TV Review: Another Life (2019). This Netflix scifi series emulates a broad swath of influences, nailing none.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Tv Review: Another Life (2019) by Ben Jeffries (31/7/2019)

Season 1 (25/7/2019)
10 episodes, between 40 and 60 minutes long

Drama, Scifi

Streaming on Netflix

Another Life aims for the stars but falls far, far, short.

When an alien artifact appears suddenly on Earth, stunning the worlds population, Astronaut Niko Breckenridge (Katee Sackhoff) is chosen to lead the interstellar mission to decipher the objects origins and purpose. Leaving behind her husband and daughter, Niko and her young crew brave the unimaginable dangers of space. Back on Earth Niko’s husband, Erik, (Justin Chatwin) attempts to unlock the secrets of the mysterious alien object. Another Life reaches for a heady mix of high minded concepts and scifi action but the only trick it seems to know is to borrow from other, better, works and it does so relentlessly. There’s a lack of subtlety, ambiguity, or even fresh perspective to the emulation, which leaves this Netflix original production feeling obvious and cliche.

Watching Another Life feels like trying to assemble one jigsaw puzzle using the pieces from seven different boxes: Nothing ever quite lines up like it should and the picture that emerges is jumbled and confused. The writing is obvious, the directing is unsteady, and the story is a frustrating parade of lukewarm takes on scifi cliches. In the first episode alone Niko faces a mutiny from her second in command, a previously undiscovered cloud of dark matter puts their mission months behind schedule, and Niko has to manually pilot the normally A.I. driven ship through the outer layers of a star before they all explode. It’s a breathless rush from one disaster to the next that sets the tiring pace for the rest of the series. If you can think of something that you’ve seen go wrong on a spaceship in film or television, the Another Life probably has a budget version of it sandwiched somewhere between a scene cribbed from Alien and a cheap effects shot. At some point during development someone decided that quantity was a practical stand in for quality, so the show takes no time setting up or winding down from each new dangerous situation, instead rushing headlong to the next shouting match or explosion, creating an exhausting climate for the audience and leaving each incident feeling like an item on a check list rather than an important moment in the story.

In it’s rush to get to the next dire event threatening Niko and the crew of the good ship Salvare, which is latin for “salvation”, the script has no time for subtlety or ambiguity. Sackhoff does her best in the lead role to try and anchor the tone of the show but her character is like an emotional metronome, unable to maintain any single setting for more than a beat or two. Each new roadblock on their interstellar journey adds to her list of reasons to snarl and swear at either her crew, the ship, or the universe at large, reinforcing her image as a hard bitten bad-ass space adventurer with an iron will. She levers open jammed airlocks with fire axes, carries bloodied crew members through dark corridors where unknown evil creeps, and pilots shuttles through volcanic eruptions to rescue stranded crew. But the series undermines that heroic image with a series of video-calls and and flash backs to her family on Earth and her life before the mission, which paint Niko as a sweet, loving, motherly type. 

It is, of course, possible for a single person to exhibit both modes of behaviour, and a more deftly written script would use Niko’s family as a foundational motivation for her badassery, but here the two elements seem disconnected and unrelated. Sackhoff has trouble reconciling the two sides of the character into one whole and the scenes where she should seem tender and motherly take on an unintentionally sinister edge, partly because her performance in those moments veers towards insincere and partly because you’re remembering the previous scene where she dispassionately told her crew she’d be willing to kill anyone who stood in the way of the mission.

The crew of the Salvare are a constant frustration for both Niko and the audience. While they seem at least passingly competent at their various jobs, none of them seem to have the temperament for a mission of such massive significance. You’d think a journey to meet an alien intelligence for the first time would warrant a crew of experienced astronauts (which we know exist because we see them in flashbacks), but no: the Salvare is staffed almost entirely by emotionally charged 20-somethings with the collective decision making skills of a drunk toddler. While the show makes a half hearted attempt to justify the ridiculous decision by implying the powers-that-be back on Earth wanted young, brave, astronauts for the mission, the casting is clearly an attempt to try and skew the show towards a younger audience. Which wouldn’t be a problem if the script was meaty enough for the actors to sink their teeth into, or the directing was focused enough to chart the emotional journey of the characters, but they aren’t.

The script is flatly underdone. Characters make bald declarations of their emotions; rather than letting the actor find ways to present their characters interior lives in a natural way they’re left trying to make lines like “I’m scared” or “We were in love,” sound like things people say. Some characters come off better than others, but mainly because they’re neglected by the script rather than thoughtfully written. There’s more than one uninteresting love triangle, and by the end of the series almost everyone is romantically entangled with someone to one complicated degree or another. Over and over again the direction seems to have been “bigger” or “less complicated”, resulting in performances that would look more at home on an angsty teen drama than they do amongst the lofty stakes of humanity’s first contact with an alien intelligence.

Everyone seems like a cardboard cutout of a person put in place to fill some genre stereotype. Back on Earth Niko’s husband Erik (Justin Chatwin) is your typical absent minded genius. When he isn’t trying to unlock the secrets of the alien artifact by playing it classical music, Erik is avoiding the celebrity reporter Harper Glass (Selma Blair). Glass says she’s only working for the public interest, but seems like she’s in it for the exposure and status. On the ship there’s the fiery, abrasive, Michelle (Jessica Camacho) who only gets away with her outrageous comments by virtue of her skills with the systems of the Salvare. Bernie (A.J. Rivera) is the ships xeno-geologist, the sensitive overweight guy with a sense of humour who likes to cook. The handsome Sasha (Jake Abel) is a U.S. congressman, traveling on board as a civilian observer, who’s motives are suspect to the rest of the crew. Zane (JayR Tinaco) is the ships doctor who serves as therapist, surgeon, pharmacist and GP all at once. August (Blu Hunt) is one of the three engineers who keep the Salvare running. She’s a bubbly young woman with an optimistic outlook, and her privileged origins as a scion of one of the richest families on Earth cause tension with other less fortunate crew members. Oliver (Alex Oserov), another engineer, is the timid young man who’s clearly into August but doesn’t have the confidence to make a move. The ships holographic AI personality is named William (Samuel Anderson), and his character has one of the more interesting, albeit familiar, arcs, but the script fails to set up any real rules for his character to operate by and that makes his development confusing. Niko’s young protege Cas (Elizabeth Faith Ludlow) is clearly a hyper capable young professional, but the character is written as lacking confidence in her abilities in a way that hamstrings the performance, trapping her between a script that has her behave one way and say the opposite. Each and every character we’re introduced to during the shows 10 episodes feels like a version of someone we’ve seen somewhere else, slotted into the show to fill out a quota of scifi cliches.

Sometimes there’s a part of a less than excellent show which makes sitting through the rough patches worthwhile. Maybe the performances elevate the material, or there’s a twist so surprising it flips the entire series on it’s head, or maybe the explosions are just really good explosions. Another Life doesn’t have any of those things. The performances are exactly what the material asks for, the show telegraphs every twist long before it arrives, and the explosions aren’t great to look at. Some people might characterise the show as “so bad it’s good”, but it’s not even that bad. In the end it feels like a mediocre attempt at scifi action drama put together by someone who thought “more” was the same as “better”. If you have a penchant for “B-grade” genre fare then you might have some fun with this series but, otherwise, there are more interesting shows to spend your time with.

3.5/10

Another Life is Produced by: Halfire Entertainment

Distributed by: Netflix

Created By: Aaron Martin

Written by: Aaron Martin, Alejandro Alcoba, Romeo Candido, Amanda Fahey, Laurne Gosnell, Naledi Jackson, J.P. Laroque, Gorman Lee, Sabrina Sherif, Alex Levine, Jackie May, Lucie Page, Sean Reycraft

Directed by: Mairzee Almas, Allan Arkush, Sheree Folkson, Metin Huseyin, Omar Madha,

Starring: Katee Sackhoff, Samuel Anderson, Elizabeth Faith Ludlow, Blu Hunt, A.J. Rivera, Jake Abel, Alex Ozerov, Alexander Eling, JayR Tinaco, Jessica Camacho, Justin Chatwin, Selma Blair, Lina Renna, Helen King

Executive Producers: Aaron Martin (Showrunner), Noreen Halpern

Cinematography: Ryan McMaster

Music: Trevor Morris