'Away' Review: This journey to Mars starts strong but cliches make the Netflix space drama excruciatingly long
Spoilers for 'Away'
The first mission to Mars is not a smooth ride.
In 'Away', the world is coming together to send man on Mars for the next step essential for human survival. Emma Green (Hilary Swank) is joined on the mission by Ram Arya (Ray Panthaki) from India, Dr Kwesi Weisberg-Abban (Ato Essandoh) from Britain, Misha Popov (Mark Ivanir) from Russia, and Lu Wang (Vivian Wu) from China to build the first base on Mars. It is a three-year-long mission, which means the crew leaves behind their families and loved ones back on Earth, dwindling on the possibility of no return.
As their journey into space begins, and they get farther away from Earth, closer to Mars, their lives begin to take a new shape. They must learn to adapt to the changes — just as man's survival instinct is prone to do.
Back on Earth, the families that the crew aboard the Atlas left behind must also adapt to these changes. The story of 'Away', however, focuses on Swank's character while offering glimpses into the rest of the crew. Emma's daughter Alexis (Talitha Bateman), a 15-year-old, begins to find it incredibly difficult to adapt to life without her mother. The teenager cannot understand why her mother decided to go on the mission especially with what the family is going through. Emma's husband Matt Logan (Josh Charles) is also an astronaut who trained to go to Mars, but couldn't because of his genetic condition CCM.
How the family overcomes this with each episode is basically the premise of the show. With each episode, the lives of those on board Atlas are put in jeopardy, not only by the obstacles of the big black unknown but also by the increasing distance. Despite fear and anxiety, they must overcome all odds to make it to Mars. By the end of it, when given the choice between life and death (being a martyr, in the case of some), they make their decision without any second thoughts.
'Away' is touted to be a sci-fi drama but it is essentially a workplace drama set in space. The first episode itself explores some friction between the members of Emma's crew when it comes to her captainship. Emma works toward regaining the trust of her peers and to even diffuse certain situations. Back home, however, she cannot seem to do so. Her daughter Lex, following the departure of her mother in space and her father's condition, suddenly finds herself shouldering a lot of (assumed) responsibility. She also finds it difficult to open up to her father about her life. Her relationship with Melissa Ramirez (Monique Curnen), who is Emma's liaison to Earth, and takes care of Lex in Matt and Emma's absence, also grows over the course of the ten episodes. And what follows is Matt's inability to understand his daughter and her even lashing out on occasion.
The Netflix series is high on drama and plays out at an excruciatingly slow pace, but time passes differently in space, so perhaps that was the idea behind it. But ten episodes dive deeper into those on Emma's crew and the relationship each form with the other. Directed by a long list of auteurs including Ed Zwick, Jeffrey Reiner, Bronwen Hughes, David Boyd, Charlotte Brandstrom and Jet Wilkinson, 'Away' oftentimes feels like a drag. We are pretty much following the crew try and save themselves from a new hurdle every episode. Tensions begin to run high just ahead of the finale as the possibility of the sorely long series ending on a cliffhanger seems more and more plausible.
Written by Andrew Hinderaker, Jessica Goldberg, Ellen Fairey, Jason Katims, Janine Nabers, Aditi Kapil and Chris Jones, the series begins strong but is also likely to lose audience over the long run as it falls prey to cliches too. 'Away' relies a lot on its characters and the presumption that the audience is willing to invest the amount of time makers take to unravel them.
All episodes of 'Away' are currently streaming on Netflix.