The Box

This is a remarkably stupid supposedly Science Fiction TV show. It wraps itself up in jargon and professional nomenclature without ever really saying anything useful to the plot or about the characters.

If this TV show written by the author of the original book is anything indicating the quality of the original book, then the original book is extremely poor quality Science Fiction.

This is what we have come to now after a long history of well written Science Fiction that used to contain well written interesting often truly intelligent characters that one cared about or at least were interesting enough to make one want to go through to the end. This "Dark Matter" leaves one wondering how a physics professor could be so stupid as to not have a glimpse of an idea what happened to him. There is a fair amount of gratuitous violence for the sake of violence not really advancing the plot, if there really was much of a plot. That too seems to be missing.

If this is indicative of more recent SF, then the whole field is crumbling into dust like much of current society. Science Fiction, even TV Science Fiction used to be the place to go for interesting escape into a world of ideas for intelligent people. All kinds of ideas not just hard science ones! This show seems to be devoid of any new and interesting ideas. The author is making a fool of his public or is a fool himself or probably both. We seem to be living in the age of the Con Man. Too bad for human society and civilization.

Room temperature IQ writing with zero emotional baggage... no change that.. they created emotional baggage and then just had a teenager cyberpunk stereotype version of a cool black woman shoot the fk out of it.

Guy comes into an alternative world... After nothing at all and two days of emptiness, sees his wife or alt-wife... whatever and finally seems to get his life back on track

JUST as they kiss, the phone rings and she is murdered...

... and 10 minutes later he is somehow chill with that fact.

Fk right off..

How can he be ok with what is going on?

This is a teenager trying to write what they imagine an adult would.

Wow, so bad...

It's been a week since we were able to behold Blake Crouch's creation on our screens. For me personally, it's always a good thermometer, of sorts, to check whether or not you're looking forward to another episode after having to wait for 7 days. Do you sense nonchalance within yourself? Or excitement? Do you want to unfold the mystery of the story further, or have you been content not having it at your disposal? I for one was eager to jump back in, and after a quick recap of the previous events, I find myself at the mercy of the ever more tightening grip of Dark Matters.

Episode 3 is an episode with truely important plot points, and without giving away anything about said plot, it makes episode 3 a bit faster-paced than the previous two iterations. It takes some jumps, not leaps, to further not only the main arc of Dark Matters, but also the development of its main characters. I'll be the first to admit that I've always been a sucker for parallel-universe-lore, and Dark Matters shows you why it is such an intrigueing subject. Mind you, as specifically mentioned, the episode doesn't make leaps, which is a good thing. Even the jumps that can be seen as questionable or skipping past important notions of the storyline, are almost instantly rectified by following dialogues.

A lot of characters show their bite, where first there was a mere bark. Relationships are put to the test almost every step of the way, and some of our characters hava a first encounter with dilemmas. Edgerton continues to do his best to show us all he is very much capable of leading a cast of equally talented actors. The story continues to stay close to its source material. And, as we have come to both hate and love about scientific thrillers, it leaves us with an agonizing cliffhanger, of which we know we'll have to wait an additional 7 days to have our questions answered.

Until more of the series and its plot are available to us, I'll be safe about it and score episode 3 a very respectful 8 out of 10. But make no mistake, knowing the story as written by Crouch will be the story shown in Dark Matters, the series shows an adept skill in pacing with strong characters that develop more and more.