Be aware, contains spoilers!

It has become a huge blog, too big I think! I will try to make the season Two blog shorter.

2022/10/01

Dark Matter has become one of my favorite shows! I’ve watched it I believe 4 or 5 times now. Dark Matter was announced when there wasn’t much SCI-FI set in space on TV so damned right I was excited, coming from the mind who also was heavily involved in the Stargate shows I also love: Joseph Mallozzi. In 2015, when Dark Matter first aired, two more SCI-FI TV shows set in space came to life, The Expanse and Killjoys! So from zero, in 2014, to three in 2015, not bad.

The characters: One aka Jace Corso, Two aka Portia Lin aka Rebecca, Three aka Marcus Boone, Four aka Ryo Ishida, Five aka Emily Kolburn, Six aka Kal Varrix and the Android.

I have to say from the very start my absolute favorite character is Three – Marcus Boone (Anthony Lemke). He is loud mouth, says things others would only think, is rude towards his fellow shipmates, especially to One – Jace Corso. He has a lot of humor, also when he is not trying to humorous he still is, that’s the best humor in my book! One (Marc Bendavid) he is the conscience of the crew, he is the opposite of Three, probably also why they always bud heads and further on, there are other reasons also. Two (Melissa O’Neil) a natural “born” leader, does immediately take the role of the captain. It immediately becomes clear she can hold her own, later in the first season we see (in part) why.

Four (Alex Mallari jr.), he is definitely a swordsman, even without having his memory, he flawlessly uses the swords, instinct, has an agenda of his own, is a bit of a loner, not my favorite character, but getting more warmed up to him. Five (Jodelle Ferland), a kid (although during the first season she already is 21 in real life!) who is a Wizz kid, knows how to get around in the system, fixes things. Unclear to the crew why she is there, she has a strong connection to Six. Six (Roger Cross), essentially seems to be a good guy, also with a conscience, but not as outspoken as One. He takes care of Five, keeps an eye on her because he is concerned for her, to be with 5 criminals on a ship, even though they have no memory. The Android (Zoie Palmer), she is connected to the ship the Raza, after a hard confrontation with Three and the other guys Two removes her security programming so she no longer sees the crew as a threat. In some ways you perhaps can compare her with Data from Star Trek: TNG, although she is an android, very early in the season you see she has a fondness for the crew, she sees that crewmembers find her important, she is seen as an equal which she really appreciates, she wants to be liked by her crewmates and wants to keep them save.

It is the 27^th century when the crew on the Raza wakes up not knowing who they are, where they from. The ships data on them is wiped clean so they also don’t even know their own names. Because of that they call themselves One through Six, depending on who woke up first from the stasis. The ship is dead in the water, doesn’t go anywhere. The crew is roaming through the ship to find food, stuff of value, and if they are truly alone on this vessel. Three then finds another stasis pod, a woman lying in there. It turns out to be an android who is not really friendly and beats Three and other crew members to a pulp before Two and Five are able to shut her down remotely. Two is able to remove her security programming and suddenly the android is very amicable and in the service of the crew of the Raza. Three is still hesitant towards her, as also the other crew members who fought her. At that point the crew don’t even know the name of the ship they are on.

The Android does manage to get the ship working again and she also finds their original destination. They are met with people with arms, they are expecting a fight, people are called the Raza who will kill them according to the ones they meet. The crew decides to give half of the weapons to the people of this world, still not realizing that they are the ones who the people on the planet were waiting for to fight against.

Meanwhile Android has found out their real identities, each of them are murderers, smugglers and such, except for five. Now that they know the truth they still are prepared to help those people, although Three is the one who is most reluctant to do that. When they are on the planet, in orbit a ship of Ferrous Corp arrives, they also sent down soldiers who’s start to fight against our crew and the people on the planet. The Raza then gets a visit from the leader of the Ferrous Corp ship, telling Two to leave orbit and let them handle it. Two does what is being asked of her, which the crew on the planet finds treachery. However Two comes back with other ships, from another organization, the Mikkei Combine, leader Commander Truffault (Torri Higginson). Together they make Ferrous Corp take off. I was a fan of Torri Higginson in Stargate Atlantis, thought it was not smart to dump her the way they did, so I was happy to see her in Dark Matter as a recurring character.

The folks on the planet never realized that Raza wasn’t a race of people, but actually a ship with mercenaries. Five finds out that someone deliberately removed their memories, because they are dangerous. The 3^rd episode looks to be a bottle show, which means, saving money, quite early in the season. Before they arrive at the station they are headed, Five finds a body of a young boy. The crew figures it can be only one of them who killed that kid. Android as lie detector tries to find out who is the one but when they all haven’t lied it means that the perpetrator has also wiped her or his memory also. Then the Raza drops out of FTL unscheduled, the Android volunteers to try and solve it but she has to go out of out the ship. She fixes the problem but is hit by an electrical storm, Three wants to leave her behind but others prevent that. It also becomes known that Five is having dreams, not necessarily her own dreams but also dreams from the crew of the Raza. In the final moments we see a character at the bar asking about the Raza, when he identifies himself, it is Jace Corso and he looks exactly the same.

When they arrive at the station it was clear to anyone what needed to be done, to not stand out, get food, supplies, repairs, fuel and leave pretty much unnoticed! Well this goes sideways of course! Two and Five get in trouble at the casino, One and Three try to sell guns but the real Jace Corso double crosses them. He was the one who was supposed to be on the Raza. Six let’s his wound be treated but when the doctor scans him, he gets a warning signal that Six is a wanted man. They manage to escape but all they did was refuel!

Now Three has something to blackmail One with, because he knows One is an imposter. This makes for lots of funny moments, them bickering all the time. In the 5^th episode we see get to see their handler, Tabor Calchek (David Hewlett), he is very angry with them for blowing their last job (first episode). He has another job for them, not for their usual fee because they fucked up the last job. It is supposed to be easy, they should salvage a shipwreck seemingly deserted but the intel isn’t correct, the crew has been turned into zombies. Apparently the mission of this ship was to go to a forbidden planet where the trees lived tens of thousands years, scientist thought this could mean immortality also for humans so a pharmaceutical research facility was set up there but it did go horribly wrong, people turned into zombies. Again some funny scenes with One and Three, I understand why they are paired together, it is a bit like with Babylon 5’s G’Kar and Londo, all the bickering, it’s fun to watch. Anyway Two has been bitten by such a zombie which would normally mean she would also turn but in a matter of hours the virus is no longer in her body and when she later checks her bite-wound, it is no longer there.

We see Hewlett’s character Tabor again, he is again angry at them for blowing up the ship she should have salvaged but when he gets a big mouth back from Two, he backs down. Because the food is running out, Five agrees to go under a sort of hypnotism to try and find out the code for the big locked vault they have found on the ship. Five dreams about Four, how he is being framed for murdering his father, she dreams about herself,  about how her friends all died and the boy who was found few episodes back, was also a friend of hers. She dreams about Six, he feels very guilty for having to kill thousands of people, ordered by the General and she has a dream where she sees One as a kid, the dream feels so good, she doesn’t wanna leave. Six goes under also to try and get her to come back.

So would have liked to have seen a bigger role for David Hewlett, he is a wonderful actor, love him on Stargate Atlantis, I really don’t understand we never see him in anything else. Even in this small role he nails it, he shows his acting skills.

Five finally dreams the code of the vault inside the ship: Maplethorpe. They find a wealth of stuff, weapons, food, you name it. They also find a stasis pod, a woman is lying in there. They take her out, her name is Sarah, she is ill, that’s why she was in stasis. She and Three have a history together, she saved him from possible mortal wounds. They also find another android in a box, one who seems nice and helpful, even the Raza android gets a bit jealous because all of the attention the new android is getting. But this new android was sent to them on purpose by an enemy of the Raza crew. At one point she gets a new directive and becomes an evil android. She temporarily takes over the ship, meanwhile Three puts Sarah back in the stasis pod because she deteriorates but due to some electric fusing, the statis pod malfunctions and kills Sarah. One and Two hook-up after Two and Three had a thing earlier in the season.

The Raza crew arrive at a space station, Six goes after the General via a transport which transfers his consciousness to another body, a clone, without getting harmed yourself. He wants revenge, the General tricked him into killing 10.000 innocent people. Four and One follow him, when they arrive as clones, Four sees One’s true face, he must come clean with the crew. Three is mourning the loss of Sarah, Four makes contact with his brother, who now sits on the throne which was his. One searches for his real name and finds out that Three was the number 1 suspect in his wife’s murder. Five says that she is convinced that the android has feelings. Fun thing, Five asks Six to go with her to the movies, Star Wars 36 is in the cinema’s!

Four is missing, it appears he has invited his brother to come to a certain planet to try and tell him what really happened but Four’s stepmother made sure this doesn’t happen, she sends Four’s former teacher and a few men to apprehend him. The Crew of the Raze don’t let a crewmember behind and save him. Four kills his teacher, even though they were, sort of, friends, to send a message. One tells Two he now knows why he joined the crew, to kill Three. Two and Three are contemplating who could be the traitor and in the final moments 3 Ferrous Corp ships jump into normal space and begin firing weapons on the Raza.

In the 10^th episode we see Torri Higginson again as Commander Truffault. She has a job for the Raza crew and if they don’t accept, the Mikkei will no longer be their friends. They also have to work together with another crew. Personally every one of that crew was annoying to me, characters you instantly don’t like, Wexler (Ennis Esmer) was, I think the worst, but also Tash (Jessica Sipos) and Vons (Jon Cor) were especially annoying characters. Anyway the op goes according to plan, they have to steal a device. But when they are back on the ship, Wexler decides to double cross our heroes. Why? Because he doesn’t want to split the money and he wants the ship. When Two does not want to give the code to the vault, he threatens to space her! When Three give the code, Wexler can’t resist it and spaces her anyway! That’s how this episode ends!

Wexler has made a deal with another faction, meanwhile the Raza crew are being locked up, baffled of what just had happened, he killed Two for no reason. One is the first one who is getting tortured because he supposedly has a big stash of money lying around on some moon, but that is the real Corso. Wexler than tries to use Five as means for One to talk but suddenly the ship is dead in the water and Five is needed to solve that. Five recognizes this problem from before and says one of them needs to fix it outside of the ship. Vons is going outside the ship but when he floats of the ship, his lover Tash blames Five and wants to kill her, but then suddenly Two is back on board and in a hand to hand fight with Tash kills her!  Meanwhile the help Wexler requested is now on board but Two takes them out one by one. The crew, still in the vault, almost out of air. Two does the same with Wexler what he did to her, he has to give the code otherwise he gets spaced. Well this time Two cannot resist it…when the guys learn about Two’s resurrection, they are a bit squeamish about her. The sell does go through but as soon as they leave the planet, the device becomes unstable and destroys the this world killing everyone on it! Meanwhile the android, analyses Two and comes with a conclusion that she is advanced bio-engineered, she hasn’t been born but created, she isn’t an android, she does have longs, hart etc but she has been created.

Next episode is one of my favorites I think, Five has a dream about putting a device under the table, when she wakes and goes looking for it, she finds it. The recording on it is not good for thrusting Two. Tabor Calchek contacts them and has a job for them, from Ferrous Corp and if they refuse they don’t have any friends left. But it is a trap immediately after they arrive they got captured, Alex Rook (Wil Wheaton) and his men expected them, they want Two, aka Rebecca according to Rook. She belongs to him, she hasn’t been born but created, by him and his scientists in this very facility. He advises the Crew of the Raza to leave, never coming back because she is home. Meanwhile, Two has no powers there, they have a system running that makes sure she poses no threat and the leading scientist hates her guts because of all his colleagues she killed during her first escape. Obviously this is not what happens, the crew know they cannot come back because of the security, but the Android can, and volunteers. Rook apparently also has a boss, he seems to want Two’s body! Have to say, Wil Wheaton has come a long way since Wesley Crusher, great actor and always a fun to watch.

In the final episode of the 1^st season, the crew doesn’t trust each other as they did before, after everything that happened, when the Android also has been taking out, it becomes worse, first they think perhaps someone from Rook’s men has been hiding on the ship but when a device is stolen from the vault, Two realizes it has to be one of the crew, because of the code. While they all have their guns raised at each other, they notice a ship closing in. It is Six who is the one working for the Galactic Authority, he was the traitor! The Raza crew has been captured.

Trivia: The lead actors didn't learn who the traitor was until the final day of shooting. Each of the lead cast were required to do mock fittings of the traitor mask. Before the final scene was filmed Joseph Mallozzi revealed to the cast who the traitor was.

Final Word:

This blog has become a bit longer than intended, but the first part is mainly introduction of the cast. It has been a great rewatch till now, was really missing this show, very happy to have it on physical media, Blu-ray, so I can watch it in the best possible quality! Hopefully we will see some closure one way or the other. Hope you did find it an interesting read, I will try to be a bit shorter with the second season.

Screencaps: Google Search