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Basic Facts:

Episodes: 13
Runtime: 42 min.
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Premiered: 2009

Format:

Series

Genres:

Drama, Sci-Fi

Created By:

James D. Parriott

Actors:

Christina Cox, Dylan Taylor, Eyal Podell, Florentine Lahme, Laura Harris, Malik Yoba, Mike Goss, Paula Garcés, Peter Howitt, Ron Livingston

Made In:

Canada, Germany, UK, USA

Premiered at:

ABC

Latest sci-​fi drama from ABC, Defy­ing Grav­ity had a lot of poten­tial and inter­est­ing story, but that is not enough for the series to suc­ceed. Orig­i­nal series premise is based upon the BBC doc­u­men­tary Space Odyssey: Voy­age to the Plan­ets, but it’s been devel­oped into much more. It is sci-​fi series, but under­neath is a human rela­tion­ship drama revolv­ing around team of astro­nauts and the mis­sion con­trol back on Earth.

Story

Series is set in 2052 when team of 8 astro­nauts are sent on a 6 year mis­sion to visit all plan­ets in the solar sys­tem. Using flash­backs we learn about last 5–6 years of prepa­ra­tions for the mis­sion. But the the real pur­pose of the mis­sion is revealed in episode 7 or 8, when Beta mys­tery is explained. In the begin­ning we only see the hints of Beta, and we assume that Beta causes hal­lu­ci­na­tions of the crew.

Unfor­tu­nately this is another series that suf­fers from Lost syn­drome, using flash­backs to tell the story, mix­ing gen­res, adding mys­ter­ies. But pro­duc­ers have yet to real­ize that using Lost for­mula is only part of the story. Defy­ing Grav­ity has a good main sto­ry­line that they failed to deliver because it was devel­oped to slow. One cen­tral mys­tery of the Beta arti­fact was hinted for some 7 episodes mak­ing it irrel­e­vant and in the process loos­ing all the view­ers. They failed to draw both sci-​fi and drama fans, and now the series is canceled.

Defy­ing Grav­ity Cast

Cast

For the most part, I like that cast, and most of the char­ac­ters. Ron Liv­ing­stone is good as it is to be expected, and I would like to men­tion Malik Yoba and Flo­ren­tine Lahme for excel­lent job with they char­ac­ters. And once again I hated the per­for­mance of Laura Har­ris. Her act­ing was by far worst part of the series even with great char­ac­ter she had to work with. I really can’t remem­ber any of here roles that I liked.

Pro­duc­tion

Spe­cial effects are really great, and over­all series is done very well, and the pro­duc­tion val­ues are not the prob­lem that lead to can­ce­la­tion. I didn’t liked music much, sounded to generic for a space based series.

Con­clu­sion

Now that all series sets are destroyed, and there is now way that series will be con­tin­ued, with only basics of the story told, there is no point of wast­ing time watch­ing it. But, there are some inter­est­ing ele­ments, so if you get chance take a look.