CBS summer series offers ‘Salvation’

The latest new summer offering from CBS, “Salvation,” continues a trend the network has had so much success with in the past. Just like “Under the Dome,” “Extant” and “Zoo,” “Salvation” — which airs at 9 p.m. Wednesdays — starts with a world-shaking development and creates tension from efforts to deal with the threat while unfolding in what can only be a finite number of episodes. Face it. By the time “The Dome” came tumbling down, it was time to go to another summer disaster.

The disaster faced in “Salvation” is a giant asteroid whose ETA on Earth is in 186 days. The space rock will end all life on the planet.

Liam Cole (Charlie Rowe) is an MIT student who splits his time between gazing into space and looking to make a close encounter of the intimate kind. He makes a connection with both on the same night. The happiness he feels meeting someone he knows he could love to the end of time is tempered by the real possibility that the end of time could come in six months.

Cole shares his findings with Darius Tanz (Santiago Cabrera), a tech wizard who is as smart as he is good looking. Tanz is the only person who has more resources and knowledge to attack the problem than the government.

Neither Cole nor Tanz know that the government has known about the giant rock for three months and under the watchful eye of Harris Edwards (Ian Anthony Dale), the deputy secretary of defense, a plan has been put in motion. Once Edwards finds out Tanz has learned about the rock, he goes into full political mode revealing the plans for the rocket ship to save the day. Edwards also loops in the Pentagon press secretary, Grace Barrows (Jennifer Finnigan), who also happens to be his secret lover.