Article originally published as DARK MATTER Review on Seat42F.
SyFy’s
DARK MATTER, based on the graphic novel, begins this week feeling very
much like a stand-alone episode of a science fiction anthology series.
Six people wake up on a generic damaged spaceship with no memory of who
they are and what they are doing. Working together, somewhat, they
attempt to piece together their identities and mission, which may not be
as good an idea as that sounds.
As we first meet the cast, self-named
for the order in which they woke up, they seem pretty easy to
pigeonhole. There’s One (Marc Bendavid, Hard Rock Medical), the
pretty-boy peacemaker. Two (Canadian theatre star Melissa O’Neil) is a
natural, fair-minded leader. Three (Anthony Lemke, Good Witch) is the
angry one. Four (Alex Mallari Jr., True Justice) has some mad martial
arts skills. Five (Jodelle Ferland, The Cabin in the Woods) is a weird,
super-intelligent kid. Six (Roger R. Cross, Continuum, 24) is a
gentle-leaning giant.
As they begin to figure out their
personalities, if not their backstories, muscle memory taking over where
they lack, they end up being a pretty bland group. Cross is the only
very recognizable member of the ensemble, but in this case, going with
unknowns does not pay off. It feels like a cast of second-stringers
making a low-budget program that isn’t likely to garner a sizeable
American audience.
The most impressive face on screen is
that of Zoie Palmer (Lost Girl), who plays The Android that can connect
directly with the ship. Aside from a few juicy bits for Ferland, Palmer
is the only one who gets to show range and prove why she deserves to be a
main player in this show. She brings a mix of coldness and sly humor
that make her stand out in an otherwise mediocre group.
The story at the heart of the DARK
MATTER pilot doesn’t help matters much. As I mentioned at the start,
this feels like an anthology installment, basically a short story with
not much momentum to keep it going. The ‘twist’ at the end of the
episode could have been tweaked only slightly and this would have been a
vaguely interesting, not very memorable, stand-alone hour. To keep this
plot going for any length of time, the mystery at the heart of the
piece needs to be grand and meaningful. Neither of those adjectives seem
to apply here.
The best thing that DARK MATTER has
going for it is that it’s on the SyFy channel. While low-quality shows
don’t last long on the network (though high-quality ones don’t fare too
much better), it is in the right place to find the small segment of the
viewership that this will appeal to. Those attracted by the simple
narrative, one familiar to the genre, may be interested in this example
of it. Plus, given all the cheesy-on-purpose TV movies that will air
around this, DARK MATTER may look good by comparison because at least it
has a story that seems to make sense and there are no awful, gory
effects.
Could DARK MATTER have been better?
Absolutely. If it boasted a cast on the level of, say, Firefly, with its
magnetic personalities and a deep mythology behind the story, the
construct could remain the same and it would improve it a lot. What that
means to me is that DARK MATTER itself is not an inherently bad idea,
since I see a way it could be really good, but just comes across as
poorly executed. That’s a shame, because no one involved seems to be
doing a bad job; there’s just an overall blandness to most aspects of
the production that cannot be overcome.
DARK MATTER premieres Friday, June 12th at 10 p.m. ET.
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