Lower Decks

Based on 1×1 “Pilot” and 1×2 “Natural Selection,” originally broadcast on 8/2/09.

On the heels of the low-budget, small release summer treat ‘Moon’ and this summer’s earlier glimpse of a similar, aborted television series called ‘Virtuality,’ ‘Defying Gravity’ makes at least one thing clear: it’s finally affordable to do astronauts on a near-casual basis in Hollywood. This comes at an extremely interesting point, since the space race is forty years old, numerous disasters have all but put exploration on hold, and the best we’ve got is an International Space Station doing phantom laps in orbit, and while that’s excellent for world cooperation, it also means that NASA is far from the relevant entity it once was. In this show, the controlling organization, in 2052, is the ISO. Ten years ago it went to Mars. That certainly seems ambitious to a modern audience, which is strange, because back in the day, everyone was predicting a future that was more ambitious as a matter of course. ABC concluded its run of ‘Life on Mars’ this year by revealing Sam Tyler was on his own space mission, and if that was a modest experience, ‘Defying Gravity’ is all about goosing everyone back into the spirit of adventure that once so visibly drove us to the moon.

For someone who grew up with a fantasy of one day becoming an astronaut, it was a bit of a disappointment when, in 1995, I realized Ron Howard’s ‘Apollo 13’ was probably the closest I was ever going to get. I still haven’t even seen ‘From the Earth to the Moon,’ the last time someone thought this stuff could be pulled off, and never ‘The Right Stuff’ (lazy and pathetic, that’s me, but I did see ‘Space Cowboys’!), so Star Trek was a sort of surrogate as much as anything else, that and the rest of the sci-fi I’ve followed through the years. When ABC kicked off its renaissance in 2004 with ‘Lost,’ it was unwittingly preparing for this moment. The only review I’ve read for ‘Defying Gravity’ makes an allusion to ‘Private Practice,’ but it has a greater connection to the mother series ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ which I wish I wouldn’t have to defend as one of the most piercing dramas I’ve ever followed on TV, a show that understands characters are always at the heart of a story, and they are in ‘Defying Gravity,’ too.

It’s also undeniably similar to ‘Virtuality,’ in too many ways to feel like a coincidence (which begs the question, did Fox decide not to pursue that one because it believed this one had a better chance at succeeding?), but different all the same. As much as I loved the two hours of ‘Virtuality’ (dig through the earlier Lower Decks posts from this summer and read my review again), I found myself engrossed faster in ‘Defying Gravity,’ which focuses itself a little sooner, and more easily, perhaps because it pivots around a central character, Maddox Donner, who’s portrayed by Ron Livingston, a nominally (a funny word choice, for those who watched these episodes) famous actor I first became acquainted with in the classic ‘Office Space,’ as well as his sometimes paramour, Zoë Barnes (Laura Harris). Creator James Parriott, who wrote both episodes, has gone to some lengths in envisioning the show, not just in the backstory and mission and complications of that mission (including something known as Beta that will figure in an extended series arc, a feature of the show sure to interest modern sci-fi fans), but in the presentation as well. Episodes explore the present as well as a parallel plot five years earlier, in which viewers get to eavesdrop on how each member of the mission found their way in.

The mission, by the way, is just presumptuous enough to do the old Star Trek line one better, a six-year journey through the solar system, touching on most of the planets, with the first being Venus. I think we’d be lucky if this show ran for six years. It’s got the goods, if viewers were inclined, to catch on in popularity like shows of the recent ABC past. Whether this is likely is debatable, but so much has been done to make this viewer-friendly it actually comes off a bit like a new and improved version of ‘Star Trek: Enterprise,’ if you will. Ambitious scripted series haven’t fared so well in summer 2009 (‘The Philanthropist’ and ‘Merlin’ have gotten marginal ratings at best, despite being quite exceptional), but you never know.

Donner and Barnes are only two of the characters on the show. Another who received quite a bit of attention in the episodes was the Hindu Ajay Sharma (Zahf Paroo), whom Donner ends up replacing on the mission through a complicated series of events which are still unfolding. Sharma represents one of the series’ most fascinating aspects: ‘Defying Gravity’ is, at heart, a classic exploration of the human condition, which Donner’s voiceovers help make clear in the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ tradition. Since it’s set in the future, the show has the chance to explore things we’re familiar with but in an elevated context. Donner and Barnes share a complex history of their own, one that envelopes reproductive rights, a subject that quickly becomes an underlying but not heavy-handed feature of the ongoing arc. The show, in essence, is attempting to breach a dialogue many of us have long since thought was over, but clearly isn’t.

The other aspect Donner brings is another element of his backstory, the failure of his mission to Mars ten years earlier, which might be interpreted as an examination of an America attempting to reconcile its present with the muddied waters of its recent past. None of this, however, bogs the series in too much messiness, but rather endows it with an exceptional richness that fills out an exploration of the characters as they make the first tentative steps on an epic journey. There’re complicated relationship issues, yes, but also a sense of possibilities, and characters who are lively and feel like they’ll be fun following weekly.

A show that has the potential of bridging the gap between ‘Lost’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ for ABC must surely have been an interesting prospect for the network, but it’s also a treat for viewers. Hopefully it sticks around for a while, because ‘Defying Gravity’ is all about saying that it’s still okay to take the risk, that it’s what makes us human.