Dark Matter and Killjoys: the beginnings of SyFy's attempt to get their spaceship on again

[Arkash]

Dark Matter seems like it really could become a good show. The really haven't set the world around them and it seems like it has a good cast anchored by Roger Cross who IMO is a really good, if underrated actor. I wanted to know more about the characters and the world they live in.

I agree, Roger Cross is a fantastic actor ! And I really appreciate the huis-clos atmosphere within the spaceship, and its long dark corridors. There's really a potential if the Raza (the spaceship name) becomes a character as relevant as the human ones.

[Mars447]

That actually would be a good explanation in Killjoys. Still wouldn't make me like the look any better.

In Killjoys we had the pretty garden party in the pilot (on Qresh) and the upcoming episode looks to be set on an agricultural plantation. So that's to examples of not-a-warehouse in the first three episodes.

Westerly, the moon where Old Town/Pree's bar and Sugar Point are located, is supposed to be an industrial hellhole. It's awfully convenient, but it still makes sense.

[Jon AS]

Amusingly it's probably most expensive to create a believable normal, middle class scifi setting. You can use the extremes of both poverty and wealth (as well as just natural landscapes, as Stargate taught us) to explain any incongruities, but depicting a functional everyday environment that looks appropriately futuristic requires a lot more work and money.

[Arkash]

I truly enjoyed both latest episodes !

Dark Matter's plot and universe is feeling more and more coherent and complete episode after episode, and the rythm and fun of Killjoys was on high last night !

[RedEyedGhost]

Well that episode of Killjoys tonight was the most Firefly-esque episode of any show I've seen since Firefly was actually on the air. Very reminiscent of Heart of Gold, very.

[GrimTuesday]

Well that episode of Killjoys tonight was the most Firefly-esque episode of any show I've seen since Firefly was actually on the air. Very reminiscent of Heart of Gold, very.

You're right, that was super reminiscent of Heart of Gold, but I think they put their own little spin on it that really fit well into the world they are building. I'm actually rather enjoying the universe that the show takes place in. I also like the interactions between the main characters, though I wish we had a few other reoccurring characters outside of just the bartender and the older lady who gives them their assignments.

Dark Matter, while I'm enjoying it well enough, it feels a little shallow, less fleshed out. The characters are ok, and the stories are adequate, but there are some good performances.

Also does anyone else find the android absolutely adorable?

[Theda Baratheon]

I love the Android in Dark Matter so much!!! She's so cute. Her little expectant face <3 I do find Dark Matter kinda shallow at the moment as well though, but I'm enjoying it and really liked bits of last ep and am intrigued to watch more!!! I wish Killjoys was airing in the UK, sounds fun. My internet is so bad I can't really watch anything online anymore. I can barely, BARELY watch netflix.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

BWS,

I loved SG:U. Some of the stories were weaker but the acting, particularly Robert Carlyle, was top notch. I loved the tension between Young and Rush. They were never going to be friends. At best they tolerated each other. Rush was never going to be open or revealing. His distrustfulness was a large part of who he was.

Young wanted to turn the crew into a big happy SG team. Rush wouldn't let him.

[Corvinus85]

SG:U biggest problem was that they tried to do 2 things at once. 1st they set in the "Stargate Universe" tying it to both SG:1 and SG:A, trying to keep/pull in the SG's audience 2. then they tried to make it as much of a drama as BSG. to pull in its audience. what they got while a good show, it wasn't as good a drama as BSG, and didn't have the feel of a SG show. Much like ST:E, SG:U seemed to finally find its footing w/ it last a few ep after it was canceled. Most Sci/Fi shows have a problem with finding its footing, even ST:TNG first season seems weak, when one looks back at it. It wasn't until the 2nd season that it really seem to know what it wanted to be.

Unfortunately it's the audience that changed, and they weren't willing to give SGU the proper amount of time to develop. Like you said, it took other shows awhile to find their footing. Even SG1, its first season is definitely the weakest. But all those shows were developed in the 90s or early 00s. People now don't seem to have the same patience. And I know this makes me a hypocrite, because I'm not giving Dark Matter and Killjoys a chance, I'm just extremely bitter about SGU.

Personally, despite some tedious plot from SGU, I was immediately engrossed by the science aspect of it. Seeing them make an effort to show a ship using a planet's gravity to perform a sling shot maneuver, or other similar stuff, struck a cord, and I could not get enough.

[Dr. Pepper]

Both of these episodes seemed to resemble Firefly episodes - Bushwhacked and Heart of Gold. Killjoys probably does a better job at the mimicry, if only because there seems to be some world building going on. With Dark Matter, I'm not feeling these characters enough so I'd really need some more world-building or deeper plotting to stick with it. I also find that I'm androided out. Seems like every show has a human like android robot now. Yawn.

[GrimTuesday]

Both of these episodes seemed to resemble Firefly episodes - Bushwhacked and Heart of Gold. Killjoys probably does a better job at the mimicry, if only because there seems to be some world building going on. With Dark Matter, I'm not feeling these characters enough so I'd really need some more world-building or deeper plotting to stick with it. I also find that I'm androided out. Seems like every show has a human like android robot now. Yawn.

But this android is just so adorable.

[Theda Baratheon]

I love androids :P Can never have too many androids/robots/replicants ;)

[Jon AS]

The actress playing the android on DM might be alright, but the writing is fairly lame. "Robot built for human interaction doesn't understand idioms" got old pretty early in TNG's run.

On the one hand I want to give the DM writers credit for realising their characters and main mystery aren't particularly interesting and throwing in a stand-alone episode, on the other hand they barely pretended there was any danger to the characters, either from the zombies or the technical problems. Then again, the fact that all our protagonists needed to survive were their guns and a willingness to use them could be read as taking the piss out of the zombie concept.

Be that as it may, Killjoys continues to kick the crap out of Dark Matter in every respect.

[Pliskin]

And I continue to find Dark Matter more interesting and engaging as a story.

The only thing interesting in Killjoys is the world building (I couldn't care less about everything else). There doesn't seem to be any in Dark Matter.

[Jon AS]

Well, Killjoys also has actual characters instead of basic concepts that are otherwise blank slates (that's built into the DM premise, sure, but that just means that the writers need to flesh them out as quickly as possible instead of pretending that future revelations about these non-characters are going to be impactful), has had more interesting stories with plots that felt like they had actual stakes and contrary to my earlier misgivings it seems to have much better production values.

Killjoys could do with fleshing out some of the recurring supporting characters, but it's still fairly early in the show's run and at least it does actually have a recurring supporting cast, which helps making the world feel more alive.

[Mars447]

Dark Matter barely has a story. Whodunnit, or why, is fundamentally uninteresting as a premise without some seriously good characters to back the mystery up, and there's nothing particularly interesting about watching a bunch of personality-free blank slates "discover more about themselves". Plus a nonzero amount of those blank slates are less bland and more actively annoying (I'm looking at you, One).

Killjoys has interesting, well developed characters, and interesting stories that build off of those interesting, well developed characters. Plus you just know that the nascent class war looming in the background will turn hot soon enough, and the resulting pyrotechnics make for good story fodder for a season and change.

[Pliskin]

The characters on Killjoys are generic procedural show characters.

You pick any boring procedural show, you'd find the same characters, with the same "humor" and the same relations between the characters.

I guess I just get bored watching the same uninteresting case of the week shows. Killjoys does have what looks like an interesting setting though. The world building specially in the last episode was quite good.

Dark Matter on the other hand, despite its cheapness and its standalone episodes, doesn't have that generic boring feel to it. Or it does but a different generic feel, that of serialized "concept" shows that are thriving in the recent years. And I find those way more engaging, even if often bad.

[Mars447]

Dark Matter absolutely has that generic boring feel. The main cast of Dark Matter are:

1. Annoying, generic white male do-gooder (also catnip for the ladies, for some odd reason)
   
2. Tough hot chick leader
   
3. Snarky asshole not-Jayne
   
4. Stoic, inscrutable Asian martial arts badass
   
5. Mopey teenaged girl (possibly psychic)
   
6. Stoic, tough black guy
   
7. Emotionless gynoid
   

Those aren't characters, those are archetypes. Killjoys, with its retired assassin putting up a peppy front as she runs from her past as a killer (with possible ties to the system's royalty), highly capable but insecure tech-genius junior partner, and his PTSD suffering (possible former lab rat) fucked up war veteran of a brother, has actual characters. They might not be completely novel characters, but there's nothing new under the sun. And at least they have personality.

[Jon AS]

It's hard to get more generic, character wise, than Dark Matter (I'd also like to use this opportunity to submit that the metaphorical title is highly pretentious for the kind of show it is). There's nice guy, lady-in-charge (who is apparently also Wolverine), annoying guy, inscrutable Asian guy, reliable black guy and plot device girl.

The Killjoys on the other hand have at least some personality, Dutch obviously more so than the two brothers. It's certainly enough to make me at least care a bit about the revelations about their pasts (well, guy-who-is-not-played-by-that-actor-from-the-X-Men-movies doesn't appear to harbor any deep dark secrets, except for maybe some minor trouble from his time as a petty criminal) whereas with DM we have to hope that future revelations will make the characters interesting enough to retroactively make us care about them and their past lives/origins.

I don't see much of a interest in the concept of the missing memories. It's a well-ploughed field both in genre stories and in more mundane settings, and until it's resolved it looms over everything the show does. Why should we care whether any of the characters get eaten by zombies?

[GrimTuesday]

Enjoyed both episodes tonight. Killjoys is still the better show, with a more fleshed out universe thus far and the characters are better, but I think that Dark Matter made some strides in that department tonight. Finding out a bit more about three of the characters (and a very small bit about a fourth) kind of alleviated a bit of the monotony that amnesia story lines tend to create.

 

Both 4 and 6 now have pretty clear motivations, 4 seeking to clear his name and get revenge, and 6 trying to come to terms with what he was complicit in and seeking to punish those who betrayed him. That's a lot of revenge motivation, but hey, at least it is something. We also got a bit of background on 5, but she still seems to mostly be a plot device at present, seemingly mainly there to hold, and slowly reveal, the memories that everyone lost.

 

As far as Killjoys goes, I enjoyed it, it wasn't anything particularly groundbreaking but it had some good bits. We got some character development from Davin that was pretty good, but other than that the story was a bit predictable but it was still