Nightmare Fuel / Dark Matter (2015)

• The series premise. You essentially wake up in the body of a stranger, not knowing how or why you're on this spaceship, and soon find that you'll have to deal with the fallout of crimes committed by that stranger, probably for the rest of your life.
  • There's an Alternate Universe with evil versions of you and your friends who represent how you used to be, and the picture isn't pretty. They've also murdered at least one person whom you've come to see as a surrogate family member in your reality (Alt Kal Varrick).
• The various ways in which the corruption of the Galactic Authority is on display in "Welcome to Your New Home" and "Kill Them All". Two, Three and Four are sentenced without even a show trial. The GA are willing to threaten the life of a teenage girl to get information (also in "Wish I'd Spaced You When I Had the Chance"). They let the terrorist attack on Hyadum-12 happen intentionally. The prison warden bows to the corporations and arranges hits inside his facility. Even the fact that Derrick Moss's lawyer can make the "absurd" charges against One go away "after some hand wringing" because he's from a rich family that owns a galactic company, given that any charges from after he stole Jace Corso's identity and joined the Raza crew are completely true (and the identity theft itself should be illegal, even if the impersonated is a crook). No wonder the Dark Matter galaxy is such a Crapsack World.
• In "I’ve Seen the Other Side of You", we see the kind of person Two rebelled against when a glitchy neural link restores Two, Three and Four to their 14-months-ago selves: Portia Lin was perfectly willing to kill Five (either by herself or casually ordering Boone and Ryo to do it) just because she thought Five was an intruder and an inconvenience, and she was in the process of casually throwing their guests Nyx, Devon and Arax out of the airlock before Five managed to stop her. She was also definitely the captain of the pre-memory-wipe Raza crew as well as the post-wipe one, proving she was cold-bloodedly vicious enough to gain the uppper hand among a group of killers.
  • Well, "Built, Not Born" shows that taking over as captain of the Raza really just involved a 30 seconds shoot-out over whether or not Portia would be allowed to connect the Android to the ship, during which Portia quickly killed the former captain and a random mook. Boone was perfectly happy to accept her as the new captain and didn't interfere, calmly finishing his meal while this was going on and then telling Portia he'd been rooting for her. Ryo, who we know was also on the crew already, wasn't in the room at the time, but obviously accepted the change in leadership.
  • On the other hand, Alt Portia, who is presented as how Two would be if Five had never joined the crew (and therefore didn't cause a memory wipe), will commit cold-blooded mass murder simply to save some time. (She and Alt Boone could have dropped the political prisoners on the Ishida ship they took over off on some habitable planet, instead of spacing them.)
• Related is that it's indicated that pre-Raza Portia was treated as little better than a slave, to the point where she actually cowers in her memory-space when Five threatens to beat her with a metal pipe. Five can't go through with it, and instead manages to appeal to Portia's better self to end the neural link.
• Even just one of the alt!Raza crew could wreak all kinds of havoc in the canon universe, especially if it's Portia Lin, who is known to be a ruthless killer.
  • In Season 3, it turns out that all of the crew of the alt!Raza (with or without alt!Corso) did come over into the canon universe. Though they mostly just help various villainous factions off-screen. With all-out war between the corporations, Emperor Ryo hunting the Raza to get the Blink Drive, and both a mass android rebellion and an alien invasion going on behind the scenes, one crew of ruthless criminals really doesn't stand out in terms of trouble they can make.
• In "Stuff to Steal, People to Kill", the Alternate Universe Raza whose crew were never mindwiped visits a mining colony in a similar situation to the one visited in the first season. This episode reveals how our Raza likely used to deal with recalcitrant targets: by utterly flattening them with nukes. Small wonder they haven't been charged with crimes against humanity, merely "mass murder".
• Portia's past is revealed: an Artificial Human created by Dwarf Star Technologies, she was routinely tortured by scientists who wanted to see how durable she was, which included being cut by lasers. Only one person appears to have found this to be wrong and he was the only one Portia spared during her violent escape where she butchered everyone else in the entire building, including maintenance workers.
• In "Going Out Fighting", Three is 'interviewed' by Rook, and 'something' is implanted in him, which can only be described as a mashup of shadows, ink and tentacles. Even stasis pods can't contain it. It's not been explained what is is yet, but no aliens have yet been seen in Dark Matter, and if it's the first proof of alien life in the universe, it's not a good one.
  • In "The Dwarf Star Conspiracy" it turns out that it really was an alien (though from Another Dimension) and there are many more of its kind, who want to come through and take over the canon universe. In fact, far from being some kind of experiment of Dwarf Star Technologies as it first seemed, these aliens are behind the entire corporation and Rook is just a front man. The dying man Rook was afraid of and taking orders from at the end of an earlier episode was taken over by one of these aliens, and that is the reason why he was aging / dying so quickly. Dwarf Star Technologies developed artificial superhumans like Two specifically as a more durable host for the aliens, and to infiltrate humanity. Some of these hosts are in the shape of children.
  • What's more, these aliens feed by draining the energy from entire suns, which would wipe out all life in their solar systems.
• In "Take the Shot", the crew is faced with the possibility that their android is trying to kill them. Two, Three and Four suffer from hallucinations caused by their neural scans: Two imagines capture and imminent destruction by Rook's men, Four sees Misaki berating him for cowardice. Three sees Sarah, who tells him she can't enjoy Heaven because she misses him, and urges him to shoot himself so they can be together. He almost does.
• In "Wish I'd Spaced You When I Had the Chance," when Five is kidnapped, one of her kidnappers says he wants to sell her to the mining corporations, then give her organs to the organ harvesters and her meat to the meat traders... then take whatever's left of her, use her skin to make himself a coat, oh, and stuff and mount her face on his wall. Holy crap. This was after she drove a spoon through his ear.
• In "All the Time in the World," the Android becomes unstuck in time, and we're treated to bits and pieces of future events. They're disturbing and violent, made all the more so because we have no context for what's really going on. Some events include:
  • Three walking up to her, looking absolutely pissed, and shooting her without explanation. This takes place two episodes later; it's the Boone of the alternate universe.
  • The Android crying and not understanding why, and Two telling her she's feeling grief.
  • The Android lying disassembled in a lab and being experimented on by a Mad Scientist who wants to know about the android revolutionaries she met.
  • And finally, a Future Badass version of herself, with one red eye, long black hair and a tight black outfit, meeting an aged Five, who tells her how to get back to her own time. Five makes reference to a bunch of ominous-sounding future events, but won't share any details with the Android. Because, despite how bleak things look, it's the best possible outcome for the galaxy and she doesn't want to give the Android any foreknowledge that would change the future. (The last two predicted events happen before the end of the same season, though.)
    "Dwarf Star's conspiracy. The Doubled Deception. Kryden. Carina. The Accelerated. The Fall of the House of Ishida. A meeting with your creator. The Black Ships..."
• In the opening of "One Last Card to Play", we see Two and Three infiltrate an Ishida cruiser being used as a transport for political prisoners and appear to be rescuing a prisoner, taking the ship over. But then, Portia opens an airlock to flush thirty innocent people into space. When the prisoner gasps, she's shot by a grinning Marcus. At which point, it becomes clear these are the alternate reality versions of the two, who are ruthless killers, and the villainous alternate crew have crossed over to "our" universe.
• The end of "Wish I Could Believe You" has the Android suddenly wake from her charging cycle in the middle of the night, prowl around the ship until she finds Three asleep in his room, point a gun at him, then reholster it and return to her charging station without ever uttering a word. The next episode reveals that a hacker is using the Android's neural link to control her body, finally gaining full control in that episode.
• When Five finds out what the hacker has done, she and Sarah stop him by using his neural link to send a pulse into his brain, permanently locking him in a vegetative state where he can only scream inside the empty void of his mind. Lesson learned: mess with Five's friends at your own peril.