Defying Gravity - TV Series

[Xelebes]

New TV series on CTV (Canadian). Don't know much about it apart from it attempting to be a racier variant of sci-fi or something. Anybody else see the ads for this one yet?

 

[Ross]

I saw comments about it on Nielsen's Tv Ratings but not seen any ads or anything yet. Could be good.

Infact...Looked for this. Quite a big "trailer" - http://abc.go.com/primetime/defyinggravity/ - 4 Different videos to watch.

 

[clovis-man]

Brought to you by the Desperate Housewives people. That may tell us something.

 

[Ursa major]

Apparently this series will be shown on BBC2 in the UK.

 

[Happy Joe]

Saw the intro episode(s) last night;
It was OK (not great or bad) but seemed to drag in places, too may cuts to historical background scenes (distracting).
I will probably continue to watch it if I have nothing else going on.

Enjoy!

 

[clovis-man]

Viewed the pilot and the first episode. I'm afraid I was right the first time. It's "Desperate Housewives in Space". Cool spaceship though.

 

[Rodders]

The trouble with things like this is that i don't ever get into them whilst they're on TV. Still, i'd like to give it the benifit of the doubt. Too much great SF TV has been ruined or cancelled because we don't try to stick with them.

 

[Ursa major]

The BBC has now moved the series to the state of "Coming Soon", so we shouldn't be too far from discovering the date of the premier's transmission.

 

[clovis-man]

I just watched Danny Boyle's film, Sunshine. I have a pretty good idea that 80% of the ideas for Defying Gravity came from that movie. Right down to the spaceship design. My math may be off, but I believe the original crew number in Sunshine was 8 as well. Off on an important mission with a mysterious "X" factor in play. sounds very familiar. See the NYT review:

Movie Review - Sunshine - On a Mission to Replace the Sun, Fighting Demons From Inner Space - NYTimes.com

The difference, IMHO, is that the film is intelligently done with loads of suspense and drama. The TV series has yet to display that. But I'll keep watching for now.

 

[Rodders]

I like the look of it. We don't always get SF that's set on a Spaceship anymore. Like all TV Series, we've got to give it at least a year. Looks like there could be some actual science in it too.

I see where you're coming from with regards to the Icarus 2 from Sunshine, but there's not much left to be original these days.

 

[clovis-man]

I like the look of it. We don't always get SF that's set on a Spaceship anymore. Like all TV Series, we've got to give it at least a year.

Well, it looks like it may take a bit for the year to get finished. Just watched the "season finale". There is enough to keep me interested, but the mysterious "Beta" factor is beginning to look a lot like a McGuffin. Guess we'll have to wait to see when ABC resumes the suspense.

 

[Ursa major]

And it's still "coming soon to BBC Two" here in the UK, according to the BBC's website.

 

[Ursa major]

If you've missed the adverts (I have, if there were any), Defying Gravity arrives on BBC2 tonight at 21:00. There are two episodes (the pilot and one called Law of Natural Selection) back-to-back, 21:00 - 22:30.

 

[Moonbat]

I watched this last night and was a little dissapointed, it seemed a bit pretentious. Lots of flashbacks and dream sequences. It seems like a good premise, but already I think its trying too hard.

So, what is beta?

 

[blacknorth]

I watched this programme in disbelief last night as it unfolded every cliche, every dumb piece of plotting and characterisation.

The problem with a rubix cube was that you were always stuck with the colours the manufacturer provided. No matter how many times you twisted the damn thing.

As for Sunshine, I agree with a very wonderful review I read of the film @ IMDb - 'smart people making dumb choices for the sake of nonsensical plotting'.

 

[Ursa major]

I've just watched the first two episodes; not the most impressive TV scifi I've ever seen, but I'll give it a bit more of a chance.

I don't think the flashbacks were handled that well and I can see (well, a little bit) why it's been called Desperate Housewives in Space.

The only intriguing (if that's the word) thread so far is the Beta stuff.

 

[Daisy-Boo]

I've watched up until ep. 8 and I enjoy it because IMO it's entertaining Sci-Fi fluff. I love the Desperate Housewives in Space moniker. LOL.

Ron Livingstone doesn't have the charisma to carry the show but fortunately the large cast gives enough variety. The series is lovely to look at and demands very little intellectually and sometimes that's just what I need.

 

[Ursa major]

The BBC started to move the programme around the schedules. (One episode was directly after the repeat of the previous one.) But at least the BBC has allowed me to stop watching without having to make a conscious decision.

With regard to the last episode I did watch, I had to start recording it after five minutes, in the hope that the ability to fast forward would make it more watchable; it didn't.

Apart from the action-lite approach, what I found most irritating with the episodes I saw were the flashbacks. The flashbacks on, for example, Lost (for the couple of seasons I watched that) were fine, possibly because they had one character from the "present". Defying Gravity has the same cast list for the "present" and the flashbacks; instead of gaining insights into the behaviour and attitude of each character (as in Lost), the technque came across to me as a cheap way of building whole episodes out of not very much when used in Defying Gravity.

 

[Omphalos]

I didn't think it was bad, but then again I am much more forgiving with TV and movie SF then I am with books (you really have to be that way, or you will rarely find anything that makes the grade). What I really liked about it was that it was SF that my wife would watch with me. That does not happen too often in our household, so I was pretty disappointed when it went "on hiaitus."