This might come as a shock, but I’m a big fan of science fiction. I’m also a strong proponent of space travel. So, when a friend informed me a while back that one of the top series on Netflix was an original about a mission to Mars, obviously I had to give it a try. I don’t normally do “reviews” like this, despite having read that it’s a great way to increase readership. But this series moved me to say a few things. And most likely this will not be the last such review I’ll be writing.

More than anything, I want to focus on the science behind science fiction, and why it matters so much in the sci-fi of today.

It’s appropriate to start with the basics in reviews like this, but in this case the basics are almost trite. Over the past thirty years, we’ve seen mountains of entertainment devoted to Mars, from stories about inhabiting Mars (Total Recall, The Expanse) to exploratory missions to Mars (Red Planet, Mission to Mars), and of course all the things that could go terribly wrong on such a mission (The Martian). So it’s safe to say we’ve seen a lot about missions to Mars. One almost worries an eventual actual mission to the red planet will seem anticlimactic. This proliferation makes it increasingly difficult to create a well-received work of fiction about a Mars mission. And the success of works like The Martian and the Nat Geo series Mars raises the bar further.

Enter Away: an Netflix original starring Hilary Swank. While most movies or series about missions to Mars are action-packed, heavily focused on the perils of an inhospitable planet, Away is a uniquely human story. It focuses not on the exploration of Mars, or even the journey there, so much as the human toll future space missions will exact. Away follows two groups of characters roughly equally: the crew of the Atlas I mission, led by astronaut Emma Green (Swank), and Green’s husband and teenage daughter on Earth. This format alone is innovative, as it showcases one of the major hurdles we face as we expand our reach into the cosmos.

It’s easy, looking at diagrams and classroom models, to forget just how vast our solar system truly is. Our sun, for instance, lies roughly 93 million miles away, a distance we regard as one Astronomical Unit. In the opposite direction, the innermost gas giant, Jupiter, orbits more than four and a half times that far from us. The upshot of this is that, as we progress in our exploration of space, missions will get longer. Missions to Mars, even if we utilize the best existing propulsion tech we have, will still be measured in months. Missions to Jupiter and the outer solar system will be measured in years. This raises an important question: when we finally replace unmanned probes with manned spacecraft, what effect will that have? Not only on the astronauts on such a mission, but on those they leave behind on Earth?

Much to its credit, Away is, to my knowledge, the first notable work of science fiction on film to deal with this very important issue. In Away, the Atlas I mission is slated to span three years, including sixteen months of travel time. The Atlas crew has been called upon to sacrifice three years of their lives, and their families’ lives, in pursuit of space exploration. Much of the show’s tension and drama arises from the struggles of Emma’s family back on Earth, notably her husband’s battle with CCM (cerebral cavernous malformation) and her daughter’s coming-of-age crises, playing out without the support of her mother.

But while Away gets top marks for that basic premise, unfortunately it faces one major stumbling block above all: science.

Away is not a particularly bad show, especially if one ignores the science aspect of it. It reminded me a lot of the previous heyday of sci-fi television, in the mid-1990s. At the time, Star Trek: The Next Generation was in its prime, and other series including Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 led to a flurry of sci-fi series looking to capitalize on these successes. Most of those series were short lived. But despite various problems leading to creative breakdowns, studio schisms, and truly incredible shark-jumping, a few of them really stuck with me. The 1990s produced such short-lived sci-fi luminaries as SeaQuest DSV, Earth 2, Space Rangers, and Space: Above and Beyond.

One of the hallmarks of those brief ’90s sci-fi series was the lip service paid to accepted science, especially with regard to details. Few, if any, depicted the realities of space accurately. Nearly all featured some form of artificial gravity. On the few occasions the characters were seen floating in microgravity, nothing else seemed to be doing so; necklaces hung from chains, cups sat firmly on tables, hair never moved. Most of these series also featured fanciful sci-fi tech, paying little mind to such considerations as power, propulsion, life support, etc. But this was all par for the course, and to be forgiven. CGI was in its infancy (Babylon 5 was an early pioneer). Flying harnesses were (and are) expensive and difficult to use.

But budgetary constraints aren’t as big an issue these days. Modern sci-fi series follow a different set of rules, with series like Star Trek: Discovery, The Expanse, and Netflix’s own reboot of Lost in Space channeling feature film-sized budgets into stunning design and effects. And this general improvement in sci-fi television has produced a more discerning sci-fi viewer. Fans today tend to be more educated, more savvy, and more demanding in terms of realism. It’s fair to suggest that your average, low-budget sci-fi TV series simply doesn’t exist today. Nothing with minimal attention to detail, lack of science consulting, and unconvincing effects can really hack it in an increasingly cutthroat sector of the entertainment market. And with further Star Wars series coming to Disney Plus, Strange New Worlds headlining a raft of new Star Trek series on CBS All Access, the juggernaut that is The Expanse rolling on with Amazon Prime and an ambitious TV adaptation of The Foundation planned for Apple TV, it’s only going to get harder to compete. To be successful, a new sci-fi series has to bring something new to the table, while also appeasing viewers’ sensibilities.

And it’s that second part where Away doesn’t cut it.

One of the first thoughts I had while watching Away was that it was a strangely nostalgic experience. It really felt like a ’90s sci-fi series. From the awkward aesthetic of the Atlas spacecraft to the chintzy props, bland costume design, near-total lack of realistic portrayal of space, and haphazard approach to the realities of such a deep-space mission, it was easy to believe I’d stepped back in time. Cups remain firmly on tables, necklaces hang properly in supposed microgravity. Even while in microgravity areas of their spacecraft, the characters are clearly walking with feet firmly on the ground, often moving with that exaggerated slowness kids use when pretending to be in space. And it’s not just the lack of realism: for the most part, the show was the kind of heartstring-pulling, wholesome family programming that hasn’t been popular since the late ’90s, from the happy family dynamic of the Greene family to the show’s noteworthy dearth of steamy romance, often demurring when one would expect modern sci-fi to delve briefly into R-rated territory.

And really, had they stuck with that, it would’ve worked. That nostalgia aspect would have remained intact; as someone who grew up with the sci-fi series of the ’90s, I would have enjoyed the show despite it being far from my usual fare (I’m a shameless Trekkie and Screaming Firehawk). The problem wasn’t that Away tried to be a series from a bygone era. The problem was that it kept trying not to be. The very ’90s feel of the series, even down to home décor and bland fashion, made certain modern elements anachronistic, even jarring. Now and then, characters will make off-color remarks, or drop an F-bomb. Side stories often take modern turns: a Russian cosmonaut who’s an estranged father, a Chinese astronaut who’s a closeted lesbian in a loveless marriage to a man, Emma’s daughter dating a Latino Texan whose father (a combat medic) was killed in action. But even then, these stories tend to be blunted; they reveal these shocking elements, as well as such romantic subplots as Emma’s close friend having feelings for her husband, and then go nowhere with them. The show keeps pulling its punches. It’s as though Away really can’t decide what it wants to be.

I will say this: had Away premiered say, on NBC in 1997, it would surely have been well-received. It would have been regarded as groundbreaking, even visionary. A few bleeps from the censors, and it would have been exactly the kind of space adventure-cum-drama sci-fi viewers like my twelve-year-old self would have eaten up. But it’s not 1997. Netflix isn’t network television. And given how much material is already out there, the series’ lazy approach to designing a mission to Mars just doesn’t work with modern sci-fi viewers. In its attempt to be so many things at once, and fear of actually being any of them, Away succeeds only in being a partially-anachronistic curiosity. Its modest value may lie solely in its appeal to the niche and shrinking market of drama viewers who are not habitual sci-fi fans but will still watch a sci-fi series randomly and know little about space travel.

For my part, given the way the first season ended and how neatly things were tied up, I doubt I would watch any second season, assuming one occurs. – MK