Defying Gravity is trying to defy the normal bounds of television. By the title the series is Sci-Fi but you wouldn’t know it given where it is being launched. By premiering the show on CTV and ABC, the creators are hoping to rope in regular, mortal viewers, rather than the rabid fans of any show with a space-bound hunk of metal. Judging by the first two episodes – characterized by taut writing, flashbacks and mystery a la Lost, and the creative genius behind Grey’s Anatomy – they just might do it.
Make no mistake, this is a series that takes place in the deep black of space. Eight astronauts from five countries are on board the Antares, a ship that resembles the long girder-like structure from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is a ten trillion dollar gamble, an international effort to send humans on a six-year tour of seven planets of the solar system. But while the mission sounds noble enough, there is something else that is driving the whole enterprise, something cryptically called Beta that is confined to a section of the ship that is off limits to all the crew except the Mission Commander.
The series starts predictably enough. The ship is in a high orbit around Earth and ready to go, the media is also in high gear as the eight astronauts are ferried up in an Aries V rocket. But the principal characters are bedevilled by history. Flight Engineer Maddux Donner (Ron Livingston) and Mission Commander Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba) led the first manned mission to Mars, where they were forced to leave two astronauts behind on the surface, an episode that haunts them still.
While they trained as alternates for the Antares mission, they’re pretty sure they won’t be going. Except that, as the Antares is powering up to leave orbit, both Flight Engineer Ajay Sharma (Zahf Paroo) and Mission Commander Rollie Crane (Ty Olsson) are diagnosed with a plaque build-up in their arteries, something that evaded medical scans during the previous five years of training, leaving mission controllers on Earth scratching their heads. Donner and Shaw are quickly ferried up to replace them and the ship heads out.
More trouble quickly develops. A routine check of a new space suit to handle the harsh conditions of Venus – the first stop in the Antares’ mission – almost means the loss of the ship’s geologist, Zoe Barnes (Laura Harris). Like Lost, there are flashbacks to the training period, when the team is first assembled, providing valuable character background and depth, and dividing the screen time between space and earth. Donner and Barnes had a fling that led to Barnes getting pregnant, even though Donner supposedly had had a vasectomy.
Livingston does a credible job playing a James T. Kirk-like character – simple, crude but intuitively intelligent and thoroughly knowledgeable of the ship’s systems. He will be the rock the other characters gravitate to as their confined world gets darker and more dangerous as the Earth shrinks in size, not just physically, but psychologically as well. There is enough mystery and tension to keep audiences coming back, wondering just who or what is driving them on. A pioneer metaphor if there ever was one.
Defying Gravity, premiering on CTV and A! August 2, 9pm and Space on August 7 at 8pm.
