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?

There’s something kind of privileged about watching an unheralded, underrated series, especially when there’s a good chance that you won’t be watching it for long. ‘Defying Gravity,’ along with ‘Merlin,’ hasn’t exactly been your traditional network series this summer, airing as a joint international venture, so poor ratings and the probability that it won’t return or finish out a promising, multiyear lifespan doesn’t quite have the same inevitability as, say, ABC’s remake of ‘Life on Mars’ this past season, which had an opportunity to fill out a whole season before receiving a definitive plug. Instead, whatever its fate, D2G at least gets an extended run, one that can sustain, for as long as it lasts, the admiration of those who are watching, wherever they are.

An episode like “Fear” kind of highlights the mood. As the title suggests, the theme this week ruminates a little more clearly on the running arc of the series, where the mysterious Beta seems to prey on past failures of the characters, some of which we’ve explored in the past, others we’re just getting a glimpse of. Celebrating Halloween, they get an ironic opportunity to flake out just as a candy bar company prepares to shoot a commercial that would give the ISO program ten billion dollars to help in the scientific research the Antares mission will facilitate. As Donner’s narration puts it, fear is a confrontation, a chance to either expose what you really are, or hide it. It’s a challenge and an opportunity. No one needs to see the hero you really are. It’s a personal thing, like choosing to watch a show that’s free to operate under its own rule. Success can breed restriction, but struggle can free you. Just as another episode goes by without revealing the big secret that is Beta, we perhaps better understand why that’s a good thing.

Maddux Donner (Ron Livingston), Zoe Barnes (Laura Harris), Paula Morales (Paula Garces), Evram Mintz (Eyal Podell), Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba), Nadia Schilling (Florentine Lahme), and Eve Shaw (Karen Leblanc) are all incapacitated in some way this episode by visions. Donner, Zoe, and Ted are all part of a contingent of the crew, along with Jen Crane (Christina Cox), set to do the spacewalk trick or treat for the candy company when the visions really hit, while Paula, Evram, and Nadia are in various supporting roles that are equally compromised. Eve learns that Beta can trigger its effect even from thousands of miles away at Mission Control. All in all, it isn’t good, but it’s an important step where so many of them realize that they’re not alone in these recurring hallucinations (remember, last episode Evram was the first one to officially breach the subject, to Donner and Ted) that it becomes that much more likely that we’ll soon have a group discussion on the cause, and answers about Beta at last.

A big revelation during “Fear,” however, comes in the form of Roy Shaw, the five year old child of Eve and Ted, whom we’ve never even heard hint of previously. It’s a development that plays along with the episode nicely, because it features the first stirrings in the five-years-earlier period of the relationship shifts between the future parents. Eve visits Beta and receives a vision of Ted, which causes her to finally introduce herself to him. Previously, of course, he’d been seeing Jen, whose side relationship with Rollie at the time has already been suggested, but gets a little bump here, too. Instead of attending a Halloween party, Ted has a long talk with Eve, leaving Jen behind, having to deal with Zoe, who’s still recovering from her abortion, which few really know about (except Ajay), even though her eventual choice of costume is a pretty big indication.

Ted’s is actually one of the nicer touches of the episode. He, and his son five years later, chooses to dress up as Doctor Ra, a fictional character made for the show, which makes a good point of making a more fully-rounded reality of it. Donner meanwhile attends as Greg Maddux, whom he reveals to be his namesake (even if D2G makes the bold prediction of a Hall of Fame berth awaiting the pitcher), while Nadia a German baseball cheerleader (I didn’t know she was German, or that Germans have baseball cheerleaders) on his arm, much to Zoe’s continued chagrin. The baseball link is a nice touch for a character (and here we’re talking about Donner again) we already know as a fan, while this Doctor Ra figure is a nice touch for a science fiction series to make, even one that if you really don’t want to, you don’t have to view as science fiction.

Because this whole business with Beta and the effect he has on people, by the very nature of the approach the series has been making, can just as easily be seen as people dealing with their baggage, which is more than universal in its scope. Everyone has baggage, but D2G is a series that says it’s okay, because even when it gets in the way, that doesn’t mean that it controls us. For an episode like “Fear,” it may have some significant consequences, but there’s always another day.

Some of the visions are old hat, are hardly need to be discussed here again: Donner sees the messed-up helmet indicative of the Mars mission, Zoe hears a baby, Evram the girl from the war, Ted the Mars landscape (and the storm that in the discussion with Eve becomes a little easier to understand as the reason the mission ended so tragically, no matter how much it continues to torment Ted and Donner). Paula sees Hector, an old pet dog, who seems to have had some sort of fatal accident. That’s pretty new, and reasonably explains itself. Eve sees some children, apparently from another tragedy. That we’ll probably see more of.

Nadia, meanwhile, may have the most interesting tease of the episode. She sees a man she feels compelled to follow down a corridor, and it’s the first time her fierce armor of frivolity has been pierced. It’s an interesting development, because of all the characters, she’s seemed like the least likely one to have any real baggage to speak of, but seeing that its taken so long to get to it, maybe that means she may actually have some of the most interesting. It will remain, however, something to expect from another episode. Those who are unaffected, at least among the crew, Jen and Steve Wassenfelder (Dylan Taylor), are equally conspicuous, but at least this isn’t lost on the creators. Jen has been the character throughout the season who can be relied upon to lend a supporting, sympathetic hand to Zoe, but has also emerged as something of a moral authority, what with that Rufus-the-fetal-rabbit business (eluded to during the episode for her enthusiasm over the candy bar research money), which may be why, for the moment, she’s unaffected by Beta. Same with Wass, as evidenced last episode, with his real concern over the injured Paula.

Hey, there’s also flashback-era Ajay (Zahf Paroo), who as I said is one of very few characters to know the truth behind Zoe’s medical woes, who offers some sage advice. I think I’ve learned, at least as far as Mohinder from ‘Heroes’ is concerned, that maybe my interest in evocative Indian characters isn’t widely shared, but I still enjoy this aspect of Ajay, as much as his present struggle to rediscover his role, which hasn’t been explored as much lately. Still, for however much more time there is to explore such matters, I’m perfectly willing to play along with whatever the creators choose to do.

“Fear” is one of those episodes where the creators seem to be commenting as much about their own product as on the circumstances of the characters, which is kind of weird, because one would assume that they couldn’t have known at the time that so few people would be watching. Maybe it was an intuition, that no matter how much it occasionally resembles the popular ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ D2G couldn’t hope, as a genre series, to capture the same kind of audience, no matter how much it deserves such success. Sometimes, it just isn’t in the cards, and that’s just something that needs to be dealt with. Fear can sometimes be a beautiful thing.

This is how I know, in case you were wondering, just how involved with D2G I’ve become: last week I stumbled upon a movie Laura Harris (the lovely Zoe Barnes) had made with James Callis (my favorite actor from ‘Battlestar Galactica’), ‘Merlin and the Book of Beats,’ and bought it sight unseen. I learned on the back of the package that Harris had apparently been featured in the series ‘Dead Like Me,’ and by complete coincidence had my first experience watching that show just a few days later. Making personal connections, such as they are, with the actors means I’ve really begun to see this show as something special. (I also saw Ron Livingston in ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife,’ but I’ll whisper that one in case anyone wonders if I’m manly enough to depend on listening to in these reviews.)

“Bacon” is another episode, in an increasing string of them, that helps tighten that bond. As with any good series, it seems to recognize the best ways to explore its best asset, being its characters, and as anyone who’s been watching throughout August (uh huh: ‘Defying Gravity’ is now a month old!) knows, each new episode seems to spiral our connection forward. Initially, it seemed like the show was going to heavily feature Zoe Barnes and Maddux Donner (Livingston) and pretty much leave everyone else as supporting players, but that has proven far from the case. The characters exist as part of a mission, and so they’re part of a family, a single unit (which is part of the episode’s theme, too) that has to coexistent, no matter how difficult that can sometimes be.

I should know. To a certain extent, because I’ve chosen to review D2G each week, I get to experience it in a unique and fairly public way, making it difficult to cover the messy tracks that develop as I attempt to record my experiences and thoughts on the show. I get to correct a few more things with this episode! Yay! So as always, bear with me…

I’ve mentioned part of the theme of the episode was being aware of the need to trust one another, but Donner also meditates on failure, how it seems to be how we best identify ourselves. As always, there are a number of situations that help in this meditation, but the primary one also happens to be that focus on our good doctor Evram Mintz (Eyal Podell) I’d been anticipating. Before we get into what that means, exactly, a few words, er, corrections.

Keeping up with a cast this size has been something of a juggle for this viewer. As I’ve said, sometimes it’s been easier to keep up with some characters more than others. It all depends on which ones happen to be immediately important, and which others wait until later for further development. Evram has been stepping forward recently, but this episode we finally get a bit more from that elusive final main cast member, Claire Dereux (Maxim Roy), who was never part of the actual mission crew, but rather has been one of the figures back at Mission Control. “Bacon” finally helps clarify her role as the person Evram has best been confiding with about his withdrawal and psychological issues (and for those who would like a little thought association, the actor Roy has a number of similarities with one-time ‘Earth: Final Conflict’ star Lisa Howard) stemming from his war experiences.

It’s funny, too, because this episode has something for just about everyone, whereas last episode was the first one for Ajay Sharma (Zahf Paroo), one-time flight engineer of the Antares, to not appear in, after having been such an early and important focus of the series, a fact I neglected to point out in my review. He has a moment or two in “Bacon,” and they are both important in completely supporting minor significance (if that makes any sense to you; he’s always welcome, that is to say, but for the now the focus is certainly elsewhere).

Okay, back to Evram and his friend Claire. The worst things one could say about D2G are that it’s nothing but another prime time soap opera and that its science is…imprecise. A fan of the series will say that the relationships are what make it so compulsively relatable (and therefore watchable) and that it’s science fiction for a reason, set fifty years in the future where things are different. Which is kind of funny, because this episode reveals Evram to be the kind of Bones McCoy doctor who trusts the old methods that are always dependable where technology can sometimes fumble. He’s good at what he does and isn’t afraid to say so. In the flashback portions the whole training crew is whisked away to a medical facility, where they meet one of Donner’s old training buddies (who’s important enough so I’ll bring her up again later) and eventually end up in a number of crises, but important to this paragraph one of two emergencies Evram handles personally. As with other episodes, there are subtle inversions of what happens in the flashbacks and what goes on in the present, and that’s the sort of thing Evram gets to enjoy here, with good old Donner and his fear of blood adding that much more layer, because that’s what D2G loves to do.

Okay, so keeping in mind much of the episode revolves around Evram, his past, and his struggles in the present, which resolve in a full disclosure to Donner and Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba), our flight commander who’s the only one onboard to know about why people are seeing visions, there’s lots more to cover. Steve Wassenfelder (Dylan Taylor), who could be called the show’s Hurley (even though I’ve previously referenced him as a good fit for the nerds in ‘The Big Bang Theory;’ and while I’m on Evram this week, he sort of sounds like another ‘Lost’-away, the late Daniel Faraday), has a lot more awkwardness around Paula Morales (Paula Garces), who tries to makes herself sound good to the crew even though her reporting and general peppiness is probably super-annoying. “Bacon” reveals that this odd couple actually started their routine five years earlier, but pushes it a lot further when an accident severs her thumb, and it’s basically his fault. Less a romantic destination than a powerful bond developing between them, Steve and Paula are starting to become something pretty special for the show. Resident nymph, Nadia (Florentine Lahme), meanwhile, finally hits on the thing that makes ne’er-do-well Steve appropriate for this mission: every now and again, he finds a thumb (see: episode).

Lest you wonder what Zoe has been doing all this time, she gets to deal with the ramifications of the decision she finally made in the flashback last episode, the big “a” plunge. Turns out she actually takes the pill this episode, but it’s really all fall-out, which is wickedly convenient, because that Dr. Winkler friend of Donner’s was the opposite case. She made the decision to stick with the pregnancy, so she left the space program to practice medicine, and by the end of the episode, both are reflecting on how their lives would have been different if they’d made the other choice. For a series with so many characters, once you get the hang of them, you notice how easily it tricks you into caring for even more of them. Also, Eve Shaw (Karen Leblanc), in the flashbacks, possibly reveals something of her own background when she confides to Zoe that she could have used her for support in all of this.

Oh, and Jen’s (Christina Cox) embryonic rabbit Rufus also features in the episode. She lets Zoe in on the secret (more than relationships, it’s all about the secrets with this show, how they affect everyone, and how they can sometimes finally reveal them, like Evram does). Keeping Rufus is against mission protocol, but the rabbit is also Jen’s therapy over having Rollie (Ty Olsson), her husband, at Mission Control, and Ted, her former lover, onboard the ship. She needs something that’s hers.

Anything else? Ah, only that ‘Defying Gravity’ is a show that’s ridiculously easy to become addicted to. But you may have noticed…I might also add that with Evram’s confession this episode, that makes it much easier for Ted to decide telling the crew about Beta. Also, thanks to Paula (and Steve), we know they’re about ten days away from touching down on Venus. Just a bit of housekeeping…I’ve also been thinking, and am putting this down for the record, that if the show makes it to a second season (and/or beyond), I suspect we’ll visit, say, four years ago and so forth. Big thinking…

Whatever ABC was doing with its preview last week, the show obviously had other ideas. For those who watched it, maybe they agreed with Ted Shaw’s decision to withhold the truth of the mission from Maddux Donner. Then again, I suppose this might have been a great opportunity to join the millions who, well, aren’t watching (despite the network’s routine “it’s a hit” attitude in the ads). For me, though, the episode was yet another affirmation that watching D2G (my clever acronym for ‘Defying Gravity’ that combines the logo with last week’s pet phrase I’ll be using for the remainder of my time writing about it, no matter how long that is; once again, though, ABC has its own opinions, running a preview for the new season of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ instead of a sneak for next week’s episode) is hardly a mistake, at least on my part.

“Rubicon,” as with the other four episodes to date of the series, reflects on mistakes, or at least decisions, that the characters have made. Donner’s narration points this out, just as the Antares reaches the final point of no return (which has been a common thing to ruminate on in this mission, as well as the countless emergencies that have cropped up in so short a time, which leads to Ted’s moment of truth — but the viewer is reminded that his wife back home, Eve, at Mission Control, has already spoken with Control commander Mike Goss about the inevitable revelation of Beta, which is likely to occur on Venus, the ship’s first stop). This episode we notice for the first time (or I do, unless it really is the first time) that Donner is rarely without a well-worn baseball, which is significant because Ted asks every crewmember to gather their most precious possessions for a time capsule to be shot into space. We know without a doubt that Donner’s is that ball, so we know at least part of the episode will be dedicated to explaining its significance to him. Given the constant reflections back to the Mars mission, it’s not hard to guess, exactly, or to whom it’s associated, given last week’s extended look back at his past with doomed astronaut Sharon Lewis (one of two left behind on Mars).

But, as the series has been doing, there’s more to it than that, more to explore personally. Plenty more. We learn more about the Mars mission, how the onus falls not on Donner and Ted for the big failure of the Mars mission but on Goss (Andrew Airlie), who’s been acting like the facts are anything but all this time. It’s Eve (Karen Le Blanc) who forces the truth out of him. Flashing back five years, we see how Donner and Ted have been handicapped by Goss in the preliminary rankings among potential mission members, to twelfth and thirteenth, which is pretty low considering their experience at the least. I suspect, as with all the potential D2G demonstrates, that with time we would have a portrait of these characters as intimate and grand as those on ‘Lost’ have enjoyed for five seasons now. It’s just, on a series like this, there’s a lot of room to breathe, to take your time, even as certain things hang ominously around everyone.

One resolution that does come here is what Zoe Barnes (Laura Harris) ultimately did about her unexpected pregnancy in the training period. We meet her mother in the episode, but Zoe doesn’t fill as much of the hour as she has in the past. She doesn’t need to, at this point. She’s become established, she has room to breathe (there’s that phrase again). This is a big moment, so it only really needs to be outlined. Her mother is an oddity who believes at the drop of a hat that her husband cheats on her, but believes and practices the art of tarot like fact, delivers fortunes too accurate to be ignored. She reads Donner first, and eventually, her daughter, who’s met with a doctor at last. Those wondering why the series has fixated on this issue might find the episode to be rather refreshing, at least on this point. On a side note, and the first time I comment on a specific actor not named Ron Livingston, Harris, whom I have never to this point thought so, acts a lot like ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ star Ellen Pompeo this episode, lisp included. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certainly weird to bring that much more association between the two shows. Otherwise, Harris has never really brought on such a comparison, and Zoe has never really seemed like Meredith Grey. Maybe it’s just mommy issues that brought it out this time.

We also have conversations between husband and wife Jen (Christina Cox) and Rollie Crane (Ty Olsson), which illuminate the bonds between them, both five years earlier when Jen was involved with Ted, and the present, where the frustrations of being unexpectedly split apart start to show over the embryo of a rabbit named Rufus. They share a scientific interest that stems from a world faced with food shortage and overpopulation (hence the extreme importance of that whole fertility issue), where global climate change is a fact (those looking for a definite position on the current political scale will perhaps leave befuddled). The funny thing is, we don’t get anything significant about whatever personal possession she might have been thinking about; she chooses a picture of them.

Paula Morales (or Garces, as the actress goes by), has more fun with Steve Wassenfelder (Dylan Taylor), who picks on her “everything is dear to me” collection of seemingly endless religious tokens, saying that her faith can’t be so great if she needs all that to remind her of it. Maybe that’s what Donner (Livingston) thinks of about the baseball. He encounters eventual Antares shrink Evram (Eyal Podell), who prods the ball’s past from him, suggesting one version of it to help him along. It was a ball caught by Sharon Lewis, not long before the Mars mission, that he ended up keeping, but its significance reawakened, he tries to finally return it to her mother, only to get it back, because it means more to him. Ted (Malik Yoba), in fact, returns everyone’s possessions, too, saying he doesn’t want to be like Goss. I think it’s decisions like this that will make the difference in this mission, and with Beta. Ted doesn’t tell Donner about it, and Donner doesn’t tell Ted that, in effect, he owes Beta, whether he knows it or not, in finding the latest problem. Beta is proving to be an ally, not a boogeyman, as it’s seemed previously. It does what’s needed, whether those affected realize it or not.

There’s also Nadia. There’s always Nadia (Florentine Lahme), I guess, the sprite of a woman who proves irresistible. She lands first on that preliminary ranking (Zoe ranks twenty-eighth, Steve last) and during the episode, woos Donner both five years earlier and in the present. She’s as much the wild card as Beta, always proving useful without providing a specific function or role, just to be there and work her magic. She’s not there to obstruct Zoe or ensnare Donner, that’s just what happens to happen, just as Zoe isn’t there solely to have a complicated relationship with Donner, or Donner to gloomily pine over a dead girlfriend and lament a failed mission. Everything works together and it spins in its own direction. That’s, in effect, what I love about this show. Everything’s simple, and it’s all jumbled into a complicated whole. If you’re not watching because you fear that it’s one thing or another, or for what it’s not doing, it’s those things and doing more, and a joy to follow all the same, as the best shows are.

It seems I catch onto something D2G has been doing all along every week. There’s a character I’m pretty sure is always to the side of the cameras I’m always hoping to catch, and that’s the story of this show, too. It’s going to be one of those easy to watch again, so you can catch what you didn’t the first time, follow developments you didn’t quite know were happening, and see how the magic really works, because as straightforward as the series seems to be, there’s a constant slight of hand going on. It’s like the baseball Donner cherishes, easy to have there and not to see, unless it’s pointed out. Even the frames where we know in “Rubicon” he’s holding it, the camera doesn’t really let you see it. Ben Sisko always had one on his desk in ‘Deep Space Nine;’ it was an unconscious, famous element that was only really pointed out a couple of times through seven seasons, most memorably in its absence. That’s the kind of show ‘Defying Gravity’ is.

“Rubicon” was a no-turning-back point all its own. Promised one thing, given another, a moment to cherish the past in its hold on the present, decide how important it still is. Intriguingly, D2G decides that the past isn’t so unwanted after all. It’s still useful, if it’s understood, made to be something positive. It makes everything else so much sweeter, including the things still waiting.

The numbers are in for the first three episodes, and they certainly don’t look all that great. ‘Defying Gravity’ will likely have its run this year and that’ll be it (unless you’re Canadian, because the numbers look better there). The complaints, as mirrored at this very site by my colleague forst, are that the series is just too soapy. Oh, and maybe that serialized television may have run its course. The signs have certainly been there for years: ‘Lost’ frustrated fans when they quickly realized they’d really have to watch everything to figure out what was going on. ‘Heroes’ couldn’t even sustain interest, after a while, over the course of a half-season arc. ‘Battlestar Galactica’ promised a series arc about a “plan” at the beginning of every episode, but never bothered with that at all, so naturally fans were quite happy to sustain their devotion to it. Next episode, ‘Defying Gravity’ (yeah, five episodes in) is poised to deliver the goods on the mysterious Beta. These days, fans have already waited too long! At a time when procedural and reality shows have demonstrated a rank ability to sustain interest week after week and the only sitcom to register any significant audience is loathed by critics, now might be the time to wonder if ambition is a death sentence, gimmicks are better than real quality, and the best days of television are slipping into the past.

‘Defying Gravity’ may have the biggest gimmick of them all, but it chooses to embrace it rather than wear it as an excuse to be noticed, because clearly, being noticed isn’t what genre on TV does these days, so the series does the gimmick one better by weaving it into the terrific sense of reality the characters inhabit, as the best premises do. The best genre shows that rely on a serialized approach don’t approach an overarching story as a burden, either, but as an extension of the characters, their circumstances, and how the two mesh into an episodic approach that strengthens the sense of the ordinary in the midst of the extraordinary. The emphasis ‘Defying Gravity’ places on relationships isn’t a detriment for fans, then, so much as a chance to feel as comfortable and natural as the characters themselves do. Most interactions we face on a daily basis shouldn’t feel so different from this, whether you’re deeply entangled in romantic issues like Maddux, Zoë, and Nadia, figuring out how to live with each other like Paula and Steve, or merely being there for each other, like Jen and Evram. Oh, and there’s always Ajay to feel sympathy for, or Mike to hate.

I love this show, and those like it, because it’s so easy to find myself emotionally invested in the characters. For some people, that’s the whole point of watching actors perform, not just to see them get out of the way of the “kewl” stuff around them. For others, the challenge is to find an interest in this sort of thing because what they’re really looking for is something to escape into. ‘Defying Gravity’ is the kind of show that walks that fine line between characters and the big story they’ve been dropped into. If the viewers who are looking for that big story are patient enough, I believe the series will give it to them. But that’s what kind of show this is, clearly: one that might ask for too much patience, even if, as I said, just five episodes in they’re going to be rewarded.

“H2IK” is the kind of episode that demonstrates the worth of holding on to that patience, because a number of things really start to bloom. Last episode, we already saw the effect Beta could have on a character like flight commander Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba) when it changed him from a nonentity to a working figure on the Antares mission and among a crew that had already placed a number of interesting characters in front on viewers. Maddux Donner (I apologize in retrospect for using a “o” instead of a “u” in the name Ron Livingston is going by here), already poised as the lead of the ensemble since the beginning, is pushed a little further when we learn a few more subtle aspects of what made the Mars incident so significant. Among the five-person crew he and Ted were a part of ten years earlier was also Mike Goss (Andrew Airlie), the current Mission Control commander (a fact that might have been suggested earlier but not nearly as emphasized) and a woman named Sharon Lewis. Sharon was Donner’s significant other at the time, so it was that much more tragic that she was among the two colleagues the team had to leave behind, casualties they still reflect on five years later as the new mission gears up, and just as easily five years later still, as the new mission is finally underway.

Since the start, the show has been flashing between the training period and the mission, so it’s been no surprise each episode since to alternate between the periods. If you were hearing about this facet offhand, you might assume it was “borrowed” from ‘Lost,’ but the approach is so different as to make the point moot. ‘Defying Gravity’ has fixed points, and each member of the ensemble is free to be featured, and nearly everyone is always present in each period, where ‘Lost’ spent most of the episodes where the flashes were featured centered on individual characters. This episode there happens to be a little more focus than usual, owing to the celebration of the Mars anniversary, at which point Mike becomes the guy that much easier to hate when he offers a toast in bad taste. Donner is in bad enough a mood, but Ajay also has to remind him that he’s so much more knowledgeable about the ship’s systems, which introduces the acronym from the title of the episode.

In the present, both things become relevant again. I’ve made allusions to ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ before, but this is an episode that makes is easy to do so again. Whereas Beta seems to be an entirely secular Prophet, if you will, its effect is less distilled as well; there are no quick-fix therapy sessions available here; if Benjamin Sisko were described as living in the past in the first episode of that series but seem no worse for wear about it the next (other than a general brooding he would never really break free from, other than to altered contexts), ‘Defying Gravity’ is ready to take it the next step and let its characters suffer and try and save themselves more naturally. Donner is a character who’s a ladies man and a complete professional and someone who’s perpetually haunted by his own failures, a complex individual who works with all that constantly, and this episode, he narrates how that’s possible, by refusing to accept that he’s alone in having to deal with all that. He’s got Zoë and Ajay he can depend on. Nadia Schilling (Florentine Lahme) has been a lingering figure, never really having a defining moment until now, but her healthy sense of sexuality finally breaks through here when the audience and Zoë (Laura Harris) learn that she’s a “friend with benefit” for Donner, and has to explain to Zoë that she isn’t her competition, but that Sharon Lewis is. That’s life.

The relationship between Paula (Paula Garces) and Steve (Dylan Taylor), meanwhile, evolves as well during an episode that’s essentially your basic crisis moment every sci-fi show seems to do, where characters are paired off and deal with whatever form of coping they’re faced with. They’re platonic, but the kind of make-nice rivals that could turn otherwise in the future. Paula’s better, thank you, after being sick throughout last episode, but this is a fine extension of her experiences then.

We get some added mileage out of psychiatrist/medical officer Evram Mintz (Eyal Podell) as well, another character who’s been roughly sketched in the past but receives much-valued attention this episode. He’s been trying to keep secret that this mission is perhaps that much more tough an endurance test for him than the others, because he’s a recovering alcoholic, and we learn perhaps why when both he and the audience revisit the horrors of war he had to experience. With just that little bit, it’s easy to see him with just as much potential to drive episodes as Donner or Ajay (Zahf Paroo), who’s continued post-mission plight moves a few steps forward when he proves useful in all the ways Mike Goss never anticipated. But then, it’s just that kind of an adventure.

‘Defying Gravity’ isn’t heavy drama or heavy romance or heavy sci-fi, but rather a combination of these things and more, a playful mixture that above all places the characters as the most important element, and this is exactly the kind of episode that allows the viewer to enjoy that fact, know what kind of show it is, what it’s capable of, and why there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of it.

The most crucial thing about any new series is how well its initial pretensions hold up past the first episode. In a way, viewers of ‘Defying Gravity’ had a sneak peak of that on debut night, when the second episode was aired directly after the first. But the true test is when those viewers have to wait the week for a new one, as they would normally have to for a weekly series. Does the show have something interesting, or just a minimal supply of curiosity that can’t be sustained? Being a serialized drama, ‘Defying Gravity’ has already assumed that viewers will answer in the affirmative, and the network seems to have agreed, because otherwise there would have been very little point in airing back-to-back episodes last week (except for an accelerated schedule, which NBC has been doing to a certain extent with ‘Merlin’ this summer). “Threshold” isn’t the first regular episode, but it might as well be; it’s the first opportunity in three hours for the creators to sit back and take a more expansive look at itself, and at least as far as this reviewer is concerned, it was worth it.

At this point, the long-term appeal of the cast and the scenario it’s found itself in becomes more important, not less, and in a serialized drama, that’s almost more important than what an individual episode has to offer, but what’s more important still is whether a new episode has something new to say, or if there’s development of any kind for the characters. “Threshold” succeeded on these points as well. As the narration of Maddox Donner (Ron Livingston) suggests, the episode is about crossing boundaries (which is certainly an appropriate topic), what it means to do so, our choices, and if they should be crossed at all. Again, this isn’t hammered over the head, but articulated in a number of interesting ways. You’ll remember me mentioning Ajay Sharma (Zahf Paroo) last time, the flight engineer Donner ended up replacing on the mission-tour of the solar system. He went through quite the dramatic arc in the first two episodes; here he begins to accept the radical change that has introduced itself to his life, a sense of chaos where he was always the model of order. The door he crosses ends up not being Mission Control but his own apartment, which he had packed up in anticipation of being away from for six years.

Another quite literal door is also a metaphorical one: Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba), who replaced Rollie Crane (Ty Olsson) as commander of the Antares, becomes much more than the guy who tagged along with Donner on the failed Mars mission ten years earlier and happens to be married to Eve Shaw (Karen Le Blanc), one of the main figures at the ISO Mission Control; he becomes a functional character, finally, after going through a pointedly catatonic experience with the mysterious Beta, which I’ll be addressing a bit later in the review. Ted, as I said, wasn’t much of a presence for the first two hours, and I probably should have referenced that in the first review as a dissenting negative opinion in an otherwise positive notice, so for him to be put in a position where he is suddenly going to matter, especially as Donner and Zoë Barnes prep for Venus exploration, is even better timing than realizing that, yes, he’s commander of this mission. When he finally snaps out of it, he comes directly to life and steps right into the role and presence he should have had from the beginning.

But he’s one of several people in this show who know what’s really going on — actually, it seems, almost only himself and his wife Eve, or so it seems, besides other members of Mission Control including Mike Goss (Andrew Airlie). But he’s got other issues as well. What ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ alum James Parriott has accomplished here better than a literal ‘Grey’s’ spin-off in ‘Private Practice’ is establish the characters with their various interconnecting and continually conflicting histories so that the viewer will actually care, once they sort it all out. Donner and Zoë are the best illustrated of that romantic mess so far, but Ted and Eve are getting there, too. Back to the five-years-ago training period, Ted had a thing going with Jen Crane (Christina Cox), who’s best been known so far as Zoë’s best friend, but who is also married to Rollie, which would have put quite a different context to the HALOs featured in the episode, devices intended to curtail the libido issued to each of the astronauts (and the subject of some amusement five years ago, when they first became acquainted with them; Ajay factors surprisingly into those sequences, in a way that sort of eludes me at the moment in the overall arc of his role in the episode, when he manages to beat it, entirely against his will). Given that Rollie was originally supposed to be onboard, he and Jen would have had an interesting time, but now that it’s Jen with Ted out there, that’s all the worse for Rollie, who otherwise has been quite the professional about all this.

Anyway, there’s also Paula Puke, I mean Paula Morales (Paula Garces), the host of the documentary segments that give humans back home an intimate perspective of the mission, who’s gotten sick, which doesn’t seem to work well with quirky Steve Wassenfelder (Dylan Taylor), who’d be right at home, say, in ‘Big Bang Theory’ with Sheldon, Howard, and the rest of that gang, which is unrelated, we would think, to everything else going on, but I guess we’ll see. The remaining members of the cast, Evram Mintz (Eyal Podell), Nadia Schilling (Florentine Lahme), and Claire Dereux (Maxim Roy), have minor moments once again that will hopefully lead to more expansive roles in future episodes.

The matter of Beta, then. When Ted visit’s the bay that’s supposed to house this entity, all he sees (and we later have confirmation that it’s what Eve has seen as well) is the surface of Mars, and whether that indicates that Beta also happens to play prominently in the botched events Ted and Donner experienced in the past or not will probably be answered in time, as will Beta’s role as a whole, but for now I like the approach as it is. As a big fan of ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ (now ten years completed), I can’t help but draw a parallel with the Prophets, the wormhole aliens worshipped by Bajorans and approached a bit more skeptically by Starfleet, whose existence as even Sisko couldn’t deny (before he ever learned that he was, in fact, half-Prophet) was unlike a conventional entity’s. Beta is like a completely secular Prophet, at least as it’s been presented so far, and contact with it isn’t something that presents a pretext that explains anything, even in riddles, and that’s what makes even Ted as a completely inward-turned figure more compelling than he’d previously been. He’s our first contact with Beta, our first reaction, and it’s a profound one. Ted doesn’t know what to think, and so it seems he can’t think at all, no matter what his crew or Mission Control does to try and reach him. And then just as suddenly, he’s back on his feet and better than ever.

But Beta is apparently working some kind of biological control over these people, and not just those on the Antares, but Eve as well. Just as it made Ajay and Rollie medically unsuitable for a six year mission, it’s still maneuvering the remaining characters in play. To what end? Yeah, well, we’ll see.

“Threshold” makes it clear that the initial instances of ruminating on the matter of procreation wasn’t a mistake, as the HALOs themselves make clear, as well as the unresolved fate of Zoë’s pregnancy from five years earlier. For whatever reason, the world forty years from now is quite keen on getting a lid on population expansion, and I doubt it stops at the astronaut program. Maybe the more it gets talked about, the more we’ll understand, that, too, but as long as the people who have been born are as interesting as these characters, I don’t think there’s much to be concerned about.

I don’t know how many episodes there’s supposed to be in this season, but I have a feeling that I’ll be writing quite a bit about them. ‘Defying Gravity’ is the kind of show that plays the game and rewrites it at the same time. There should be plenty to talk about.

Maybe that’s what prospective astronauts would really do, I don’t know. I do know that the episode didn’t need to waste twenty minutes introducing the patches, setting up the competition and carrying out the competition.

I’m much more interested in the main story line that takes place aboard the Antares (in the present) involving the mysterious Beta that may or may not be an alien from Venus. Unfortunately, last night’s episode didn’t move forward nearly enough for my liking. We’re getting glimpses of what could be a very interesting tale. But the soap opera elements of Defying Gravity overshadow everything. I’ve seen the show compared to both Lost and Grey’s Anatomy, two other ABC shows I watch and enjoy. The comparisons to both are more or less valid: the flashbacks and mysteries of Lost coupled with the sex and drama of Grey’s Anatomy.

The way I see it, Defying Gravity would work much better if it chose one of these shows to emulate rather than attempting to merge the two. Either make it a straight soap opera in space or a serious, complicated drama in space. I am interested in learning more about Beta and why “it” is changing the DNA of those aboard the Antares (and at least one person back on Earth). More importantly, I’d like to know why the ISO is going along with Beta’s demands.

I can’t see Defying Gravity running longer than its initial 13 episodes. Which means it will probably end on a cliffhanger given that it is supposed to take the Antares six years to get to Venus. Would the show have worked better as a self-contained miniseries? Maybe. But again, if it insisted on straddling Lost and Grey’s Anatomy, even a miniseries with a definitive end wouldn’t have been all that much better than what we’re seeing.

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.