DARK MATTER: So far so good?

I have to say – when Syfy cancelled a few of my favorite shows (Warehouse 13 and Being Human to name a few) I was upset. I couldn’t see their vision for their future. Thankfully they had a clear idea in mind because the shows Syfy has chosen for their lineup are fantastic. That brings us to Dark Matter.

Dark Matter, based on a graphic novel published by Dark Horse, is the story of second chances. Six people find themselves drifting on a spaceship with no recollection of who they are. Something that Melissa O’Neil who plays 2 says she and the rest of the cast embraced, “I actually loved it. Being a first-time performer on television, I didn’t really know what to expect, and I thought that it was such a lovely thing to encounter, that we were going through what our characters were going through. At the same time, we were discovering what was happening and how to interact with each other in the exact way that our characters would be doing it. We were just piecing it together as it came to us. But I think that there is a great bit of truth that’s happening on screen, that we’ve all done our homework to prepare our characters as much as we could. There is honesty that’s happening there as we navigate that.”

When asked what would set apart Dark Matter from the slew of other space dramas coming out this year Joseph Mallozzi (Executive Producer) said, “Well, first and foremost, it’s a ship-based sci-fi which, I think, differentiates it from anything else out there. Tonally, it’s a lot of fun. You watch this at the pilot and there’s more of that. At the end of the day, I think fans like to tune in for the character and just essentially to have a good time. And I think that’s what we’re going to offer them. And at the same time, like I said, I’m not sure how serialized the other shows are but our show is very serialized in that I mentioned those twists and turns and surprises. There’s going to be a lot of reward for the audiences who tune in.”

By the end of the second episode they manage to figure out a small part of their past. They were murdering mercenaries. This doesn’t sit well with most of them and it appears the series will be about them deciding who they really want to be. Melissa O’Neil says, “. It’s that we wake up and we are who we are in that particular moment. And then we are confronted with these facts about who we were, and how do we walk through our lives having everybody else who we don’t remember know who we are, know what we are capable of and treat us like that? How do we move forward into that kind of a landscape? It’s very interesting, I think.”

Have you been watching Dark Matter? What do you think? Are you going to continue watching?

Dark Matter airs Friday 10/9c on Syfy