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'Defying Gravity' TV series cancelled
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Defying Gravity, the ABC network space soap opera, has had its series finale, having been cancelled due to poor ratings before the last filmed episode had aired. It was inevitable, of course, as Defying Gravity defied logic.
Defying Gravity, for those who never watched it, and that would be most of those reading this, was a series about an interplanetary voyage that planned to visit most of the planets of the Solar System in six years. That straight away tells one of the lengths the series took to ignore science.
Since interplanetary voyages tend to be boring, even when things occasionally go wrong, the show’s writers had to invent improbable things to happen for the time the ship was between worlds. This usually consisted of soap opera, personal relationship nonsense, coupled with a mystery involving something called “Beta” and the “true purpose” of the mission. Lots of air time was eaten up with pointless flashbacks to the training regime for our intrepid crew.
So Defying Gravity shed viewers as an ascending rocket sheds stages and fuel. The series was cancelled with no immediate plans to air the unaired episodes six days away from Venus, the first destination.
Defying Gravity had a good initial premise; do a show set in the near future about an interplanetary voyage of discovery. But the execution, as is too often the case, fell very short of the mark.
Here are some tips for anyone wanting to do a similar show and do it right.
First, choose one destination. Mars has been done to death. I suggest the Saturn system. Saturn has lots of interesting moons to visit, which would take up a lot of air time.
Second, sit down with a lot of scientists, astronauts, and futurists and plan out what the mission is going to look like, who the crew will be, and what they might find at their destination.
Third, make sure that a few of these people you consult read your series bible and every script. That way you will adhere to some semblance of scientific and technological reality.
Fourth, do not pull out the hoary old “secret conspiracy” device to try to make things interesting. This too has been done to death.
Fifth, do not rely too much on sex to drive your show. It is a heavy temptation to throw it the green eyed monster to raise tension, but really, if NASA or whatever agency is sending this mission has planned it right, the crew will be chosen in part to be too professional to bang each other over the head with pipe wrenches over who gets what nookie.
Finally, plan out what your future society is going to look like in advance. Defying Gravity was set in the 2050s, but it looked like 2009 except abortion is illegal. Think about how things might change in the next thirty to fifty years and you’ll find things that will drive your story arc in more interesting and original ways than sex, secret conspiracies, and technobabble.
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