Leave This Earth and Follow National Geographic to Mars

It seems a hell of a risk, what the newly-branded, newly majority-FOX owned National Geographic is doing in television. A pivot towards premiere TV is a welcome one for the millions of viewers who have decentralized their entertainment from major networks to more diverse and groundbreaking series on smaller ones like AMC, FX, and BBC, but the question remains for NatGeo whether a dramatic series will attract those who generally associate the brand with nature and animals, or if it’ll read like Microsoft stepping out of its lane with a Windows Phone. Well, as one of 37 total owners of a Windows phone I’m familiar with terrible shit that should’ve never been made. Fortunately for NatGeo, Mars doesn’t fall into that category. Mars is actually an amazingly unique drama that blends documentary format within a tense sci-fi drama, striking a balance to serve both the intellectually curious and the easily bored. The miniseries sets up like a sci-fi film, as if you’re watching The Martian as they plan to settle humans on the Red Planet for the first time. It’s worth mentioning The Martian in specific, as Andy Weir joins the cast of writers, engineers, and scientists featured on the documentary part of the series. Mars toggles back and forth between interviews of present-day leaders of science and engineering, with the fictional space-exploration drama that follows an awesomely diverse cast on their mission to be the first humans on Mars in the year 2033.

If the pilot is any indicatio…