Defying Gravity

[TimO]

Did anyone see this yesterday on Beeb 2? (If not, the first two episodes are on iPlayer in SD and HD).

For TV science fiction it seems quite "hard", ie so far it's pretty accurate.

I'll admit I found some of it a bit implausible.  They didn't seem to bother with multiple layers of safety when doing test ("Why do we need the safety line?  The airlock door isn't going to open" ), and the Astronauts didn't seem very prepared for emergency situations.  And why would you bother with one vastly complex mission when you could probably do a better and cheaper job with multiple small missions.  Anyway, I guess you have to have some of these situations to make a drama out of it, so I'll allow this dramatic license!

The story could be interesting, I'm wondering what this mysterious thing they keep on alluding to is, whatever caused the two astronauts to simultaneously have the same medical problem.  I wasn't watching every second, but I don't think they mentioned in any details what seemed to have some inhuman powers over what was happening.

They are also clearly preparing us for various possible psychological issues with the astronauts in a "they are going nuts, or are they?" type of way, which could work, depending on how blatantly it's done.

The first two episodes were sufficiently interesting that I'll probably keep on watching.

[TimO]

It looks like I'm talking to myself, but ...

I just watched Episode 4, and I can't help thinking that...

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...either the psychologists who picked that crew read their directions backward, and selected the most psychologically screwed up bunch possible, or whatever it is that the senior staff all seem to know about is really doing it's best to screw the mission up.

I also don't think much of the design of the redundancy in their spacecraft.  In a system that complex there should be no physical location where a single fault could cause almost complete failure, but that's a whole other thread!

[tonycollinet]

Well I watched the first, and gave up on the second.

Like a bad soap opera based in space.

And the concept of gravity created by microfibre clothing attracted to the floor (that somehow miraculously makes the wearers movements exactly as though they are in a gravity field) ludicrous. If you are going to have it, just have artificial gravity, and don't bother trying to explain it.

Sad, cos I was looking forward to it.

[Kim]

I've not watched any yet, but I've had it described to me as "Grey's Anatomy in space".  Magnetic hairspray was mentioned.  Whether that makes it worth watching for comedy value or not, I'm not sure...

[TimO]

Technologically rigorous it isn't, but it's probably a lot less worse than most science fiction on TV (and films).

[Spinners]

Enjoying it so far...

[TimO]

Bugger, that's just too irritating.

I've just watched the latest Episode on BBC iPlayer.

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...what the feck is Beta?  Is it something that they brought back from Mars the first time?  Is it a whale?  Is it some sort of all powerful AI that someone accidentally created in a lab?

I hate cliff hangers like this, they've got to tell us something in the next episode, haven't they?

[Bledlow]

I hate cliff hangers like this, they've got to tell us something in the next episode, haven't they?

Going by some other US series, not necessarily. They could spin it out for a couple of years, with plot convolutions piling up. It's possible they're making it up as they go along, & haven't even decided what it is yet. It has been known, I believe.

[TimO]

True, I believe "Lost" is one that made up as they went along, but I've never seen that.

Defying Gravity is not entirely USAian, as witnessed by the fact that it's not NASA making the flight, but some (currently non-existent) international organisation.  The series is loosely based on the BBC Fictional/Documentary programme "Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets", which interestingly Astrium were involved in (although I don't know whether they've been involved in Defying Gravity).

Given it's partially a BBC programme, lets hope the plot isn't quite so drawn out, and they may actually tell us what "it" is, and not just keeping us wondering with lots of vague references.

[TimO]

OK, that was interesting.

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Of course it opens up a whole mess of new questions.  Do "they" know more than they're admitting too?  What is Beta, and what's going to happen when they have the complete set?

It seems very 2001 Blank Monolith like, in fact it reminds me even more of the original Sentinel short story.

It'll be entertaining to see if the writers manage to avoid giving us a solution which is too obvious, and also isn't just very surreal and suitably fuzzy and vague.

At least it answers one of my questions in the OP "And why would you bother with one vastly complex mission ?", because as someone said, it's an interplanetary scavenger hunt, although I would have thought that at least for some of the planets that we can deal with moderately well, like Mars, they would have sent an unmanned mission first.  It would have been easier and faster to send something in effect with a shovel and camera on it, to dig Alpha up.

Edit: Oh, and why can't Jen see Beta?  That's clearly going to be significant in the storyline very shortly.

The buggers have got me hooked now, however bad the storyline and acting is, I need to know the answer!

[groucho]

The buggers have got me hooked now, however bad the storyline and acting is, I need to know the answer!

Same here!!

[Jaded]

I've not watched any yet, but I've had it described to me as "Grey's Anatomy in space".  Magnetic hairspray was mentioned.  Whether that makes it worth watching for comedy value or not, I'm not sure...

It took me a while to realise that this description wasn't likening the programme to reading a medical book in a spaceship. That sounded really odd. 

[TimO]

Looking at the Wikipedia entry for this, it looks like the yanks have canceled the show.

This is why it's always a mistake to start watching a US series until it's been broadcast for a few years, and you know there's a slight chance they may actually get through enough of the series that at least part of the story is explained.

I guess this means that we will now never get any explanation of wtf Beta is, and what would have happened when they collected all of the artifacts.

I did think the story was dragging though, they really seemed to be squeezing things out as slowly as possible, so they could stretch the storyline out, and make as many episodes as possible.

[Zoidburg]

Firefly got binned and that was actually good/brilliant in places.

Defying Gravity has filled me with "meh" from the little I have seen, so no more episodes is hardly a shocker.

[TimO]

Firefly wasn't bad, athough it did always strike me as being a Cowboy series based in space.  Defying Gravity had some good points, but admittedly it also lacked something.  In both cases, they were getting better, but as isn't unusual the USA networks decided it wasn't working fast enough (and Sci-Fi often suffers from this), so they got binned.

Of course, the original Star Trek series got given the shove, and look how badly that's done over the years.

[Zoidburg]

Firefly wasn't bad, athough it did always strike me as being a Cowboy series based in space. 

You make it sound like that is a bad thing .

What's not to like about a space western?

You are entirely correct though, it quite purposely takes inspiration from the post civil war period in the US and what happened to many of the confederates who found themselves on the loosing side.

[TimO]

Firefly wasn't bad, athough it did always strike me as being a Cowboy series based in space.

You make it sound like that is a bad thing .

What's not to like about a space western?

I'll accept that many Sci-Fi programmes and films are to some degree Space-Westerns, but I found Firefly to be a little too overt in this for my taste.  Oddly enough I enjoyed the film, Serenity, far more than the TV series.