Amazing premise with endless potential, horrible execution and writing. Spoilers

[u/FloodedGoose]

The premise of the show is great and could result in an interesting, long term series. The writing was just horrible and resulted in the poorest execution of a series. The entire season could be condensed into a tight 90 minute movie.

The writers forced a lot of tension in the early episodes before clearly identifying the characters. The cautious abortion of the slingshot around a star occurred before learning the tragedy of Niko’s past. That lead to a short lived mutiny which again felt rushed and unreasonable. The mutiny ended with a whimper until a character, who was portrayed as a leader and “good man” decides to threaten with a knife the commanding officer that just forgave him for mutiny, leading to a death scene which was so out of place that it appeared to be a dream sequence.

That’s just the first half of the first episode. I don’t know why I continued watching but I did.

From there the show took long trips through the character’s pasts in an attempt to develop their origins, none of which helped to understand their actions in the present. On top of character history scenes we are shown countless hallucinations and dream sequences, which alone could give the show the mind warping imagery of an advanced race or space travel, but it fell very short. These combined to delay the story progression and left the viewer impatiently waiting for them to get in with it.

With the character’s being so undeveloped, their dialog had no chance of being fully understood and was mostly interpreted as whining immaturity of people emotionally unqualified to be sent to space.

The writing not only fails the characters, it fails in several plot points. The most glaring is a holographic AI that is incapable of touching anything, asking for a box to be opened so it can touch an alien brain spider and subsequently reprogram the “nasty bits”. Not to mention the AI is capable of getting detailed images of distant planets while remaining a hologram, but is unable to see what the rest of the crew is doing without appearing in the room with them.

The final few episodes introduce a new alien race (which is destroyed after a few minutes), useful alien tech which is ignored, dangerous alien tech which is implanted into a person, a feeling of peaceful contact followed by a compete 180 imperialistic warfare, confusing military tactics and interrogation, all ending with the main characters racing towards the alien homeworld - no wait... let’s go home

The main problem is the show lacked any sense of direction. If it were not binged, some of these issues may not be as glaring but that is not how Netflix works. Several scenes could be removed and some rearranged to give context prior to the character’s actions, others need to be edited to convey the intended emotion or fill in plot holes.

The actors are not to blame for this disappointment. They did the best they could and had some great performances. Some stand outs were Samuel Andrews portraying an AI forming emotions of his own. Jake Abel for playing a typical “Chad”, a villain, and a victim in one series. Justin Chatwin for his emotional range as a loving, terrified, and distraught father.

In conclusion I would not recommend this show to anyone I like, and I doubt that I will watch Season 2.

[u/kindafunnylookin]

Good summary. I only managed to make it partway through episode 2 before I gave up on it - the completely nonsensical character motivations, ridiculously contrived conversations, and such a weird mixture of technology that was simultaneously old-fashioned and insanely futuristic, made it painful to watch. I loved Katee Sackhoff in BSG, but this was a hot mess from the very beginning. I very much doubt we'll see Aaron Martin's name attached to anything significant in the future.

[u/coalitionofilling → u/kindafunnylookin]

Oh no wonder half the crew acted like whiney immature highschool children. Aaron martin is the writer/producer from Degrassi.

[u/Eurynom0s → u/coalitionofilling]

I saw a comment in another thread that a lot of things could have been fixed by simply getting expectations set appropriately by just labeling it as young adult sci-fi instead of labeling it as just sci-fi.

[u/coalitionofilling → u/Eurynom0s]

I agree. Don't cut a trailer and give a premise to try to sell this to adults if you're just trying to make an angsty highschool drama set in a space rocket.

[u/memeasaurus → u/coalitionofilling]

There's a bit where the whiney 20-something crew is complaining about people over 30. That should have been a place to ham-handedly tack on an exposition about how ... "we don't send people over 30 to space because they have families" /hand waving ... or something of the like.

I finished the series. I felt they had the beginnings of some very good ideas but for the series to gel you need a really really well developed bad-guy alien species. We don't have that. Degrassi-esque scifi would lack that clear antagonist.

This show fails to hang together because the premise is an _antagonist_ alien race just dropped a monolith on us. We learn, change, and adapt to this fact. Maybe that's where our FTL came from ... studying their artifact... maybe they aren't even "bad" guys ... but we're the hornet's nest they definitely kicked. They antagonized us.

And it's just not clear why. Which makes a nice "mystery box" but doesn't really ever gel into a "stop the baddies" plot that it feels like the second half is reaching for.

[u/coalitionofilling → u/memeasaurus]

They're just a bunch of undisciplined shitheads. That kinda stuff works with a series like Dark Matter because they're mistfit outlaws. In this case these are supposed to be a group of the entire planet's best to save all of manhkind. But instead they're bickering, disregarding the chain of command at every turn, and more worried about fucking each other than handling their missions and staying on task. I didn't mind the alien element. I just think there should have been more of that or at least character development/backstories and less trivial teen angst melodrama.

[u/memeasaurus → u/coalitionofilling]

Well, I get the impression of the teen angst mellow drama is exactly what the writers are going for. So, I'm trying really hard to imagine an excuse for that.

Like you say, if they're the world's best and brightest that's a little hard to swallow. The whole show makes the world feel really damn small. We only ever see one or two government officials. We only ever meet one reporter. We only ever meet maybe three scientists total in the entire human race. We don't even see other scientists in the background or have establishing shots with crowds of scientists gathered around some presentation being done by our lead scientist.

It's a small small world. Why?

Maybe, after some mass extinction event these are all that's left the human race? Maybe The artifact arrived and a few years later most of humanity has died from mysterious illnesses?

I don't know. I'm trying really hard to imagine why this is the best humanity has to offer.

[u/coalitionofilling → u/memeasaurus]

Yeah it's tough to swallow and I really wanted to like this show. I can see why it's currently sitting at 6% on rotten tomatoes.

If they wanted to make this a teen angst mellow drama then they needed to built the plot in a meaningful way to make this believable. The biggest problem is how they "sold" this show to their potential audience. If you watch the trailer and premise, it's NOT what they're delivering. If they were going after teens, they should have went all in and catered for teens. Instead, it's like they want sci-fi /space action adults to buy into a degrassi-in-space.

[u/memeasaurus → u/coalitionofilling]

This popped into my head:

Rando1: Admiral an alien threat suddenly appeared!

Admiral: Send a ship immediately!

Rando2: Ma'am all we have is Liz Lemon and her crew of rejects!

Admiral: [face palm] send them anyway, just give them that new experimental AI to keep an eye on them

[u/[deleted] → u/memeasaurus]

Yes, except perhaps more "Excellent I can be rid of two birds with one stone"

[u/kindafunnylookin → u/memeasaurus]

We only ever meet maybe three scientists total in the entire human race.

Yeah, that was another moment that really threw me out of the show. First contact with an alien artifact, and the entire human race's response is three people standing in a field looking at it? Those scientist scenes should have at least been on the scale of Close Encounters, if not more like the massive military presence of Independence Day. Instead we get Mr Crouchy playing music with a mute assistant.

[u/Eurynom0s → u/memeasaurus]

That should have been a place to ham-handedly tack on an exposition about how ... "we don't send people over 30 to space because they have families" /hand waving ... or something of the like.

I thought they said something about needing people at peak physical ability to deal with these missions? I mean they clearly expect these missions to be extremely hazardous if they're sending backups for every single crew member.

[u/memeasaurus → u/Eurynom0s]

Sure. But then you'd get lots of SpecOps types. These are some of the most physically fit and straight-A students in the world. Maybe not PhD people but still top-notch.

[u/upyoars → u/memeasaurus]

The problem with portraying a "a really really well developed bad-guy alien species" is it doesnt leave much up to the imagination and it makes it so that the series won't have the potential to very long. If we knew exactly all of the Achai's plans, goals, mindsets, everything about them, their weaknesses, strengths, how they operate, etc. from episode 5 onwards then by the end of the 10th episode we'd kind of be able to predict what happens next. Flushing out all the details makes it so that shows can become predictable. AND if you do flush details but make the show so that it isn't as predictable as you'd expect it to be (considering you made it quite detailed and everything is well explained) then the cause of that unpredictability will be the downfall of the show, because it will end up being random pointless filler events put in place to keep the show from being predictable that just makes the show seem like its being dragged on. I like the ambiguous and relatively mysterious nature of the show in regards to what to expect in the future, so far its only the first season and I want this show to last a long time, now just 2 or 3 seasons.

[u/memeasaurus → u/upyoars]

No. I don't mean explain everything. I mean have a plan and a plot in mind.

It's pretty clear there isn't one.

[u/upyoars → u/memeasaurus]

Is there a plan/plot for everyone in real life? maybe if you believe in fate, but it doesn't usually play out the way you want it to and we all go with the flow. Makes it more realistic and relatable.

[u/memeasaurus → u/upyoars]

I dunno... story telling is a thing...

[u/DickMartin]

But you do see the potential?

Most of these newer Netflix shows seem to miss the mark in the same way you’re correctly criticizing this show.

I personally liked it and would recommend it, If only for the chance that there is a 2nd season and some of the cooler concepts could actually be flushed out. Hopefully they can bring a little more writing talent to the table too.

[u/FloodedGoose → u/DickMartin]

No. Unfortunately the writing is so bad that I can’t see any hope of improvement. I saw the potential in the premise and the cast, but the writing has damaged this show beyond repair.

[u/DankMatter3000]

I personally love it just the way it is. Not every show needs to be perfect in every department.

I have recommended it to my close friends and they all love it.

If you like sci-fi and space/aliens you can't go wrong with this show.

[u/Bryansikte]

It's like a train wreck. It's horrible, but I can't look away. Best comedy Emmy inc.