I don’t watch a lot of TV dramas any more since they largely seem to rehash old tv plots, or are otherwise predictable or just not interesting. I was told to check out the first season of Dark Mater and it became one of about 2 dramas on TV I really liked and made a point of watching. Tight generally not predictable plotting, frequent plot hooks that did get my attention, severalI don’t watch a lot of TV dramas any more since they largely seem to rehash old tv plots, or are otherwise predictable or just not interesting. I was told to check out the first season of Dark Mater and it became one of about 2 dramas on TV I really liked and made a point of watching. Tight generally not predictable plotting, frequent plot hooks that did get my attention, several interesting likeable charters (though cliches as well in many ways) you wanted to see develop and see where their relationships developed.
In the first season premiere, the characters wake up in this and find out they are not just wanted criminals, they are the scum of the universe. Hired to whipe out a settlement man, women, child so a company can claim the star system as uninhabited (though that itself made no logical sence). Horrified at who they were, they don't use their names, but use the numbers they came to for names. And as the season went on my wife and ?I were hooked.
Season 2 has been a huge let down. The whole prison arc of the first 2 eps was a complete cliché, echoing similar stories with POWs, southern jails, etc. Corrupt indifferent guards/warden. Favored gang really running the place that the main characters need to bargain with. The main characters almost immediately agreeing to do a prison break from the inescapable prison. Etc, etc. The stories drag, and are sloppy. In the first ep no one in the prison (2, 3, 4) even mentions, much less asks about what happened to, the missing half of the crew; but in the second ep 3 is surprised that 2 would escape leaving behind the three missing crew. One of the actual non criminal characters casual murder spree at the end seemed unnecessary and out of character. 6’s tepid defence of himself, or of why the Razzas crew deserved to be let go, was underwhelming (it seemed like the writers just wrote it as a token throw away). The next ep the characters memories and personalities revert to their previous, utter vile, forms; and they then go about killing the others among them they don't remember even though they know they are a year out of date as to what's going on. It does have a cool scene where your in the memory of the core female captain character "2", seeing a glimpse of nightmare of her life as an escaped lab experiment UN the run and desperate. Showing what could drive her to become they cheerfully cruel criminal who enjoyed being brutal. But otherwise it was so sloppy and inconsistent as to make us want to strangle the charters.
A plot twist from last season where she has a gun to the back of the head of one of the crew who'ld been closer to her then any guy in her life..wasn't nearly to separate him from the idiot cliche Mercinaries, whose constantly suspected him of something..but because she had actually bereaved the Mercinaries rediculous logic for suspecting him again, regardless of him being the moral voice among the crew, and the person with utterly nothing to gain from betraying them, having walked away from the extreme wealth and power of the inherited to the leadership of one of the corporate empires to stay and help them, mainly her. Increasingly in this season she's played as less a hardened but resourceful leader, then someone making dumb mistakes or actions . And getting almost flirty with the idiot Mercinary.
At another point resolving a plot twist of the computer tieing into their brains and reverting their memories - all those effected simply pass out for no reason. The other eps similarly have increasing big plot wholes, or threads simply ignored.
Add in to all that and the background of the universe is becoming very cliché and sloppy. It had been as cliche, but the stories didn't focus on it enough to let it drag the stories down. But this season it's becoming much more frount and center. A future ruled by corporate empires at war. Everything and everyone corrupt, and incompetent. (No mention of the illegality of prosecuting people for crimes they have no memory of, and are therefore metally incompetent to stand trial for?) Last season’s automated medical equipment and surgical nanite replaced with a prison medic. A prison riot was quelled in seconds by the sonic stunner – this ep no one noticed until you had time for a big fight scene, and to allow the fight top spread so they stun the whole prison? A prison where the android is being held for data extraction, but the critical cables for the escape are easily accessible? Their ship is not even stored in a hanger or something, but left fully operational and unguarded in Lunar orbit near the prisoners?!
Sadly this show seems to be going from must see ( cliches done well and interesting/fast), to seen it better on older shows. I'ld give season 1, a 7 or 8. Season 2 is starting as a 3, and trailers and premeries offer little reason for optimism.… Expand
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