Airdate: August 2nd, 2009Episode Title: Pilot/Natural Selection
Episode #: 101-102 (Season 1, Episodes 1&2)
Starring: Ron Livingston, Laura Harris, Malik Yoba, Christina Cox, Peter Howitt
Pitched as Grey's Anatomy in space, I gave Defying Gravity a chance solely on its unique location of taking place entirely in space. While the show maintains to soap like drama of a Grey's Anatomy, it has an heir of mystery and science fiction action that at least kept me watching through the two hour pilot. The show follows eight astronauts, 4 male and 4 female as the journey on a six year mission on board spaceship Anteles, visiting various planets in our solar system, the first being Venus. The opener was riddled with character flashbacks trying to present the characters to us, but also had numerous B-plots that confused me and made the two-hour premiere feel rushed. I wouldn't say I was impressed, but I wasn't disappointed either. The first season, schedule for thirteen episodes, runs through August and presumably to October. While the special effects of the show are magnificent and gigantic, the shows characters are almost entirely lifeless pieces of cardboard. Ron Livingston, who plays the lead role of "Maddux" is baffling confusing, I'm not entirely sure what his character is, but he was certainly cheesy and overacted in the first two hours. Laura Harris, playing "Zoe Barnes", is Maddux's love interest, but her girlish innocence and cunning makes her appear and sound a lot like Elizabeth Mitchell's character Juliet on LOST. The other characters are almost entirely forgettable. However, not only was the graphic stunning, with a full space ship, plenty of visual effects and stunning solar moments, the show played with a mysterious entity only called "beta" that is apparently controlling every aspect of the Anteles mission. Let's see how next weeks episode plays out, but I have a striking feeling that this one is dead in space.
Episode Score (out of 10) 8.5
Story: B
Characters: C+
Creativity: A-
Impact: B+
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