Dark Matter, SyFy's new space show, premieres June 12th
- Thread starter Quinton O'Connor
- Start date
Well....that was deathly dull. Paper thin plot, cardboard archetypes, dreary clichéd dialogue and absolutely zero chemistry. I'd already figured out the twist ending less than 10 mins in and by the 20 min mark I was actually starting to drop off. It was like a sub-par episode of The Outer Limits, only they took what should have been just the first 20 mins and stretched it out to a whole episode. But I think where it lost me was when they started in the the sexual innuendo with the Captain (because she was obviously the Captain right from the offset.) What is this, the mid 90's?
Normally I give a new show a good three episodes, but I think I'm already out on this one.
Normally I give a new show a good three episodes, but I think I'm already out on this one.
I don't mean awkward in the sense that they were acting awkward. I mean awkward in the sense that the dialog is forced and stilted. That scene where 2 comes to 1's door and there's that moment where he thinks she's there for sex, then they make sure to get a lot of shots of people staring at her ass. They're taking shortcuts to inform the audience to whom to focus their sexual interest, when they could have established that naturally.
Did you guys really not predict the twist about ten minutes in?
I was excited when I clicked on this thread, then I watched the "Sneak Peek" for season 1, and..........
*Sigh*
Looks horrible. It's like Stargate Universe meets Farscape and just comes off as cheesy. The only plus that comes to mind is...diverse cast?
They should've just fought to keep Stargate on the air. By the time Universe rolled around, the whole show mythology was running like a well-oiled machine and still being updated to offer endless possibilities. This looks DOA.
*Sigh*
Looks horrible. It's like Stargate Universe meets Farscape and just comes off as cheesy. The only plus that comes to mind is...diverse cast?
They should've just fought to keep Stargate on the air. By the time Universe rolled around, the whole show mythology was running like a well-oiled machine and still being updated to offer endless possibilities. This looks DOA.
Well, after watching the pilot, I no longer think this was the story idea for Stargate Universe's possible third season. But really, I wasn't all that impressed. If anything, it kind of comes across as a combination of SGU and Firefly.
The characters at this point, are just a bunch of space opera clichés. You got the laid back cool guy with a heart of gold and wants to do the right thing. The responsible woman who has assumed the mantle of leadership. The psychotic guy who loves guns. The silent guy who seems very proficient in a fight. The teenage genius who knows random fact and blurts them out at inappropriate times. The black guy. The blonde in a skin tight outfit.
I don't know, it's not a bad show, but there's a lot of room for improvement here.
The characters at this point, are just a bunch of space opera clichés. You got the laid back cool guy with a heart of gold and wants to do the right thing. The responsible woman who has assumed the mantle of leadership. The psychotic guy who loves guns. The silent guy who seems very proficient in a fight. The teenage genius who knows random fact and blurts them out at inappropriate times. The black guy. The blonde in a skin tight outfit.
I don't know, it's not a bad show, but there's a lot of room for improvement here.
I think that, by the very nature of the premise, it would be hard to get too deep a sense of the characters this early on. Even they don't know who they are yet.
As for Six/Griffin, if anything, he came across to me as "the laid-back guy." He seemed the most relaxed, phlegmatic, uncommitted member of the group, aside from disliking the food bars. There's no reason the character as scripted couldn't have been played by an actor of any ethnicity. Granted, he is black in the original comic, but not all the characters are the same in the show as they were in the comic. Specifically, Five and the Android (and possibly Four/Ryo -- hard to tell from the art I can find) have been gender-swapped for the show.
By the way, here's an older page from Joseph Mallozzi's blog about the early casting search for the characters, plus suggestions for their "Stargate equivalents." Interestingly, One/Jace is compared to Eli, Two/Portia to Carter, Three/Marcus to Vala (!), Four/Ryo to Teal'c, Five/Kid to Ford, Six/Griffin to Ronon, and the Android to Woolsey. Although I'm sure one shouldn't take the comparisons too literally, since there are already some clear differences. The Ford and Ronon comparisons don't seem to fit the screen characters that well. But I like the description of the Android as "less a robot and more a surly butler." (Interestingly, when Mallozzi asked for casting suggestions in the comments, there were nominations for Jodelle Ferland and Roger Cross.)
The writing and acting look pretty terrible based on the one minute trailer. Plus, the executive producers are Mallozzi and Mullie? They were by far the safest and most unimaginative shepherds of the Stargate franchise. how long until deep space gives way to Planet Vancouver? I'll wait for Netflix on this one.
That's what i thought when i saw the name now.. i've watched SG1 here and then, watched Atlantis for the most part but Destiny lost me pretty quick all because of the insange generic and unimaginative way the shows were run. Every once in a while they had some good episodes, the sweeps episodes were often amazing and everytime they were followed by dreary bottle episodes to save on money after the sweeps episodes ate up the budget.
Based on that alone i would be hesitant to watch this show and now that i scrolled through the posts i'll pass. If it picks up and gets to actually be good i can always binge watch it later on.
I'm surprised at the negativity. It wasn't the best thing ever, but it was okay. Nothing about it seemed egregiously bad, and the cast has potential. Heck, at least it's a TV series that's actually set in outer space. The only one of those Syfy has had since Stargate Universe ended was Metal Hurlant Chronicles, which wasn't very good. So I'm willing to look for the best in this one.
It wasn't actively bad so much as it was just dull, unimaginative and cliché ridden. Nobody had *any* chemistry. The "twist" was so clumsily foreshadowed it was obvious what it was going to be less than 10 mins in.
It was by the numbers, middle of the road, b-movie grade story telling.
In short: it was boring and that's generally worse that being terrible. At least some terrible things are interesting or attempt something new.
I wouldn't quite say that. Granted, it is from the same production designer, James Robbins, and there are some broad-stroke similarities to the look; the shuttle interior in particular seemed very similar. But at least Destiny felt like a somewhat "alien" design. This seems to be a humans-only universe, rumors of alien monsters aside. Also, Destiny had a sense of age to it, this mysterious ancient (and Ancient) place that was a character in its own right. Raza is just... a ship. A damaged ship that's unfamiliar to the characters because of their memory loss, but otherwise not particularly old or mysterious.
Although what I'm basically saying here is that I thought SGU's designs were more interesting than these. This a pretty bland-looking show so far. And the ship designs that io9 has been posting lately (here, here, and here) haven't impressed me much. Still, that's not a dealbreaker, just a mild disappointment.
Anyway, for what it's worth, David Hewlett and Wil Wheaton will have recurring roles on the series, and Torri Higginson will be turning up too. We'll probably see a lot of familiar faces from Stargate and other Syfy/Vancouver productions, so it might be worth watching for that alone.
True, thing is aside from skin colour, I find both One and Six to be essentially the same character, only One is more noble and heroic, while Six is more about jokes and wisecracks. I will admit, Six is a nice departure for Roger Cross, who is an actor who seems to constantly get cast as unlikeable assholes.
Four definitely came across as very Teal'c-like, and I suppose I can see the similarity between Two and Carter. One seems more Cameron Mitchell to me, and Six kind of a weird combination of Sheppard (likeable guy who'll kick your ass if provoked) and McKay (complaining about food). Five doesn't really remind me of any Stargate characters, if anything she is River Tam from Firefly transplanted into the show, just replace rich privileged family who essentially abandoned her with royalty apparently defeated in a coup.
Actually, this show is filmed in Toronto, so we likely won't see the omni-present pine forest.
I think that's taking the dream she described too literally. Remember, she said it wasn't her own dream. As I said, if she's having other people's dreams, then maybe there's a connection to the others having had their memories taken from them.
And the equivalent character in the comics was a boy. So I don't think they intended a River parallel.
Why not? They switched the android's gender too. Maybe they wanted a more gender-balanced cast than the comic had.
I didn't even know this was going to air yet. Was it just me or was this a very quiet premiere?
Five IS actually a girl in the comic.
Four is male.
Only the android has had its gender switched for the show.