Defying Gravity Pilot S01E01 (ABC)

Defying Gravity intertitle, image via Wikipedia

I honestly don’t know how I missed this scifi show. I caught up on it three weeks ago and was impressed by the show, the acting and pretty much everything. The fact is that I wasn’t expecting much.

For the first few weeks in August, I kept seeing Defying Gravity in queues. I expected it to be some kind of extreme sports show. That is until I stumbled upon someone mentioning it as scifi. I did my homework and started watching the 7 episodes that I had missed.

I was surprised at how interesting this show was.

Warning: spoilers ahead

* * * * *

The show is all about a mission in space, in the near future, by astronauts. They are on a grand tour, visiting all of the planets of our solar system. The mission will take six years. The astronauts don’t know the whole truth behind the mission, as they will all discover in episode 9.

Until then, they have unexplained hallucinations, which endanger the mission. Meanwhile, the backstory of the show is also shown. It goes back 5 years when the mission was being planned. Donner and Ted are two of the astronauts that went to Mars 10 years ago. Two of their fellow astronauts were still outside when a storm hit. They had to leave the planet. They were ordered by Mike Gauss, who was still on the spaceship. Donner and Ted complied, but under extreme duress.

Donner’s lover was left on Mars, as well as another astronaut. This has haunted and tainted them ever since. They were part of the training team, but Mike was under orders that they should never be able to go to Venus. As it happens, at the last minute, Donner and Ted were taken aboard after two of the astronauts developed health problems.

Eve goes on about how they were chosen for this. Eve is now married to Ted, who was involved with Jen five years ago. Right now, Jen is married to Rollie, one of the two astronauts who was grounded. Donner is involved sexually with Nadia, the German astronaut, but is in love with Zoe, who was also involved with Donner 5 years ago.

Anyway, there is quite a lot happening in the past to explain the situation of all of the astronauts. It’s quite intriguing. I’ve watched nine episodes and I’m still hooked.

* * * * *

An astronaut reminisces about his time on Mars, ten years ago. Donner makes the decision to strand two astronauts on the surface of the red planet. They weren’t fast enough and if they didn’t launch, they wouldn’t have made it. He was told by mission control to proceed.

His old partner married the boss. He is at the new mission control party. New astronauts are leaving.

5 years earlier, Shaw and Donner are part of the training team for the new mission. The new mission is a six year mission to 7 planets.

At a press conference at mission control, Donner blows his lid and pushes a probing reporter to the floor. He is told by Gauss that he will be finding a replacement soon.

Something is going on. The bosses haven’t told the astronauts the whole story. Something is happening in space.

Donner has a nightmare about Zoe and Ganesh, the Hindu god.

The med officer in mission control notices something off in AJ’s medpatch. Another crewmate has similar problem. They go arrange them. They both have a heart murmur.

This means that Shaw and Donner are going to have to be the replacements. The odds of this happening are incredible. Both crewmen cannot be cleared for space travel.

At mission control, they talk about some kind of alien intelligence that is dictating terms. It wants Donner and Shaw.

Shaw is told by the mission commander what is going on. He was going to tell the crew when they hit Venus.

Rollie says goodbye to his wife Jen, who will be piloting without him. AJ goes for a spacewalk.

In the past, Zoe Barnes got preggers.

Mike doesn’t let anyone go after AJ, who put himself in orbit. Back in mission control, Donner knocks Mike out. He leaves for the launch.

Donner dons his suit and talks AJ down from his perch on the ship.