I recently watched season 1 of
Dark Matter, a SyFy show based on a comic, and I think the writers missed an opportunity.
The premise is pretty simple: Six strangers awake on a spaceship with most of their memories wiped. As the people come out of their sleeping chambers they name themselves "One" through "Six" in the order that they awoke. They soon realize that they are the crew of the ship, named Raza, and are, apparently, mercenaries for hire.
With the premise at hand it could have been one heck of an action show if they had the crew taking on various jobs as they search out their identities while dealing with an unknown past that could catch up to them at any minute. Think of the old classic
A-Team TV show but set in space or even to
Firefly.
Instead, most of season 1, spanning just 13 episodes, is spent as each crew members find outs their identities rather quickly and each member sets about settling some issue that they suddenly know about. In a way it's actually pretty weird in that the characters, who have no memories of their past, when finding out something about themselves, suddenly need to resolve the issue even though
they still don't have their memories. In short, the show goes from being what could have been an exciting action show to a mundane 'soap' drama.
I can't say too much negative about the show, though. The special effects aren't bad, there is enough going on with the storylines to keep somebody watching, and heck, even Wil Wheaton shows up as a bad guy.
Sci-fi TV viewers will likely recognize at least one of the actors. Roger Cross, who plays Six, is a supporting actor who has appeared in a lot of genre TV shows over the years and most recently could been seen as Travis in Continuum.
Enough viewers have tuned in that SyFy has committed to a second season coming in 2016.