August 28, 2020
The exploration of outer space had always been a fascinating subject for movies. There is so much drama that can be mined about our fascination about the human experience in an extreme environment full of danger and the unknown. Film like "Apollo 13," "First Man,""Hidden Figures" were based on real life events. Films like "Gravity," "Interstellar" and "The Martian" depict astronauts in fictional scenarios.
The only TV series which I had seen about space were only of the campy sci-fi variety like "Star Trek,""Lost in Space" or "Space 1999". This new Netflix series "Away" is a more realistic depiction of astronauts in an albeit fictional space mission to Mars. While it was the story of mission commander Emma Green and her family which is the central core of the series, each member of her team is given a personal story which was dealt with in each episode.
American astronaut Emma Green was the leader of an international crew sent on a pioneering three-mission to Mars. Her husband NASA Chief Engineer Matt Logan had health issues which prevented him from joining the mission, and had to be left behind to take care of their teenage daughter Alexis (Talitha Bateman). While Emma trying her best to perform as wife and mother while in space, issues that arise from Matt's medical condition and Alexis' abandonment are dealt with.
While Emma had the support of her Indian pilot Ram Arya (Ray Panthaki) and British-Ghanaian Jewish botanist Dr. Kwesi Weisberg-Abban (Ato Essandoh). She faced resistance from her veteran Russian engineer Misha Popov (Mark Ivanir) and Chinese chemist Lu Wang (Vivian Wu), who both felt that Green was not fit to be mission commander. The series opens with a fiery accident which triggered the team's heated internal conflict even before they launched for Mars from their pit stop on the Moon.
Two-time Oscar Best Actress Hilary Swank leads the all-inclusive cast here as Commander Emma Green. Of all moms who worked away from home, Emma was the ultimate example. She was not only working overseas, but in outer space. Of course, she tries her best to balance her duties as mission commander (at hand) with her obligations as a mother (from a distance). So far Swank's scenes been more of drama than action. She had some scenes which displayed her physical prowess in "zero gravity" (like that space walk scene). But so far, It had been more of her dramatic muscle which had been flexed.
Among her four teammates in space, the writers have distributed all other forms of dramatic tropes, mostly dealing with estrangement from family and the various ways people try to deal with their psychological stress and their guilt feelings. Since the crew members come from different countries, there are also leeway for discussing inter-cultural differences, not merely based on their individual personalities. In the first four episodes, we had already seen the backstories of three of them, and the various personal issues they faced in the past and how they are affecting them now as they are in space.
As a whole, viewers who were expecting more of an action-filled space adventure series may be disappointed. A lot of the conversations were being conducted as phone calls and video calls which can tend to be tedious. Actually, the space mission felt like a mere backdrop to tell a several dramatic stories -- absentee parents, physical disability, teenage rebellion, difficult family relations, LGBT issues, life-threatening disease -- none of which are particularly novel topics for a TV series, be completely honest.
Hopefully, the last four episodes (when they finally reach Mars) can give us something more exciting to chew on. As of now, the first half of "Away" still feels like a typical melodramatic soap opera enhanced with high-tech special effects.
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