2042. Suivant les ordres de ses supérieurs contre son gré et sa conscience, lastronaute et pilote Maddux Donner (Ron Livingston, Frères dArmes, Standoff) et Ted Shaw abandonnent deux de ses collègues sur Mars suite à des conditions météorologiques dangereuses qui mettent en danger la survie de l'équipage. Dix ans plus tard, et trainant toujours une mauvaise réputation, il est chargé de sélectionner 8 astronautes destinés à participer à une mission de six ans autour du système solaire. La NASA a pour mission d'envoyer ces astronautes faire le tour des 7 planètes du système solaire en commençant par Vénus. Au moment du grand départ, deux d'entre eux présentent dun coup des anomalies cardiovasculaire et au pied levé, Maddux vont alors rejoindre cet équipage
Évidemment, leur mission nest pas aussi simple quils le pensent et lhistoire de cette série est construite sur une série de rebondissements au fil des épisodes afin quon découvre le terrible secret qui a motivé cette étonnante expédition mais pas totalement puisqualors que la série prenait son envol cosmique, elle fut annuler (frustrant hein ??!??)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/09_september/29/gravity.shtml
Bien heureusement, sur internet, jai trouvé une interview de James Parriott qui nous donne quelques éléments sur la suite quil y aurait pu se passer :
- Nadia : Ces hallucinations lui montraient un homme lui ressemblant beaucoup. En fait Nadia est née hermaphrodite et ces parents ont choisis pour elle le sexe féminin lorsquelle avait 11 ans. Son hallucination lui montre ainsi lhomme quelle aurait pu être. Mais il faut se rappeler Beta et les autres objets semblent modifier lA.D.N. de léquipage ce qui aurait pu conduire à une réelle transformation physique en homme, dautant plus que sa présence devait prendre de limportance au cours de la saison 2. James Parriott a dailleurs révélé que le rôle avait été écrit avec lidée dun homme dans un corps de femme.
- Donner & Zoe : Comme le laisser deviner les épisodes, lannulation de la vasectomie de est du aux changements dADN. Pourquoi? Eh bien la vraie raison serait sans doute apparue vers la fin de la série avec une nouvelle grossesse de Zoe malgré son hystérectomie grâce à ses mêmes changements physiologiques.
Il allait tous être testes. Lidée était que dans leur vie il y a des moments ou sils les revivaient tous, ils choisiraient une autre voix. Les objets devaient ainsi les confronter à nouveau à ses situations et de leur donner une chance de prendre des décisions différentes.
- Arnel Poe : Comme on peut le deviner, cest un accident durant un entrainement de survie qui couta une jambe à Arnel qui a également ramené Zoe dans le programme. Au début de la seconde saison, il était prévu de retrouver Zoe chez elle enseignant dans un lycée qui avait tourné la page et peut être même commencé une nouvelle relation. Tandis que de son coté, Donner aurait commencé à perdre la tête.
- Wass : Son rôle semble en grande partie dapporter un aspect comique et détendu dans léquipe mais pas seulement. Il ya une alchimie avec Paula dès le début et même si ce nétait pas prévu, elle ne pouvait que se développer. On allait ainsi apprendre que Wass a des Troubles Envahissants du Développent (une forme éloigner de lautisme et quil a peur du contact avec les autres.
- Jen : Pourquoi Jen ne peut-elle pas voir beta et les autres? A-t-elle été mise sur la mission par erreur ? Non, en fait si elle ne peut les voir cest parque comme on la entrevu lors du test disolement, elle a peur dêtre abandonnée. Jen a peur dêtre seule car elle a été abandonnée lorsquelle était enfant. Les objets vont ainsi la confronter à sa pire crainte la solitude durant la saison 2. Elle va même devoir se débarrasser de Rufus le lapin après quil est créé des problèmes dans le vaisseau.
- Eve : Dans les saison 2 et 3, Eve allait analyser sa vision de Mars ou elle entend Ted dire go, go, go pour réaliser que la casque porte linscription Antares et quelle voit donc le future et non le passé qui devait la conduire à se rendre sur Mars.
- Rollie : Rollie allait passer quelques temps en prison suite à laccident avant den sortir pour emmener Eve sur Mars à laide dun vaisseau dapprovisionnement.
- Goss : On aurait découvert que Goss nest en fait pas un mauvais bougre mais quil a été un peu dupe et quil y a quelque chose de plus grand qui se cache.
- Beta et les autres objets fractals: bien sur leur nature exacte naurait été définit puisque cest le Cur des questionnements Est-ce dieu? Y a-t-il un dieu ? Est-ce un alien? Quest ce que lunivers? Et toutes les questions philosophiques que lhomme se pose depuis toujours
Le choix de la fractal renforce cette idée, puisquil sagit de modèles mathématiques quon retrouve partout dans la nature y compris dans les marchés financiers.
- Durant le show, léquipe serait parvenu à rassembler tous les objets:
Alpha Mars
Beta Terre
Gamma Venus
Delta Mercure
Epsilon Jupiter (Europe)
Zeta Saturne (dans les anneaux)
Eta - Pluton
- Arnel, Trevor, Ajay et Claire auraient été à lorigine de la fuite sur lobjectif véritable de la mission Antares au public. Les trois membres de léquipe au sol auraient été forces de travailler avec le journaliste Trevor dans une sorte de complot après avoir découvert que tout ça cacher quelque chose dautre, que Goss ne révélé pas lensemble du plan et que ce plan était même bien plus gros que ce quen savait Goss.
- Létat de la Terre à cette époque aurait également été abordé. Il navait en effet pas pu lêtre dans la première saison car le budget a été concentré sur le vaisseau mais il était prévu une plus large perspective sur un monde qui se désagrège.
- Par ailleurs les scenarios allaient revenir sur ce qui cétait passer sur Mars. Sharon et Walker auraient ainsi survécu quelques temps dans les habitats laisser sur place voir même seraient toujours en vie. Une partie de la deuxième moitié de la saison deux auraient ainsi pu se dérouler sur Mars ou en orbite mais ce quon allait y trouver navait pas encore été défini.
Eh voila encore tout un tas de bonnes raisons pour regretter la disparition prématurée de lAntares.
http://cliqueclack.com/tv/2009/10/29/how-defying-gravity-would-have-progressed-straight-from-the-creator/ How Defying Gravity would have progressed, straight from the creator by Keith McDuffee
Defying Gravity creator James Parriott discusses how Defying Gravity would have continued on, had the show lived to see more seasons.
One of the things that kills me anytime a show I love doesnt get picked up for additional seasons or is flat-out canceled mid-season is dangling storylines. Being that Im into sci-fi shows, enduring long story arcs is pretty commonplace. So, when word came that Defying Gravity was not only not getting a second season, but it wouldnt be airing the final handful of episodes in the U.S., it was par for the course. But dammit, I wanted to know what was going to happen next!
Via powerful, mystical, magical items that I wont reveal here, for fear the secret will fall into the wrong hands, I was able to watch the final episodes of the first and only season of Defying Gravity. Iveys already written about them, the final episode having aired on Canadas CTV and SPACE channels last weekend. Unlike another sci-fi show that was cut short soon the U.S. version of Life on Mars Defying Gravity wasnt allowed to wrap up its story. In fact, even if it had the time to prepare for it, theres just no way it could wrap everything up in one season. The season only got better in the latter episodes, which makes the show being gone all the more disappointing.
Still, I had to know how the show was meant to end. If there was truly no hope that the show would get picked up somewhere else, I had to jump at a chance to find out what was going to happen next. So, I went straight to the source and contacted the shows creator, James Parriott, to get a reading from the next book from the Defying Gravity bible. And, lordy, did he read.
First of all, lets get the basics out of the way. Parriott confirmed to me that the actors have all been released and the sets have been destroyed, so the show is pretty much dead no real hope now of seeing the show get the CPR it needs to continue on into another season or a wrap-up movie.
So, why did the show not do better in the first place, if its as good as I say? As Parriott explained, the show wasnt officially picked up by ABC until a mere three weeks before the first episode aired, virtually giving them no time to market the show properly. By that time, all ad space they needed for the show to get the awareness it needed was spoken for.
Getting back to what I said about a show bible, Parriott said that in order to sell the show, he had to have the show worked out, and he does indeed have a bible for it. In fact, he has the first three years of the show all worked out, along with how it would ultimately end. Because Parriott has what he said is a tremendous respect for science fiction and its fans, he didnt want to string viewers along too long without anything significant to reveal, which is why Beta was revealed in episode nine and not somewhere in season two; he wasnt about to leave us with a big hole in the ground at the finale. Lost fans know what hes talking about.
Speaking of Lost, heres a fun bit he had to say about the show and how it relates to how he went into putting Defying Gravity together:
I love the show [Lost], and Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse]. I did a lot with Greys Anatomy during the first couple of years of Greys, and that first year of Greys was the first year of Lost, and I did a lot of dinners with ABC buyers with those two guys and Shonda Rhimes from Greys. Carlton is a really bright and funny guy, and he gets up, and the first question out of the foreign buyers mouths is wheres it going to go? Do you know where its going to go?, and he said I havent a clue. And then he sits down across from me at the dinner table, and I remember saying Damon, come on, thats bullshit, right? I mean, you know where its going to go. And he says, Jim, I havent a clue. Im four episodes out; thats all I know.
And I just thought to myself, yknow, thats really dangerous. And then when I got into doing this show, I said I dont want to do that; I dont want to be in that position. First of all, Id have ulcers if I did that, which would just be crazy, and I wouldnt be able to sleep at night. So I went in pretty much knowing where it was going to go.
Ive often said that having the Greys Anatomy tag on this show really hurt it. Sci-fi fans ran for the hills when they saw it was going to be Greys-in-space, so it never took off. So, I asked Parriott about that.
First of all, ABC literally bought the show three weeks before it aired. ABC, I think, in their own way, were trying to kill it. They had been planning to buy the show all summer long, so they had us on a hook. But they wouldnt commit, wouldnt commit, wouldnt commit. While they werent committing, they were cutting trailers and were preparing to launch, but they werent telling anybody. And then they finally committed three weeks before launch.
Essentially, the only people who saw the promos were the 1.5 million viewers through ABCs summer schedule.
[Having the Grey's Anatomy tag] probably hurt the show ultimately. But in terms of trying to sell the show, as sort of a quick pitch
for the buyers, it had to be look, its a show in space, but its not a space show. This is a space show thats going to attract women. That seemed to be the easiest thing to do. In fact, I dont think we ever really coined the phrase that its Greys in space; someone had just said that and we said OK.
So why wasnt the show pitched instead to Syfy? Couldnt the show have shined there and gotten the attention it needed and deserved? You know, it could have. But we were always trying to create a network show and not a cable show. So if you go out and just say were sci-fi, the networks sort of balk at that. They want to know its bigger and the potential audience is broader than a sci-fi audience. However, when it became clear that ABC wasnt going to give us a big summer launch and not be promoted as well as we wanted, I was encouraging the studio not to sell it and go to Syfy. And in fact they did go to them, but they did it too late and after we already aired two episodes. I said, would you guys buy this if we pulled it from ABC and give it to you for free on rerun and buy us into a second season? But then youve already aired and youre taking the wind out of Syfys sails, because they cant promote it as their show. And Mark Stern [Syfy Exec VP of Original Content] was very interested in it, but once it aired on ABC you lose your caché. And youre done. But we could have survived on Syfy and done many seasons.
If it had been an ABC developed show, believe me, we would have been promoted and been put into a better time slot.
Now, lets get into the answers to some of the unanswered questions from the show. First of all, Parriott wont yet reveal to me the ending of the show, as hes still holding onto hopes that something will come out of left field and cause it to be revived again, in one for or another. If, in six months, the show doesnt see the light of day again, then we may get our answer.
Lets go over the characters Parriott and I discussed:
Nadia She had quite the odd hallucinations, didnt she? Who was that man she kept seeing, and why did he look so much like Nadia? As Parriott revealed to me, some fans of the show got it right in their guess that she was, in fact, a hermaphrodite when she was born. The choice was made for her when she was 11, by her parents, which sex shed ultimately become. So that man were seeing is actually what Nadia would have been, had they chosen to raise her or him as a man.
Now, heres the wild kicker. All those DNA changes that are happening with the crew, caused by Beta and the other artifacts? Well, they would eventually wind up causing Nadia to gradually turn into a man.
Parrriott also said that it was planned for Nadia to really have a more significant presence in season two. If you see the way we wrote her, she sort of had that male sexuality about her, that fuck em and forget em mentality. So we wanted to write her sort of as a male character in a female body.
Donner & Zoe Probably already guessed or assumed by many, but Donners reversed vasectomy was part of the DNA change brought upon by Beta. Eventually, toward the very end of the series, the true reason for that happening would be revealed, when Zoe becomes pregnant again on the trip. So yes, even Zoes hysterectomy would be reversed in order for that to happen.
They were all going to be tested. The idea was that they all had points in their lives that, if they could do them all again, then they would have chosen a different path. Beta the fractal objects were going to put them up against those same situations and stand them up to themselves again, give them a chance to make another decision.
Wass I asked what the Wassenfelder characters significance was going to turn out to be, since, for the most part, he only seemed to serve as the comic relief for the show. Dylan [Taylor] sort of has that different gear that we had to exploit, which is sort of that funny gear. And he had a relationship with Paula Garcés the first time we put them together, and we just though that was a relationship we have to mine. That wasnt the initial plan, but Wass was going to have something like Pervasive Developmental Disorder [similar to Autism] and have a great fear of people touching him and having contact with other people. He was going to become a weirder guy. One reason I didnt have hallucinations for him was because I didnt have any for him worked out yet!
Arnel Poe Yeah, people guessed pretty early on that its Arnels leg loss that gets Zoe back into the program. At the beginning of the second season, shes going to be at home, has a job teaching college, shes going to have another romance, shes going to have washed her hands of the whole thing. Donners going to be going nuts. Theyre going to be doing the survival training for the mission and Arnel was going to lose a leg, and Zoe would be called back.
Jen Was she mistakenly put on the mission? Why cant she see the fractal objects? No, she was correctly put on the mission. And she cant see [the objects] because, if you look back at when she was in the isolation tanks, she has a fear of abandonment. Jen seems to always need a man, and shes very needy that way because she was abandoned as a child. And what the fractal objects were doing was she was going to become extraordinarily lonely in season two, and the bunny was going to fuck up the ship and she was going to have to kill that bunny. Thats her thing she was going to have to overcome, that incredible loneliness.
Eve In season two and season three, and leading into Mars, Eve was going to discover that the flashback she has of Mars, where Ted is yelling go go go, shes going to realize that on top of his helmet there it says Antares so she was actually seeing the future. And shes going to realize she has to go to Mars.
Rollie Rollie was going to be in jail for his [driving incident] and have to be pulled out and take Eve [to Mars]. And they were going to go up in one of the resupply vessels to Mars.
Goss Goss would not be the bad guy in the end. Goss would find out that hes been being duped a little bit, and that its bigger than all of them.
Beta and the other fractal objects I was never going to define what they were. I think thats one of the themes about the whole show, is the theology of it. Is it God? Is it not God? Is it alien? What is the Universe? I do believe in a greater being, a greater thing, and this fractal thing is really an amazing thing. I was reading in The New Yorker how stock market swings follow Pi, the fractal equation. And thats sort of a scary thing, that it just moves. You can plot the right dips and curves [of the market] that it does indeed move fractally, and that just blows me away. Theres just tons of stuff we dont know.
Other reveals:
- They would eventually get all of the fractal objects during the course of the show.
- Arnel, Trevor, Ajay and Claire would have been behind the true mission being revealed to the world, eventually. The three would be forced to work with Trevor in a sort-of underground initiative and ally with him when they see that hes right in that something larger is being hidden. We would find out that Goss is hiding a larger agenda, and then theres an even larger agenda that even Goss is unaware of.
- The state of the world the planet Earth itself would have been revealed. We didnt have the budget to do it the first season it was struggle enough just to get the ship up and running and do the shows with the quality that we had. We were going to reveal the world at large and, yknow, its kinda a fucked up place.
- On that note, I mentioned the scene where Wass says he could sleep through World War IV, and Parriott had no idea what I was talking about. He said hed been through the shows eight million times and never remembered seeing that. When I told him the episode and scene (episode 11, Wass at the isolation chambers), he said it must have been another case of Dylan Taylor ad-libbing again, and he totally missed it.
- There was horrific stuff we didnt show that happened on Mars. Sharon and Walker had actually lived a couple of weeks in the habitat on the planet. Half of season three would probably have taken place on Mars or in orbit around Mars, but we hadnt worked out fully what exactly they were going to find on Mars. But we did talk in the writers room about possibly having the two still alive when they arrived.
Well, there you have it. As for the remaining episodes not shown yet in the U.S., Parriott tells me not to expect them on network television, though you will see them appear on Hulu and/or iTunes. The full set of episodes should arrive on Blu-ray next January.
I really want to thank Mr. Parriott for taking the time to talking to me and revealing so much of what many fans were wondering about this show. If only wed get that sort of resolution with every other killed series. See me again next spring when I try to pry the show bible from Parriotts hands to find out the rest of the details yet to be revealed.