Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “Love, Honor, Obey,” originally broadcast 9/13/09.

Just over a month later, ABC might have just aired its final episode of “Defying Gravity.” It’s a little confusing, in some respects, because the season was planned to have twelve episodes, and clearly, eight does not equal twelve, and how the episode ends, it seems like we’re right back to that other failed sci-fi show this summer, the pilot-sized ‘Virtuality,’ which also had to settle for ending just as things were really going to get interesting. Still, technically speaking, it was called a “season finale,” which in network parlance doesn’t actually preclude the chance it’ll never be seen again. Bad ratings, I get it. But if you’ve got to go, best to do it in style, right?

The biggest thing the series has been building toward, the biggest question, was finally answered, if not the actual nature of Beta, then how the crew of the Antares was going to discover the fact of its existence. Recent episodes have made it all but impossible that Mission Control commander Mike Goss (Andrew Arlie) was going to get it his way and get that at the last possible moment, and this is the first time things don’t go his way. The whole episode, as per Maddux Donner (Ron Livingston)’s narration, is about the notion of obeying orders, and I think we reach some of D2G’s best ambitions on this rumination, not just the standard “it’s wrong to blindly obey,” because we all pretty much know that, but that it’s a basic human right to choose what we do and whom we listen to.

It’s no secret that much has been made of Donner and Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba)’s prior experiences in this regard, in the Mars Mission, which gets as much a resolution as there could be at this point, one episode after Ted has spoken with Eve (Karen Leblanc) five years earlier, their first real conversation, really, before finally ending up a couple, where she allays at least his continuing guilt about it. In this one, however, Donner finds out about that and doesn’t accept that there’s any real absolution possible, that he should feel any better about leaving any of his team behind. He says he knows that in his gut, no matter what anyone else might say or technicalities explain. Goss made it impossible to make the right choice.

Goss interferes again, repeatedly, just as Zoe Barnes (Laura Harris) confides more fully in Donner about her experiences with the hallucinations that last episode almost blew the lid off the Beta question among most of the crew, which leads both of them to the cargo pod that houses the entity, only to discover they don’t have access. There’s nothing Goss would like more than to engage everyone in busywork (something all bad leaders have a propensity for), to keep their minds off what their guts are telling them. The HALO patches introduced earlier as sexual inhibitors are blamed for the Halloween hallucinations, and once they’re disposed of, the assumption is supposed to be that those events are behind them, but when that doesn’t work, the crew finds themselves in yet another crisis, the most dire yet.

At this point, D2G explores some of the better facets available in its unique context. Would it dishearten you to learn cancer is still around in forty years? How many sci-fi shows threaten their ships with deadly solar flares? The crew is forced to scramble for shelter, which itself won’t even guarantee them total protection from radiation that in thirty years might still end up killing them. Zoe and Jen Crane (Christina Cox), because of Rufus the embryonic rabbit, end up in the nightmare scenario Donner didn’t want to experience again, having to make the decision to close off an escape route. Communications are also disrupted by the event, so two groups of the crew are cut off, one from each other, and the other from Mission Control, a Schrodinger’s cat, which some of the crew discusses.

It’s another moment where the show eerily seems to comment on its own fate. Is it dead or is it alive? For all intents and purposes, ‘Defying Gravity,’ especially for having an abbreviated run and miserable ratings and this being termed a “season finale,” might in very generous terms be discussed the same way, like James Parriott and company wondering the very same things as their fans. Because it’s an international production, there technically is a chance that it’ll be back, but who’s to say the likelihood? In a perfect world, it would turn out to be another meaningless drill, a Mike Goss call that’s completely unnecessary, because really, why end this series prematurely? There’s six years left on the mission, and at the very least, some very immediate exploits to be had in Beta and the Venus landing. Why deny that?

Because it’s always about the money. The crew’s agitation about the funds lost out last episode are brought up, too, while Donner’s conversation with Eve opens another can of worms. Just what is it that brought her onboard this mission? She gives him an answer about a corporation that’s invested trillions of dollars, but it’s much more clear that she’s there as a consultant in regards to Beta (which kind of makes it funny that Goss still seems to think he’s got the final say over when and how the crew finds out about it). But she’s not onboard the ship, the crew is, and no manner of discussing it will prevent the inevitable, especially if Beta itself wishes to finally be known.

Recently, I saw ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ for the first time, in which Richard Dreyfuss seems to be irritably compelled to investigate the aliens who’ve flown their ships to Earth, but that’s not what happens with the crew. They make a deliberate, group choice, prompted perhaps by the botany display Beta makes in Jen’s lab after the solar flare incident turns out to be a drill. Steve Wassenfelder (Dylan Taylor) has one of several scientific/philosophical moments there that helps make their situation clear. The rest of the cast, Paula, Nadia, Rollie, Ajay, Evram, Claire, they all have tiny moments in the episode, if not closure, than at this point certainly acknowledgment that they’ve developed into cherished friends, even in this short time, which is certainly appreciated.

I guess in the end, ‘Defying Gravity’ joins my little collection of prematurely ended, little-seen, but still great series, alongside ‘High Incident’ and ‘Boomtown’ (which each ran multiple seasons, though you’d hardly know it), and that’s as good as it’ll get. It would have been amazing to watch this show, and this cast, grow, and it was so tantalizing, to get this far, but it was all too appropriate to end on this note, where the characters are in a place they wanted, even if the viewer isn’t. D2G was a unique reflection of the human experience, familiar on external terms right away, but in its own just as instantly.

The next time someone tries something like this, it’ll be impossible not to think back to how ‘Defying Gravity’ made it that much easier to make the unusual feel like home.

Maybe our Canadian friends can help us out?