James Cameron’s pilot for Dark Angel cost up to $10 million, and Fox promoted it hard. The two-hour premiere marked his television debut and drew 17.4 million viewers when it aired on October 3, 2000. What followed was two seasons, 42 episodes, one breakthrough star, and a second year Fox scheduled into the ground.
Trailer, via convar HUN.
Max Guevara and the Manticore Escapees
Dark Angel is set in 2019 in a dystopian Seattle. Jessica Alba plays Max Guevara, also known as X5-452, a genetically enhanced supersoldier who escaped as a child from a covert military facility called Manticore. By day she works as a bike messenger for a courier company called Jam Pony. By night she is a cat burglar, and she is always looking over her shoulder for government agents trying to drag her back.
The premise does a lot of work at once. Max is a fugitive, a worker, a thief and a sister. She is also searching for the other children who scattered after the escape, her genetically enhanced brothers and sisters. That search gives the show its engine.
Michael Weatherly plays Logan Cale, the second most prominent character. Cale is a wealthy cyber-journalist and vigilante who broadcasts under the alias Eyes Only. He recruits Max to help with his campaign against corruption and crime, and in return he helps her dig up information on the other Manticore escapees. It is a clean trade, and it gives the two leads a reason to keep talking to each other.
Jam Pony, Manticore, and the People Around Max
The supporting cast fills out Max’s world. Valarie Rae Miller plays Cynthia “Original Cindy” McEachin, Richard Gunn plays Calvin “Sketchy” Theodore, and Alimi Ballard plays Herbal Thought, all couriers at Jam Pony. J. C. MacKenzie plays Reagan “Normal” Ronald, the boss. Jennifer Blanc plays Kendra Maibaum, Max’s first roommate. John Savage plays the main antagonist, Col. Donald Lydecker, the man hunting Max and the other escapees.
Season two reshuffles the board. Lydecker is written out early. Herbal Thought and Kendra Maibaum do not appear at all. Kevin Durand arrives as Joshua, an experimental creature from Manticore with distinct canine facial features. Jensen Ackles returns as Alec McDowell, X5-494, the identical twin of Ben, X5-493, one of the original 12 escapees. Ashley Scott joins as Asha Barlow, a resistance fighter with a romantic interest in Cale. Martin Cummins plays the season’s main antagonist, Ames White, a National Security Agency agent tasked with destroying the Manticore escapees.
Two Seasons, Two Very Different Shows
The two seasons are not the same show, and the numbers make the case better than any argument.
| Season | Notable cast additions | Average viewers per episode |
|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | Alimi Ballard, Jennifer Blanc, John Savage | 10.4 million |
| Season 2 | Kevin Durand, Jensen Ackles, Ashley Scott, Martin Cummins | 6 million |
The first season aired on Tuesday nights and drew mainly positive reviews. It won several awards, including the People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Drama, and averaged 10.4 million viewers. Alba’s portrayal of Max drew mostly positive reviews and several awards of its own.
For season two, Fox moved the show to Friday night, a less desirable air time. The season picked up criticism for its new plot elements. Ratings fell to an average of 6 million viewers per episode. Fox canceled it.
The Casting Bet That Paid Off
More than a thousand young actresses were considered for Max. Cameron started reviewing audition tapes once the field narrowed to twenty or thirty applicants. He was not impressed with Alba’s tape at first.
“She had her head down, she was reading out of the script … she didn’t present herself all that well. But there was something about the way she read the script that copped an attitude that I liked,” Cameron said.
He kept coming back to her tape and eventually decided he needed to meet her. Alba was hired before the script was written. Eglee said the writers got to work backward. “We had the benefit of being able to write a script kind of backward, we were writing for this actress, with her cadences and her rhythms and her sensibilities and her attitude and her slang,” he said.
Alba spent a year training in martial arts and gymnastics and riding motorcycles.
Cameron took a plain view of the show’s odds. “If it flies, it flies. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t … If people connect with it, which I hope they will, fine. If we don’t find an audience, we deserve to be off the air. It’s that simple,” he said. Eglee later admitted the first season had been “routinely over budget” and worried it would factor into renewal. Fox “just barely” renewed the show for a second season.
What Dark Angel Actually Got Right
Fox spent heavily on the premiere’s promotional campaign, paying for theatrical trailers, billboards and guerilla marketing. Principal photography took place in Vancouver at Lionsgate Studios. Subsequent episodes had a considerably smaller budget than the pilot.
The case for the show rests on Alba and on the first season’s numbers. The case against it rests on what Fox did next. Moving a show from Tuesday to Friday is not a creative decision, but the ratings collapse that followed is real. Dark Angel was the only show produced by Cameron/Eglee Productions. A series of novels continued the storyline, and a video game adaptation followed.
Dark Angel is a good show that never got a third season. The first season drew 10.4 million viewers an episode and won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Drama. The second drew 6 million and was canceled. The published Rotten Tomatoes score is 65%, which corresponds to 6.5 of 10.
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