I just finished watching Dark Matter, a science fiction show on Apple’s streaming service. It was very good.
The premise of the show is centered around travel between alternate universes, based on the popular “choice driven” version of the multiverse hypothesis. In a little more detail, a scientist discovers a way to travel between alternate universes based on different choices he or someone else made, and uses it to try and switch places with someone who had chosen family instead of continuing his research. Hijinks including all sorts of violence ensue.
The show was very good. It was a single season of nine episodes and it didn’t really end on a note that suggested another season – every character’s story was adequately resolved like a movie.
And I really like this about it.
In the Zaslov era, the reality of television is that most shows do not get a second season no matter how good they are. In fact television has gone back to being as ephemeral as before not just streaming but as before home video, as the new reality includes that when shows are not renewed there are also deleted from streaming libraries for weird corporate financial reasons that are frankly atrocious; mostly to avoid paying royalties to cast and crew. The phenomenon of shows getting canceled prematurely isn’t at all new, but it’s a bigger thing than it ever was before. And a big problem for fans of the medium is that this usually leaves us with perpetually unresolved cliffhangers, like the endings of Westworld’s fourth season, Watchmen’s only season, and many others.
So I’m really grateful that the writers and producers of “Dark Matter” chose to resolve it cleanly.
Of course, looking at the show itself, it truly makes the most sense as a one-and-done presentation, like a long movie. It was nine fifty minute episodes, so seven and a half hours – basically double a longer than average movie, or a little more than what used to be called a “miniseries.”
I think it’s great and should happen more often.
The best example in my memory of a show that ended well was Breaking Bad, which had five excellent seasons with only a handful of borderline filler bottle episodes that were still great. The series finale was epic and resolved everything as well as possible – which no, isn’t perfectly because it was a tragic show with almost everyone dying, but it was done perfectly, great television. And it really stood out because it was a short run, around 60 episodes total, and ended while it was still doing well. Too many shows in the past had dragged on long beyond where they should have cut off. Game of Thrones was probably the last show to have a truly notorious shark jump after too much milking. After that, Zaslov took over a major network and single season runs followed by deletion became the default, with Paramount doing it last year to Star Trek Prodigy.
Prodigy by the way is another one that ended perfectly. The season 2 finale left options for a third season but also left everything more than adequately resolved.
Maybe the fact that multiple shows are now getting this right suggests a shift in the culture. Perhaps now we are going to see television pivot back to more content that stands on its own like movies.