Away Season 1 Review

Away (2020-)
Season 1 - 10 episodes (2020 September 4)

Watch Away on Netflix
Created by: Andrew Hinderaker
Starring: Hilary Swank, Vivian Wu, Ato Essandoh, Ray Panthaki, Josh Charles, Mark Ivanir
Rated: TV-14
Watch the trailer

Plot
An American astronaut struggles with leaving her husband and daughter behind to embark on the first international space mission to Mars.

Verdict
This is a space mission where everything goes wrong, often unbelievably so. There's drama on the ship and back on planet Earth. I wish the show would stay on ship more. While I appreciate the international crew, the show would be served better if each of the crew got equal time. While we see background on all of the characters and the ensemble cast is well developed, this is a space drama more than a space mission. The ship lacks character. Unfortunately many plot points are telegraphed well in advance.
It depends.

Review
This starts with the how we got here trope which causes me to instantly dislike the series. The first episode teases a story rather than actually telling it with flashbacks a few frames long. There's a Rashoman type story used to develop the captain, Emma (Hilary Swank), before we finally hear her side of what happened.

Hilary Swank plays Captain Emma Green.

Everything that can, goes wrong. Small events are overly complicated. The ship seems like it was made to generate problems. I wish episodes would look at the psychological toll or how crew members entertain themselves on a mission like this. A bottle episode could be a lot of fun. This crew trained together for two years, and they seem like strangers. Each episode is driven by something going wrong on the ship. Was there no quality control during assembly?

If the drama on the ship isn't enough, Emma has a lot of family drama at home that creates additional drama on the ship as her crew isn't sure she is fit to be captain. I'd prefer the show kept most of the scenes in space.

The crew played by Vivian Wu, Mark Ivanir, Hilary Swank, Ray Panthaki, Ato Essandoh.

The drama is forced and the plot lines are easy to guess. As smart as this crew should be, they shouldn't miss plot point clues. There's a lot done to make things play on screen.

I like the characters and each of the crew gets a nice amount of development. They just don't seem like a well trained crew that's been working together. The first season's mission is getting to Mars. The series has potential for future seasons to explore setting up a base on Mars and expanding. There's a lot of potential there. So much of this season feels like character set up for an eventual plot.