Been really enjoying this, just been shown on the BBC. What a real bummer that it won't go further. An intelligent, stately series, real class. Some people may have found it a little slow, but I prefer things that way.
Never mind, another one bites the dust.......
Philip
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Well, that's (North) American audiences for you. In Britain, a show like this would have got a chance to develop further...
shareUh, NO -- it's **not** North American audiences that were responsible for Defying Gravity's demise but rather ABC executives in the U.S. that killed this series and sabotaged it from the very start. For a chapter-and-verse delineation of same, see this article on Airlock Alpha:
TV Watchtower: You Had Me at Halo: 'Defying Gravity'
The good, the bad and the ugly on how a sci-fi show was launched and killed in eight episodes
http://www.airlockalpha.com/feature/6898/tv-watchtower-you-had-me-at-halo-defying-gravity.html
I know that watching sci-fi requires some suspension of reason but hard sci-fi show like this could be bit more intelligent..
episode 2 when donner is pulling zoe in by hand? common! i'm not talking about speed here..you have to keep the tension but still.
I like the idea of this show, i am a sci-fi fan but these kind of things put me off (and i found them in abundance)
oh and slow tempo is good in space..
It is a shame it got cancelled. It wasn't perfect, but I was really enjoying it. It made a change from the usual style of things these days. It at least felt like proper science fiction. (Despite some big flaws... *Ahem* Instant Communications *Ahem*)
As for it having more of a chance in the UK? Nah... even if we had the budgets to support something like that, they would only have greenlit it if it was another (new)Doctor Who, juvenile and colourful and fast paced for the kiddies. In the UK it would've been cancelled even sooner. Not because of audience reactions mind, I think it would've gone down well, but because the 'suits' would've considered it not 'trendy' enough or 'cool' enough for their tastes, because the character weren't always swearing and doing drugs. ;-)
Time enough for the earth in the grave!share
I agree with Wdlee about the Beeb but "What A Shame!!!"?? Not really. I wanted to see something about a voyage around the Solar system, alien intelligences, possible lifeforms, different planets. What did we get? Who is sleeping with whom? That blond bimbo who´s hairstyle is the same in everything she appears in. Relationships`. Masses of flashbacks. If I wanted that I´d watch one of the endless mindless bloody soap operas that seem to be so popular. To be honest I strongly suspect the flashbacks were there to pad out the pitifully few bits of space travel. Good riddance.
Well, *you* must have ADD as a viewer; most new series take several episodes to set up characters and initial story arcs. It used to be that a series season was at least 26 weeks long, and if it took the first seven or eight episodes, that was fine; no longer. A pitiful 13 episodes are now supposed to constitute an entire season (ha! Did a calendar year suddenly get shorter??). Attention spans and mindful watching have deteriorated badly, and shows like The X Files and Outer Limits, which had time to find their legs, would fail now for lack of appropriate patience. Even David Simon's genius show The Wire, which many critics consider to be a landmark of modern TV and probably the best TV show of the last decade, took at least that long to set the groundwork ... but HBO let him do that, to their credit. Simon is novelistic in his approach, and his new show, Treme, is even more impressionistic in its narrative than even The Wire was, but HBO will once again give him enough leeway to tell a good tale (they've just announced a second season for Treme, which only premiered this week; big brownie points for HBO!!). But science fiction, for some reason, gets NO such leeway -- not even at SyFy, and, apparently, not even from some of its viewers, who seem to want the same kind of instant gratification that cheap and easy video games provide. Grow up! A good narrative needs time to unfold -- time that Defying Gravity never got, just as it never got the promotion it deserved. And *that's* what really killed it: inattention from and sabotage by the network.
shareI really have to have a problem with a sci-fi series where the crew decides to do an exploratory landing on Venus early in their journey. Really! Any kid with just a little astronomical knowledge is going to know nobody's going to want to set foot on a planet where the average temperature is over 800 degrees Fahrenheit, the atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of earth, and is full of sulfuric acid, etc. I'm glad the series was put out of its misery.
shareThe problem with this show is that there are astronauts on an exciting space mission, but half the show is focused on who's dating whom. Their love lives are not interesting in the context of the historic space mission. I, like the masses, wasn't interested in a soap opera in space, and stopped watching. I admit I didn't give the show a chance, but it didn't have a good start.
share> The problem with this show is that there are astronauts on an exciting space mission, but half the show is focused on who's dating whom. Their love lives are not interesting in the context of the historic space mission. I, like the masses, wasn't interested in a soap opera in space, and stopped watching. I admit I didn't give the show a chance, but it didn't have a good start. <
Ditto - except I caught the entire series thru Netflix, altho I was FF'ing thru the flashbacks and the coital scenes towards the end. I also grew tired of the JJ Abrams "polar bear in the jungle" stuff. It's been a while since I watched DG but one example of this is one character dreaming that another character is floated naked thru the space ship, approaching an open door. Flashbacks and polar bears disguised the fact that the main narrative was moving at a glacial pace better in Lost than in Defying Gravity.
"Ditto - except I caught the entire series thru Netflix, altho I was FF'ing thru the flashbacks and the coital scenes towards the end. I also grew tired of the JJ Abrams "polar bear in the jungle" stuff. It's been a while since I watched DG but one example of this is one character dreaming that another character is floated naked thru the space ship, approaching an open door. Flashbacks and polar bears disguised the fact that the main narrative was moving at a glacial pace better in Lost than in Defying Gravity."
Beta was causing them to have simultaneous dreams about birth, death and renewal. I found it quite intense and compelling, actually.
For the fans sake I think the show should have been given at least a full season, CK. I was never going to be a fan, but I recognized its ambitious nature. I probably would have been a fan if the series had a more tradtional narrative structure with a more realistic depiction of our first interplanetary voyage in force. The cool stuff was the voyage - the rest (to me) was flummery.
Still, if a network is going to greenlight a show like this I can't understand why they'd pull the plug on it so early.
I agree. I thought that it was a shame when this show got cancelled. I thought that it was great. By the way, is this coming out on DVD?
The DVD is already out. Try Amazon.
shareThe DVD is already out. Try Amazon.
Just finished the last couple episodes last night and only now found out that there ain't going to be a season 2. X_x Man, this totally crushes the excitement I had after the fantastic ending of epi 13.
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"How can you ever have time if you never make time?"-Merovingian, Matrix Reloaded
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Intelligent? There was nothing remotely intelligent about it. It was a soap-opera in space! If they were to dump the romance idiocy, have characters that are at least remotely like astronauts and not soap-stars and get rid utterly laughable concepts such as the HALO patch, they might have had something. At least cancelling this trash frees up some room on the schedule for something else.
shareDo you think astronauts are creatures from outer space? You think they are not flesh and blood? You think they don't have a life back home or for that matter on the spaceship where they would live?
I love my sci-fi to the last drop but over-the-top aficionados like you must think everything start and end with machine precision... be it emotions or gadgets. You simply ... SUCK!
I just hope this show gets picked up by some other network. What a shame indeed!!
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I have to agree with the guy that said the flash backs is what killed the show for him. It killed it for me as well. The show spent 75% of its time in the past tense. Most writers know when you right a book you don't bog your story down in what happened yesterday. And frankly what happened yesterday was pathetically boring.
Now I will say I was very interested in what was going on when they were in space. What was in the room that was such a big secret? Why were people seeing things. How were they going to live for six years. I mean what was going on on board was far more interesting then what they did last month on Earth. The show that handled flash backs perfectly is Lost. They sprinkle them in sparingly and give you just enough to make it interesting and relevant to the situation today. Gravity was in flash back hell. They truly over killed on the flash backs and I think thats a big part of why viewers were dropping off like flies.
Looks like I may be in the minority -- but I think the "flash backs" were a good thing. The way the past and present were interleaved, the way the characters' stories were revealed, I think reflect some really good writing. This is what gets me the most interested in a show: Good storytelling. I'm glad there was some closure to season 1, but I was so disappointed that the rest of the story didn't get to be told.
Another reason: The Antares isn't all that big; neither is the mission control room. Too much story at just those locations would have gotten boring. Interleaving the training with the mission allowed them to be shown in a lot more settings.
I think the interleaving, the slow reveal of the characters' lives in a back-and-forth fashion, showing how past experiences and choices bear on the present, made this show unique and compelling.
I totally agree with you. What we are seeing on the ship is the culmination of years of preparation, the selection process, and training. The attitude of the astronauts is a bit flippant at times because it reflects the reality (as best TV can do) of the relationships that have developed over those years and how comfortable or not they are with each other. Friendships have grown strong and some have known each other even longer (from the Mars mission). You can't have them acting like they've known each other only briefly, still feeling out basic relationships or being unable to discuss importanat issues with each other. From this point of view, I think the flashbacks, to enhance our understanding of why things are the way they are in their present, is essential.
For example, I just finished watching the final unaired episodes (thank you, Netflix) and was disappointed more than ever that the genius network execs pulled the plug on this show just as it was getting very interesting. Those last five episodes were far and away the best as they continued to reveal more of the relationships between the crew and ground control members, while advancing the show to the climax on Venus. There is also an alternate ending in the deleted scenes to the last episode that made more sense for connecting the show to the next season that never was.
My biggest question, and this is something the show's creator and executive producer would know, is what happens after they gather all seven of the alien objects (don't know what to call them). There are a lot of questions one might ask. For example, were they planted around the solar system because, like in the original 2001 a Space Odyssey, the ancient and all powerful aliens feel that if we have reached the capability to collect them, then we've evolved far enough for them to talk to us directly? I would like not to think that these objects were separated for a reason, because bringing them all together is a bad thing or or very bad things will then happen to the human race.
That question and, of course, what are they, are what I'd like to know. Has there been any follow on novels written that continue the story? It's obvious that the object can communicate with each other, so what are they saying?
Getting past the insults, the show won't be picked up by any other network as ABC, in their infinite wisdom, decided to tear down the sets and not preserve them to sell to a cable network (like SyFy). Since these were fairly intricate and expensive, the show is just done (on TV). It may survive and progress in written form, but unlike other series, that have a chance to build a following, even a written continuation is unlikely. I gather the genius ABC execs, who see nothing but $$ instead of potential, must have thought it better to cut their losses and open the sets to other shows to use, instead of selling them.
shareSince you obviously missed it, I will repeat here what I said about flashbacks in another thread. Sorry, but what you call soap opera, I call character development: they're going to be in space for at least **six years** so OF COURSE the relationships among the various crew and how those relationships were created becomes highly relevant. They'll be stuck together and they have to work together -- and that means plenty of back history and potential for interaction and conflict stemming from various sources, including personalities. What, did you think they were only going to be pushing buttons, taking readings, and doing maintenance all that time?? Some of the best films, plays and novels ever, according to your definition, would be relegated to 'soap opera', including Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and most of Shakespeare because they all dwell on the relationships among the various characters. Besides, most of the time, equipment and trajectories actually work in space -- and when they work as they're supposed to, nothing much happens and IT'S BORING. Which leaves you with not much to get into between crises and discoveries other than the personal relationships.
As for the flashbacks, they didn't bother me at all (nor did they bother me in Citizen Kane or Casablanca, for that matter) -- but then again, I have a decent attention span not spoiled by video games and immediate gratification. You probably had difficulty with Memento, too. I also have no problem with the way it took six of seven episodes to really start developing the action in the story arc: many fine directors work that way, including David Simon in his series "The Wire" and now in his current HBO series "Treme", and he's not the only one. It seems to me that *your* expectations of TV storytelling are a little too Wonder-white-bread bland! You should seriously reconsider.
Sci-fi character dramas always face an uphill struggle, they're very niche even within the genre. Stargate Universe is another brilliant sci-fi character drama that's suffering from having such a specific appeal, I'd definitely recommend it if you loved Defying Gravity.
shareThis could have been an excellent series. Great Actors and Super Direction. Problem was the Scripts.
They tried hard with the scientific justification but got into the relationships in a hurry!
It's a problem I'm having with ALL the Scifi's on at the moment. I can't pick one that gets it right.
You have to have a viable story first in order to develop believable motivation surrounding the characters and their subsequent relationships, otherwise all you have is soap where people fall in love just because they do.
I thought the production value of Defying Gravity was really high though, without the going-everywhere-at-the-same-time-yet-going-nowhere script of V.
Stargate Universe is looking better this season but even there, there is a lack of substantive story.
I'm waiting for a new SciFi.
I have to admit though...I will desperately miss Defying Gravity.
I watched all 13 episodes and I need more. Loved the premise and the entire cast. That's pretty rare for me.
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