It’s started on BBC 2 now (Thursdays 9pm – though the opener was tonight, Wed.) so it seems safe enough to talk about this. Defying Gravity is a joint venture between the BBC, ABC and a few other stations (BBC press pack here). It’s the story of a group of astronauts on a six-year tour of the solar system, starting off on Venus and then doing the grand tour. The public believes that it’s for little more than a sightseeing mission but in reality, there’s another purpose to it all, involving an alien life form.
The show is told from two perspectives: from that of the mission and from flashbacks of five-years ago as the crew started to train together and the inter-character relationships are all different.
All of the attractive crew* (and Joey from Bread) have their burdens: two of them abandoned fellow astronauts on Mars, another has killed people in their past, one struggles with religion v science and so on.
If it was to be compared to current TV shows, the mix would be of Lost and Grey’s Anatomy with a dash of Sci-fi, but there’s also a heavy dash of science in here (the show is actually based on an old BBC documentary series) and it covers the following themes:
- Character relationships in a long-term space mission
- The impact of alien life – and the cover up of said alien life – on Earth
- The cover-ups that take place on Earth to keep the mission successful
- Religion v science
- The autonomy of a space crew versus following orders from the ground
- The cost of such a space mission and the impact of commercialisation on space travel
- The strain on relationships when one is in space and one is on the ground
- A relatively serious look at the tech/travel times 40 years from now that may take us on space travel
- How spit can save your live in a leaky space suit
What there isn’t:
- Laser beams
- FTL travel
- bumpy-head aliens/stargates/warp drives
- happy plot resolution and character resets at the end of each episode (see most Star Trek series, Stargates and so on) – stuff has consequence in this show
It’s not a perfect show – some of the contrivances in the opening eps are a bit much – and as a few people have pointed out, this is not the normal crew you would send into space (though given how dull many of the people sent into space have been, I think I’d rather have this lot up there).
One thing that people moaned about when this aired in the USA was that it was a slow show, but having sat through four hours of Stargate Universe where all they have managed is a) find an old space ship, b) fix the air supply and c) head for the sun I don’t think it’s an accusation that sticks.
The problem the show has is that it may not be SF enough for SF fans (most of them like laser beams and lots of aliens) and everyone else will be turned off by it even having a hint of SF (Lost took years to admit that it has quite a few SF elements like time travel). A lot of the things it does seem normal to anyone who watches Grey’s (a show I can’t stand), ER or other mainstream hits, but they aren’t normal for SF shows.
But this is a show with fantastic potential. Having watched the first 11 episodes, this deserves a shot. It’s not perfect, but it is one of the best attempts at producing a mainstream SF show (to me it also pisses over most TV of recent years including – look away Guardian TV readers – The Wire). If you were a fan of the excellent Orbiter by Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran you may want to check this out. And if you like the show you may want to check that graphic novel out.
Anyway, it’s a show that could do with the ratings – in iPlayer (episodes here) (repeat times here) as much as on the channel – to help it survive past the first 13 eps (in the US, ABC moved it about the schedules and also gave it shockingly bad pre-publicity and advance buzz. They should have hired me for the PR 🙂 )
* Crew run-down:
The series’ international ensemble cast is led by Ron Livingston (Sex And The City) as flight engineer Maddux Donner, Laura Harris (24) as ship’s geologist Zoe Barnes, Malik Yoba (New York Undercover) as flight commander Ted Shaw, Christina Cox (Blood Ties) as biologist Jen Crane,Florentine Lahme (Impact) as pilot Nadia Schilling, Paula Garces (The Shield) as pilot, scientist and on-board documentary producer Paula Morales, Eyal Podell (24) as psychiatrist and medical officer Evram Mintz, and Dylan Taylor (House Party) as theoretical physicist Steve Wassenfelder.
The cast on planet Earth is led by Andrew Airlie (Reaper) as Mission Control Commander Mike Goss, Karen LeBlanc (ReGenesis) as scientist Eve Shaw, Zahf Paroo (Battlestar Gallactica) as grounded flight engineer Ajay Sharma, Maxim Roy (MVP) as flight surgeon Claire Dereux and Ty Olsson as Rollie Crane, once Mission Commander onboard Antares, and now cap comm; episodic director Peter Howitt (Sliding Doors; Bread) also plays the role of British journalist, Trevor Williams.
14 responses to “Defying Gravity: best TV show for 2009 and why viewers should stick with it”
As a viewer in Canada – our participation in this series is via CTV, both directly and via their SFTV channel Space – I’ll second Craig’s assessment. It does take a couple of instalments to get the footing properly established, so if you’re a particularly impatient sort of viewer, this may not be your thing. If you’re willing to invest the time, though, Defying Gravity will repay that investment handsomely.
I’d love to see this show run the whole six-year “Grand Tour” plotline. And I won’t mind having company along for the ride, either.
After the first episode, I was not keen at all, but after the second I was less dismissive and I’m undecided about it at the moment.
Bad points: I found all the Top-Gun-esque whooping and general banter to be a bit tiresome. I also found the spiritual musings to be a bit hokey and bit un-scientific for the crew of a scientific endeavour (plus, abortion is illegal in the future? I mean, seriously? I’m not buying that). If it does deal with religion (which can be interesting, but isn’t original, see Athur C. CLarkes Rama series) I hope it’s not awkwardly crow-barred in just to please the ‘faith’ crowd in America. That would suck. What they did crowbar in was the predictable British bad guy, in the form of a journalist. Very cliché. And lastly, do they only send stunningly attractive women into space?
Good points: The art direction is great, (even if the ship does look remarkably like the ship in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine) and the as yet un-revealed alien angle has got me interested enough to keep watching. It’s also nice to see sci-fi on the telly generally. I’m interested to see how one or two of the characters develop.
So, I’ll keep watching for now. It might surprise me.
Not every alt.future story in SF has to depict any nation’s society as having evolved in a fully progressive manner. Political and ethical pendulums do keep swinging back and forth.
The abortion being illegal angle I found quite interesting because most US shows go for the ‘happy liberal future’ whereas given the level of debate/argument in the US over abortion, I could plausably see that happening. In some ways, it paints quite a dark future, which you don’t immediately see because everything looks so shiny.
As for the journalist being the bad guy, I don’t see him being the bad guy. He’s just doing his job. And besides, it’s Joey from Bread. Who thought he would ever get a job? 🙂
As for the spiritual stuff. One one hand, yeah, I see where you are coming from, but again, each of the Apollo astronauts underwent moments of spiritual musings, especially after coming home, so I can see that. There’s a lot of quotes, quips and moments that are total background but if you are a space geek, you pick up, showing that if nothing else, the writers did their homework (even the science is fairly decent, though there’s the usual dramatic licence for things like gravity).
Yeah, again, I wonder how much that is the fault of Star Trek in that everyone thinks the show should reflect a shiny, positive future. The history of mankind shows that for every step forward in one area, we take three back elsewhere. I mean look at the current broadband, health and education stats for the US – and that’s meant to be the best country in the world?
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Well–I’ve watched the first 12 episodes and agree that there was a slow start but LOVE this show. I’ve watched sci-fi in the past, and serialized dramas of all kinds, so I like the mix here. The actors are all engaging and every week I find I can’t wait for the next episode!
And in Canada, the broadband situation’s not much better, for all that we get right about health care and education. And education may be on the verge of slipping, if we’re not careful.
[…] I’ve ranted before about how much I’m a fan of Defying Gravity and the season ender (which just aired in Canada) was bloody fantastic. One character close to death (though you know they’ll survive), another is emotionally hurt, another is jailed, Cape Canaveral is flooded and under water, another is told that his one-night-stand had an abortion, a new alien turns up, a character has a baby (though the SFX were bloody awful for it) and another realises that she has blocked out sexual abuse in her background. […]
I loved the season finale. I too agree that it started slowly giving almost too much background
information, but now I find myself looking back at previous episodes
to see what I missed. Since the hallucinations seem to
center on guilt, I’m trying to guess what Nadia’s is. Wass and Jen have no guilt but
are essential members of the crew. Wass saved Zoe before she even stepped on Venus and Jen will be needed. Arnel, the loose cannon. The story is about to get out. The mission for me is to save Beta’s family so that they can help humans save the earth. Why is Kennedy underwater?
Definitely gone now:
http://www.tvsquad.com/2009/10/22/set-visits-reveal-ghosts-of-defying-gravity-set-destruction
The show was great to me because it was SciFi that was plausible – something we could relate to – not something freaky like teleportation (sorry, Trekkies). The story lines were very close to home for many people and I thought that would gain viewership. The acting was awesome. Paula Garces’ work here is a great example as a contrast to her roles in the “Harold & Kumar” movies. Ron Livingston was even that much better in contrast to his “Office Space” role. The list goes on. All of them had a “chemistry” – it was awesome and will be missed if indeed lost.
Hi Craig
Thanks for the supportive words for DG. You ‘got’ what it was and what it was trying to be; good fluff TV, a guilty pleasure with some intrigue and mystery.
Glad I discovered your blog.
Best
Andrew Airlie
Thanks for the kind words Andrew.