Defying Gravity's Reality

Turning technology from mumbo-jumbo into rich tasty gumbo

August 17, 2009

Defying Gravity's Reality

I've enjoyed the first three episodes of ABC's Defying Gravity, a show about a multi-year mission to visit strange new worlds...errr...sorry...all seven other planets in the solar system. It takes place after 2050, and the show gets the tone of near future without crazy bullcrap just right. Things have advanced, especially rocket technology, but there's still garbage, drinking, infrequent public transportation, and bureaucracy.

The show has its holes, however. (Update at bottom!) The spaceship has a few minor rotating rings, but also zero G. They get around the special effects budget for zero G by explaining in episode 1 that the astronauts wear nanotech suits that provide an electromagnetic attraction to an artificial down.

Of course, that doesn't explain why Ron Livingston is tossing his baseball in a perfect arc in his quarters. Or why this is demonstrated with a tomato being floated through space in the vivarium, but plants are growing with a down orientation, producing normal fruit, and a handheld misting sprayer (an insane idea in zero G) produces mist instead of propelled tiny globules.

And unless there's a static hair thing, their hair should be all over the place, too. They could have made the whole damn thing rotate for micro-gravity, or introduced a typical device like a dense material (made of neutrons or something) that was balanced by inertia with minimal tidal forces. There are about 1,000 methods in sci-fi to "solve" this problem. (In Star Trek, they just said, we've got gravity plates on each deck. End of story, but not very realistic. On the other hand, it's 500 years in the future, and they have anti-matter engines.)

Also odd, no delay in communications. Perhaps they have an ansible, but it's a major bummer (not a character on the show). It would make more sense to either integrate the notion of superluminal communications in passing -- "it's remarkable how this mission wouldn't have been possible without the Swiss tachyon acceleration breakthroug"..."Yes, isn't it" -- or use the time delay as a significant plot point.

There's also a major plot point -- potential SPOILER for those who haven't seen the show at all -- involving a pregnancy, a vasectomy, and an abortion that they're being all coy about in some ways. Livingston's Donner has a one-night stand with Zoe Barnes (played by Laura Harris), and when she asks about protection, he says he had a vasectomy. She believes him. This becomes a whole ugly thing, mostly revealed in the first episode, and trickling out through subsequent ones.

But Zoe, like everyone else, would know that Donner was sterilized before he went to Mars 10 years earlier. It's part of the protocol. In the show, abortion is illegal (although seen as a temporary thing). So Zoe's most reasonable response would have been, it's not his fault: the vasectomy didn't take or reversed spontaneously (which can happen), and, damn. Instead, it's "oh, the guy is lying about it" deal. Or so it seems.

In the show, it's pretty clear that an alien is responsible for anything weird.

Update! Just watched episode 4, and they explained several of the above points. A little cute in some cases, but it works. The astronauts use a nanoparticle magnetic hairspray to avoid problems in zero G, which actually makes perfect sense. The living quarters do rotate to provide microgravity, which then explains Livingston tossing his ball.

The tomato is still inexplicable.

Posted by Glennf at August 17, 2009 2:31 PM

Comments

Yeah, screw the critics, I like the show too.

As best I can tell, there's absolutely no reason for the nerd to be on the crew. OK, he is supposedly brilliant. But he has about zero social skills, which would be a major selection criteria for such a long mission. In fact, his social skills are in the negative numbers. I'd expect crew members, en masse, to cycle him through the nearest airlock after about three months, just to see him explode in the vacuum.

So I expect that they will plan to address why he's on the crew in the next few episodes.

Beta may not be an alien, though I'm leaning that way myself. It could be what Charlie Stross calls a "weakly godlike" AI.

Posted by: Tom Negrino at August 18, 2009 12:43 PM

With the "fixes" in episode 4, I'm pretty much fine with the science now. There are a few lacunae still, like since they have three nuclear reactors, there shouldn't be any problem with the ship having cooled down with the power problems in "H2IK" because they'd'd be heating the ship with recirculating pipes from the reactors. I would have suspected more of a containment failure concern on episode 4, so KUDOS to them for not having a Star Trek "the engine, she's going critical!" plot point so early.

Yeah, I know they have to push the sex, but it's kind of silly. Like, these are highly trained people who worked for years to get ready for this mission, close together that whole time, and now they start acting like high school students?

Also, the person who gets the shortest shrift is the nerd. Of course!

Posted by: Glenn Fleishman at August 18, 2009 10:23 AM

Oh, thank god someone else likes this show, too.

OK, the tomato was thrown in one of the science areas where there is no rotation. Shouldn't that explain it? You do still have the plants growing normally and the mist, but there's really only so much they can do.

The problem with making the ship fully rotate is that you have to have sets built to look like they're curved like in Kubrick's 2001. You also lose the little cutesy things like tossing the tomato.

I am perfectly happy with the balance the show has struck. It's absurd to me how many people complain about the science on the iTunes review and then go on to suggest Battlestar Galactica. I liked BSG but, Jeebus, if there was ever a show with bigger science and plot holes I'm not aware of it.

I think that's the double-edged sword of having a scifi show set in the near future. People complain about the science aspects more than they do with Star Trek which simply makes up a gobbly-gook word for a solution and continues with the story.

If there's a failing to me it's the hyper-focus on the sex lives of the crew. I think that's important and is obviously there to get certain viewers to tune in, but I could stand to have it turned down just a little.

I'm enjoying it. Which means it'll get cancelled immediately.

(And, yes, I'm a hypocrite about comments!)

Posted by: Moltz at August 18, 2009 10:13 AM

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August 17, 2009

Defying Gravity's Reality

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