"Dark Matter," Year One

Spoilers for the first two-ish episodes ahead.

Not more multiverse media, I hear you cry.  We've had enough!  How much more can we take?!  Well, maybe there's room for one more show.  

The Apple TV+ series "Dark Matter" (totally unrelated to the 2015 "Dark Matter") is one of the best pieces of science fiction I've seen this year.  Based on a novel by Blake Crouch, who also created the show and wrote most of the episodes, "Dark Matter" is about parallel universes.  A physics professor, Jason Dessen (Jason Edgerton) is a little bored and resentful of his mundane life with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), especially after an old friend, Ryan (Jimmi Simpson), wins a prestigious and lucrative scientific prize.  Then Jason is assaulted by a mysterious assailant and wakes up in a different version of his life.  He has no family but is the wealthy CEO of a tech company.  He also has a girlfriend, Amanda (Alice Braga) and a partner, Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi), who both think he's just returned from a strange mission.

Apple continues to make a lot of great science-fiction shows that seem to come out of nowhere.  Going with the parallel universe theme, I imagine that "Dark Matter" could have been made into a film with the same cast, but it wouldn't have been as good.  Nine episodes is probably a few too many for this miniseries, because the pacing drags at times, but it's so worth it to get to the last third, where all the setup pays off in such a satisfying way.  I continue to be happily flabbergasted at the resources Apple puts into these projects.  "Dark Matter" is set in and around  present day Chicago, and it's clear that a significant amount of the series was actually shot there!  There's a big chase sequence right on the University of Chicago campus!  After watching so many genre shows stuck in the Volume over the last few years, it's almost miraculous to find something so geeky set somewhere so tactile and recognizable.    

Like many science-fiction "what-if" stories, the story takes scientific concepts, in this case superposition and parallel universes, and extrapolates them into a totally fantastical scenario, where you can travel to other versions of your own reality and interact with them.  The fun of "Dark Matter" is that it sets up this impossible mechanism - in this case a Schrodinger's box that acts as a portal to other worlds - but then has it follow rules that create weirder and wilder possibilities, revealed to the audience a little at a time.  The show also takes the trouble to create a set of compelling characters, played by very talented actors, who are given the time to really grow on you.  We've all seen enough media about parallel universes to be familiar with the basic tropes by now - they're rife with alternate versions of characters and darkest timeline nightmare scenarios.  However, we've rarely had something like "Dark Matter" that has the thoughtfulness to really examine the psychological underpinnings of this kind of idea, and extrapolate some of the really brain-breaking stuff that would happen if it were possible.

So while there's a lot of twisty, plotty business about juggling universes keeping track of which version of which character you're watching, there's also a lot of good, solid character drama here.  Significant time is just spent with Jason examining himself, either trying to fit himself into different realities, or considering the choices that led him to particular situations.  I can understand why Edgerton and the rest were willing to take on this role, because so much depends on the performances.  It helps that the show keeps changing, the stakes and goals constantly evolving as the situation spins out of everyone's control.  We do end up with a big action finale, but it feels earned by the time we get there.  

The production overall is excellent, but it did include a pet peeve of mine, which is that there are certain key scenes where I couldn't tell what was going on because everything was so dark.  I understand the reasoning behind it, but still -  "Dark Matter" doesn't have to be a literal description.       

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