Episode #1.5

I've managed to watch up to episode #1.5 and although the story is intriguing, I'm finding it very hard going with Three, if not almost impossible!

Anthony Lemke might be a great actor but his portrayal of Three is seriously making me groan everytime he's on screen. Three's arrogant, self-assured, belligerent, lying, egotistical and selfish attitude is the kind of thing that get's everyone else killed, usually except themselves. It's so over the top over-acting that it's actually ruining the enjoyment of watching the show for me. One might think this is a Comic Relief effort by him. If this character is antagonistic or negative one more time, or if he comes out with another load of BS to cover for what really happened, when there's no good reason for it whatsoever, I might just stop watching Dark Matter to save my sanity! One might say "...but they're all wanted criminals in a universe that's hunting them" but how did such a person survive in the first place? The others all seem like they have more than 2 brain cells inside their heads but Three is a meathead of unbelievable proportions! It wouldn't be so bad if Three was funny with his attempts at humour or likeable in some way but he just isn't. Ever! Anthony Lemke's delivery is not even dead pan. There's infinitely more credible feeling and emotion from Zoie Palmer who plays an android!

The rest of the cast are believable and the acting is pretty damned good. They have interesting traits that make me want to know more about them and their history. With Three I know what he's going to say before he says it and his character has become so mind-numbingly predictable it's now beyond a joke or something I'm laughing at. I really don't care who he is, what he's done, or where the series plans to take him. I just want him to be the first of the main cast to leave or get killed off. If this guy were part of my crew I wouldn't hesitate to blow him out of an airlock instantly, or arrange for him to encounter a convenient accident. Having to put up with him is viewing torture. It's not just a case of being such a good actor that he plays a character the audience loves to hate. Three's character is prehistorically unoriginal, stuck-record type repetitive, unashamedly forseeable, and it's all becoming very, very boring to endure him compared to the others.

Really, I love this series. But this is not one of the better episodes.

In the process of trying to salvage a dead ship, the crew ends up attacked by died in the wool zombies. Number 2 gets bitten in the neck and there is great concern. Not much as far as tension because, of course, it's a series with a standard cast. What's interesting has to do more with their continuing mission as they try to avoid the conglomerate that is after them.