Do we like Naren Shankar?
Our score: 6 out of 10. No harm found and some decent words on representation, but the public record is thin and I couldn't verify charity or personal conduct.
Naren Shankar is the bloke behind the sci-fi series The Expanse, and he came to television sideways. He was finishing a physics and engineering degree at Cornell when he decided he didn't want to be an engineer after all. A friend who had just joined the writing staff of Star Trek: The Next Generation got him into TV writing, and he slept on that friend's couch in Los Angeles for about two months.
On the harm test, there's nothing nasty on the record. No culture-war rants, conspiracy theories or campaigning against anyone turned up in my searches, and I found no sign of him keeping dodgy company. His most-discussed public comments are about casting. He has argued that a future in space would include all kinds of people, not only “white Nebraska corn-fed boys”.
He has made the same point about the show's characters. In a 2019 interview he said everyone in the show is human first, with kind people and violent ones in every faction. He also said the writers' room often draws on real-world parallels, such as the Syrian refugee crisis, to shape a character's refugee experience. That is a showrunner treating migrants as people, not as a problem.
On the good-person test, I searched for lawsuits, accusations and complaints and found none about him. Every hit was about other people with similar names. That is reassuring, but it isn't a reference. I also couldn't confirm any particular charity work, so the score stays in the middle rather than up high.
There was also nothing recent and newsworthy I could verify, so there's no fresh stoush to report. His new sci-fi company is reported to be working on an adaptation of another book series by The Expanse authors. I couldn't open a source that gave a firm status, so treat it as a lead and not a fact.