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
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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.
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Ted was blasted with memories of Mars. He almost had a heart attack. The doc on earth is worried, but Mike and Eve tell her to disregard this. Eve tells him that this happened to her too. Beta chose him. He needs to go back. He is late for a meeting.
In the past, the astronauts are fitted with libido inhibitors. Eve is scoping out Ted already. She met Beta back then. Beta has shown her things. She goes to Beta’s room and sees Mars. Three men in suits are watching and say that Beta is talking to them.
Paula is puking. She can’t test the LRV. Donner is the alt. The auto-pilot on the lander wants to go down on a tertiary site. The override isn’t working. Mission control doesn’t want Donner to investigate. If he digs in the lander code, he will find things that he isn’t supposed to. Ted is MIA.
In the past, the girls and the boys have a friendly bet to see if they can get wood while on the inhibitors. They go to a strip club. AJ wins. Donner goes to see Barnes as she leaves. At the strip club, Paula pukes. Rollie is flirting with Jen, but Ted interrupts.
In the present, AJ isn’t let into mission control. Rollie brings him his stuff. Ted is acting weird.
All 8 astronauts have changes in their genome. Their genomes are aligning. The doc takes it up with Eve. Eve tells her that there is no going back once she knows. Eve gives her a strand of her hair to analyze.
Zoe and Donner hear the lander running. The lander receives a software update from mission control.
Claire finds the same patterns in Eve than in the crew. They are all the same. Claire is brought into the fold.
Ted is in his quarters. He won’t come out. Rollie talks with him. He comes out finally. He goes back into pod 4.
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