Exactly.
Dark Matter, SyFy's new space show, premieres June 12th
- Thread starter Quinton O'Connor
- Start date
Exactly.
The android on this show really bugs me. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but she's..."weird".
I like her weirdness. It makes the show more tolerable. Especially this episode where the humans spent half the time just moving crates around.
I guess that makes sense. Hopefully it's more something like that and less "Look at how badass this guy can be!" on the part of the writers.
Totally agree with you guys about the wicked stepmother, though. Ugh.
But Four didn't love Akira. Ryo did. Four has no memory of Akira, or anyone else for that matter. All he knows about his past is what Five told him and what little research he's done on his own. He has no emotional connection to any of it because he doesn't remember. Four knows that his former self was dealt a grave injustice, and he wants it avenged. Killing Akira was a means to that end. It was a sacrifice that would have hurt Ryo deeply, but it cost Four nothing at all.
This also stuck out to me. I found it somewhat amusing.
The first time I saw it it made sense. They just got back from buying a bunch of stuff after a long drought so "yeah, lets show off our goods."
But you're halfway into the story, tension is rising and Two goes to hash it out with Three and he's still in the cargo hold unpacking and moving shit around? It just struck me as odd.
That said, in a comparison between this and Killjoys I'd say this show's the lesser of two evils. Michelle Lovretta's trying too hard to make Killjoys "Lost Girl with spaceships."
I didn't see this until today, because I was at the Shore Leave convention over the weekend. It's weird to watch Roger Cross on TV when I was actually talking to him just yesterday. (He doesn't seem quite as tall and imposing in person. But he's much closer to Six in personality than to some of his other roles.) Anyway, this episode made it clear that he's the best actor in the cast.
The stuff on the ship worked pretty well for me, but I still don't like this whole feudal-Japanese-empire-in-space thing. Without some kind of backstory to justify why this empire exists and is so committed to historical playacting and low technology (seriously, needle and thread for a suture, when they have nanotech and hyperspace engines?), it just seems silly and forced, a non sequitur tacked onto a futuristic universe. I can't care about Four's plight or his family conflicts when the whole scenario feels like nothing more than a lazy stereotype. It's a symptom of how weak this show's worldbuilding overall has been, in contrast to Killjoys, whose intricately thought-out setting is one of its strongest features.
And apparently the Space Samurai aren't the only ones lacking in futuristic technology. Those random bandits in the woods had a very 20th-century shotgun. Indeed, everyone seemed to be still using gunpowder-based projectile weapons. Which is a conceit that seems to be used in a lot of sci-fi these days, I guess because ray guns are seen as dated. Still, I tend to think that futuristic projectile weapons would use something like miniature linear accelerators to fire bullets. That's just a matter of the user's health, since guns are very, very loud and can cause hearing damage in enclosed spaces, like spaceships or station corridors. Developing quieter firearms would be pretty much a necessity.
(Didn't Firefly actually have something like this? They used bullets, but the gun sound effect was more muffled and future-ish than a plain old "bang"?)
No, they were in addition to the whisky. The whisky was in the same crate as the juice; the pills were in a different crate.
The stuff on the ship worked pretty well for me, but I still don't like this whole feudal-Japanese-empire-in-space thing. Without some kind of backstory to justify why this empire exists and is so committed to historical playacting and low technology (seriously, needle and thread for a suture, when they have nanotech and hyperspace engines?), it just seems silly and forced, a non sequitur tacked onto a futuristic universe. I can't care about Four's plight or his family conflicts when the whole scenario feels like nothing more than a lazy stereotype. It's a symptom of how weak this show's worldbuilding overall has been, in contrast to Killjoys, whose intricately thought-out setting is one of its strongest features.
And apparently the Space Samurai aren't the only ones lacking in futuristic technology. Those random bandits in the woods had a very 20th-century shotgun. Indeed, everyone seemed to be still using gunpowder-based projectile weapons. Which is a conceit that seems to be used in a lot of sci-fi these days, I guess because ray guns are seen as dated. Still, I tend to think that futuristic projectile weapons would use something like miniature linear accelerators to fire bullets. That's just a matter of the user's health, since guns are very, very loud and can cause hearing damage in enclosed spaces, like spaceships or station corridors. Developing quieter firearms would be pretty much a necessity.
(Didn't Firefly actually have something like this? They used bullets, but the gun sound effect was more muffled and future-ish than a plain old "bang"?)
No, they were in addition to the whisky. The whisky was in the same crate as the juice; the pills were in a different crate.
^Yeah, but they could at least dub on a futuristic sound effect, like I think Firefly did. It did seem they were animating blips of light onto the gun barrels, not quite your normal muzzle flashes.
I'm just frustrated that we have so little context for any of this. We don't even know how far in the future the show is set. The contrast of high and low technologies is something that could make sense in any number of possible futures -- say, an Asimovian far future where civilizations have fallen and risen up again at varying times and paces so that the archaic coexists with the modern (although this show doesn't seem nearly that far ahead). But the show has revealed virtually nothing about the larger galaxy or its history, offered no context or explanation for the world we're being shown, so it all feels random and arbitrary, just a hodgepodge of tropes without anything to unify them or make them feel like they belong together in the same universe.
I'm just frustrated that we have so little context for any of this. We don't even know how far in the future the show is set. The contrast of high and low technologies is something that could make sense in any number of possible futures -- say, an Asimovian far future where civilizations have fallen and risen up again at varying times and paces so that the archaic coexists with the modern (although this show doesn't seem nearly that far ahead). But the show has revealed virtually nothing about the larger galaxy or its history, offered no context or explanation for the world we're being shown, so it all feels random and arbitrary, just a hodgepodge of tropes without anything to unify them or make them feel like they belong together in the same universe.
1967 CALLED IT WANTS ITS MATTE PAINTINGS BACK
You know what would be really cheap?
Silent pew pew guns with invisible emissions, that leave no physical damage on someone when they get killed.
Silent pew pew guns with invisible emissions, that leave no physical damage on someone when they get killed.
Imagine musicians that design fire arms, who rifle the barrels, and add vent ports in such a way to create specific sounds as a bullet is fired, like the gun is a flute or a whistle, rather a stark tube which creates a random utterance as it currently stands.
What if this customization became so exact that a the bullets passage up a barrel could even create, not just notes or a tune, but entire words.
Longer the barrel, longer the word or words, obviously.
Imagine if every time you pulled the trigger to your pistol, while trying to kill someone, that your gun said "You're awesome!" or "I luv you too!"
It's still better than the ones seen on Enterprise.1967 CALLED IT WANTS ITS MATTE PAINTINGS BACK
Oh, I forgot to mention: The flashbacks totally didn't work for me. The way the scenes were directed and edited, it looked like Four was having those memories (particularly in the second, where the camera was on him just before and after the flashback), but he can't. Are we supposed to believe that Akita -- who apparently didn't know about Four's memory loss -- was just sitting there doing an extended "As you know, Bob" riff and narrating these memories to Four? Or were we just being given a glimpse into a supporting character's memories that the main character remained unaware of, which would've just been narratively awkward as hell? The flashback format just made no sense in the context of this particular show.
Heck, it would've made the subplot more interesting if Four's loss of memory had actually been used -- say, he doesn't remember what Akita's talking about, but he has to pretend he does and avoid getting caught in a mistake. Or something about Akita's behavior puzzles him because he doesn't remember, and he doesn't know for sure what side Akita's really on. Instead, we got a plot that just ignored the whole memory-loss angle and didn't feel like it belonged in this series at all.
Heck, it would've made the subplot more interesting if Four's loss of memory had actually been used -- say, he doesn't remember what Akita's talking about, but he has to pretend he does and avoid getting caught in a mistake. Or something about Akita's behavior puzzles him because he doesn't remember, and he doesn't know for sure what side Akita's really on. Instead, we got a plot that just ignored the whole memory-loss angle and didn't feel like it belonged in this series at all.
Yeah, I think that's where I got confused too. They seemed to be talking as if Four completely remember him. Didn't he even say something about "talking to him in the hallway that night"?
^I didn't catch that part. Maybe we're supposed to think that Five sat down with him and told him all these memories in great detail? But doesn't that sort of squander the whole premise of the show? This was just a bad subplot, even aside from the stupid, grating, racist stereotype that Japanese people in the future are violent, sword-swinging throwbacks making one-note speeches about honor. I mean, for pity's sake, the Japanese weren't even like that in the real samurai era. That whole mythology of honorable swordsmen was invented retroactively in an era when the samurai class had become mostly bureaucrats who felt a need to romanticize their past. In reality, samurai fought more with bows and arrows than swords, because you don't have to risk your own life to shoot at someone from a distance.
Sure, of course, given that the Ishidas are a royal family, you could claim that they're doing the same thing, clinging to a romanticized myth of a past that never existed. But as long as we're not getting any evidence that the larger culture is not like this idiotic stereotype, as long as this is the only side of that culture we get to see, it's just a very, very bad idea, the worst, most cliched, most gratuitous part of this show's generally crappy worldbuilding.
Sure, of course, given that the Ishidas are a royal family, you could claim that they're doing the same thing, clinging to a romanticized myth of a past that never existed. But as long as we're not getting any evidence that the larger culture is not like this idiotic stereotype, as long as this is the only side of that culture we get to see, it's just a very, very bad idea, the worst, most cliched, most gratuitous part of this show's generally crappy worldbuilding.
While I agree 100% with your sentiment, I can't agree in this case. I was going to say the same thing but then realized that the "bang-bang" gun sounds and the "pew pew" linear accelerator/futuristic weapons sounds are all added in post-production. If you're adding a sound effect, then it doesn't cost any more to add one type of sound vs. another.
Making them lasers or some beam weapon is a different story. That's an additional optical effect and added expense. The sound effects were going to be added regardless f the type of sound.
I agree with the sentiment. A lot of the complaints I've seen about Dark Matter and Killjoys is summed up by production cost savings measures. The "shopping mall" space station. The warehouse/factory/concrete corridor for a space ship that looks very 21st century factory. Are we really that jaded and spoiled (for lack of a better word) that we can't forgive these shows for their budget saving measures? What happened to the group of science fiction fans that embraced Dr. Who or Blake's 7 in the 70s and 80s with it's shoestring budgets? I can forgive production values for the sake of story.
I'm just glad we're getting real space operas. Science fiction shows that are more than just 21st century Earth shows with some minor twist.
Although I did think it was funny that the space station interior looked like some terrestrial building and the groundside hideout the General's clone was in looked more like some space station interior.
And why is it I'm forgiving of Dark Matter or Killjoys using a brewery for an engine room but I condemn Star Trek 09 for doing the same?