Apple TV+ Dark Matter (2024) (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

'Dark Matter' Series in the Works at Apple from Matt Tolmach, Author Blake Crouch

Apple is teaming with Sony Pictures Television and Venom producer Matt Tolmach on a series based on Blake Crouch's bestselling novel Dark Matter.

collider.com

Dark Matter — not to be confused with SyFy’s Dark Matter — is a super fun sci-fi novel that’s wholly accessible to a non-sci-fi reader. It could make a really great series. I’m hopeful for this new show.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Clicked on the thread hoping to see that SyFy's Dark Matter had been picked up. (Might have been enough of a reason to try Apple TV.)

But Noooooo....






- Walter.

 

[DaveF]

No, I'm imagine that ship has long sailed. The actors are all on different things now. But, we can dream...

 

[Josh Dial]

'Dark Matter' Series in the Works at Apple from Matt Tolmach, Author Blake Crouch

Apple is teaming with Sony Pictures Television and Venom producer Matt Tolmach on a series based on Blake Crouch's bestselling novel Dark Matter.

collider.com

Dark Matter — not to be confused with SyFy’s Dark Matter — is a super fun sci-fi novel that’s wholly accessible to a non-sci-fi reader. It could make a rally great series. I’m hopeful for this series.

I really enjoyed this book. I like Crouch's stuff (it's fairly breezy but it's engaging). I also liked Recursion (which, if you liked Dark Matter, you'll probably also like).

 

[DaveF]

I enjoyed Recursion, but felt Dark Matter was a much stronger book. Though I could see Recursion being a great show, with video adaptation improving the aspects I felt were lacking.

I'm excited to see the exploding plotline adapted to TV. The way it starts slow, laying the groundwork, and then working out every logical consequence of the concept, has so much promise.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Man, what a let down opening this thread was!

Like Walter, I immediately thought this was news that SyFy’s Dark Matter was being revived by Apple. Oof. Maybe that clarification should be in the title?

 

[Johnny Angell]

I enjoyed Recursion, but felt Dark Matter was a much stronger book. Though I could see Recursion being a great show, with video adaptation improving the aspects I felt were lacking.

I'm excited to see the exploding plotline adapted to TV. The way it starts slow, laying the groundwork, and then working out every logical consequence of the concept, has so much promise.

I also liked Recursion but have not read Dark Matter.

 

[DaveF]

Dark Matter (2024) released on Wednesday. I watched the first episode last night and enjoyed it. The book had a slow build -- I described it at the time as sci-fi for people who don't read sci-fi, as it took time to build the world and establish the science-fictional conceit before it really delved into it. And so this first episode was primarily establishing the key characters, putting the main character into distress, and then making an episode-ending reveal to start drawing out the sci-fi story. To anyone versed in recent popular movies or TV shows scifi, it will be apparent what's happening by that reveal if not sooner. But for those who aren't into scifi specifically, the show will still have not fully explained itself and presumably episode two will get into the details.

So what's happening? Jason Dessen is a physics professor for a local, Chicago college of no national reknown, trying to teach the marvels of quantum mechanics to disinterested students. He's married, in a seemingly normal relationship, with Daniela, a fine arts salesperson. They have a teenage son, learning to drive. They might also have lost a child sometime ago, from the environmental storytelling.

Jason gets a call from an old friend, Ryan, who's won the Pavia Prize (the fictional Nobel Prize of this story). Jason is obviously jealous; Ryan repeatedly comments how Jason should have won and Jason's work was fundamental to his success. Jason also, we learn, is admanantly, maybe neurotically, commmitted to staying local to Chicago, to not even traveling too far from his own house.

But at his wife's insistence, Jason goes to the nearby bar to celebrate with his friend. And on his walk home, he's assaulted, kidnapped, drugged, and abandoned by a masked assailant who seems to know him intimately.

Spoiler

Jason wakes up in a well-appointed, but locked, corporate hotel room. People greet him, they celebrate his successful return, and Amanda embraces him with affection. Jason is bewildered, knowing none of these people. He escapes this weird corporate lab-prison, makes his way home, and finds Amanda there waiting for him! There is no Daniela, there is no son.

We cut then to Daniela making dinner, mad Jason for returning late. Jason enters, he apologizes, and we discover that this is the assailant from the wound on his arm where Jason had fought back.

The show ends with the original Jason fleeing his home, from the corporate-lab people coming to collect him, and the assailant-Jason making love to Daniela.