3 September 2009
Review of 'Defying Gravity'
Posted by Ryan Anderson
Hi folks. I’m still neck-deep in paper revisions, so if you’re looking for something to read, Joe Shoer has a good review of the new sci-fi show “Defying Gravity”. I’ve never seen it, but his review makes a good point that it’s refreshing and promising to see a popular show that is pro-space exploration.
I would recommend anyone who is interested in this concept for a show skip this and try Planetes instead. That is if you can get past it being an anime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
Go read Dwayne Day’s reviews of DG on The Space Review. I think you two are viewing different series.
By the way, I saw Moon. I don’t know how you thought it was so great scientifically when I found more flaws than I imagined.
Seriously, you really think a company cloning a lone human being hundreds of times to run an entire lunar facility by himself for three years is efficient and logical? And the same company goes out of its way to kill off the old clones?
I thought you would have caught such things.
I am afraid to go back and read what you said about the new Star Trek film now.
I should clarify that I’ve never seen Defying Gravity, I’m just linking to a friend’s review. I have heard from a lot of others that DG is pretty terrible.
As for ‘Moon’, yes of course the cloning raises more than a few red flags, but in sci-fi there is always going to be some suspension of disbelief. In this case, the whole story hinges upon the premise that two clones meet each other. Without that, there would be no story. Or at least, it would be a completely different story.
As I mentioned in my review of ‘Moon’, the science behind the cloning is not that bad, as far as my limited knowledge of biology goes. And really, it sounds like what you are complaining about is the logistics, not the science. In my opinion, the logic behind the cloning worked pretty well for the movie. That’s not saying that I think it would work in real life! But given the future portrayed in the movie, it makes as much or more sense to me to have pre-programmed clones as it does to continually spend resources recruiting, training, launching and retrieving numerous human astronauts.
Overall, I think “Moon” is significantly better in terms of science than most sci-fi.
My review of the new Star Trek can be summarized as: Wow, a Star Trek that is fun! It reminds me a lot of Star Wars. The science was absolutely horrible. “Red Matter”? WTF? Bad science is nothing new for Star Trek, but the movie was enjoyable.
It was more than bad science in the new Star Trek film that was objectionable – it is the way they took both the characters and the ideals of what Star Trek was all about and threw them in the dumpster.
I don’t know if you ever saw the original series. I know for certain you did not grow up with it or expereince the world before Star Wars came along and derailed science fiction with all the promise it held in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
I am not trying to blame you for your late birth, I am just pointing out that Abrams and his gang of Hollywood thugs took a wonderful series that had real influence on our world and made it into a piece of cinematic trash.
Star Trek was entertainment, of course, but it was always about something more. But what I see now is dreck that I cannot tell apart from all the other dreck that passes for entertainment these days. This past summer was particularly dreadful for bad films.
I am sure I will here arguments from the pipsqueaks who read this that This Ain’t Your Father’s Star Trek Any More, Old Man! to which I will say You Got That Right, Sonny.
Is that the demise of Western Civilization I see looming on the horizon, with a starship with two warp nacelles leading the way?