Defying Gravity: Series Premiere

Regular airtime: Sundays, 9pm ET (ABC)

Cast: Ron Livingston, Andrew Airlie, Christina Cox, Laura Harris, Malik Yoba

US release date: 2 August 2009

By Cynthia Fuchs

PopMatters Film and TV Editor

The Vacuum of Space

 Trailer

 Official Site

I always knew would be here.
—Maddux (Ron Livingston), Defying Gravity

It had become the focus of everything. It was all I could feel, all I could think about. It blotted out the rest of my face, the rest of my life. Like the zit had become… the truth about me.
—Angela (Claire Danes), My So-Called Life

 
“My old man calls space travel a fool’s game,” sighs astronaut Maddux (Ron Livingston). “He says human beings are 60% water, they eat, sleep, defecate, can’t follow directions, and explode like piñatas when exposed to the vacuum of space.” Maddux actually wants to go back into space, which you know because he looks longingly at a TV news report on the team about set to take off on a six-year mission to seven planets. He and his drunken father (Charles Haid) are tightly framed and deeply shadowed, their conflict emphasized by a shallow focus that leaves on blurry and the other sharp: dad looks surly and drunk, Maddux hurt and oh so resentful.

Maddux’s feelings about his dad (pretty humdrum, after all) soon give way to a more profound despair, revealed in flashbacks of his last space flight that went tragically wrong. Ten years ago, in 2042, Maddux was the pilot of a landing vessel on Mars: his face appears in another close-up, this time aghast as he’s commanded to leave behind two fellow crewmembers, in order to salvage the very expensive mission. No wonder he’s all bent out of shape over not being selected for the current mission, much longer and more expensive ($10 trillion). He’s got some redeeming to do.
And so… Defying Gravity, which premieres 2 August on ABC, goes on to grant Maddux a chance. Good thing, because his needs are vast, both melodramatic and action-heroic. Not only must he repair his personal legacy (“We’re not getting away from it are we,” he asks a then-and-now teammate, Ted [Malik Yoba], “Mars is gonna haunt us for the rest of our lives”), but also abandon grumpy dad (“I don’t know if you’re gonna be here when I get back,” he says by way of goodbye; “Pour me another before you leave!” mumbles dad, still mad the kid didn’t make good on his real talent, baseball: “You had the sweetest slider I ever saw”). Maddux’s personal stakes are exacerbated by bad blood between Maddux and his bottom-line-minded commander from that other mission, Mike (Andrew Airlie), doubts regarding his competence, conveniently and repeatedly voiced by Trevor (Peter Howitt), a Brit reporter who can’t shut up about Mars, and oh yes, some horribly messed up history with sorta-maybe girlfriend and fellow crewmember and zoologist Zoe (Laura Harris). When they begin sharing the same nightmare-fantasy—she’s walking naked out of the spacecraft’s airlock and he’s floating outside in his spacesuit, yelling “Noooo!”—you know they’ll have plenty to work through over this long, long mission.

To ensure you understand the magnitude of all this emotional mayhem, Maddux helpfully narrates in generically navel-gazing voiceover: “I’ve always been one of those people who believe you create your own destiny, and through a few bad decisions, I’ve certainly made mine,” or again, “We carry the baggage of our past, our fears, our superstitions, our failings, but we also carry our hopes and our dreams, the hard lessons learned from our lives.”

Lesson one: don’t fret about not getting on the mission when you’re the star of the show. After the angst initiated in the first scene with dad, Maddux and Ted help to monitor the launch from mission control not quite joining in the ritual cheers that ripple through the room when all goes well. They’re called up when something goes wrong with two astronauts on board the Antares—the same something. This crisis is framed by a couple of Lost-ishly cryptic exchanges between Mike and boss Eve (Karen LeBlanc), in charge of the mission and also, oh dear, Ted’s wife. Apparently, they’ve neglected to tell the team that they’ve been chosen by an entity called “Beta,” an entity whose unknown motivations oblige Eve to make blandly absurd pronouncements like, “We’re in uncharted territory here. This is what it wants,” and… cue portentous theme music, “It has a lot more say in this mission than we do.” 

It’s unclear whether Beta has more in common with Desmond’s incessant button-pushing, the “pure chaos, pure evil” of Event Horizon or the sheer brilliance of Jeremy Davies’ skittery hands in Solaris, but it’s clearly a device to bring trouble. This may mean exacerbating the soapy stuff or it may mean relief from same. Beta may or may not be behind the emotional meltdown of the crewmember who “tested the most stable,” Ajay (Zahf Paroo), or the predictable flirtations of German pilot Nadia (Florentine Lahme), who makes tedious play after play for Maddux. Beta may be instigating the Horror Movie 101 voices Zoe keeps hearing, or the apparently very bad idea Ted has at the end of the second hour. Zoe’s accidental expulsion from the ship in a leaky spacesuit leads to the sort of emotional-existential calamity that typifies Defying Graviity. As Maddux prepares to retrieve her, he makes what seems a helpful suggestion, “Conserve your air.” Her comeback (“Is that a euphemism for ‘shut up’?”) indicates that the show leans a little too hard on annoying battle-of-the-sexes repartee, leaving the whole space travel thing as backdrop.

Thus has it ever been. With glaring exceptions like the original Twilight Zone, science fiction-ish TV series tend to focus on inner space more than outer. And so, along with his increasingly addled and acting-out crew, Maddux goes forth, ruminating and reflecting. “Life isn’t always fair,” he says, “Failure can be rewarded, merit can be looked at like a disease. Sometimes I think the only natural selection happens in a Petri dish, but it’s in a Petri dish. That’s not really natural, is it?” No, Maddux, it isn’t.

— 2 August 2009
 
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Comments

The show would have been great if they left out the religious stuff - I say no thank you to the Hindu teachings and we don’t need that taught to us while watching a cool idea for a show.

Comment by Doug in CT from USA — August 2, 2009 @ 8:42 pm

Religion is a part of our lives now, like it or not, and will be part of our lives in 2052, like it or not…  The Hindu “teachings” in DG were anything but preachy and I thought they fit in rather well.  Best of luck to DG… I’ll be back for more!

Comment by dave from LA, Ca — August 3, 2009 @ 9:52 am

this show is amazing and i love it i am praying to god that they do not cancel this show i love the song from the trailer life is beautiful by vega4 and ron livingston is so hot and they cant take this show off the air like they did drive ill be pissed if they do

Comment by latina from danville illinois — August 6, 2009 @ 5:40 pm

I could do with less of the sex angles in the plot, but this is a great show. We need quality scfi shows like this one to bread the tedium.  Especially in Danville, I used to live there, I know.

Comment by Ken from Chicago — August 9, 2009 @ 2:19 pm

It just kills me when self righteous viewers decry the human condition and pretend to be able to create the human life experience better than it really is.  All human failings, and successes, have their place in this show because they are all a part of human life: religion, sex, porn, valor, deceit and etc.  Life is not conducted like some perfect play, it’s a mish-mash of screwed up people who mostly get it right but also get it wrong.  That includes imperfect speech patterns, monotonous personalities, and every other variation of the human condition.

This a very good show with good character development and enough mystery to make it interesting.  If you don’t like it, change the channel.  Continuing to watch something you feel is utterly worthless and without merit only reflects on your lack of maturity.  But then, immaturity is a valid human condition and a lot of very immature viewers and reviewers are out there.

I give this show an 8.5 and Cynthis, you get a 1.2.

Comment by Doug Glass — August 27, 2009 @ 4:22 am

People that think you can leave “sex” or “religion” out of *anything* to do with space travel are frigging idiots.  Period.  No simpler way to put it.

Sex: Well, it’s something we all do.  Whether you like to admit it or not, the minute that we all become aware that we have something there that feels good, sex is on the mind.  It’s going to be on the mind of any person in space too.  So drop your conservative bullshit and get over it.  Fact of life, it happens, period.  You can’t change it.

Religion: Well, everyone thinks about the fundementals of that too.  One would hope that the scientific minds put into a space program would have better thoughts about it than the average plebe on earth.  Unfortunately that’s not true.  The typical religous moron that has intense feelings about the rights and wrongs of sex (see paragraph one) is going to be one of the people, if not two of the people, selected for a space mission.  And how do we deal with that?  The same way we’ve always dealt with is: Believe whatever you want to believe, but don’t you dare let it get in the way of what you are doing.

A lot of people are assuming that “beta” is a religious icon.  Why?  Why would you assume that?  Simply by making that kind of assumption, you are saying you are more powerful than god.  What if “beta” isn’t a he/she/god/other but instead an it.  What if “beta” is an alien artificial intelligence left behind in there version of a computer bank that is trying to make contact to simply communicate its directive?

God and sex really have little to do with the matter.  You people that want to focus on that just simply need to get laid.

Comment by Chris Wilson from Oregon — September 3, 2009 @ 7:33 am

I’m a longtime Science Fiction fan who keeps watching week after week hoping that the show will get better. It has the potential to be a great show, but I think it’s in imminent danger of being cancelled. Why? I think because there’s too much in there that doesn’t make sense:

1) Nobody’s perfect, but some of these characters have such serious issues there’s no way they would have made the cut for such an important and dangerous mission. The hard partying, immature, and lack of self control some of these jokers display would have caused them to be cut from the space program from the outset. For those of us accustomed to seeing real astronauts and NASA missions covered in the news, it takes a huge amount of suspension of disbelief to accept some of these clowns as the real deal.

2) The “incestuous” relationships between the team members are ridiculous. Consider this: The real reason some commanders oppose having gays in the military is not necessarily to be discriminatory, but rather because romantic relationships between team members of combat units are bad for unit cohesion, morale, and puts lives at risk. While not in combat, the environment this team is dealing with is equally hazardous, and certainly the history between some of the characters would have precluded them from being assigned together, halo or no halo! The end result is basically porn - sex in the show just for the sake of having sex in the show, even when it really doesn’t fit realistically into the context.

3) The playful interplay between some of the characters is overdone. Half the time they don’t seem serious enough about the preparation for and undertaking of what is suppposed to be the most difficult and demanding thing they’ll tackle in their whole life.

4) They’re dragging out the Beta mystery too much. 7 episodes in and we don’t really know anything more about it than we did in the first episode. If it keeps on like this I think a lot of viewers will no longer care. Season 1 & 2 of Lost did a superb job of stringing you along while keeping you interested with bit by bit revelations - Def G pales in comparison.

5) Maddux’s monologue narrations are pretty pathetic, lacking any real depth or unique insight into the human condition. He might as well be reading from a fortune cookie. They need to either hire a genuine philosopher, priest, pastor, rabbi, etc. who can contribute some really profound reflections on the issues covered in each episode, or just drop the commentary entirely.

So that’s my 2 cents. We’re halfway through, so there’s still some hope that the writers/producers wised up for the remaining episodes. If they didn’t, it seems almost certain that this season will be the only season.

Comment by Jon Fisher from Florida, USA — September 6, 2009 @ 10:44 pm

I like DG, it is not hardcore sci-fi (which I love) but it explorers some interesting topics.  What are the costs to be the best or achieve a dream?  Sure in reality none of these people would be astronauts but if the behaved like real astronauts the show would have been canceled after the first episode.  But they get around that pretty well by having fate or beta influence the decisions on the crew selection.  Each person was picked for a very specific reason.  I find that the more interesting mystery than beta.  I don’t think beta will ever be completely understood and that makes sense to me.  The stories are human and full of suspense and intensity.  I think the cast is well chosen.  Calling it a soap is not quite right.  I would call it humanistic sci-fi, accessible sci-fi or just plain mainstream sci-fi.  If your hardcore and complaining go read a book.  Not even the sy fy channel has much if any hardcore sci-fi.  Some element are a little blatant by I know they have a broad audience and having people scratching their heads saying “I don’t get it” is really an option.  I keep hearing it compared to grey’s anatomy, I never watched that show.  And frankly any new show taking place in a hospital can count me out.  Take a risk, do something original TV LAND!  Keep up the good work GD.

Comment by Brian from Oregon — September 12, 2009 @ 8:12 pm

Though in response to the points made earlier in the tread, that the portrayal of long distance space flight in terms of interpersonal relationships is not right.

Is that how can we tell the effect of long range space flight on personal. In such given the amount of stress and loneliness over six years or more how can they not develop some forms of relationships. In such do all future astronauts have to be monks and nuns.

I am not saying that what DG paints is what will happen but to say that “the right stuff” will work for long range missions maybe underplaying the effect of extreme long term isolation from earth and its effects on spiritual and sexual needs of the crew. 

If you wonder why I posting this now is that BBC only just show the first two eps this week.

Comment by Richard from Manchester, UK — October 21, 2009 @ 6:41 pm

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