Long-awaited scifi treat

Dark Matter
Foxtel SyFy Channel, Saturday’s , 7.30pm (repeated Mondays)
I’M A science fiction freak – I can’t help it – from the moment I watched Doctor Who at the age of four, I was hooked but it’s a genre that mainstream television seems to treat (mostly) with disdain.
The reboot of Battlestar Gallactica was amazing television but free to air (particularly in this country) didn’t seem to know what to do with it. It was put on later and later until you just about had to send out a search party to find it.
So Pay TV (and things like Netflix) have been a bit of a godsend if you want to watch anything other than Doctor Who and the odd DC comic show). And it’s particularly great for bringing Canadian-made scifi to Australian viewers (some of the best stuff seems to be coming out of Canada these days – who knows why).
The latest offering is Dark Matter – which premiered on Foxtel a week ago. The chance to win a ticket to Comicon was the lure to get you watching. An interesting plotline kept the interest. Somewhat in the vein of Joss Wheedon’s totally underated Fire Fly (another show that suffered at the hand of free to air), this is a show about a crew with a chequered past. And Dark Matter starts in a highly creative way.
Imagine waking up on a ship floating aimlessly in space with no knowledge of who you are, where you are and what the heck is happening.
The crew is then attacked by an android and later shot at by another ship. After escaping, our group arrive at their ship’s intended destination: a colony on a planet waiting for a shipment of weapons like the one they are carrying, to defend from an approaching threat.
So they are the good guys right?
A decrypted ship’s file casts some doubt on that – in fact they learn five of them are wanted murderers and they’re not, as they had believed, there to help the people in question: they’re there to kill them.
This is space opera at its best and most fun (so far).
And if you are wondering about its pedigree – ep three is directed by Amanda Tapping the English-born Canadian actress, producer and director best known for portraying Samantha Carter in the Canadian-American military science fiction television series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis and Helen Magnus in the Syfy Channel series Sanctuary.
Like a lot of science fiction shows around at the moment – this started as a comic and has been adapted for the small screen (this seems to be a thing now!).
It started well, and if you are into a bit of science fiction it might just be worth going along for the ride.
– Tania Phillips