Dark Matter: Season 2

When the three or four episodes of the first season of Dark Matter aired in 2024, I was super-pumped about the show. The show was created by Blake Crouch, who based the show on his 2016 novel about a physicist who built a machine to travel between alternate dimension.

I thought it was so interesting how the machine worked, like you walk on an infinite hallway and you can decide to walk through a door… and on the other side of the door is an alternate dimension. Like I said, I was really intrigued about the science of it all, but as I found out more and more about how it works, it just felt like bad writing or bad science fiction.

Plus, the story started becoming incredibly predictable. Some things didn’t work for me – like the introduction of a certain character. The villain didn’t work for me. By the end of the first season, I just became disinterested in the series.

Two years later, and without notice, Apple TV just dropped the first episode of season 2.

I had forgotten a lot of stuff that happened in the first season (so I might have to fast-forward through some of the last season), but it got me interested again.

Season 2 starts off with 13 dead bodies of our main character, Jason Dessen. I don’t know the timeline, but I am to guess it’s in the near future, where the other Jasons have zeroed in to find “our” Jason. So, I’m intrigued where this is going… I’m still not convince it’ll be great television, but I’ll tune in to find out how we got here.

The normal timeline, we see a lot of setting up the table: the black friend who needs to clear his mind (I forgot his character in the first season), the drug friend who needed to create a drug to help takes him home, and there is a mysterious psycho Jason who wants to kill the other Jasons. The prime Jason is just trying to find his way back home.

The Mandalorian And Grogu

The latest Star Wars film, The Mandalorian And Grogu is finally available on Bluray and 4k (it was released last week). As you may, or may not, know, I was super, super disappointed in The Book of Boba Fett that I didn’t even bother watching The Mandalorian Season 3 (that’s how bad that Boba Fett show was).

Enough time have passed that I think it’ll be good to check out the film, which, as it turns out, is more or less, like Season 4 (but all condensed into one two-hour movie).

The first thing you noticed is that it looks really good, because they now have a movie budget. I think it’s PG-13, but it felt so much more violent than the television show… particularly the opening sequence where Mando is just killing all these troopers.

If you’re not familiar with The Mandalorian, it’s about a bounty hunter who rescues a baby Yoda, and the series became kind of like Lone Wolf and Cub. It had elements of Spaghetti Western, but with that dash of Eastern action… set in the Star Wars universe. It was cool, at least the first season was really good.

Anyway, in the movie, Mando is on a new mission to track down a Jabba the Hutt’s son. It’s pretty straight-forward how the story plays out- however predicable it was. Mando goes to planet, finds the Hutt, and rescues him from his captive. He then has to bring in the captor. Like I said, it’s a pretty simple fetch mission.

Some new elements in the movie: Mando has a new ship (which is a different Razor Crest). He has an assigned co-pilot, who helps out, but I didn’t think he was needed in the story. It’s like a cameo appearance, like Martin Scorsese as the four-armed cook… he didn’t need to be included.

So, what’s the verdict? I think it’s still a television show. The whole movie could have been split into two one-long episodes.