Dark Matter - Episode 6 - Review: "Remembrance of Things Past"

Now we’re cooking! After half a season of dancing around exactly how a person’s memory may affect their identity, we actually get to see some of those memories and judge for ourselves! Whether or not this empowers or destroys the people involved has yet to play out, but we can already see the new information starting to wear away at the crew. The episode picks up in the middle of one of those memories, with cryptic flashes of a dead emperor, a weird lady with a fan on her face, and then a terrifying sword fight between guards and a hooded figure (at this point I said YAS omg it’s Four! out loud). The dark figure quickly destroys the guards and pulls back his hood to reveal a blood-spattered… Five? Cutting back to the ship we see that Five is seizing on a table in the infirmary with the rest of crew around panicking- apparently they’ve found a way to tap her memories/dreams and it is not going well.

Jumping back 24 hours, Two is video conferencing with Talbor, wrapping up the zombie shenanigans from last week. He’s pretty pissed they destroyed his cargo, but not as pissed as Two and she lets him have it. And fair enough, she was so nearly zombified on that job! The whole thing was shady, and a few theories are brought up as to why, including the unsettling notion that they were never intended to survive the mission. These issues are sidelined, however, by the fact that there is little food or fuel left on board. They may even have to sell the ship, to no one’s satisfaction but Three’s.

After this there is a quiet scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the episode, but is so necessary to the fandom (and, presumably, to the rest of the series). One passive-aggressively confronts Two about her tryst with Three (then Seven ate Nine), doing his best not to judge her but completely unable to control his desperation to make sense of the thing. She explains that she needed a non-committal fling, and they both shuffle around the notion that (A) they have feelings for one another and (B) it would be a bad idea to get involved when their lives are so volatile. This is a sweet conversation that is both honest and necessary for the slow-burn type of romance One and Two deserve, if romance is what they’d even call it. Their crushes are apparent, but the instability of their lives, plus their literal brain damage, should probably be sorted out first. But seeds have been planted.

So Five, thinking she may have the mysterious vault’s entry code floating around her subconscious mind, comes up with the utterly gangbusters idea to probe her own brain for information. The vault could solve all their financial problems, yes, but it’s clear that she really just wants to make some sense of those memories, and everybody (audience included) is on board for that. So she’s strapped into the infirmary and ready to rock. The Android takes the lead, explaining the technobabble with her usual adorably indelicate wink at the total recklessness of what they’re about to do.

On an Android-related note: Killjoys has been doing a fun thing with their ship’s version of Siri via the creation of Lucy, a vocalization of the ship’s inner workings. An endearing Hal, if you will. Lucy has served that show well, and it’s interesting to compare her to Killjoys’ SyFy-sister’s version of essentially the same character, a personification of the ship. Dark Matter has chosen to give the Raza a human form in The Android, I’m curious how both takes will affect their respective shows in the long run. A reasonable viewer can understand that a ship is not expected to really progress as a sentient being; in fact, the implications of such a progression are pretty terrifying (see: the aforementioned “Hal”, Skynet, maybe AM, if you are mouthless and must scream, etc.). I’m pretty sure Dark Matter isn’t going that way with the delightful Zoie Palmer, but It’s natural to associate human development with things shaped like humans; we inherently expect it. I do wonder how The Android will play out, long-term.

Back on the Raza, Five is deep into a stick fight training session in her brain. It’s apparent she’s experiencing one of Four’s memories, and when he hesitates to strike his surrendering opponent his own father appears and WAILS on him for it! Apparently he is raising his son to be a ruthless leader, ruling via fear and mercy is not a quality to be respected. This is a borderline cliché take on Asian royalty, but it does inform Four’s personality perfectly. It’s also traumatizing enough to send Five into a physical tailspin and the crew wakes her up to avoid any further damage.

Five is angry she was taken from the memory, not understanding just how dangerous the process is for her. She calls on Four, dutifully relaying his own memories to him. Four counters that Five is clearly getting too emotional during these experiences; the memories have long passed and cannot change, so it would be wise to employ objectivity when viewing them. This is an excellent point, so Five decides to get back on the horse, determined to navigate her own labyrinthine mind.

She ends up right back in one of Four’s later memories as his step-brother is being shipped off via royal order. Four is confused, but his brother and stepmother insist it was his doing. Four says it isn’t, that the whole thing has his father’s fingerprints all over it. He watches his brother’s ship take off in the distance. At this point I am reminded that there are spaceships here and we aren’t watching a flashback to feudal Japan or something, which speaks to the wholeness of the world that has been built. The range of culture that exists as part of the show’s universe is really excellent.

That night in the castle Four/Five is deeply angry, pacing and downing feudal Japanese space liquor, riling himself up to confront his father. As he heads to the Emperor’s bedroom he’s stopped by the guards and the man that had been training young Four. They allow him to pass after he angrily threatens them, and he wastes no time calling his old man out. When the Emperor fails to respond, Four leans in and finds blood everywhere; his father has been murdered. Lady Fanface appears and reveals herself to be Four’s stepmother, to no one’s shock. Empress Fanface launches into a diatribe, making it clear she has been behind everything and that Four is screwed with a capital S. He runs for it.

The news of the Emperor’s death is already being shouted around the palace, along with orders to arrest the prince. Four runs into the guards and we see the opening scene in full context. Four murders the guards who were trying to arrest him for a crime he didn’t commit and this information is too much for Five to handle. When they try to pull her out she doesn’t respond, stuck in a conscious coma.

Five calms down physically when she jumps to another memory; now in a bustling crowd, she picks somebody’s pocket and heads to an underground hideout to find it ransacked and vacant. She finds a photo on the floor of a bunch of misfit kids and sees her own smiling face among them. This is Five’s own memory! It looks like she was living with a group of orphans and runaways, picking pockets and sharing the spoils to survive. Her friend TJ stumbles in shot, explaining that a man they robbed the other day is apparently dangerously connected. The seemingly useless storage device they stole is actually a rare key, and the man they took it from wants it back. He’s already had their friends killed and he won’t stop until he has the key again. Five decides they need to run, and she’s heard of a ship launching soon that might provide an escape.

One and Three are loading up, unwittingly bringing the stowaways on board the Raza. TJ’s condition is not improving. We know he’s going to die there, but Five is determined to save him. She thinks they should come clean and ask the crew for help, but TJ thinks they’ll just be killed and he’s super right, considering who the crew used to be. Five sneaks off to look for medical supplies using the air vents to get by undetected. Always chilling in the vents, that one. She overhears Six saying a password, an old teacher he didn’t get along with. She makes it to the infirmary but Three catches her. He is exactly as unsympathetic as you’d imagine, and drags her away to be pitched out of an airlock. She’s too scared to really explain herself but does try to leverage the key for her safety. Three couldn’t care less, he’s not even going to tell the rest of the crew he found a stowaway. He seals the door, ready to bounce her without a second thought.

This memory isn’t resolved, however, as Five’s organs are shutting down. She needs to wake herself, and there’s no way to get a message to her without someone to going INTO HER BRAIN and telling her. This is apparently possible somehow, though no explanation is offered. I mean, yes, this a show where five people’s memories can be removed and downloaded into another person’s psyche, so I supposed we are just meant to make the leap here, but really? Six can just go into her brain and see what she sees? How, a million times how, I ask.

Next thing you know, Six is being strapped to a table next to Five and offered little in the way of comforting words from the Android (adorable). Plot-hole aside, it’s great fun that Six can see these experiences now. The first place he lands is one of his own memories and he gets easily sidetracked in his search for Five. Six watches himself walk with two buddies, congratulating each other on stealing a Galactic Authority destroyer. They seem to be members of a Rebel Alliance of sorts called the “Insurrection” and are just off a successful mission against the GA. Six was a precious idealist.

Just as celebratory drinks are being poured an angry rebel bursts in with awful news: it’s being reported that they are terrorists who stole a GA ship, then bombed the station killing the innocent civilians who lived there. The worse news is that it’s true. The guy pouring the drinks confirms it, their leader “The General” set it up, and the guy further defends The General and the cause and other vague ideals oft spouted by television revolutionaries and terrorists alike. He probably would have launched into a song about it like Enjolras in Les Mis, but he’s shot in the head by Six in a fit of moral disillusion. Six shoots all of them, which… harsh, bro. So harsh! His two heist friends seemed just as shocked as he did about the bombing, and the guy who ran in with the holo-news was mad about it! Yikes, suffice it to say, Six completely breaks. He even tries to shoot himself but he’s out of bullets. Worst day ever.

The silver lining is that he’s actually in Five’s mind and can jump out of this tragic affair! He finds Five walking into a stable on a sunny farm. She notices him briefly but continues to live out the flashback by having a conversation with a woman nearby, this person’s mother. It is a nice memory. She confronts Six, confused as to how he’s even there (SAME), but she’s overall dismissive of him. She confesses she’s been living in this person’s past for years and wants to get back to that life, even if only a few hours have passed on the Raza. Six tries to convince her to wake up, telling her it’s not real and that her body is dying, but these words fall on deaf ears. That place is real enough to Five, and the miracle of a safe, happy existence is valuable to her, even if it becomes her end. Six can relate, but points out that this memory isn’t perfect either because it goes on, because it lead its owner to a life of crime. All of these memories, traumatizing or slightly-less-traumatizing, are finite; at least in the real world they have control, they might be able to change things. Five wakes up on the Raza, as there’s no place like home.

After all this, Five again tries to reach out to Four, who is still at it with the swords. Five wants to tell him about his past, but he’s already sure of what happened. After what happened with the pawn broker he did some research: he knows he was a prince, he knows he was a murderer, and he not keen on learning much else. Five tells him the truth, how he never killed his father and that Empress Fanface set him up. Five wants to absolve him, but it doesn’t seem to take. He puts his sword away, seething, and walks away.

Five finally finds a little comfort in thanking Six for rescuing her and telling him how much she trusts him now. Which, please, if you’re a little girl reading this DO NOT tell grown men you barely know how much you trust them, even if they were just in your brain. To his credit, Six reacts perfectly. He’s appreciative of the compliment and genuinely likes Five, but he really isn’t sure if he should be trusted either. As Five leaves, we see that Six is following his own advice to her by trying to exercise a little control in this world by tracking down The General.

For all the fun we’ve had watching, Dark Matter’s biggest problem has been jumping the gun a bit. It relies on the uber-genre-savvy SyFy viewer to understand that space opera + ragtag bunch of misfits = fandom GOLD, but it doesn’t always to the legwork. This is the first episode that I felt really got a handle on the way it tells a story. The pieces that didn’t make sense were in service of the bigger story. Yeah, it’s dumb that Six can randomly jump into Five’s brain, but the ensuing scenes were worth the leap in logic. Four’s frame-up by his mustache-twirlingly-evil stepmother was obvious, but that last steely look as he shelved his weapon for the night was worth it. This is the way of sci-fi on TV, there are buys that the audience must make, and so long as the series keeps paying off it remains totally worth it.


Post Script:

How fun was it to see Jodelle acting out those memories? She’s too cute.

Whose memory was Five living in, One or Three? I think we all know it’s Three’s, so my real question: where did it all go wrong for him??

Six jumping brains- a total plot-hole, WTF moment or reasonable leap given the show’s material?

Five didn’t see Six’s memory, right? Do you think she’d still trust him if she had?

Let me know, drop a comment below!

About the Author - Lindsey Salazar

Lindsey is an unabashed TV, film, and book nerd who lives and works in Los Angeles. Watch this space!

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