It's not the most original story. It borrows heavily from Solaris, 2001, Star Trek, Sunshine, Strange Days, The Abyss... But the hate it gets is pretty ROFL worthy. I didn't understand why at first, until i understood that this series replaced the ultimately forgettable (yet seemingly more popular) "The Expanse". I love Sci-Fi, but honestly, all the reviews rating this below 5, you can just disregard them. IMDB should stop letting every opiniated crybaby write a review and figure out a way to filter out the petty fanboy drivel. It also seems a lot of these people did not watch the show, like they claimed to have, since they are bringing up issues, which are actually explained in the story. But as it stands, Nightflyers is rated a lot lower than shows many times worse, such as Killjoys, Dark Matter or Continuum and other cheesefests. This show is leagues better than those, yet gets rated a lot worse.
Back to the show. The setting works, eventhough it's not original (as stated above), characters and performances are better than most sci-fi series, there is enough mystery, to keep you interested without dragging it all out (like The Expanse). There are a few things that don't make sense, but ultimately don't detract from the experience, unless you have set your bar to the standard of the absolute best shows of the past few decades. If you let those things bother you, then you can stop watching about 95% of movies and shows all together.
It's a well made show, i enjoyed watching it, but does not break any new ground. If you liked the movies/shows i mentioned earlier, and wouldn't mind a "light-synthesis" version of those (content & storywise), then you might very well enjoy this.
