Reviews

Defying Gravity is (ostensibly) a "sexy scifi/drama". Unfortunately, it's about as sexy as the office dork who think's saying "penis" every chance he gets is sexy, there's virtually no science and the attempts at drama are extremely poorly-acted clichés we've all seen countless times in hospital/workplace dramas from the last 30 years which, even when done in a mediocre fashion, have been done a hundred times better.

The show's attempts at being naughty include a sexy, female German astronaut telling the show's hero (with the dopey name Maddox Donner) how she'll be waiting for him naked and in bed in his apartment and a bet between the male and female astronaut trainees as to whether or not any of the males can achieve an erection, despite the anti-libido drugs administered to them via dermal patches (a nerdy cadet wins when the sexy German girl rubs up against him in her bra). These are typical of the show's vain attempts at titillation.

We are also treated to hackneyed attempts at drama we've seen countless times, but done better. Maddox's relationship with his drunken dad who dumps on all of his accomplishments; the female cadet who gets pregnant from a supposedly vasectomized male astronaut but never tells him; the shifting romantic triangles between astronauts (related in endless and sluggish flashbacks), all of which seem to result in marriage: the deep-seated guilt of two astronauts who were forced to leave behind their fellows to die on Mars during a sandstorm. Given the by-the-numbers writing and stiff acting, we make no emotional connection. To put the icing on this cake of mediocrity, we are subjected to Maddox's voice-overs regarding the nature of humanity, the wonders of the universe et al, which sound like Jack Handy's "Deep Thoughts" musings from Saturday Night Live.

The flaw that really destroys the whole thing is the utter lack of regard for real science. This show is supposedly a "scifi drama", which means that it has to succeed as either one or the other if it is to have any value. With the bar having been raised so high by shows like Babylon 5 and BSG, something as slipshod as DF winds up looking worse than 60s scifi-cheese like Lost In Space. Scientific errors? Where does one begin? Howbout the fact that they have instantaneous two-way communication between the spaceship Antares and Earth without any time lag whatsoever, despite being millions of miles away? Howbout the fact that they walk around, sit in chars, set objects down on surfaces, etc, as if gravity were somehow being artificially generated, except for when crewmates have sex or the sexy Latina girl barfs, which floats around as if it were in null G (and if gravity were being simulated by acceleration, everything in the ship would be shoved to the rear, since, unlike real-life rockets, the orientation of the decking is perpendicular to the drive source). And, if gravity seems to be present just about everywhere, just what exactly are the two rotating boom sections for? In more flagrant disregard for the laws of gravity and inertia, in one episode our hero Maddox has to pull a crewmate back into the ship by her tether after she was accidentally ejected into vacuum. However, he winds up having to continuously pull her in, despite the fact that, in a null-G or micrograv environment, after he pulled once, she would continue to move in the direction pulled "until or unless acted upon by an opposite or external force" (first year physics, Day One). Instead, Maddox has to keep pulling her in, hand over hand, tether remaining taught the entire time. An additional minor-but-salient inaccuracy (one that's frequently forgivable in scifi shows for purely visual reasons, but nothing should be forgiven in a show this bad) is the ridiculous size of the Antares and the amount of unnecessarily spacious areas within it. Since any open spaces have to be pressurized and filled with breathable air, the idea behind spaceship (or submarine, for that matter) design is to make the open spaces no larger than necessary. Sinc this show is set in 2052 and seems to be attempting no to stray too far from what is currently possible (Star Trek and other shows can get away with this, since the technology is that of the far future or, in the case of BSG, of another culture in another part of the universe entirely), the concept of building a ship with huge, spacious corridors and giant, cavernous lounges filled with big picture windows so everyone can look out and see the pretty stars (and be microwaved by hard radiation while they're at it) is patently absurd. The amount of oxygen that would have to be brought with them, not to mention the enormous CO2 scrubbing capability that would be required to keep the voluminous internal atmosphere from becoming poison, is truly staggering. Add to these errors the comment by a crewmember in an episode about how beautiful the moons of Saturn appear (seen by the naked eye and while en route to Venus, which is inward towards the Sun? WTF?) and the fact that the Antares' mission is to tour "seven planets in six years" (it would take that long just to get to Saturn), despite the limitations of fuel requirements and the human body's ability to withstand anything approaching the amount of acceleration required to achieve such a timetable, and you've got a show that, despite the fact it's being produced in the 21st century, is about as scientifically accurate as the previously-mentioned Lost In Space.

A previous user comment calls this show "entertaining". I ask you, how could anything so utterly pretentious yet inarguably bad be entertaining to anyone, other than someone who can be satisfied looking at flashing colors on a screen for 60 minutes? Even my cat gets tired of that after five.

The main character, Isaac, wasn't a cyborg. He was genetically augmented and had nanobots in his body, but absolutely no cybernetic components, ergo he was not a "cybernetic organism", or "cyborg" for short. In fact, he was never even referred to as being a cyborg in the movie, the title must have been insisted upon by some idiot with the distributors. However, it wasn't a bad movie. The acting was quite competent and I have to say Rich did a good job. As far as cheap movies go, it blew away most of the ones I try to watch on OnDemand and wind up turning off after 10 minutes(case in point, "Pistol Whipped" with that bloated, ridiculously lousy actor Steven Seagal).

Where to begin? The fact the term "Nephilim", which actually means the offspring of Angels and humans, is used for the Fallen Angels themselves (correctly termed "Grigori")? Or howabout Thelma the Lesbian Ghost, who can't touch people, but can touch everything else, which includes opening doors, eating food, changing her clothes (and hair) and who casts a shadow? Then there's the fact that no one notices Cassie speaking to what would appear to be nobody at all, even when she's in a crowded room with people right next to her? And what the hell kind of high school is it where they allow male and female students to freely visit each other's rooms, unsupervised, and where teachers go to bars with the students? And what's the drinking age in England, anyway? I thought it was 19, but here we have high school juniors going to bars. And when Ella shows up, no one notices that she wears the same outfit every single day? But such details aside, nothing compares to the tedious, drawn-out, snail-paced storytelling style. Such a shame, too. This show had all the ingredients for being really good, but, I hate to say it, that dopey show Charmed was more exciting. And here I thought British TV shows were better than ours.

Didn't anybody else notice that, despite the fact the guy had photos of himself with a mustache, he didn't show them to his wife? I mean, come on. The first thing anybody would've done in his situation, with his wife insisting he never had a mustache, would be to shove the photos in her face and say "See? Photos of me with a mustache!" For God's sake, he even showed a stranger (female cop) his driver's license and said "Do you see a mustache in this photo?" And the cop said "Yes". So why wouldn't the guy show it to his wife? He even dug out the photos and looked at them, ostensibly with the intention of showing them to his wife as proof, but no. I can't believe how insanely frustrating it was to try and watch this flick while that idiot held onto those photos yet didn't show them to his wife. I couldn't enjoy it after that. Please, someone explain to me why the director thought that was a reasonable way for the protagonist to behave.