Trivia / Dark Angel

Series

• Acting for Two:
  • Some X5s have clones, which are subject to Playing Their Own Twin, such as Ben's clone Alec (both are played by Jensen Ackles) and Max's clone Sam (both are played by Jessica Alba).
  • Joshua had a younger brother named Isaac, who was also played by Kevin Durand. Despite being played by the same actor, they weren't twins like Ben and Alec or Max and Sam were - Joshua was older (and not just by a few minutes), Joshua is brown-haired while Isaac had shorter black hair and wasn't quite as big as Joshua, and Isaac had a barcode while Joshua doesn't.
  • Geneva Locke played both Max's younger self in flashbacks and her X7 clone in the present, and Chris Lazar played both young Zack and his X7 clone. Footage from a young Max flashback was reused briefly to represent young Sam in a flashback in "She Ain't Heavy" as well.
• California Doubling: Takes place in Seattle, filmed in Vancouver.
• The Cast Showoff: Jensen Ackles did his own piano playing in "The Berrisford Agenda", which he learned in the course of a couple days, making him close to the Instant Expert his character was. They hired a hand double but never had to use him.
• Conclusion in Another Medium: Since the show ended mid-plot, two novels (Skin Game and After the Dark) were published to finish the story, in addition to a prequel novel (Before the Dawn) which feeds into both the Pilot and After the Dark. Skin Game wraps up the siege of Terminal City, while After the Dark provides closure to the Myth Arc. Completing the set is a compilation of in-universe documents called The Eyes Only Dossier.
• Creator Backlash:
  • In the commentary for the season one finale, Jessica Alba praises the first season immensely and then completely brushes off season two like it was yesterday's garbage.
  "The second season I'm not even going to mention because that really wasn't the show. The first season was definitely the show."
  • After a new writer in Season 2 gave Original Cindy a line where she comments on Alec's prettiness, Valerie Rae Miller called them up and told them in no uncertain terms that they were not going to make Cindy no longer a lesbian.
• The Danza: Ashley Scott as Asha, nearly.
• Development Gag: When Max meets self-made "superhero" Phil in the episode "I and I Am a Camera", he asks her if her name stands for Maximum Girl or Maximum Woman. "Maximum Girl" was a working title for the show.
• Enforced Method Acting: When they were filming the scene in "The Berrisford Agenda" where Alec confesses to Rachel and she slaps him, Meghan Ory's attempts at fake slaps weren't coming off, so Jensen Ackles told her to really slap him. It worked, and you can see his genuine reaction, but since real slaps really hurt, he learned never to suggest that again.
• Executive Meddling: Part of the reason for the sudden change in the show's thematic elements between the first and second seasons, supposedly an attempt to tone down the show's dystopian atmosphere in the wake of 9/11.
• Friday Night Death Slot:
  • Shipped here in its second season. The show that replaced it in that particular timeslot? Firefly. Cue fan war.
  • Despite this, the show was greenlit for a third season and its renewal officially announced. And then it was canceled instead just a few days later. Like the inversion of being Uncanceled.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Jensen Ackles related that Jessica Alba was cold to him due to stress from carrying the weight of the show on her shoulders but spoke to him near the end of filming the season to apologize. Apparently, James Cameron put a lot of pressure on her.
  • Michael Weatherly apparently engaged in some pettiness behind the scenes like literally counting how many lines he and Jensen had in their scenes together and having the writers change it if Jensen had more, and having them change a scene where Alec beat Logan at pool to the other way around, despite Alec having genetically enhanced skills. You wouldn't know it from Jensen's professional demeanor in his interviews about the show, though.
  • On the plus side, it was this experience that made Jensen determined that he would be welcoming if he were ever the lead on a show, and everyone who's co-starred or guest starred on Supernatural will attest to the truth of that.
  • Weatherly and Alba's failed engagement wasn't always exactly tranquil.
• No Stunt Double: Jessica Alba and Jensen Ackles did have stunt doubles (and Jensen's continued to be his stunt double on Supernatural), but did a lot of their own stunts, including their fight scenes with each other.
• On-Set Injury: Lita, who played the Phalanx leader in the series finale, suffered three cracks in her vertebrae rehearsing with a stunt double while filming a fight scene. She attempted a hurricanrana but the stunt double dropped her on her head and shoulders. She would finish and film the scene, but the neck injury kept her out of the wrestling ring for a year.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The tie-in game by Radical Entertainment and Sierra/Vivendi Universal was originally going to avert this trope, but after the show was cancelled, the game's budget was decreased significantly and it ended up becoming a repetitive button-mashing beat-em-up with little variety in enemies and bosses (where for the bosses, all of them have the same exact attack pattern) and puzzles that have been seen before in other titles. The only significant good things about it are that Jessica Alba and Michael Weatherly lent their likenesses and voices for Max and Logan, and there are some decent unlockable extras.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Louise, a woman who's revealed to be trans in "Out", was played by trans actress Jessica Crockett. It's listed as the first time a trans woman character on any television series was played by a real trans woman.
• Reality Subtext:
  • The Pulse in the show's backstory was inspired by Y2K panic.
  • One of the reasons the network retooled the show in Season 2 and later cancelled it was that following 9-11, they got cold feet about portraying an America that had been reduced to a Third World country by terrorist actions.
• Real-Life Relative: Max's brother Krit is played by Jessica Alba's actual brother Joshua Alba in "...And Jesus Brought a Casserole". There's no indication whether or not this means Max and Krit actually share DNA, as X5s generally don't and only call each other siblings because they were raised together.
• Romance on the Set: Jessica Alba (Max) and Michael Weatherly (Logan). They were engaged.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • There is a video game James Cameron's Dark Angel based on this series, which should not be confused as having anything to do with the video game Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse.
  • There is also an adventure supplement for Shadowrun with the title Dark Angel, and though both the game and the show are set in near-future Seattle, the adventure was released about a decade before the TV show first aired.
  • This series has nothing to do with the 1990 film Dark Angel (aka I Come in Peace), which is about a vice cop fighting an alien drug dealer, or the 1994 film Dark Angel: The Ascent, which is about a teenage demoness who was born in Hell coming up to Earth and becoming a vigilante. Or with the TV series Angel, about the eponymous vampire.
• Star-Making Role: For Jessica Alba.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The audition tapes on the season one DVD reveal that there were originally going to be only six escapees, rather than the final number of twelve, and that Jondy (who'd been mentioned by Max as her closest sister) was to be the subject of "Cold Comfort" and not Brin.
  • Biggs in "Love Among the Runes" was originally going to be Krit, but Joshua Alba was unavailable at the time. There were also plans to have Syl take on what eventually became Cece's role in "Freak Nation" but Nicki Aycox wasn't available, and to bring back Lisa Ann Cabasa as Tinga's twin (named Jewel in The Eyes Only Dossier). This might be just as well, since both Krit and Syl would have been Back for the Dead.
  • James Cameron originally wanted Eliza Dushku for Max Guevera.
  • The genesis of "The Berrisford Agenda" was 'the Embassy Episode', where Max and Logan would go to a black-tie event at an embassy and encounter fallout from something Alec had done for Manticore, which the three of them would have had to work together to deal with. The story wasn't coming together until it was suggested to make it a love story.
  • It originally would have been Lydecker handling Alec in the "Berrisford Agenda" flashbacks rather than his subordinate Sandoval if John Savage had been available.
  • Robert Berrisford was originally going to be portrayed with more roguish behavior that made it clear Alec had modeled his persona after him. And Rachel would have briefly woken up and forgiven Alec before she died.
  • When the man in the alley addressed him as Simon Lehane, Alec was originally going to say, "That's my alias, don't wear it out," but Jensen convinced the writer that Alec wouldn't be flippant in this scene.
  • Originally, Rachel would given Alec her locket as a gift in a quiet moment, until it was pointed out that boys don't usually receive lockets as presents. Instead, it comes off as she's running to warn her father.
  • Alec and Asha were originally going to actually sleep together; instead, they had a near-miss in "Borrowed Time".
  • The story director for the show wanted to do an episode where the A-story was that Alec would be mistaken for Ben by the Yakuza, who wanted revenge for something Ben had done to them. As the season stretched on without finding a place for it, and they needed an obstacle to Alec getting to the hospital to give Logan a blood transfusion, it was reworked into the B-story of "Hello, Goodbye", with Alec being arrested for one of Ben's murders.
  • A lot of their usual snark and bickering and runaround was cut out of the scene where Max tells Alec about Ben, because the dialogue was running too long and the points that this was a really painful thing for Max to discuss and Alec wanted to know about his brother weren't getting across.

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Band

• The Pete Best: All of their drummers before Hoglan except possibly Jack Schwartz (who at least appeared on We Have Arrived). Lee Rauch has the dubious honor of being this trope not only for Dark Angel but also to Megadeth, having played on a demo with them and nothing else.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Dave Mustaine had asked Eric Meyer to join Megadeth several times, declining each and every time to stick with Dark Angel. He also hit up Durkin about joining, but the latter declined because he didn't want to give up Dark Angel (though, like Lee Altus and probably Meyer as well, Mustaine's out-of-control drug usage probably played a role in this decision).
  • A fifth album, The Atrocity Exhibit, was planned back in 1992 but never came into frution. Interestingly, Exodus would release an album with the same title fifteen years later.

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