Created by Blake Crouch
Based on Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Showrunner Blake Crouch
Starring
Joel Edgerton as Jason Dessen, a physicist who unwillingly travels between alternate realities after being abducted by his counterpart (Jason #02).
Jennifer Connelly as Daniela Dessen, Jason’s wife.
Alice Braga as Amanda Lucas, Jason #02’s girlfriend and partner who tries to help Jason #01 find his way back home.
Oakes Fegley as Charlie Dessen, Jason and Daniela’s son.
Jimmi Simpson as Ryan Holder
Dayo Okeniyi as Leighton Vance
Recurring
Amanda Brugel as Blair Caplan
Aina Brei-Yon as Dawn Lawrence
William Smillie as Matt
Theme music composer Jason Hill
Country of origin United States
Original language English
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 9
Production
Executive producers Blake Crouch, Joel Edgerton, Jakob Verbruggen, Don Kurt, David Manpearl, Matt Tolmach
Producers Dustin Bernard, Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry, Jeff MacVittie
Cinematography John Lindley, Jeffrey Greeley
Running time 46–59 minutes
Production companies Matt Tolmach Productions, Mountainside Entertainment, Sony Pictures Television
Original release Network Apple TV+, Release May 8 – June 26, 2024
Dark Matter does get confusing. It’s not that there’s a lot of characters and plots to keep track of; it’s that there are many different versions of the same character, each involved in the same plot line but with variations.
But don’t worry: even if you lose track of who the good guy is (or even if there are any good guys!) it pulls together at the end.
That’s the nature of multiverse stories. I wrote one in which I had a chapter length sequence in which a central character dies, killed by the main antagonist. About forty pages later, I had the exact same sequence of events, only in this one the main antagonist is already dead and the central character survives. A depressing number of readers failed to notice the difference.
Having multiple variations of the same characters is very hard writing. It has to made sense to your audience and half the time a writer has a hell of a time having it make sense to the writer. A good example of this is a murder mystery by David Brin, Kiln People, in which it’s possible to make cheap and easy golems of ones’ self, complete with all memories and knowledge of the original, that last twenty four hours before dissolving. Useful when you have to be in two places at once, or just want to stick someone “else” with mowing the lawn. It’s all fun and games until someone gets murdered. I think it’s Brin’s most brilliant work. (Brin alleviates the existential horror of a 24 hour existance by allowing the golems to merge their accumulated experiences back with the original, thus “living on”–provided they get back within 24 hours, of course.)
It’s a challenge for the actors, as well. Most of them played multiple versions of the same role, and while the showrunners thoughtfully provided visual clues such as differing attire and bumps, bruises and limps picked up in various plot developments, discerning who was who depended mostly on subtle clues from the actors themselves. Think Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black. Only those were clones, and not superpositional variations of the same individual.
And of course, Chicago and the entire world vary from portal to portal. You might have a utopian Chicago hundreds of years advanced from ours, or a place that looks like Antarctica in a bad mood. Many CGIs died in the making of Dark Matter, but Crouch et al don’t let it overwhelm the plot.
Jason Dessen is a college professor teaching physics, trying in vain to get students to understand or even care about the concepts behind Schrondinger’s cat. He is kidnapped by a version of himself who has developed an interdimensional portal. Jason #2 thinks Jason #1 has a better love life and wants to swipe it. (Some of the Jasons are nicer than some of the other Jasons, and won’t the ‘nurture vs nature’ crowd have a field day with that!).
The state of superposition is imagined as an endless corridor with doors every fifteen feet or so. Said doors open to the same locale on various realities, seemingly at random. Luckily, none of the Jasons we saw opened a door to a reality where Earth never existed in the first place, even though the odds would overwhelmingly suggest such. Various Jasons learn some semblence of control over which variation of their world they want, and the fun begins.
Confusing, yes. Well-written, well-acted, intelligent and plausible, also yes. Apple TV+ is continuing their string of superior science-fiction shows. I hope they keep it up.
Comments
Schrondinger typo Schrödinger is what you want.