Defying Life

I was excited to see a new SciFi series on ABC about human exploration of the solar system called Defying Gravity. The geek in me always enjoys a series that theorizes about new propulstion systems, ways for people to live in space for long periods of time, etc. There hasn't been a Star Trek series on television for years. Maybe Defying Gravity will fill the void.

After the first two episodes I was ready to give up on the series. It was turning out to be more like a soap opera with different characters flashing back in time to when they began relationships with the other characters on the show. It all made sense when I found out the producer of Grey's Anatomy is also invoved in this series. No wonder the blogosphere calles the series "Grey's Anatomy in space".

Also, I had a hard time turning off the old think-mellon about the technical aspects of the show. For example, for artificial gravity the crew wears clothing with some nano-magnetic woven fiber mumbo jumbo to keep them achored to the ground. Say what? So what about showering, going to the bathroom, etc? Is there special clothing for these tasks? So far we haven't heard anything about the engines, communciations, etc. There are a ton of challenges sending humans to Mars via Venus on a six year mission. While on the ship the crew wears a special patch behind the ear to suppress sexual urges (I can't belive I'm writing about this on my blog; I hope my nephew isn't reading this). So there is one cool piece of technology that could help in long space missions.

Ok, let's put the technical stuff aside and get back to the soap opera aspect of the series...

One of the main reasons I stopped watching Battlestar Galactica was over the soap opera dynamics of "boy meets girl", "boy wants girl", "girl thinks she wants boy", yadda yadda yadda. Show me more toaster Cylons with that flasy red eye thing going on.

Frustrated with how science fiction has become more for those wanting romance, I was trying to figure out how to spend a Borders gift card. I found a book I'd been wanting to read for a while called Riding Rockets by former NASA astronaut Mike Mullane. I thought I'd found my cure for my SciFi frustration. I was excited to read an astronauts biography about his experiences in the space program. Alright, here we go. No soap opera stuff here. It's all rockets, apogee, perigee, you name it. Let's get talking about astrodynamics.

Without giving too much away (because you should read it for yourself if you're interested) I was amazed to read about stories that really aren't too far from what's being portryaed in ABC's Defying Gravity. It made me stop and think about things. Besides the stories in Riding Rockets I thought about Lisa Nowack. She was the NASA astronaut who became involved in a wacked-out love affair with another with another NASA astronaut. She became so jealous she drove from Houston to Orlando to confront her lover's girlfriend. Or is it mistress? I get so confused about these things. Anyway it's complicated and NASA had to do a lot of PR damage control.

So while soap operas aren't my thing they do prove one thing about life in the real world. We're complicated beings. We all have hurts, hangups, frustrations. Series like Battlestar Galactica and Defying Gravity seem to be stretching the net of SciFi to more than just propulsion and life support systems. It's no wonder that the SciFi channel has changed it's name to SyFy. The new name still sounds the same, but it's different enough to attract non-geeks (like cool people) who would want to watch series about people in relationships with a bunch of cool technology available.

So let's see where Defying Gravity takes us. Hopefully we won't be left hanging.