Season 1 - 13 episodes
Buy Defying Gravity on Amazon Video (paid link)
Created by: James D. Parriott
Starring: Ron Livingston, Malik Yoba, Paula Garcés, Florentine Lahme, Karen LeBlanc, Eyal Podell, Dylan Taylor, Christine PCox, Laura Harris
Rated: TV-14
Watch the trailer
Plot
Eight astronauts living aboard an international spacecraft undertake a mission through the solar system as the world watches from billions of kilometers away. Their mission isn't what it seems.
Verdict
This is one of those really good shows that was unduly canceled. This balances a mission in space with turmoil between the crew and mission control. The problems the crew face feel like more than just plot contrivances seen in some sci-fi shows. The mystery at the core of this mission is intriguing and the first season gives us a glimpse of what that is and what was to come. This uses flashbacks to build engaging characters and callbacks between past and present. There are a lot to these characters and even in the first season this builds a lot of backstory for them.
Watch It.
Review
This was planned for five seasons. Creator Parriott had outlined up to season three before this was canceled mid-season. ABC picked this up just three weeks before the first episode aired. This left very little time to advertise the series, and the network marketed this as Grey's Anatomy in space which didn't attract the sci-fi crowd. This is a show that would have flourished on a streaming service if only it had been developed a few years later. ABC canceled this after eight of thirteen episodes had aired.
I had seen a part of this on Hulu a long time ago, but never got to finish it. 
Each episode alternates between past and present as we see hopeful recruits training for a space mission and the crew of the Antares spaceship selected from those recruits embarking on a mission to Mars. Lost popularized that kind of storytelling and many shows copied that poorly. This show does a great job with the concept. It ties past and present together with plot points and concepts that link to both. A reference in the past sets up a character moment in the future. We get to see how characters have develop and change. It certainly lends to the social drama, but the payoff moments this set up are rewarding. This show is as much about character interactions as it is traveling into space.
The writing is solid. This is a series that has thought about space travel. Issues that arise feel grounded within the framework of the show. One aspect is that astronauts take pills to reduce their sex drive as they're in an enclosed space for a long time. I don't know if a mission would occur with a group of people that have so many intimate and personal relationships, but that's part of what this show is.
Maddux (Ron Livingstone) is the main character. He wasn't the first choice for this mission due to a mishap on a previous Mars mission that he and the Commander Ted (Malik Yoba) experienced. There are a lot of entanglements between the crew and mission control.
Soon after the first episode, there's an undercurrent of something malevolent about this mission. Everything on this mission seems to go wrong. Soon even the crew suspect something isn't right. They discover they were chosen for this mission, but not in the way they thought. This show does reveal what's going on instead of saving any kind of reveal for the second season. While there was certainly more story to tell, this season does end in a way that makes it feel like this was the first chapter.
It's a shame this show didn't get to reveal more of the story. This show never had a chance when renewal rests on the number of viewers and the network did very little to attract viewers. An interview with Parriott reveals what was in store for the series.
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