Dark Matter premiered on June 12, 2015, on Syfy and Space with a hook that practically wrote its own trailer. Six people wake from stasis on a derelict ship called the Raza in the farthest reaches of space. Their memories are gone. Their only clues are a cargo bay full of weapons and a destination: a remote mining colony about to become a war zone. The crew is a band of amnesiacs, and the show’s central question is whether they will turn their backs on history or whether their pasts will catch up with them.
That question sounds like prestige television. What Dark Matter actually delivers is a workmanlike space adventure that never quite decides how seriously to take itself.
Trailer, via Sky Sci-Fi.
Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie Build From Stargate Parts
Dark Matter was created by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, who developed the concept while working on the Stargate franchise. It was originally published as a comic book series in 2012 before Prodigy Pictures brought it to television in association with Space and Syfy. An order for 13 episodes was placed for the first season, which premiered on June 12, 2015.
The Stargate pedigree shows. Mallozzi and Mullie know how to build a ship, populate it with bickering specialists, and send it somewhere dangerous on a weekly basis. What they do not do here is push past that formula. Dark Matter has the shape of a show that was assembled from parts that already worked elsewhere, and it trusts those parts to carry more weight than they can.
The premise does the heavy lifting in the pilot. A group of people in stasis pods awaken aboard the Raza with no memories of who they are or their lives before awakening. They assume the names One through Six in the order in which they left stasis. Also onboard is a female-looking android with a wireless neural link to the ship.
That naming device is the show’s best idea. It gives the audience a clean roster and gives the characters a reason to keep asking the same question the viewer is asking.
The Crew of the Raza
The cast is the reason to keep watching past the first few episodes. Melissa O’Neil plays Two, Anthony Lemke plays Three, Alex Mallari Jr. plays Four, Jodelle Ferland plays Five, Roger Cross plays Six, and Zoie Palmer plays The Android. The show spreads its attention across all of them, which is both a strength and a problem.
- Two: Melissa O’Neil
- Three: Anthony Lemke
- Four: Alex Mallari Jr.
- Five: Jodelle Ferland
- Six: Roger Cross
- The Android: Zoie Palmer
Zoie Palmer’s Android is the standout. She has the least human material to work with and finds the most in it. The Android’s wireless neural link to the ship makes her a piece of infrastructure as much as a person, and Palmer plays the tension between those two facts without overselling it. When the show needs a scene to land, it usually hands the scene to her.
The rest of the crew is more uneven. Lemke gets the most obvious assignment as Three, the mercenary who leans into violence, and he plays it with a grin that keeps the character from becoming a chore. O’Neil has the hardest job as the de facto leader, and the show asks her to carry authority before it has given her a reason to have any. Mallari’s Four is stoic to the point of vanishing. Ferland’s Five is the youngest and the most curious, which makes her the audience’s way in, and she handles that role well enough.
A Cargo Bay Full of Weapons and a War Zone
At the end of the pilot, the crew discovers they are a band of mercenaries who rank among the worst criminals in the galaxy. That reveal is the engine of the series. It leaves them with the dilemma of continuing their original selves’ violent path or seeking redemption, and their lives are frequently complicated by secrets from their forgotten pasts.
This is where Dark Matter should get interesting, and where it mostly does not. The show keeps returning to the same conflict without deepening it. A character learns something ugly about who they were. The crew argues about whether that matters. They take a job, usually a violent one, and the job goes wrong. Repeat.
The mining colony from the pilot sets the template. The crew arrives somewhere dangerous, discovers the situation is worse than they were told, and has to choose a side. Dark Matter is comfortable in that groove, and comfort is not the same as ambition.
Three Seasons, 39 Episodes, and a Cancellation
Dark Matter ran for three seasons and 39 episodes. The first season premiered on June 12, 2015. On September 5, 2015, the series was renewed for a second season. It was renewed for a third season in September 2016, which premiered on June 9, 2017. On September 1, 2017, Syfy canceled the series. The last episode aired on August 25, 2017.
That is a short life for a show with this many moving parts. Three seasons is not much room for six leads, six backstories and a premise that keeps promising a reckoning. The series ends in August 2017 with the cancellation arriving a week later.
The renewal history is worth noting on its own. Syfy picked the show up for a second season within three months of the premiere, and for a third season roughly a year after that. Whatever the network saw in the ratings, it was enough to keep ordering more until it wasn’t.
What Dark Matter Sets Up
The show’s structure is its own kind of gamble. Six leads means six backstories, six arcs and six sets of secrets, and the series has to decide which ones it can afford to serve. That is a real constraint, and it shapes everything the show does with its cast.
The premise itself is durable. Amnesiacs with a criminal past, a ship full of weapons, and a destination that turns out to be a war zone — that is a pilot that earns its hook. The show’s problem is what comes after the hook, not the hook itself.
The Android sits outside that problem. She is the one character who arrives without a forgotten past to recover, and the show gives her the wireless neural link that ties her to the ship. What the series does with that is the part of Dark Matter that feels least like a rerun of something else.
Where the Show Falls Short
The redemption question is the show’s central engine, and it is also where the writing is thinnest. The crew learns it is a band of mercenaries among the worst criminals in the galaxy, and the series keeps circling that fact without pressing on it. A premise this loaded needs the show to keep finding new angles on it. Dark Matter mostly finds the same angle.
The tone is another mismatch. A show about amnesiac war criminals could go grim, and Dark Matter does not. That is a choice, and it is not automatically the wrong one. But the lightness sits oddly against material that keeps gesturing at atrocity.
The cast carries more than the scripts do. Palmer, Lemke and O’Neil are doing real work with characters who are often written as types. When the show gives them a scene with weight, they land it. When it does not, they hold the line anyway.
The Verdict on Dark Matter
Dark Matter is a 5.8 out of 10. It is a competent science fiction series with a strong cast and a clean premise, and it never becomes more than that. Three seasons and 39 episodes is enough time to build something that lasts, and Dark Matter spends most of that time treading water.
The show’s best asset is its cast, and its biggest liability is a premise it never figures out how to escalate. The amnesia hook is a starting point, not a destination, and the series treats it as both.
Mallozzi and Mullie had a comic book, a Stargate résumé and a network willing to keep ordering seasons. What they did not have, by the end, was a story that knew where it was going. That is the part worth watching for anyone studying how genre television gets built and then stops.
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