"Dark Matter" Is a Great Unfinished Space Opera
"Dark Matter" Is a Great Unfinished Space Opera
5 reasons to watch the under-appreciated series from "Stargate SG-1" producers
Back in 2016, while browsing Netflix, I chanced upon a new, engrossing space opera that Sy-Fy began airing a year earlier as part of its agenda to revive its status as the premiere channel for science fiction television. It’s not The Expanse.
No, the show I’m praising is a lesser known Canadian import called Dark Matter, which was created by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, who previously worked on Stargate SG-1. After seeing the 13-episode first season, I was ready to declare it one of the best new sci-fi shows on TV and eagerly anticipated where it would go next.*
*Though no longer on Netflix, the series is currently available for free streaming on the official site of the CW channel - no subscription is necessary.
The series improved with its second season before hitting its stride in the third, which had not a single weak installment and ended with a series of mind-boggling cliffhangers. Unfortunately, the show was then unceremoniously cancelled, going off the air just as it had moved past the midpoint of its planned five-season story arc.*
*Adding insult to injury, Sy-fy then renewed a somewhat similar space-themed series called Killjoys for 2 more seasons.
In this article, a version of which I had originally run on my old blog, I want to share with you 5 reasons why Dark Matter is still absolutely worth watching:
1. Solid writing and casting
In the in-medias-res opening sequence, 6 people awaken from stasis aboard the spaceship Raza without any memory of who they are. Though the ship’s database later informs them that they are a fearsome mercenary group consisting of hardcore criminals, the Raza crew seems to be something else in reality.
Each member names him/her-self in the order he or she woke up. The one exception to that would be the nameless Android (Zoie Palmer), whom the crew activates in the pilot to run the ship.
One (Marc Bendavid) is a meek, seemingly harmless man with scientific expertise, who appears to be completely out of place aboard this ship.
Two (Melissa O’Neil) is a no-bullshit badass chick, who quickly becomes a defacto leader.
Three (Anthony Lemke) seems to be an old-school, not-too-bright gunslinger (reminiscent of Jayne Cobb from Joss Whedon’s Firefly.)
Four (Alex Mallari Jr.) is a silent and stoic Samurai with a thing for sword fighting.
Five (Jodelle Ferland) is a precocious teenage girl, who is excellent with technology.
And Six (Roger Cross) is a big, friendly giant, who functions as a voice of reason and advocates nonviolence.
In effect, Dark Matter starts off with a group of recognizable archetypes, but like Lost, it then gradually molds these numbers into three-dimensional human beings. Suffice it to say, almost none of the characters on the series are who they initially seem to be, and yet they themselves do not know it. It is tempting to read the show as a cross between Dollhouse and Firefly, but that would be doing it a disservice.
Dollhouse, after all, struggled to build a narrative around one amnesiac main character, whereas Dark Matter manages to succeed with six distinct individuals, providing a clear and coherent mythology from the get-go. Given the series’ emphasis on memory, flashbacks are used extensively to reveal new details about the protagonists, in the process upending viewer expectations.
What really sells the premise, though, is the cast, who has to play each character as literally discovering their identity over time. The female half really shines, with Melissa O’Neil, Jodelle Ferland and Zoie Palmer providing some of the series’ finest performances. The show really begins to click as the women come into greater focus, especially in the second half of the season. This isn’t to say that the men are poorly cast but that the female players tend to overshadow them.
Zoie Palmer’s character in particular becomes a standout as the season progresses. Her gradual humanization, conveyed through little more than Palmer’s subtle acting, constitutes one of the show’s strongest character arcs, with an excellent scene midway through the first season depicting her trying on a variety of different accents in an effort to impress the crew.
2. Deft balance of multiple tones
Dark Matter can be a lot of different things in a given episode – the protagonists emerge from radically different backgrounds, allowing the show to take on the form of a drama, a sci-fi show, a thriller, a heist movie, a comedy, etc. That leads to some occasionally weird tonal shifts, but it’s a testament to the show’s strengths that it is able to juggle them extremely well. Probably the best illustration of this is Episode 7, which is able to combine dead serious dramatic beats with farcical sex comedy into a thing of sublime brilliance.
But what’s more impressive is that, unlike a lot of contemporary genre shows, Dark Matter doesn’t fall into the trap of using self-deprecating humor to sell its pulpier elements. Although it doesn’t take itself too seriously, it nonetheless plays straight the most ridiculous material, like the retro-feudal Japan plotlines of Four or the memory dives of Five, without all the winking, meta-commentary and handholding that Joss Whedon had made into a requisite of modern genre programming. This makes the proceedings feel both old-fashioned and novel in our postmodern age.
3. An Immersive, Lived-in World
Sci-fi stories are often unfairly maligned for privileging world-building over engaging storytel-ling and characterization. While Dark Matter is a character-centric show, it doesn't skimp out on presenting an interesting universe, whose corners viewers may want to explore. Every episode expands on the show’s universe piecemeal, introducing new elements of its mythology, new antagonists or new concepts that might play a role in future stories. It’s never entirely clear, just when and where exactly the show takes place, though clues suggest that it appears to be the future of our world – a post-racial environment, where nationality and ethnicity no longer seem to matter.
Rather than distinct planets or governments, the main ruling superpowers appear to be interplanetary Corporations, who may have begun as representatives of a specific nation.* These corporations are constantly at odds, using mercenaries like the Raza as proxies in a cold war-esque conflict. One could certainly read a veiled critique of capitalism and an influence of the 1970s classic film Rollerball, where nations were abolished in favor of multinational conglomerates, who took control over humanity. Given how low-tech and often de-glamourized the show’s future looks, one senses that, while this isn’t exactly a dystopian world, it’s one on its way towards a cataclysm.
*The Mikkei Combine, for instance, appears to represent the French, while Volkov-Rusi clearly stands in for the Russians.
What is great is that the show communicates these and many other ideas to the audience without ever explicitly spelling them out via artificial exposition, allowing the setting to feel established and lived in. In other words, the future is old and believable, even if some if it feels utterly incredible.
4. Great bottle episodes
Dark Matter is not a big budget series.
It cannot provide high-octane action or spectacle in every single hour. But it makes due with what resources it has so well, that you rarely, if ever, notice how relatively inexpensive it actually is. This is best demonstrated by the series’ excellent “bottle” episodes, which predominantly utilize a program’s permanent sets and rarely venture into the outside world, avoiding expensive on-location shooting and guest stars.
This technique used to be quite common on television - many series, especially in the sci-fi genre, had to produce a bottle show or two per year out of necessity, so that other episodes could depict expensive events or action scenes. As the average production values of genre shows have grown considerably in the last 10 years or so, bottle episodes have become increasingly rare.
In this regard, what’s unique about Dark Matter is not so much the fact that the show produces bottle episodes at all, but how regularly it produces them, and how deftly it incorporates them into its narrative framework. Throughout the first season, for every couple of adventures that introduce new worlds and locations, there will be one episode that takes place almost entirely aboard the Raza ship. And moreover, this won’t be a self-contained hour that could be easily removed from the larger arc, but often a pivotal episode with long-term repercussions.
The premiere, for instance, spends 30 out of its 42 minutes on the Raza, establishing in detail the ship’s geography before the crew finally heads out to a mining colony. Episode 1.07, which features the crew managing to access to an impenetrable vault in the bowels of the ship, expands that geography, while leaving the Raza for a number of select flashbacks to depict the earlier life of Three/Marcus Boone.
1.11, easily the season’s best, utilizes the ship’s pre-established geography to craft a fast-paced thriller packed with exciting twists and action sequences that outclass many of the show’s bigger episodes, all without going off-ship until literally the last three minutes. As a whole then, the show makes turns what might be seen as a potential weakness into a strength.
5. Patient, Economical Storytelling
Dark Matter is a basic cable serial, which means it has to balance its serial ambition with a mission-of-the-week approach that provides entryways for new viewers. So, while every individual hour has its own specific self-contained plot, it also functions as a piece of a larger tapestry. But what distinguishes the show’s approach to this hybrid type of storytelling is its narrative economy.
On average, it has less scenes per episode than 75 percent of other basic cable series. And with some rare exceptions, the show virtually has no extraneous scenes, nor forgotten or rushed plot developments. The writers take their time to gradually set up numerous mysteries about their protagonists before paying them off.
This is comparatively rare in the age of ADD and hyper-speed seriality. As information travels faster, attention spans grow shorter. Viewers demand more plot, more twists, more shocks in smaller chunks of time from serials. They want to be able to binge on shows as fast as possible. Television programs have been both influencing and influenced by this demand. Numerous serialized shows wind up with excess baggage – plot points are introduced, only to be dropped or retconned, stories are rushed through so quickly, that their potential is undermined; needless complications arise to fill out the running time and make the progression fast and exciting.
Any show that wants to take its time – both at the micro-level of the episode and the macro-level of the season – risks being disparaged as “slow” or “boring,” as though by default fast pacing is the proper pacing and the standard to which all shows should strive. No wonder then as to why some reviews labeled the pilot of Dark Matter as a ‘slog’ early on and complained about the series lacking excitement and incident.
Admittedly, it’s not until Episode 7 that Dark Matter really gets good. The first six episodes of S1 are a little bumpy, as the show is still getting some of the chinks out of its armor. But in its final three hours, it becomes clear that Dark Matter is a legitimate-ly good television show, one that never really got the ratings, nor the critical coverage it deserved. So, if you’re a sci-fi fan, give Dark Matter a shot.
Hopefully, one day it will be revived, allowing its fans to get some real closure.
If you liked this article, be sure to check out the interview I conducted with the series’ creator:
But what do you think? Have you seen ‘Dark Matter’? Does a future run by multinational corporations seem plausible to you? Any other shows you know and love that were cancelled before they could reach a conclusion? Please,
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I think I saw the first season when it aired, but I dont' believe I continued. Maybe a good time to revisit.
I was a huge fan of Dark Matter; I really enjoyed that era of SyFy programming (Continuum, Killjoys), but Dark Matter was easily the best by far. Devastating cancellation on the heels of an amazing (final) season. Thanks for sharing - I couldn't agree more with all of your points (though 13 episode seasons, instead of 22, certainly helped it bridge the gap between modern serialization and classic episodic meandering).