This is a spoiler-free review.

Let me begin by confessing that I am a huge fan of The Expanse, both the book and the TV series. With that one show, the Syfy Channel raised their profile dramatically among hard science fiction geeks and elevated their programming back to Battlestar Galactica levels. With their newest offering in the genre, Nightflyers, they are poised to do it again. If, that is, the show can achieve enough momentum to break orbit instead of backsliding into the gravity well of schlock.

Before we go any further, we need to be very clear: potential viewers surfing the internet for reviews will hear the inevitable comparison to the 1997 film Event Horizon. It is an easy leap to make, lest we forget that Nightflyers was originally a Locus Award winning novella published in 1980 by George R. R. Martin. Adapted into a low-budget film in 1987 it would be unfair to say the two films were similar or even related. Thematically, however, there is a grey area. The specific themes being hard science fiction. And horror.

And you will get plenty of horror in the opening sequence of the season premiere of Nightflyers.The tension ramps up so quickly that this viewer was grinding her teeth and breaking into a flop sweat. Seriously. We are talking a series opening as jarring as some of the scenes in season 1 of the Walking Dead. Which is pretty damn impressive for Syfy. The success of that opening scene was in no small part thanks to the excellent acting chops of Gretchen Mol as Dr. Matheson and Angus Sampson as Rowan.