorites. While Star Trek has more history and many, many more shows to its name, The Expanse has near-flawless execution going for it. Star Trek’s franchise includes some of the genre’s best shows ever, while The Expanse is frequently listed among the best TV shows ever in any genre.

Admittedly, this means that Mass Effect has some lofty influences to live up to, and the much delayed Halo adaptation doesn’t exactly bode well for any upcoming long-awaited small-screen version of a popular post-apocalyptic military sci-fi video game. That being said, considering how well the games blended elements of Star Trek and The Expanse in an original, engaging, unpredictable story, Mass Effect’s upcoming streaming show may well be able to do the same.