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'Away' Premiere Recap: Season 1, Episode 1 of Hilary Swank Drama

September 05, 2020 11:18·
Hilary Swank leads a mission to Mars in Netflix's 'Away'

Hilary Swank leads a mission to Mars in Netflix's 'Away'

Centered around two-time Oscar Winner Hilary Swank's mission commander, Emma Logan, her earthbound husband, Matt (Josh Charles), an ex-astronaut and NASA engineer, their teenage daughter, Alexis (Talitha Eliana Bateman), and Emma's global crew, Ram (Ray Panthaki), Emma's Indian-born second-in-command and mission co-pilot, Misha (Mark Ivanir), a Russian engineer, Kwesi (Ato Essandoh), a British botanist, first-time space traveler, and the crew's only outwardly religious member, and Lu (Vivian Wu), a stoic Chinese chemist apparently selected by worldwide agreement for the Mars version of Neil Armstrong (i.e., she'll be the first human to take a footstep on the red planet), Away opens not on Earth, but on the moon, with a space-suited Emma making final preparations for the history-setting, three-year mission to Mars and back.

Away collects the experience of five astronauts of different nationalities, although the American astronaut will be the central axis.

Why Hilary Swank for the role, was she someone you had in mind from the start? .

As if a spacewalk on a moving ship wasn't risky enough, Emma and Misha - who must stay tethered to each other to keep from floating off into space - are also at a crossroads: the latter believes the commander is unfit to lead the mission. It is in these moments that it stands out the most the production value of Away, a series with an excellent budget, which can also be seen in the great care taken in the creation of the Atlas environments and which allows us to witness a work that has no particular defects on a visual and technical level.

Matt Logan (Josh Charles) is a NASA engineer.

Misha Popov (Mark Ivanir) is a Russian cosmonaut and engineer who participates in the mission to Mars with Emma. He is a world-renowned botanist and carries with him the hope of growing life on Mars. When, during their pre-launch press conference, a reporter brings up the idea that surviving the mission is 50-50, Emma cringes but answers as honestly as she can.

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I would say off the bat there were two things that made me think, wow this is something I want to work on. She was asked Why she wanted to tackle a space drama. But, when Matt suffers a stroke, things change for Emma. When she patches in Alexis, who is at Matt's side in the ICU, Alexis cries, "I need you here". Emma, ever in control, calls a specialist from the lunar base to help Matt. She is a headstrong, empathetic, and highly intelligent leader.

For me, I don't see this as a SyFy show, I see it as like this is what could potentially happen on a mission to Mars. "That was so powerful and that's really part of why we chose to put the show in a very near future world that really felt like ours". It is a formula that aims to better adjust to the current reality of space missions, including women and men, astronauts from China, Russia, India and the UK.

With them playing astronauts, did they have to go through a physical training process? So far Swank's scenes have been more of drama than action. "So it took a lot of getting used to for all of us". The protagonists must not only deal with nostalgia for their home and the bad news that comes to them from earth (The family of Emma Green, the protagonist, also has its problems), they should also try to get along with your peers. Bateman does an admirable job as Alexis, given the fact that for most of the episode's second half she's essentially crying. Rose and Markinson's characters, though, feel like typical network drama government bureaucrats, all bluster but little substance. He was from England, and we just thought he was just sparkling. Unfortunately, Away did not manage to take off as we would have expected, thanks to a somewhat exhausted central phase andoften predictable evolution both in the characterization of the characters and in the evolution of the situations that they find themselves having to solve.

Parting Shot: As the rocket takes off from the lunar base, on its way to Mars, everything goes silent as the rocket boosters stop.

Sleeper Star: Monique Gabriela Curnen plays Melissa Ramirez, a friend and colleague of Emma's that she's chosen for "ground support", i.e.be a female role model for Alexis while she's gone. Alexis already calls her, with snarky affection, her "substitute mom", but it'll be interesting to find out more about her, as she was also on track to be on the Mars mission but chose to drop out of the program. And when you squeeze your abs, you go backwards. He's barely 12 hours past brain surgery, but somehow is able to swear with gusto.

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