DEFYING GRAVITY 1.9 - "Eve Ate The Apple"

[SPOILERS] Defying Gravity has been sucked into a scheduling black hole here in the UK, and I'm probably going to lose track of the show now it's Christmas season. So, purely in the interest of completism, I'll be making an effort to watch the remaining handful of episodes at my own pace (thanks to the internet), but don't expect more reviews until New Year...

I was ready to enjoy "Eve Ate The Apple", after last week's upswing in quality, but it felt hackneyed and corny to me. Everything took a backseat for an episode mainly comprised of flashbacks helping explain what the mystifying "Beta" really is. And it's pretty much what I theorized from the start: a form of alien intelligence. Maybe it's a piece of technology, or maybe it really is a living entity, but it's definitely not man-made and has been responsible for the crew's hallucinations. A few unexpected flourishes are woven into its back-story, though -- like the fact there are apparently more of these artifacts on various planets and moons, which means the Antares mission is effectively one big Easter Egg hunt. At the tax-payer's expense, because the authorities are scared there would be mass panic if people knew aliens existed. Really? By 2052, when we have a fruitful and exciting space program that can send manned trips to other planets, the public still won't embrace the discovery of aliens?

I assume the writers thought putting more alien artifacts on other planets would give them a solid reason for Defying Gravity to continue past one season, but it doesn't feels like a compelling way to extend things, to me. How many pre-training flashbacks were they expecting us to deal with, exactly? Defying Gravity has already taken a painstaking eight episodes just to address the one interesting aspect of the show, so I doubt it would stand any chance of holding audience interest by travelling to different parts of the solar system collecting glowing fractal eggs. Anyway, Defying Gravity was such a bomb in the States that it was pulled by ABC, and even the BBC have quietly moved it to a graveyard slot now, so there's no chance of more episodes beyond this year. It would have been a terrible idea, let's be honest.

For me, there just wasn't anything about "Eve Ate The Apple" that was original or fascinating, unless you've never encountered science fiction in your life -- particularly 2001: A Space Odyssey. So yes, "Beta" is some kind of Monolith-like beacon that exudes "whale song", discovered thirteen years ago by Eve (Karen LeBlanc) in Nazca, Peru, when she was part of the American Crisis Corp. A nearby private army of the mysterious Bertram Corporation were having difficulty locating "Beta" (so-called because it was the earthbound "beta" signal detected by their observatory techies, who also picked up an "alpha" signal transmitting from Mars), so Eve proved invaluable because she has a kind of psychic connection with the entity. A bond shared by the crew of Antares, who have seemingly been chosen by "Beta" itself to go on this multi-billion dollar mission -- explaining why certain astronauts suffered problems that resulted in them being sent back home in the earlier episodes.

I suppose there are a few interesting avenues to possibly explore hereon in, but I'm not sure if this is just me overanalyzing things in desperation to find an entertaining angle. The Biblical title could be a clue; "Beta" communicates through visions of the crew's most shameful or guilty experiences, and it was only after Eve ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge that her and Adam came to understand shame through her sin. Eve Weller-Shaw is assumedly our modern-day Eve, and it seems Paula (Paula Garcés) has turned to religion to explain "Beta" as a sign of The Rapture, so does "Paula" equate to "Paul" -- Jesus Christ's disciple who originally spread Christianity to the world? The fractal tomato plant that "Beta" made grow was possibly some symbol of the Garden Of Eden, too? Oh, and Maddux Donner = Madonna?

Over thinking, right?


12 December 2009
BBC2/BBC HD, 11.40pm

written by: Blythe Robe directed by: Peter Howitt starring: Ron Livingston (Maddux Donner), Malik Yoba (Ted Shaw), Andrew Airlie (Mike Goss), Paula Garcés (Paula Morales), Florentine Lahme (Nadia Schilling), Karen LeBlanc (Eve Weller-Shaw), Ty Olsson (Rollie Crane), Eyal Podell (Dr. Evram Mintz), Maxim Roy (Claire Dereux), Dylan Taylor (Steve Wassenfelder), Christina Cox (Jen Crane) & Laura Harris (Zoe Barnes)