Spoilery Dark Matter discussion post through 3x07

[sholio]

So the comments to the previous pimping/recruiting post are getting steadily more spoilery, and even as a spoilerphobe myself, I'm basically THE WORST at not talking about spoilers with people I'm trying to recruit into a thing (I told rachelmanija something about the show in email last night that I really wish I'd kept my mouth shut about), so let's do a post for ALL THE SPOILERS.

... well. Some of the spoilers. The thing is, I haven't seen past 3x07 yet - the Six-focused one. I've slowed way down on my watching speed because the last few episodes of season three are ALL WE'LL EVER HAVE *cries* and I want to make it last. So I would really like to remain unspoiled as possible. Under the cut are the things I particularly want to be unspoiled about (cut because the questions themselves are spoilers for season three):

• How the Three/Sarah situation works itself out. The latest thing I've seen with them is Two going in VR to meet virtual!Sarah, and Three mentioning that Ryo hinted at some big dark secret in his past, followed by Sarah's weird reaction to that. So obviously there's something huge there, and I really don't want to know 'til it happens!
• How the Ryo/Four situation is resolved (or not resolved). I don't care about anything ELSE about Ryo's storyline in particular; I just would like to be surprised about whether we get Four back or Ryo becomes an ally or whatever.
• Who dies/doesn't die at the end of the season, and generally what situation we're left with forever.

And anything else that happens after 3x07 if possible, but I wanted to mention those specifically as topics to be careful of while we're discussing.

But other than that, let's talk about ALL THE SPOILER THINGS!

Let's talk about how amazing Android is, and how perfect her actress is, and how 2x10 with Android breaking herself out of her perfect VR world to save her friends, while they all think she's evil, made me cry!!

Let's talk about Three holding Five's hand in the woods and putting his jacket around her and my 50 billion feels about them!!!

Let's talk about about the Raza crew's fascinating, conflicted relationship with Truffeault (sp?) as a shades-of-gray ally-sometimes-antagonist and how her quizzical eyebrow-quirking at them this season is starting to convey increasingly desperate flavors of "WTF have I gotten myself into".

Let's talk about how I didn't really have any ships in particular for this show until Three kissed Two on the forehead in the time loop episode and thanked her for believing in him, and then suddenly, bam, 180-degree turn into Sudden Shipper Feelings because it really hammered home how much they've both come to love and trust each other, and how they're friends now, and I'm totally fine with them just being friends forever, but my unexpected shipper feels sure did get a workout there.

... and for that matter, NOTHING I thought in season one was going to happen shipwise has happened. Which is a good thing; the show has been, for the most part, incredibly light on actual romance, and it's been pretty awesome. Who would have expected they'd kill off the one character I thought had bulletproof plot armor, the central protagonist white dude? Do we miss One? How much do we miss One? (I actually do kinda miss him now that I'm rewatching season one, but I still think the show is more interesting and less predictable without him.)

Speaking of predictable, let's talk about how Space Japan is the most boring thing in the history of boring things and why couldn't they give Four a better storyline this season?! Does anyone in Space Japan even have a freaking hobby or interest other than stabbing things?


So yeah, bring out your spoilers. :D

Comments

[sholio]

In retrospect, it was probably the back-to-back feelings-punch of 2x10 (amazing Android episode) and 2x11 (amazing Five and Three episode) that really made me fall for this show. I was already getting pretty deeply hooked on the characters, and then THOSE EPISODES happened, and I didn't have a chance. :D

(Yes, I'm commenting on my own post. I figured I'd just add thoughts in comments as they occur to me, rather than doing a million ETA's.)

[kore]

ZOIE PALMER ZOIE PALMER. OMG. I mean, I think all the actors are great but she's totally the MVP. She can make something poignant and/or hilarious with just a couple of words and limited intonation. A friend of mine and I were just talking about how much Gosling SUCKED at protraying a replicant in Bladerunner. It's really not easy to portray someone not-quite human and she just nails it. And there are so many moments in the show when she has to portray someone else, and does it almost totally with body language and just her eyes!

....and the Android/Three thing which is kinda HILARIOUS. I get the feeling he's turned on yet slightly terrified of her, and she might be messing with him a tiny bit. Or just think he's cute!

TWO HALLUCINATING NYX, CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT SOME Six/Two is the pairing of my heart but OMG Nyx! I loved her! (WHY was she killed off, WHY. And then Solara just left! WTF. I had the feeling she'd be back, tho.) And also Six and Three, with Six hallucinating Three was rescuing him. AWW.

Two is badass and Boss Lady without being a humourless bitch or worrying about her command for one minute and I just love her. Melissa O'Neil is perfect. AND WHAT ABOUT THAT BACKSTORY. I'll be really curious to know what you think of episode 10. By the same token Five is cute and to me convincingly smart without being Wesley-esque. And she has darkness too: "Android? Kill them all." And WTF is happening at the end of the paradox ep?! (You get a much better idea after the finale, tho.) Android and Five are adorable together, they're both so invested in the found family. Another reason I love this show is there are different connections between the characters -- like Six is close with Five but also keeps saving Three, and Three and Two are kind of on the verge but he also has Sarah, and so on.

Who would have expected they'd kill off the one character I thought had bulletproof plot armor, the central protagonist white dude? Do we miss One? How much do we miss One? (I actually do kinda miss him now that I'm rewatching season one, but I still think the show is more interesting and less predictable without him.)

I LOATHED One, because he seemed like the stereotypical White Dude Who Tells Everyone How To Feel, and then Jayce Corso was intriguing (I always love the evil mirror versions of characters), and then boom, no more Jayce Corso. WTF. I had hoped with the revelations that the rest of the evil mirror crew being alive (YAY) we might get him back, but that got totally squashed by the showrunner. I had to almost wonder if it was some off-camera thing that got him so kiboshed. -- Oh yeah, Wexler sucks, though. I want to drown him in a bucket.

ANDROID NEGOTIATING WITH ANDROID. HOW PERFECT WAS THAT. ahem.

[kore]

I really think without Zoie Palmer, the show would not only be a lot less funny but it would lose so much heart. She carries about as much emotional weight as Six and Five, re the crew being a family.

Fake Space Japan....oh, Fake Space Japan. Why. Just why. Everyone was so stiff and cliched and it was just awful. That's one of the few serious missteps of the show, I think. There was like NOTHING redeeming about it. sigh.

Six being off the ship for so long in S3 was another one. I know it was the season where "everyone has been blown apart, now we give them a reason to slooowly come back together" (which also reminded me of Farscape), but it just sucked because it went on too long, we never saw him on the colony, and they had no real connection to the story. It just seemed weird he'd decide to leave and help these people instead of his Space Family. I think creators that come up with found family settings are always tempted to bend them until they allllmost break and then have them rebound back together, but it's almost a cliche at this point and tricky to do.

[sholio]

I think all the actors are great but she's totally the MVP. She can make something poignant and/or hilarious with just a couple of words and limited intonation.

AGREED! She's INCREDIBLE. And then when she gets the personality upgrade it's just like, whoa -- I think seeing her in a more emotive role makes you even more aware of how well Palmer is doing at playing her normally.

The androids negotiating with each other in 3x06 was probably my favorite part of an episode I thoroughly loved.

"Are you being untruthful?"
[pause] "No. Are you being untruthful?"
[pause] "No."

I DIED. There's just something about the way she says her lines; I just want to listen to her talk. And the way you can see how much emotion the Android actually does have, despite her lack of expression. It's amazing.

I LOATHED One, because he seemed like the stereotypical White Dude Who Tells Everyone How To Feel, and then Jayce Corso was intriguing (I always love the evil mirror versions of characters), and then boom, no more Jayce Corso. WTF

OH THANK GOD IT'S NOT JUST ME. I didn't hate him, but he was always my least favorite of the seven. I think my biggest problem with One throughout most of season one was that he was a lethal combination of not being that interesting on his own plus having a tendency to warp every relationship he was involved with into a genre trope that never managed (for me) to rise above its tropiness - Typical Het Romance with Two, Typical Bickering Potential Slash Pairing with Three. He wasn't terrible; he was just predictable. I felt like, once he was gone, the characters began to rearrange themselves into more interesting, unusual, and unpredictable relationship patterns. The show overall felt more interesting and unusual. Plus, it meant that throughout most of seasons two and three, the show had one white dude out of a six to eight person cast, which is really unusual.

Although yeah, there was a distinct whiff of "... did you piss off someone upstairs or what??" to the way he died - the suddenness of it and the fact that it never had that much bearing on the plot. And then, yeah, they killed off Corso just as quickly. That whole situation was very strange.

TWO HALLUCINATING NYX, CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT SOME

RIGHT RIGHT???!! I'm pretty sure that, based on that episode, Two and possibly Nyx are canonically bisexual, which is excellent ... not so great that she's dead, though. I adored Solara and was sad to see her go, but after the way things went with the new crew members in S2, I was pretty sure she and Adrian weren't going to be on the crew for long - I was vastly relieved that they left rather than dying.

I do love how the show manages to maintain the "who can we trust/who are we" aspect of season one in seasons two and three without breaking up any of the friendships, by introducing new characters with their own secrets and/or using things like evil doubles and characters gaining/losing their memories. In general, I'm all over the way the show plays with trust issues and redemption (it's SUCH an unusual way of doing a redemption arc, for all of them, and I love it).

[sholio]

Fake Space Japan....oh, Fake Space Japan. Why. Just why. Everyone was so stiff and cliched and it was just awful. That's one of the few serious missteps of the show, I think. There was like NOTHING redeeming about it. sigh.

AARGH. I KNOW.

On the one hand, I appreciate that they're trying, and especially that they gave us a bunch of Asian characters in different occupations from scientist to soldier, something sci-fi isn't very good about, in general. But the execution of it is just so bad; it's one stereotype ladled on top of another, and it's completely lacking the humor and sense of fun that the rest of the show has.

I didn't mind Six having his own thing for an episode or two, especially since it meant we got to see how much Five misses him, but I agree that it went on too long and the "getting back together" episode with all the mindfuckery was incredibly frustrating to me. I don't want Six interacting with evil VR versions of his teammates, I want the real thing!

[sholio]

Another thing I was just thinking about, re: season three especially, is how much I love that the characters have gotten close enough that they're actively looking out for each other's emotional wellbeing: Six and Five staying in contact via future Skype, Two taking Five to Six's planet because she knows it'll be good for both of them, Three trying to cheer Five up in the time loop episode, Two asking Three how he's doing re: the Sarah situation and then going into VR to help with that once she realizes how much stress being Sarah's sole point of contact with the outside world is putting on him. They all do this a little bit in earlier seasons, but in previous seasons it seemed like the focus of the sweet bits was mainly on saving each other's lives, while in this season it's shifted to trying to keep each other happy and emotionally healthy. Which I love. <3