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Posted in: Apple, Review, TV | Tagged: apple tv, Constellations, jonathan banks, noomi rapace, Sad Astromom, sad astronauts, science fiction
Constellation: Noomi Rapace Rises Above Bland "Sad AstroMom" Mystery
Noomi Rapace is great in Constellation, a Science Fiction mystery that is... not great, another hoary Sad Astronaut story
Article Summary
- Noomi Rapace shines despite the clichéd "Sad AstroMom" trope in Constellation.
- The series on Apple TV+ struggles, burdened by string of constant clichés.
- Jonathan Banks features in a complex role amidst space agency politics and drama.
- Constellation may disappoint if it takes the route we think it will to solve its mystery.
Constellation is yet another Science Fiction series on Apple TV+. Have you noticed that Apple TV+ now has more Science Fiction TV series than any other channel, let alone the SyFy Channel, which barely has two, for a channel called "SyFy" (which the snarky out there claim is Polish slang for "syphilis")? Anyway, the bad news is that Constellation is not a winner, despite starring the ever-great Noomi Rapace as yet another sad astronaut who is an angst-ridden mother, because all female astronauts on TV and in films have to be angst-ridden mothers as well. "Sad AstroMom" has become a clichéd and sexist subgenre in the "Sad Astronaut" section of Science Fiction television and Film now.
All TV and movie astronauts just have to be sad now, and all female astronauts have to be sad mothers. That trope seemed to begin in Gravity when Sandra Bullock played an astronaut trapped in orbit but also had to be mourning her daughter because Hollywood executives decided just being in danger of dying in orbit wasn't enough for a character. Eva Green played a Sad AstroMom in the 2017 movie Euphoria. Even Ryan Gosling has to play Neil Armstrong mourning his daughter in Damien Chazelle's Sad Astronaut movie First Man. Why does Hollywood need to keep giving their astronauts dead or endangered daughters?? Every female astronaut heroine lately just has to be a Sad AstroMom. WHY?!
Sorry for the rant. Back to Constellation. Noomi Rapace plays an astronaut who survives a massive accident on the International Space Station and miraculously makes it back to Earth alive and reunites with her husband and young daughter. However, she starts feeling at odds, at first possibly from PTSD, then hallucinating a dead colleague suddenly alive, then alternate versions of her daughter. Her boss at NASA, played by Jonathan Banks, is trying to solve the mystery of the experiment Rapace and her fellow astronauts were conducting on the space station that might have caused the accident and killed one of them, an experiment that might have had some effect on not just Rapace but possibly the whole fabric of reality itself because, of course, it would! Where does Banks find the time to deal with space agency politics while also being sad and broken and arguing with a space truther on the convention circuit… or is he? And just when you think Banks is playing someone who's not murdery… I better stop there. Creator and writer Peter Harness has written for Doctor Who before, so he at least comes with some pedigree, but unfortunately, the series is less than the sum of its parts.
I get the creeping feeling Constellation is an eight-hour remake of the 1969 movie Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, a dark, downbeat Sci-Fi movie that's the only live-action movie directed by Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson. The answer to the mystery is freaking obvious! It's the Multiverse! It's always the Multiverse now! The multiverse, once a fascinating theory in astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics, has become the biggest and most overused cliché in Sci Fi TV and movies now! Hollywood got tired of overusing Time Travel, so now they have to beat the Multiverse to death. Overuse of the Multiverse has practically killed off any excitement we could have for the MCU. It is a weapon that Hollywood has misused to its cost. This is why good Science Fiction is so hard to come by in Hollywood productions. The nice things we think we're getting keeps turning out to be… the Multiverse.
If the answer to the mystery turns out not to be the Multiverse, I will be very pleasantly surprised.
Constellation is streaming on Apple TV+, and let's hope it doesn't need a second season.
Constellation
6.5/10
Noomi Rapace has never given a bad performance and she's great here as an angst-ridden astronaut, but the answer to this Science Fiction mystery might be more obvious than we think and feels less than the sum of its parts, and the series is an entry in a new sexist subgenre of Science Fiction: the Sad AstroMom.
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