Blake Crouch has hilariously adapted his own 2016 novel, “Dark Matter,” into a nine-episode series for Apple TV+, intended to be your destination for classy sci-fi. He has nothing to do with “dark matter,” except that Shakespeare might have used the phrase to describe some sinister matter: “This dark matter darkens our bright prospects,” something like that.
Pseudoscientifically speaking, it's a parallel reality series, with a dose of domestic drama, some secret project hijinks, and a structure reminiscent of The Odyssey, in that it's the story of a man facing monstrous obstacles and distractions. personal as he tries to return to his wife, his son and his homeland. A complement of familiar quantum mechanics terms are dropped along the way, with just a hint of a thud: superposition, entanglement, liminal, multiverse: ideas that have become standard scientific plot devices and useful literary metaphors. .
Joel Edgerton plays Chicago physics professor Jason Dessen, married to Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and father of Charlie (Oakes Fegley). Almost everywhere on television except “Abbott Elementary,” teaching is dramatic shorthand for failure, and we get the sense that Jason isn't fully engaged at work. At the end of a day in which 1) he gives meaningful lectures to half-interested students about Schrodinger's dead and alive cat; 2) he interacts with his family, showing us a comfortable home; and 3) he finds out that his friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) has won a million dollar physics prize, which bothers him a little, he is kidnapped and drugged by a masked man and wakes up, as they loved to say in the movies. old Marvel comics. , “Trapped in a world he never created!”
“Dark Matter” centers on Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), left, who is married to Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), at least in a reality show.
(Apple TV+)
Well, not to be shy about it, the man in the mask is, more or less, Jason himself (identified in the book as Jason 2), who comes from a reality in which he decided not to marry Daniela, and that choice created an entire alternate timeline. (See: the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics.) Although he becomes a major physicist, he has been drowning in regret to the point of inventing a techno-magical contraption capable of opening doors to other worlds, apparently only finding one in which he would marry her and replacing it with Jason. It's a terrible idea!
In the other world, where Jason doesn't recognize the people he (thinks) knows him and is confronted by radically different versions of people he (thinks) he knows, the natives assume he has lost his mind. For a while, he is inclined to agree. That's not exactly his beautiful house, and there's certainly not his beautiful wife inside it: it's the beautiful Amanda (Alice Braga), a psychologist attached to the techno-gizmo project. But before long, Jason will realize what's what and he'll set about figuring out how to get back to the place where he once belonged. Obviously, he won't sit still, in this or any other alternate Chicago (we'll visit a few), although a viewer might be inclined, after a while, to encourage him to settle down. There are some tantalizing opportunities.
That, of course, would leave her Daniela saddled with Jason 2, who is, after all, a liar, an interdimensional kidnapper, and, one would have to say, given the false pretenses, a rapist. Obviously no one would expect his partner to be replaced by a simulacrum; Still, it takes her an oddly long time to realize that something isn't quite right with him (long-term partners are very attuned to variations in behavior) let alone accept that he's not the man for her. Who got married.
There is little new under the sun of science fiction, and in “Dark Matter” there are echoes of the films “Sliding Doors”, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and the grandfather of the “What If?” films, “It's to Wonderful Life” (To make that echo stronger, it's on a movie theater marquee, while Jason runs like Jimmy Stewart down the street.) There's the “Star Trek” episode “Mirror, Mirror” (in which Kirk from the Bad World and Kirk from the Good World swap places) and the great Fox series “Fringe” and countless other movies and TV episodes that play with worlds. and parallel realities.
In another dimension, Jason is married to Amanda (Alice Braga).
(Apple TV+)
“Dark Matter” is not subtle. Crouch (whose previous “Wayward Pines,” about being trapped in a single city-sized reality, was turned into a Syfy series) doesn't waste time on subtext, not when he can have characters explain their themes of choice and repentance. (There is even therapy). “Are you happy with your life,” Jason 2 asks Jason 1 as he knocks him unconscious, “or have you ever wondered what else you could have been?”
Explaining her latest exhibition, which features alternative paths, double exposure portraits and a quote from TS Eliot (“Footsteps echo in memory/Down the passage we don't take/Towards the door we never open”), Daniela from the other world. (a successful artist where “our” Daniela has stopped painting) she tells the crowd: “Sometimes we ask ourselves the big questions. Who I am? Who could it be?… We all know that our lives are marked by the decisions we make.” (“Dark Matter” wants you to choose love).
Because the main characters, and some secondary ones, have counterparts in each reality, there is a lot to keep clear and no one should blame you if you don't. (You can't tell players apart without two scorecards, to paraphrase the old saying.) Furthermore, for dramatic effect, the action will cut between realities without immediately making it clear where we are: a fake. It can tire you out after a while, keeping things together, and “Dark Matter” goes on for a while, although Crouch is careful to turn his midlife crisis drama into an action movie at regular intervals. Things become increasingly more complicated, as the premise itself suggests, and at some point you may wonder how, or even if, Crouch is going to get his protagonists out of the hole he has dug for them; I'm sure some of you, smarter than me, have figured it out.
Edgerton does a good job of differentiating the normal sad Jason from the hyper-creepy Jason (without making it too obviously creepy) and the creepy Jason playing the normal guy, although, for different reasons, they can all grow up. sometimes dressing. (The main reason: The series is too long, almost as long as an entire season of “Doctor Who.”) Connelly is very much a person you might want to search worlds to find; Braga is a ray of sunshine and sensitivity where you wouldn't expect to find it.
As with all science fiction, there are impossible things that you will have to accept; otherwise I guess it would just be science. Crouch has scrupulously tried to plug conceptual holes and anticipate his objections. It's useless, of course, but that's okay.
While poetically evocative, like the butterfly's flapping wing causing a typhoon, and mathematically pretty, the many-worlds interpretation is ridiculous in any practical sense. What counts as an election anyway? Does a typo in this world create a clean copy in many others? There are billions of people on Earth deciding things every second, not to mention all other sentient beings. Is there a world where my cat isn't bothering me right now? (Probably not.)
