Netflix’s Away – A Slow burn Space Series Covering Astronauts’ Conflicts
Unlike many space series, Away isn’t the action-packed science fiction series, rather it’s a slow burn drama focusing on Astronauts’ personal conflict and struggles to cope up with first-time scenarios traveling to Mars.
The series starts with a Multinational crew led by Emma Green (Hilary Swank) on a three-year Mars mission who has been supported by her husband Matt (Josh Charles of The Good Wife) in every way from the ground. Matt was also supposed to be a part of the mission but he couldn’t make it due to a degenerative neurological condition. However, Matt being one of the great minds in NASA keeps working with mission control from a wheelchair while suffering from a neurological condition and losing his mobility in the process. Matt and Emma’s struggle to cope up with the dilemma of their profession and family issues is well evident as they control their end emotionally taking care of the mission and their teenage daughter Alexis (Talitha Eliana Bateman).
Away is a journey of crew members on board the Atlas who are fighting their own personal demons while coping up with the unseen challenges of space travel. Apart from Emma Green, the crew is made up of great minds of global regions including Ram Arya (Ray Panthaki) from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), U.K. astronaut Dr. Kwesi Weisberg-Abban (Ato Essandoh), Lu Wang (Vivian Wu) from China and Russian cosmonaut Misha Popov (Mark Ivanir).
As the crew starts their journey, they have to deal with a chemical leak causing a small fire aboard the Atlas. Although the event is quickly contained by the quick-thinking crew, the incident further causes a series of questions and concerns Commander Green’s leadership. You may get tipped off with all unsaid tension between crew members and their argument over whether Green is the best fit to lead the mission. With Misha and Lu not trusting Green, the crew goes through certain capability conflicts throughout the series. We see a lot of ups and downs in the relations of crew members as we progress through the episodes and how they end up trusting each other for their final touch down to Mars.
Noteworthy plot to mention is how the crew connects over the course while they face challenges of equipment malfunction, water shortage, lost communication, and so on and on. In the initial malfunction which leads to a water shortage, the crew has to let go of their ship’s garden which was supposed to be planted on mars to prove that life can survive on earth. As they stop serving the plants, one of the plants stays green while the rest wither away, this scenario creates interesting debate as two leading astronauts think it’s either a genuine miracle or the result of an unknown biological adaptation.
But they both end up being wrong, as they notice that their commander becomes erratic, cringy, and starts losing her mind due to dehydration post the water shortage. Turns out Emma has been catering to the plant with some of her own water ration so that she could keep it alive as a symbol of hope and further to fulfill their mission to plant life on Mars.
This scene where this is revealed to the audience is an epitome of the show and the emotional drama surrounding each crew member is what makes the series stand out from other science-fiction shows. The only drawback of the series is that it’s a sci-fi genre show hence it was supposed to be either actions or horror drama but this rather is a more emotional drama and you will surely miss the sci-fi actions expected from such a TV Series.
The show surely delivers a marvelous but soothing story about how people can make things work with their will power to achieve greatness and space is not just about fighting aliens or unknown power or destroying asteroids.