This is a very disappointing show. From the outset the premise is fantastic, a journey to Mars! Imagine the thrills and drama involved in such a story! it should be no trouble, right?

Wrong (apparently!) The characters in this production are so overburdened with dramatic personal events and so lacking in the stoic behaviour we recognise in real life astronauts that you rapidly lose interest in them as characters and then lose interest in the whole premise.

No issue is to small in this production that it cannot needlessly be blown into a full on crisis with emotionally unstable characters who couldn't be trusted to sit the right way on a toilet, let alone land on Mars.

I can only assume the reason this crew was sent 'Away' was in the reverent hope they would stay there!

SFX is good though!

Below average quality drama which just happens to be in space. I don't like this type of drama. It tries to work towards feel good moments but it feels unnatural and artificial, and I'm asuming that cycle of feel good feel bad will be repeated throughout the show. I won't know cause I'm stopping after 2 episodes. It's shallow and stupid. I feel like I wasted precious time I could have spend watching something else.
And it's not realistic at all, which I feel like it's trying to be.

[spoiler]I'm pretty sure they have procedures for everything up there and the commander won't take impulsive actions when she has an actual expert in the field right next to her. And even if she did I'm sure there will be an issue with that commander. And I'm sure the psychologist or whoever that was wouldn't encourage her by telling her she did the right thing cause she tried to save her colleagues. I mean, again, it's dumb drama.
And there's no way austronauts would even start that journey with so much hostility. It just seems impossible.
[/spoiler]

not sure how they could have made this anymore woke

This is NOT an action show as many might expect and hope for. This show is very heavy on the Drama. But that doesn't mean it is not good...it is. It is probably a slightly more realistic look at a "mission to Mars" flight and all the physical and emotional burdens and risks that come along for the ride.

Its about a dysfunctional crew you wouldn't want flying you on an airliner flight let alone picked for mankind's biggest achievement of flying to Mars, who miss their dysfunctional loved ones back home on earth who are somehow able to make mobile phone calls or facetime between them 17million plus miles away (as at episode 4) when I can't even get a signal in the countryside.
There is nothing plausible or credible in this series to make any of it believable.
Utter crap. Don't waste your time.

Watching the 5th episode, until now more a soap opera then anything else. Very predictable, SFX good, story meh, acting fair, 5/10 so far.

I don't know what all of these bad reviews are all about. My husband and I binge watched it in 2 nights. This is a heartwarming story about love and living your dreams. Jason Katims from Friday Night Lights and Parenthood is the Producer/writer so if you liked those shows, you will love this one too. There are 2 storylines in each episode, The trip and how they cope with various ship problems as well as alternating with flash backs of each of the astronauts lives. The writing and acting are superb. Hillary Swank is fantastic as usual. We loved it.

The first five episodes are useless, boring, soapy, unrealistic drama about the life of each crew’s member of the first mission to Mars. To make things worse they even allow real time communication at millions of kilometres of distance, keeping the useless, boring, soapy, unrealistic drama, not considering the lag caused by the speed of light, the maximum achievable.

On the second half of the season it switches completely. Suddenly (literally) it isn’t possible to have interactive communications. The lag, which would have always been there, increasing from seconds to minutes, has been turned on. And thanks to this the focus has been finally moved principally to the mission and we can watch a decent SciFi show, although not brilliant.

I’d suggest to skip the first 5 episodes altogether, if it wasn’t unreasonable. Just swallow them and enjoy the second half.

This time the people working for NASA and the crew, unlike most of sci-fi out there, are almost competent people, unlucky for the sake of the drama, but not stupid on purpose.
Most of the drama on the technical side revolves around one single water recycle system that was built with an useless backup system.
I feel that they could improve on that, giving the crew more variety of problems, with more clever and creative way to resolve them.

The worst part of the story is how much those people are emotionally and psychologically unfit for a mission like that.
They are overburdened by past traumas, unresolved conflits, family problems, internal struggles and professional jealousy.
Away is a perfect example of why i love the odd-man hypotesis introduced in The Andromeda Strain so much.


If you skip trough all the unnecessary sentimental stuff is still watchable.

As a sci-fi head, I'd say I was NOT prepared for the high drama - I was literally in tears every episode. Episode 3 was Emmy worthy, exploring a controversial Asian queer love relationship quite beautifully, unfolding like delicate calligraphy. But I was perplexed at some of the crew's choices, the dilemmas they found aboard their ship every episode, and the dissention amongst the international support staff and NASA on the ground. Maybe watching during our highly dramatic real-life situation wasn't the best choice.
I think the overall show message was... you betta pray?

It’s not really my preferred choice of viewing, but it’s actually ok.

Despite the Sci-fi genre, it’s really more about relationships and family and can be a bit depressing in my opinion. Some people like emotional, tear jurker films/programmes, but it’s not my thing.

However, I did enjoy it a certain amount, more the sci-fi parts.

It has some great actors and it’s well done.

It's obvious that it is not a typical sci-fi series. It has some nice moments, space shots, a great ending and good inclusion of diversity. However, for my taste, it was too slow and often overburdened with cheesy emotional issues, making it hard to watch and enjoy. Also, it's often quite predictable.

To much drama, really. I got all sad after watching every episode, and my boyfriend was upset and bored.

I quite got the fact that the commander is missing her family. Redundancy in the scenario is quite impressive unlike the water thing.
A fully automated mission movie couldn't be more annoying.

It might not be the best show ever, but it was okay. It's definitely more drama than action.

The only reason I don't rate this lower is because I managed to finish it but honestly it was just bad. It's like the worst team of astronauts put together and makes you wonder if the spatial program actually screens their candidates. I've never seen so much personal trauma and drama in one place and such a mismatched group of people. It was ridiculous and took away from all the space stuff that should have been enough to hold interest.