Defying Gravity: Pilot Review

On Defying Gravity, Paula Morales wanders throughout the space ship with her video camera explaining everything she sees in that voice that adults use when talking to children. Good thing there’s a thirty-second delay on the live broadcast because I have a feeling this is going to get ugly.

ABC’s newest space opera was more entertaining than I thought it would be, but mostly that was because I had the advantage of being able to fast-forward through the slow parts — of which there were plenty.

The general plot revolves around a group of astronauts sent into space on a six-year mission to explore the solar system. At the beginning of the show, I tolerated the flashbacks because I understand wanting to jump right into the plot and thus needing them in order to present each character’s backstory. An hour in, though, I was sick of them and I hope this mode of storytelling falls away in the coming episodes, but I fear that it won’t.

On the surface, it’s nothing but a soap opera where the leads actors are in the space program instead of in a hospital. We have an unplanned pregnancy, a love triangle, an outcast, an over zealous guy married to his job and a seemingly well adjusted married couple who are about to experience the longest distance romance ever in the history of mankind.

Then we’re let it on the thing in the pod. We’ve got to assume it’s alien and powerful since it’s been “picking” the people it wants and it’s driving a quarter of the crew crazy. Thanks to “it,” two of the original team come down with sudden heart problems and are replaced by two guys who probably shouldn’t be in space. Two guys whose last mission ended with them abandoning their fellow astronauts on Mars. Yeah, like that’s not going to come back to haunt them.  But what “it” does for the plot is transforms the show from a space opera to a sci fi series and I’m all for that.

I’ve read plenty of grumbling about the poor science in the series but I bought what they were selling, which is all that matters to me. I was also very impressed with the shots of the ship inside and out. But what I like most about Defying Gravity is that it took me back to an era when the world cared about space travel.

When I was in school, we all gathered together to watch rocket launches and we applauded along with the folks at NASA. It was an exciting time and astronauts were heroes risking their lives for the good of mankind. I felt a little bit of that when I watched the ground control applaud the launch in this series. Now if they can only keep moving forward and quit looking back, I might anxiously await the next episode.

Defying Gravity airs Sundays at 10:00 on ABC.

(ABC/SERGEI BACHLAKOV)