The big 2-part Dark Matter season finale is coming up this Friday (I know … already) and to celebrate we had the opportunity to be a part of a conference call interview with several of the cast along with lead mystery wrangler, Joe Mallozzi. Joining Joe were Melissa O’Neil (Two), Jodelle Ferland (Five), Alex Mallari, Jr. (Four) and Roger Cross (Six) who answered every question we threw at them. It was a lot of fun and laughter accompanied most of the conversation. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves and with the exception of a few phone line issues, it went off without a hitch.

Before you read any further, be warned that HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! There aren’t any large, hairy, wookiee-sized spoilers inside, but there are a few, fuzzy tribble-sized ones tossed about. I know some people would rather avoid such teases and hints, so please avert your eyes and read no further if you are one of them. For the rest of you nerds, keep on readin’ on, but before you do, remember that the Dark Matter finale is a two-parter beginning at 9/8c this Friday. That’s one hour earlier than usual. Don’t miss it!

Hi, Space Cadets!

Cross: No hugs, Tom. No hugs, no hugs. (This is from me frequently teasing Roger about hugs on Twitter. The fact that I’m still alive is proof he’s a very tolerant man.)

With Five proving herself to be a very capable member of the crew, can you each talk about your character’s changing opinions of her?

Cross: I still think Six kind of feels like he has to protect her, but he starts slowly realizing, “Wait a second, she’s smart.” There’s a comment, and it’s pretty subtle, too, that Joe wrote in there where they’re coming off the ship and she goes, “Oh, I would’ve just reprogrammed it.” And all of a sudden the bells go off and he’s like, “I didn’t know you knew how to program.” She throw him things and all of a sudden you’re like, well, maybe she’s not as helpless as she appears.

Who, other than Melissa, is the best singer? And who thinks they’re the best singer that might not necessarily be?

Ferland: Melissa’s the best singer.

Mallari: Roger’s a nice second.

Cross: Alex, you’re right there, brother! For some reason, from day one … I think it’s a very odd group of us, but we all seem to know the same songs. And we might have some sing-alongs that kinda might drive our first ADs crazy going, “They’re laughing and having too much fun! Like, stop!” And we’re like, “What? We’re just singing!”

O’Neil: Alex, Roger and I all really love 90s soul and R&B. We should do a 90s music video!

Cross: That would be fun. We should do that.

Mallari: On the Raza.

Cross: We’re still trying to get Jodelle to sing, but she keeps refusing. I don’t know why.

Ferland: One day, I’m just going to belt out into song and you will all be shocked.

Melissa, here’s a question for you. Dark Matter is your first television series experience. What was the most interesting or surprising thing you learned from this?

O’Neil: I didn’t expect to come out with so many new friends. My entire summer has just kind of been filled with crew members and AD people and my stunt double. It’s cool. I’ve created this new posse in Toronto and besides learning a whole ton and learning a different way to tell a story, I’ve made so many new friends. Like, life-long ones, you know?

How are each of you most like and most un-like your characters?

Mallari: I’m not like Four at all. [laughs] Yeah, he’s too serious for my liking.

Cross: You’re not serious.

Mallari: That’s what I’m saying, I’m not like Four at all. I mean, the only thing I have in common with Four is I can kick ass.

Ferland: I think I’m most like Five because of her quirkiness and her weirdness. I just kind of consider myself a really weird person and I’m proud of my awkwardness and strangeness. I think I’m like Five in that way, she’s pretty different and I relate to her because of that. I don’t know how I feel about her sense of style. I tend to wear one or two colors at once instead of all of them, but I love dressing like that on set and it’s a lot of fun because that’s not normally how I’d go outside. I love being able to play Five and be completely different than how I normally am, except for the quirkiness, as I said. So, yeah, other than the colors and all of the pink, we’re pretty similar.

O’Neil: I don’t know, I don’t think I find as much comfort in my own skin as Two, but I don’t know. I can be pretty forthcoming with my thoughts.

You’re not a custom-built biosynthetic organism, are you?

O’Neil: I’m not a biosynthetic organism. I don’t think. But maybe there’s going to be a dun, dun, dunnn(!) moment in my life, I have no idea. But no, not to my knowledge.

What piece of technology from the show would you want to have in real life?

Mallari: Transfer Transit.

O’Neil: That would be so great!

Cross: That would be awesome.

Ferland: It freaks me out a little, I have to admit, but I would try it. It would be cool, yeah.

Mallari: Oh, and FTL!

Ferland: If we’re just talking technology here, I just want the fish.

Do you each have a favorite part of the ship’s physical sets?

O’Neil: I like the corridors.

Cross: The corridors are cool

O’Neil: I love the hallways, they’re so great. They just look so industrial and grimy. I feel like in those areas, that’s where you can see that we’ve got a “beater” for a ship. It’s not like we’re flying around in some Cadillac. It’s utilitarian and I feel like the corridors really show that off the best.

Ferland: I really love the bridge as well just because there’s lots to look at. There’s so many buttons and it’s fun to hang out in.

Cross: We’ve got a pretty cool screen in the commissary, too. It’s the screens that never line up and drive Jodelle crazy.

Jodelle, we were surprised to see that you didn’t say you liked the air ducts. With all that crawling, you need some knee pads for those.

Ferland: You know, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. When I saw that I was going to be crawling through all those vents I thought, “that will be fun” and then I actually got in there and I was like, “I might’ve been a little bit wrong.” I can’t say that if I had a little bit of free time that I wouldn’t go find some vents to crawl through, but it’s definitely worth it when I watch afterwards because I go, “Wow. That looked really cool, I’m glad that I did it.” But, yeah, it’s never as much fun as you think it’s going to be, but I still enjoyed doing it.

Jodelle, I know you’re a big fan of Doctor Who. There’s a great “technobabble” line uttered by the third Doctor when he says, “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.” It became a kind of catchphrase in its day. Back in episode 10 when you were wiring up the android to open the vault door you said, “If I don’t adjust the inverter to minimize harmonic distortion we’ll get pulsating torque and the whole thing will fry.” Am I the only one who made this association? Because when I heard it I thought, “She’s got her Doctor Who moment here!”

Ferland: You know what? I didn’t even think of that, but I’m so glad you mentioned it because that makes me really happy. I love my Doctor Who references even if it was by accident!

Cross: And Joe will tell you it wasn’t an accident.

Ferland: You never know with Joe. There are some things that seem like references to something and I’m never sure if he did it on purpose.

Joe, what gave you the idea to try Periscope after the Dark Matter broadcasts?

Mallozzi: Syfy UK asked if I would be interested and I was like “sure” and we did it for one of the Syfy UK broadcasts and it was delightfully awkward, but fun. And then I decided I would follow through. I’ve been live tweeting almost every week and hopefully I’ll have time to do an east and west coast Periscope and possibly one for the UK viewers as well.

Do any of you have any other upcoming projects that fans can look for while we wait for a second season of Dark Matter?

Cross: The final season of Continuum is coming out, as most of you probably know, September 11. I have a movie, Lockdown, that’s going to be out soon. I’m doing some episodes of Bones and I’m doing a bunch of other stuff. You’ll see me all over the place.

O’Neil: I’ve just finished my last two days of shooting on a show called Rogue on DirecTV. I play this hacker girl. That’ll be out, I think, over the holiday season. And a new CBC show called This Life, which stars Torri Higginson, our Commander Truffault. I just finished doing a video game, but I can’t talk too much about that yet.

Jodelle: I’ve had a pretty chill summer, actually, since Dark Matter finished. I have a couple of things I’ll be working on with friends, but nothing I can give a lot of information on at the moment.

Are you or any of the writing staff fans of Big Brother? The finale reminded me, in parts, of the general distress and alliances that show up so much in that show.

Mallozzi: Well, I’m going to show my age, but I don’t watch Big Brother. When I was a kid I read a lot of Agatha Christie and the finale is essentially Ten Little Indians where basically you’ve got a group of people and they start dropping one by one. There’s a dying realization that if there’s no outside force here, then it’s one of them, and as the mystery deepens distrust grows and you see alliances shift. Really, that’s where my inspiration comes, but Big Brother is a good reference, too.

Can you all talk about working with Wil Wheaton?

Cross: Poor Wil. Airplanes killed us that day. Remember that, Joe?

Mallozzi: We were actually shooting by an airport and the poor guy has to deliver this incredibly long monologue. He’d get into it and then 30 seconds in a plane would buzz the area and we’d have to cut and start over again. He ended up delivering an entire monologue in pieces, but he was super professional and super focused and just a very nice guy to work with.

Ferland: I knew we were going to have Wil Wheaton on the show, but I never got to meet him! I was so sad. What happened is that I … nobody told me. I was at the computer at home after work and I saw something on his Instagram of Facebook and it was a small piece of the Dark Matter logo and he was saying it was a hint of what he was working on. And I looked at it for a while and I thought that looks really familiar, then I was like, “Wait a minute!” Then I texted Joe right away and I was like, “Wil Wheaton’s on our show! Why didn’t you tell me?” I was very excited about it and hopefully I’ll get to meet him some day.

What was everybody’s biggest surprise when you all read the finale script?

Ferland: Every episode had something that shocked the team. Every time we got a script we just wanted the next one.

Cross: These last few episodes, especially, we were just like, “Ahhh….”

Ferland: Yeah, and we were bothering Joe non-stop asking, “Please, please give us the next episode. Tell us what happens. You can’t do this to us!” but we got nothing out of him.

Cross: Except for that grin. That Mallozzi grin.

O’Neil: I was watching the finale on my iPad and yelling at the screen. So we better find out, we really better get a second season. I want to know how it ends.

For the rest of our extensive coverage of Dark Matter, CLICK HERE.

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The Dark Matter 2-part finale airs Friday, August 28 at 9/8 central on Syfy



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