#derrick-moss

Yesterday (July 24, 2021), Dark Matter showrunner Joseph Mallozzi sat down with Scripts & Scribes for a livestream on Youtube, and answered questions about the writing process, Dark Matter, and Stargate. Here are the Dark Matter questions and answers (questions are copied and pasted from the chat replay along the right-hand side of the video, answers are paraphrased).

Question: What happened to Sarah, Dr. Shaw and Portia's daughter Katie in the Alternate Universe?

Answer: Sarah passed away, Dr Shaw is still in stasis, and Katie is still on a planet with Kryden for safekeeping.

Question: Did Ryo, Boone, Das, "Corso" and "Griff" all know about Portia's nanites pre-mindwipe? Did Ryo, Boone, Corso, Wexler and Tash all know about them on the Alt crew?

Answer: The pre-mindwipe crew did know that Portia was an enhanced human. The Alt crew did not.

Question: Is Alt Wexler slightly nicer? 'Cause Primary Wexler threatened to rape Five in front of One, and it'd be hard to accept Alt Wexler joining the crew in S4 if it'd be in his character to do the same.

Answer: Yes, Alt Wexler is nicer than Primary Wexler. More someone you could go out for drinks with.

Question: In that vein, is there a reason Alt Corso has the same hairstyle as One instead of Primary Corso's hairstyle? 'Cause both were gunning for Boone, and if Wexler can be nicer, Moss could be less nice...

Answer: There was no real reason for the hairstyle, but that’s a very good point.

Unanswered Comment: You left that ambiguous on purpose; sneaky...

Question: What would Moss have done when they actually reached the mining planet if there'd been no mindwipe? I'm sad we didn't get to see One join the outlaw crew more deliberately in S2, like Six because of the Executive Meddling that took him off.

Answer: He would have killed Boone.

Question: I meant what he would have done about being expected to kill the miners.

Answer: That’s hard to say because it didn’t actually happen. After he killed Boone, maybe he would have tried to stop the others and gotten killed.

Question: When One faked his death, did he anticipate that van Hoeven was going to hire an assassin (before the day was over, even) or did he hire Corso himself (without the latter knowing)?

Answer: One hired Corso himself.

Unanswered Comment: I hope One is in the miniseries, but it's probably too much of a spoiler to talk about.

Question: To  me one of the secrets of a GREAT show is a cast that just gels, they  just like each other and have a ball. as in SG1 and SGA. was it like  that with the Darkmatter cast ?

Answer: Yes!

Question: When you said on your blog that One would have returned as "an ally" in S4 (and presumably S5), that does mean helping from his position as head of CoreLactic rather than being on the ship?

Showrunner Joseph Mallozzi is pitching a 6-episode miniseries to Netflix that will condense Season 4′s planned storyline, with an opening for a second miniseries condensing Season 5.

Fans, request "Dark Matter Season 4" and "Dark Matter Season 5" at https://help.netflix.com/en/titlerequest Joe is pitching them as a couple of miniseries to be conservative but you can even specifically say "Preferably as full 13-episode seasons!" on your forms. He's confirmed that won't sabotage things.

And check out www.josephmallozzi.com and www.reddit.com/r/darkmatter, where Joe has been uploading segments of his pitch!

Please reblog this post (reblog, not just like) far and wide to spread the word!

@quipxotic​  Quipxotic,

My friend Raven (@raven-mcbain-monkeymouse) shared a Dark Matter fic idea with a suggested title of “Mind Games” they won't be able to write themself because they can't do dialogue, in the hopes someone will pick it up, and based on your Dark Matter fanfics on AO3 I've enjoyed very much, I was wondering if you might be the person to write it.

Described here: https://noybusiness.tumblr.com/post/652572197116903424/dark-matter-syfy-fic-idea

and here: https://noybusiness.tumblr.com/post/655303946482696192/titlesummary-meme-ship-of-your-choice-from-dark

(Another possibility would be to use his scan from Transfer Transit from Episode 8).

According to Joseph Mallozzi, not much time passes between episodes of Dark Matter, so when AU Wexler said in Season 3 that his primary counterpart, who died in Season 1, had been missing for a month, it was accurate. Which means it hasn’t yet been a full year since the pilot.

So with that in mind, and I’m honestly surprised no one has thought of this before, I can totally see the Android throwing the crew a surprise birthday party on the anniversary of their awakening. Half of them don’t even know their birthday birthdays anyway. Since it was her awakening, too, perhaps she’d even wipe her own memory of doing the planning after it was all set up, so that she could be surprised as well.

Preferably in an AU where One wasn’t killed off due to creative interference by the execs and was still with the crew as Mallozzi originally intended. Although he was going to bring him back in Season 4 if the show hadn’t been cancelled, so if this is set in the future, an AU might not be necessary for him to be on the ship (although Mallozzi’s blog post said “would return as an ally in Season 4″, so I’m not sure he’d have been a crew member again as opposed to helping them from his position as head of CoreLactic, in which case an AU would be needed in order for him to be on the ship on the day, unless the Android sent him an invitation).

Anyway, feel free to grab this idea. Multiple people even, I don’t mind; in fact, I encourage it!

I was reading an older version of the script for the pilot of Dark Matter, where it opens with the image of One in a misty stasis pod oblivious to his surroundings, and also thinking about this cut scene from Episode 2.04 “We Were Family”:

ANDROID (O.S.): How long did it take you to start dreaming?

FOUR turns and throws her a look.

ANDROID: Thoughts and images from human memory form the basis of REM and NREM dreams. Without memories to process, brain mechanisms are incapable of producing cognitive contents.

FOUR: On the second day, I dreamt I was back in stasis, awake but unable to free myself. It’s a dream I’ve had many times since.

and the fact that when people are stasis pods, their digital consciousness is uploaded to keep the mind active, per Five’s explanation in Episode 3.03 “Welcome to the Revolution” of how she saved Sarah.

So, the six of them must have been dreaming while in stasis, and at some point when the memory-wiping virus did its thing, their dreams must have just gone black.