The Expanse Profiles: Naomi Nagata

 At right is an artist illustration of Naomi Nagata, who is the second officer on The Rocinante as well as Captain Jim Holden's long-term girlfriend. The artist that drew the picture is JujuFei, and you can look at more of her work HERE. As far as the books go, it's not how I would have pictured Naomi. But I think most people are not going to draw "Belters" correctly, because the author James S.A. Corey describes them as having overly large heads. When I brought this up to my community D&D group/collective, they argued that zero gravity would make your head swell disproportionate to the size of your body. In other words, Close Encounters of the Third Kind got it right when they had all these big-headed skinny aliens. That's what humans would look like were we to live our entire lives outside a natural gravity well.

In The Expanse television series, Naomi is played by actress Dominique Tipper. She's pictured below and on the left. Naomi served with Holden as a part of the crew of The Canterbury. As far as skills go, she's an excellent technician capable of hacking any computer to find any bit of information that the plot requires or to programming the magnetic bottle containment system that keeps a fusion reaction contained.

Naomi Nagata became super interesting after the Ring Gates opened to 1300 worlds. In the book, Nemesis Games, it's revealed that she had a kid named Filip with a Belter terrorist by the name of Marco Inaros. Marco, a Belter who is more than aware that access to 1300 habitable worlds means extinction to a lot of people who have evolved to live in zero gravity, takes his anger out on Earth by dropping a bunch of asteroids covered with anti-radar paint on the planet. The result is the death of billions of people, tidal waves the size of skyscrapers, and just massive extinction level events. Earth barely survives. Marco kidnaps Naomi prior to this event, and she becomes pretty essential in not only identifying who he is, but ultimately taking him out using a trick of the Ring Gates.

I can't wait until the Amazon series showcases the destruction of Earth. That is going to be some epic level destruction porn that goes on for probably an entire season, as the struggle in and around Earth's survivors, as well as all the characters impacted by it, go on and on.

In my opinion, Naomi was a pretty flat character until Nemesis Games. The introduction of her son, Filip, gave her a lot of depth. Additionally, I enjoyed the connection that she had with the terrorist Marco Inaros, because in many ways, it was the point of view we needed to have any sympathy for what the "belters" were going through in facing a kind of extinction with the opening of the Ring Gates.

Coming up on Friday: Profile of Amos Burton