Apple TV+ is known for its epic sci-fi series, and Dark Matter is the latest addition to that repertoire. But does Dark Matter live up to expectations?
Dark Matter Review
Dark Matter Review
Dark Matter’s premise is intriguing: a family man’s world is turned upside down when he’s kidnapped and awakens in an alternate reality, one in which his son no longer exists, he’s partnered with a different woman, and he has fulfilled his dream of being an award-winning physicist.
Frustrated, Jason begins to investigate, discovering in episode 2 that his kidnapper was himself from the alternate reality. As a pioneering physicist, ‘Jason2’ created technology that permitted travel across the metaverse, and he resolved to kidnap ‘Jason1’ and take his place.
What follows is a tale of twists and turns as Jason 1 traverses the metaverse to locate his original life and depose Jason 2. Based on a novel of the same name, Dark Matter has widely been described as “mind-bending”, but this Apple TV+ series doesn’t live up to that hype (at least not in the first couple of episodes that have been released).
The Dark Matter series has an ominous tone from the start: Jason is subdued, the scenery is dark and grey, and suspenseful sound effects are aplenty. But this very quickly becomes monotonous: each scene is so dark, grey, and serious that no scene stands out as suspenseful anymore. The pace is also painfully slow; it would have been far sharper as a film.
All this could be forgiven, however, if there were enough substance to Dark Matter’s story, but the first episodes don’t deliver in this sense, either. The only significant events that unfold after the kidnapping are Jason1 discovering Jason2’s invention and then becoming intimate with the woman he knows to be his wife (she is now a successful artist in the parallel world).
This intense focus on Jason’s psyche and romance in the first episodes makes it more like a soap opera than science fiction. The only sci-fi we get are basic questions delivered in an overly serious style: “Have you ever wondered what else you could have been?”, the likes of which aren’t particularly mind-bending.
According to critics who have seen the entire series, it doesn’t improve in future episodes, either. Wenlei Ma writes: it’s never-changing gloom makes for hard viewing. Where’s the levity, the warmth or even the reprieve?. And Roger Ebert concludes that it ‘lacks the urgency needed to maintain the tension inherent in the story of a man whose life is stolen.’
It’s a shame that Dark Matter is this painstaking and charmless, given that the book it derives from is known for its gripping language and fast pace. (The book has also been critiqued, however, for its simplistic exposition of science and philosophy.)
Thanks to films like Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, the topic of the metaverse is trending, and Dark Matter is riding that train. But simply throwing around philosophy jargon, alongside a tone that demands this show must be taken seriously, as Dark Matter doesn’t do enough to make a series epic or entertaining. It achieves quite the contrary.
Patronisingly serious and painstakingly slow, Dark Matter won’t go down in sci-fi history. If you want to see a science-fiction series that’s truly mind-bending, then check out Altered Carbon on Netflix or one of Apple TV’s various other sci-fi shows.
