I don't agree at all with all the critics of other reviewers: it's a very decent show, not as "sciency" as you would expect; there are lots of politics involved but the characters make sense, are pretty intelligent and the actors are quite convincing in carrying the tension and double-play of the multiple agencies and various protagonists.

It's well paced, interesting at every episode and not at all a frenzy of stupid mathy-jargon thrown at you like scorpion, which is utter bullsh*t for sure.

As I said, it's well written and seems to be going somewhere fast, which is kind of hard to find in a show nowadays so be content and stop complaining when something good comes your way! :D

How often do we watch shows like The Walking Dead or Alien and quickly and easily dismiss the glaringly obvious mistakes regarding how "realistic" is? When I watch a movie or show, I figure I am in their world and anything is possible.

Salvation is no exception. I enjoy apocalyptic type shows and movies anyway, so when I saw previews for this I was already all in. Much to my happy surprise, it is also very reminiscent of 24, my favorite show ever.

So, I will keep this short and sweet. If you liked Jericho, 24, and Armageddon...you will probably like this. The acting is great, The chemistry between the actors is also great. The story line, considering the premise, is solid. I have been enjoying this show immensely. I hope there's a second season!

The brutal truth: they have the budget, they have good actors, they don't have the right hooks nor the accurate science. But it's all about relationships and the spinning of chaos in the minds of the characters, the players, at the end of the world. It's about a counter-clock to salvation. Give it a try, maybe they find salvation

First thing, this show is never about the earth and the asteroid. It's about how the two powerful nation US & Russia deals an extinction level of event on each other. Although half of the show are almost predictable, it still has many plot twist. With not so many good Sci-fi series out there, I think this show deliver an interesting Sci-fi drama.

Personal thought, I don't know why so claimed 'smartass' people gave bad review on almost every sci-fi TV? There are many good sci-fi shows canceled because of bad review from those 'smartass' people. I mean why don't we just enjoy the show and give some appreciation.

So even though an asteroid is going to hit in 6 months, the main characters are driven by petty back stabbing jealous motives. It is so absurd. The dialogue is equivalent to soap opera foolishness. I certainly hope this is not how the smartest and brightest would act if we had 6 months to save the world. If so, we deserve to die.

I just finished watching the third episode of this series. I began watching this series with high hopes. The description of the series and the graphics were very impressive. I watched the pilot and was very concerned, there didn't seem to be much of a story line. I watched the second episode with the hope that it would get better, it didn't. I watched this third episode because I try to give a TV series a chance. This third episode was the worst and I am done with the TV show. There is absolutely no story line to this show, it just keeps jumping from scene to scene. Each scene is two or more people holding idiot conversations. There is a lot of Political and Techno talk that has absolutely no meaning. The MIT graduate seems to be the dumbest of the entire cast. Most of the conversations are between a man and a woman either in a bed, an elevator,or behind closed doors. This show seems to be a soap opera with a little bit of science thrown in. I try not be beat up on shows, but I cannot recommend this to anyone who really enjoys their TV watching. Pretty people holding ridicules, meaningless conversations.

An ambitious story that the writers don't even come close to attending to. It's almost as if the focus is not so much on how the oncoming asteroid will annihilate all life on Earth, but more on how it's going to really put a crimp in the sex lives of the main characters.

The underlying theme to this show is the deification of the newest 'in' group, the computer geek/tech billionaire, which is to be expected in the information age. What doesn't fit is how these people are either unassumingly charming or suave and sophisticated. For every Elon Musk, there are thousands of techies with social anxiety that couldn't carry on a conversation, much less get a woman to go home with him on the same day he met her.

Unfortunately, even in a disaster show, the libido has to be front and center with heavier themes playing backdrop to whether these people can get enough love before the big one turns us all into dust.

Then there's the big idea. The clichéd ark that its creators say isn't for the elite inhabitants of the planet, but really is for the elite inhabitants of the planet is being converted from a 160 seat vessel into one that can carry hundreds of thousands. This would be a great idea, if they didn't have just 6 months to complete it in.....and the Government wasn't trying to both keep a secret on the asteroid and put the kibosh on the ark....and all the various principles involved weren't distracted by the nonsense in their personal lives....and (well, you get the idea) Finally, we've seen this story before. It's called Deep Impact. If you missed that, then it's Armageddon. If you've seen neither, it's more like 'How I Met Your Mother During the Potential End of the World'.

I can't imagine this show getting a second season.

I guess that they don't teach physics or career planning at writer's college?

BTW ... how was a tiny probe going to take-out a massive asteroid again?

Astrophysicists don't... 1. fix rocket engines 2. verbally command super computers performing advanced CFD simulations 3. diagnose "Asteroid" gaming hacks 4. perform engine construction, diagnostics and repair There were too many poorly thought-through technical aspects in this series.

The writer's didn't seem to realize that it takes 8 minutes for a signal to travel from Earth to Jupiter. I was surprised to see that the probe near Jupiter had the fuel to fly around the solar system chasing asteroids?

They could call this show "America Good - China, Russia and Iran Bad"

Does anyone know why the USA can't afford to lose the one billion dollars required to save the Earth?

Bad science, bad acting, bad story ... it's just bad.

I truly don't agree with most reviews. I am a filmmaker by myself and I am very interested in science and astronomy. I do have pretty high standards in series and movies. People that are talking about cliché stuff, and maybe for all those reviewers, maybe our world is pretty cliché, or let's say America;). I do agree the story is not deep, but they made this series for a bigger audience which is not only the deep thinker. I like the conflicts, plots in the storyline. I think the casting and acting are great as well. Production en postproduction are clean. I truly hope there is a season 2 coming.

Salvation is an interesting show with engaging characters and lots of plot twists. The writers need to avoid gratuitous violence (of which there has only been a little so far) and focus on the plot and developing the characters. I think some of the people who give it a low rating and lots of criticism just like to hear themselves bluster. I have a post-graduate education and don't watch much TV. So far, Salvation is a winner!

I liked this pilot and will be back for episode 2. The MIT brainiac felt real: disheveled, impulsive, horny and fun. He teams up with an Elon Musk-type to advance his discovery of doom. The government bad guys are the kind of slick you love to hate. The government's press secretary seems stuck in the middle, but has a good heart that guides her true. I'm sure we'll meet new players.

I've been watching this show for the past three weeks or so and I'm really enjoying it. I know that it is quite a cliché - an asteroid coming our way and blablabla - but the cast is amazing and I really liked the characters.

Anyway, haters always gonna hate. This is one of my favorite shows right now and I keep on counting the days to watch the next episode.

There's certainly much to explore in the plot and I am really looking forward to see the "final impact" at the end of the first season. Hopefully, it'll make it to the second season and then we'll look at a post-apocalypical world in which 70-90% of the planet was destroyed and the remaining 30-10% of it must struggle to survive against the ods.

Be aware a meteorite is coming to destroy the earth!

Even in worst TV show or bad movie who talk about end of the world using Extinction Level Event, you will see the stuff! Here you get nothing. USA vs Russia, BILLIONAIRE vs GOVERNMENT, Hackers trying to get the truth and a very bad soap opera.

I don't even understand what the point to create a bad TV show full of cliché with horrible story full of stupidity who has absolutely no emotional attachment.

The worst parts of this TV show are:

• the comportment of the actors, how peoples react to this fact: A METEORITE COMING TO CRASH AND DESTROY EARTH.

Normally if someone say to you: "Hey it's the end of the world you know, we are all going to die" something happen inside you normally. I d k you are a little afraid, you have suicide or psychotic tendency, you want to see your family or fight like hell to avoid this terrible, terrible, ending.

BUT HERE "we so don't give a sh.it" No one stress, no one rush, no one cry or become irrational, no, everything is cool, people go to bed at 10 o clock, go to work, make some jokes, try to create stuff who blow, but "they don't care" oh my god we are so doomed, we are all going to die, you want to take a beer ?

• IF you crash a satellite at high velocity on a meteorite who as the size and the strength to destroy mother Russia and a part of China, do you know what is going to happen ? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! A fly at mach 3 crashing on a windshield who has the size of Paris: HORRIBLE - WASTE - OF - TIME!

• USA want to fragment this meteorite to avoid it to fall on them and hit Russia. Russia want to do the same. Everyone focus on hit the meteorite first. That is totally retard concept, a pure non sens AND IT'S NOT WORKING LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE! YOU CANT CALCULATE THE IMPACT POINT OF THIS KIND OF STUFF IT'S IMPOSSIBLE! I will explain that using 1 fact of many needed to be accurate: The meteorite is made of cheese or is made of pure iron. (85 IQ needed here) Apparently the man who wrote this script do not reach this amount.

• AND DO YOU REALLY THINK IF SOME GIANT ROCKS FALL TO DESTROY ONE OF THE BIGGEST PART OF THE WORLD YOU WILL SURVIVE BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT AT THE IMPACT POINT ? HAVE YOU EVER EARED OF NUCLEAR WINTER OR ICE AGE ?

• Creating the ARCH to save people, select them, put them inside and fly away. AND GO WHERE, TO THE MOON? ON MARS? FOR THE NEXT 300 YEARS waiting the cloud dust vanish ? I hope you have a lot of resources to FEED them. THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION can feed 4 peoples for 6 months using the last hydroponic technology and recycling. I hope your shuttle have 30 time the size of the TITANIC to stock and feed hundreds of peoples for hundreds of years.

seriously ...

horrible TV show who take us for retards knowing nothing about nothing.

I watch TV for entertainment. If I wanted to watch only what could happen, I'd watch the Science channel. People, get over the fact that Salvation is just a story. Sit down, relax and watch what might happen if an asteroid was heading to earth. Now, on to Season 3..... I wonder what it is?????

This is not SF. At best it is a thriller at, worst it is a soap opera. Of all the similarly themed shows 'Deep Impact' is the only one that was even remotely well done and vaguely believable. 'Armageddon' was puerile and this show, I'm afraid seems to sit somewhere closer to that. Why has Elon Musk suddenly become an action hero? Has Tesla or SpaceX employed a PR company to put a messianic spin on Musk and his capabilities? Perhaps his sister's influence in Hollywood has something to do with it. This show can only improve if it stops taking itself so seriously or drops all the clichés. I don't think I'll be holding my breath to see if either happens.

Update Dec 2017 - This got renewed for a second season? How?

I'm only watching because my husband wants to watch it. When Liam, the midst of the crises wants to use Darius' helicopter to get his girlfriend. His girl friend is the love of his life even though they only met the week before. She is clearly the only girl he's only gone out with.

At this point I'm rooting for the asteroid, which can't get to Earth fast enough.

Struggled through the first episode. Terrible acting with the same old world ending scenario. The genius kid gets to act like an idiot but is the hero. Same old government conspiracy stuff. The usual side plots of the mother debating whether to tell her daughter, the love interest of the main character, which does nothing for the plot. Save your time and watch something intelligent.

So OK an asteroid will collide with Earth in 6 months. Yes that could happen. Now the Russians (and it is always the Russians) have stolen whatever the U.S. has that will move the asteroid off of it's path. The dialogue......" the Russians want to control the asteroid". I thought I heard wrong. What?????? How stupid can you get. Not to mention the first two commercial breaks aired 15 ....count em.....15 commercials. The next one aired 11 commercials. That alone is enough for me to never watch this show again. I realize commercials pay for air time but 15 of them? I don't find the acting particularly bad, but a little too much personal nonsense going on. I probably won't watch this show again.

Finally, finally there is a TV series about an asteroid coming towards Earth and what we are going to do about it. It is called Salvation and it fails in every single respect.

The first alarm bell was Jennifer Finnigan, the female costar from Tyrant. She was terribly annoying in that show where she posed as the voice of reason and common sense, while being a nagging and demanding wife to the ruler of a foreign country. I thought "shame on you! Just because she was like that in that show is no reason to hold it against the actress". In Salvation, she plays the annoying nagging and demanding voice of reason and common sense as girlfriend to the secretary of the DOD.

But that's the least of the problems of the show. The idea is a brilliant MIT student figures out there is an asteroid coming towards Earth. He tells his professor, who then calls someone and then promptly disappears, with goons watching his house. Desperate, he finds a way to reach to an Elon Musk wannabe and tell him the story. Backed by this powerful billionaire, he then contacts the government, which, surprise!, knew all about it and already had a plan. Which fails. Time to bring in the brilliant solution of the people who care: the EM drive! A hypothetical space drive that would be of no help in this situation, even if it would work! For which there is a need of exactly two billion dollars and one hundred kilograms of refined uranium. And that's just episode 2.

The only moment we actually see the asteroid is in a 3D holographic video projection, coming from most likely a text data file output of a tool an MIT student would build. Somehow that turns into a 3D rendering on the laptop of the billionaire. Not only does it crash into Earth, but it shows the devastation on the planet as a fire front. Really?

Bottom line: imagine something like Madam Secretary which somehow mated with the pilot episode of the X-Files reboot. Only low budget and boring as hell. There is no science, no real plot, no sympathetic characters, nothing but artificial drama which one would imagine to be pointless in a show about the end of the world, and ridiculously beautiful people acting with the skill of underwear models (Mark Wahlberg excluded, of course). Avoid it at all costs!

CBS seems to have a tendency to make series about "brilliant billionaires" who will put their minds and effort and means and cash for saving people. A noble cause, or so it seems...

Another CBS series with such a fellow was "Pure Genius", a show that I think I personally killed single-handed because I wrote a very critical review for it, the opposite of what a 90-95% of other reviewers wrote while giving to it ratings full of 9s and 10s. They basically were writing that that show "gave them hope". All I was seeing (and CBS producers as it seems) was a cheap melodrama.

So, after a long prologue...what is "Salvation" all about? Well... a large meteor has a 97.2% probability of hitting the Earth in 186 days! Not an impossible scenario. Believe you me. It happened at least 5 times before, with the last one, killing the previous rulers of the planet, the all-mighty dinosaurs.

Not original at all, but how this series holds to its premise? Well not bad for the time being. You have some relatively strong-minded characters: - a billionaire genius who initially thinks that the best course of action is to build an arc and populate ...Mars (dumb idea for so many reasons) - an MIT student who might for a while thought that its best to live intensively his remaining 3 months - a Pentagon officer who is the poster boy of secrets and conspiracies and - his press secretary with whom he had an affair, but she will probably play a crucial rule to the salvation (or not) of the Earth.

There were some things that bothered me but minor. It's not a "big" series despite the theme of the global damnation, but is not small or boring either.

I wonder if the writers have already think how this is going to end. You see 186 days until doomsday can't easily span in a series for the long run.

Anyway...not great...not bad either. I see the reviewers before me are divided and polarized. It's one of these cases. We will wait and see. For now and based solely on the pilot, I say...give it a chance.

.

First, let's get an important aspect clarified: a lot of reviewers have been (excessively) critical of the scientific veracity behind this show. Yes, they are right, this is not a model of how humanity will divert a ELE capable asteroid.

What this is trying be be is an engaging piece of entertainment that is (1) not a cop drama, (2) not a medical drama, (3) not a who's sleeping with who drama. It has taken a media-popular scenario - asteroid heading toward Earth - and wrapped it in a well presented package with charismatic cast and good pacing. It is absolutely light in scientific accuracy, but - I'm not sure how to put this clearly - IT'S A TV SHOW!!!

There are some interesting characterisations and scripting so far has been tight with only a few 'off pace' moments. Yes, a lot of characters are heavy on stereotype, certainly more than we get in UK shows - but, again, this is an entertainment show. I watch it for my brain to go into neutral and coast along; if I want accuracy, I'll watch Discovery.

As with all good sci-fi - the real story is nothing to do with the tech - it's all about the people and how they react to a situation. The asteroid is simply a McGuffin that puts a shiny angle on the show...

Once again we have a show with little to no intelligence, when it is supposed to be set with intelligent people. It is as ignorant as that show Scorpion is, which at least started out with a little hope. The daddy snake bit was it for me with that show as it went downhill fast, and this one simply started at the bottom with no place to go. I seriously can not describe just how unscientific this mess of thing really is. The best way I guess is to relate to a simple scenario. You are trying to escape a group of rampaging mutants, but instead of jumping into the moving escape vehicle, you jump into the bushes and squat down, in full view of the charging hordes. Such is the intelligence of this idiocy. Save yourself a few IQ points, and go watch Bugs and Daffy instead. That makes more sense even than this idiocy does.

I really liked the first season as it became intense and got me really interested into the whole asteroid scenario. While I did get frustrated with the cliffhanger of first season and not knowing whether they will survive or not the second reason was worth the watch as it was more interesting especially the ending of episode 13. RATED 9 so hopefully the show gets another season normally would have given it a rating of 8.

I was really prepared to give this show a chance..... the premise was good.... I like these "end of the world" type things.

I've sat through it, week after week, while the writing (and acting) got progressively worse........ now it's just ridiculous.

I mean, Tanz, one of the main protagonists, can't go into the bomb shelter/spaceship hangar, because he has a hereditary disease?

So? - What's the problem? - Is he going to spread Hodgkins to all the other people in the shelter?

Does he have to have babies with them all, or can some of human race escape his evil genes?

Then next, the dramatic farewell between Tanz and Evelyn, which was already completely pointless to begin with.... but alas, they can't have each other, he has to die.... he has a passive and not contagious disease :D

Next, Tanz is on screen (presumably it has taken some time to get down to nuclear safe level, from the dramatic farewell topside)..... getting all the genetically lucky to dance.... when Liam, another main protagonist, suddenly thinks...... he forgot to tell Tanz something.... (before he burns up in nuclear holocaust).

So, what does our hero do? - It must take at least 15 minutes to get topside and run through the woods.

Does he call him up on the phone?

Does he send him a mail, messenger, snap, SMS, MMS?

No.... of course not, as the true hero he is...... he kisses the love of his life goodbye, and sacrifices himself, to run through the woods to talk to Tanz..... in his high tech mansion, full of technology directly connected to the bunker.

I mean, you would think "you can't write this stuff".... but apparently you can, and get paid for it? :O

I like the first 4 episodes, and am looking forward to watching the rest. Not an action packed sci fi show, but more a thinking person's sci fi. I hope it continues with the good characters, well written episodes, and interesting plot. The special effects are good, and not overdone. Some sci fi shows are just CGI mess-fests where they try to throw as much CGI stuff as possible. Not this show. Witty, clever, and thoughtful. Hope it lasts.