Kristen Muir

A few episodes in and I feel my brain starting to rot. This is a story about a bunch of highly intelligent people making incredibly stupid decisions. (One vehicle contains rope and hooks, helium, and a giant tunnel, but another doesn't contain a single thing that could patch a hole? Or a bunch of very smart people couldn't consider that a hole could be patched? C'mon show writers.) Apparently, these people's training did not include emotional or psychological training, and no one's personality is taken into account when they go through rigorous training to join this trip to Alpha Centauri. If you like interpersonal drama, you have it here in spades. If you enjoy sci-fi shows in which professionals act cool and calm and use brilliant science to solve their problems, skip this. This isn't sci fi -- it's Lost on another planet, minus the mystery. If you watched Lost and you couldn't get enough of people arguing with and berating each other, this show might be for you. If you enjoy shallow characters and uninspired camerawork and music, the sound of exasperation, plus great CGI, watch this. If you liked Interstellar, Inception, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Star Trek world, this will not please you, I think.

The show's visuals are beautiful, the music is gorgeous and essential, and the inclusion of the omniscient Whistledown elevates this show from the tirelessly trivial. But if, like me, you have no interest in romance (as a genre), there is no reason to watch this show. A whole bottle of red will not let you forget that love conquers all and that, therefore, there is no point whatsoever to the main conflicts. But if you want to waste eight hours marveling at the elevation of first world problems into a whalebone corset or straightjacket for the aristocracy, this show is for you. And about the diverse casting: it is jarring to watch this while IRL I'm teaching people about African slavery in English colonies happening at this exact same time, but this show would be dead in the water with an all-white cast. Don't worry: by episode 3 you'll probably be able to tell all those white people apart.