This is a very disappointing show. From the outset the premise is fantastic, a journey to Mars! Imagine the thrills and drama involved in such a story! it should be no trouble, right?
Wrong (apparently!) The characters in this production are so overburdened with dramatic personal events and so lacking in the stoic behaviour we recognise in real life astronauts that you rapidly lose interest in them as characters and then lose interest in the whole premise.
No issue is to small in this production that it cannot needlessly be blown into a full on crisis with emotionally unstable characters who couldn't be trusted to sit the right way on a toilet, let alone land on Mars.
I can only assume the reason this crew was sent 'Away' was in the reverent hope they would stay there!
SFX is good though!
Below average quality drama which just happens to be in space. I don't like this type of drama. It tries to work towards feel good moments but it feels unnatural and artificial, and I'm asuming that cycle of feel good feel bad will be repeated throughout the show. I won't know cause I'm stopping after 2 episodes. It's shallow and stupid. I feel like I wasted precious time I could have spend watching something else.
And it's not realistic at all, which I feel like it's trying to be.
I'm pretty sure they have procedures for everything up there and the commander won't take impulsive actions when she has an actual expert in the field right next to her. And even if she did I'm sure there will be an issue with that commander. And I'm sure the psychologist or whoever that was wouldn't encourage her by telling her she did the right thing cause she tried to save her colleagues. I mean, again, it's dumb drama.
And there's no way austronauts would even start that journey with so much hostility. It just seems impossible.
This is NOT an action show as many might expect and hope for. This show is very heavy on the Drama. But that doesn't mean it is not good...it is. It is probably a slightly more realistic look at a "mission to Mars" flight and all the physical and emotional burdens and risks that come along for the ride.
The first five episodes are useless, boring, soapy, unrealistic drama about the life of each crew’s member of the first mission to Mars. To make things worse they even allow real time communication at millions of kilometres of distance, keeping the useless, boring, soapy, unrealistic drama, not considering the lag caused by the speed of light, the maximum achievable.
On the second half of the season it switches completely. Suddenly (literally) it isn’t possible to have interactive communications. The lag, which would have always been there, increasing from seconds to minutes, has been turned on. And thanks to this the focus has been finally moved principally to the mission and we can watch a decent SciFi show, although not brilliant.
I’d suggest to skip the first 5 episodes altogether, if it wasn’t unreasonable. Just swallow them and enjoy the second half.
Its about a dysfunctional crew you wouldn't want flying you on an airliner flight let alone picked for mankind's biggest achievement of flying to Mars, who miss their dysfunctional loved ones back home on earth who are somehow able to make mobile phone calls or facetime between them 17million plus miles away (as at episode 4) when I can't even get a signal in the countryside.
There is nothing plausible or credible in this series to make any of it believable.
Utter crap. Don't waste your time.
Watching the 5th episode, until now more a soap opera then anything else. Very predictable, SFX good, story meh, acting fair, 5/10 so far.
I watched this when it first came out and was really excited for it because I’m a big sci-fi fan and MARS! I muddled through the overly dramatic drama and the “big twist” that could have been much more interesting and in the end realized that it was an earthbound drama and too much of it at that. Everyone has something major, not just life mind you, but a big deal happening to add to the nonstop over-drama of the show.
Fast forward four years and it was still sitting on my PLEX because I figured, at the time, there would be a season two and perhaps that would be more spacey. Of course Netflix being the piece of crap company they are who don’t know either good shows or how to follow through pulled the plug on this. I blew the dust off and thought, let me try this again and what happened is what always happens when the show is a dud: I found myself fast forwarding through at least half of every episode. The pandering to China with 1/3 of the show about Chinese drama and in Chinese, the totally unrealistic and pandering lesbian drama, the superhero dad that was supposed to lead the mission but now is in a wheelchair with a brat kid, the Russian dickhead in pretty much every scene and so on and so on and so on.
Aside from the normal suspension of disbelief for mediocre sci-fi (good sci-fi is first based on good science, then the rest becomes the stage on which that science is provided), you have the same old trope of a bunch of morons at NASA (who have some of the smartest and most capable people on the planet in real life) and totally unrealistic drama playing out with highly trained and vetted astronauts and it’s just over the top. I have to actually side with Netflix on pulling the plug on this show, I got through half of it a second time before I totally gave up on it and deleted it from my system.
Don’t watch this for sci-fi because it’s not. It’s a modern day drama, based on modern day issues and pandering to modern day talking points that has occasional glimpses onto the interior of a space craft and rare glimpses of outside the space craft (you know, the really cool stuff you came to see). Watch this if you want something like a soap opera with people loosely affiliated with space stuff.
It's obvious that it is not a typical sci-fi series. It has some nice moments, space shots, a great ending and good inclusion of diversity. However, for my taste, it was too slow and often overburdened with cheesy emotional issues, making it hard to watch and enjoy. Also, it's often quite predictable.
The only reason I don't rate this lower is because I managed to finish it but honestly it was just bad. It's like the worst team of astronauts put together and makes you wonder if the spatial program actually screens their candidates. I've never seen so much personal trauma and drama in one place and such a mismatched group of people. It was ridiculous and took away from all the space stuff that should have been enough to hold interest.
To much drama, really. I got all sad after watching every episode, and my boyfriend was upset and bored.
It might not be the best show ever, but it was okay. It's definitely more drama than action.
I quite got the fact that the commander is missing her family. Redundancy in the scenario is quite impressive unlike the water thing.
A fully automated mission movie couldn't be more annoying.
It’s not really my preferred choice of viewing, but it’s actually ok.
Despite the Sci-fi genre, it’s really more about relationships and family and can be a bit depressing in my opinion. Some people like emotional, tear jurker films/programmes, but it’s not my thing.
However, I did enjoy it a certain amount, more the sci-fi parts.
It has some great actors and it’s well done.
Space is just an afterthought in this series. Quite honestly, they could have just removed the space element and saved some money on the budget, and that would not have hurt the storyline. Otherwise, this is a drama that explores human relationships. However, the series does not delve into all of the relationships, putting more emphasis on Emma(Hilary Swank). If you love drama, you can watch this. If you are a sci-fi aficionado like me, you can give this a pass.
I don't know what all of these bad reviews are all about. My husband and I binge watched it in 2 nights. This is a heartwarming story about love and living your dreams. Jason Katims from Friday Night Lights and Parenthood is the Producer/writer so if you liked those shows, you will love this one too. There are 2 storylines in each episode, The trip and how they cope with various ship problems as well as alternating with flash backs of each of the astronauts lives. The writing and acting are superb. Hillary Swank is fantastic as usual. We loved it.
As a sci-fi head, I'd say I was NOT prepared for the high drama - I was literally in tears every episode. Episode 3 was Emmy worthy, exploring a controversial Asian queer love relationship quite beautifully, unfolding like delicate calligraphy. But I was perplexed at some of the crew's choices, the dilemmas they found aboard their ship every episode, and the dissention amongst the international support staff and NASA on the ground. Maybe watching during our highly dramatic real-life situation wasn't the best choice.
I think the overall show message was... you betta pray?
I got so impatient when i watched this. Characters are so not attractive. lack of emotions and connections for me. not to mention the unrealistic part about being able to call earth through their cell phone.
If you've ever enjoyed the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen Spielberg, Octavia Butler, Michael Crichton or Robert Silverberg... if you like space exploration or sci-fi stories where you get to know more about the people and see them bonding, this is the mini series for you. 8/10
This show has some nice moments, however I was expecting to focus more on the actual astronauts than it did. This ended up being a story about love and missing someone so dearly, still halfway decent though.
4.5/10 - Not sure if watching it was worth it or not... I expected to watch a nice (Sci-Fi) space show but there where fewer space scenes than I was hoping for and this show generates a lot of artificial drama by disregarding both physics and human spaceflight guidelines/rules (which drove me nuts). It's basically a drama with fake astronauts that happens to play ~50% in space so if one doesn't care about realism and enjoys drama this might be a good show. For those interested in a much more realistic approach I can recommend the TV show "Mars" (at least if one doesn't mind that approx. half of it is a SpaceX documentary).
Very slow start and it just keeps getting slower.
A Netflix level soap opera. Writers today have no new ideas, only remakes and pieces of shit like this one. I’m done with Netflix.
The first thing that comes to mind regarding this show is that the zero-g was really well done and that the visuals were great, I'd say pretty realistic and not over-the-top.
I enjoyed the characters, even though the astronauts' behaviour and responses to problems were quite a few times plot-driven and unrealistic. I have seen worst in other shows however, and at least it didn't make me roll my eyes 25 times per episodes.
The families on Earth are interesting enough, and I enjoyed Talitha Bateman (Alexis) 's acting. Good teen actors are not a myth.
I look forward to a second season.
SPOILER
The ending really gave me PlanetBase vibes.
You had me at Swank.
Shout by CarloBlockedParent2020-09-07T15:06:04Z
This time the people working for NASA and the crew, unlike most of sci-fi out there, are almost competent people, unlucky for the sake of the drama, but not stupid on purpose.
Most of the drama on the technical side revolves around one single water recycle system that was built with an useless backup system.
I feel that they could improve on that, giving the crew more variety of problems, with more clever and creative way to resolve them.
The worst part of the story is how much those people are emotionally and psychologically unfit for a mission like that.
They are overburdened by past traumas, unresolved conflits, family problems, internal struggles and professional jealousy.
Away is a perfect example of why i love the odd-man hypotesis introduced in The Andromeda Strain so much.
If you skip trough all the unnecessary sentimental stuff is still watchable.