When the hook of a particular movie or TV show directly involves instant/Act One amnesia, you know you're in for a bit of a slow burn. Things will get revealed, but slowly. Dangers will preset themselves, but with purposefully fuzzy context. Puzzle parts will need to be pieced together and investability won't come easy.

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Now let's talk about six amnesiacs. Space travelers who emerge from cryo-sleep with no recollection of who they are, where they are, or why they're all together. And yet, each member of the group begins to sort of flop and mold into a particular space crew trope. Normally, this Saw-type scenario might make you think along the lines of a meta-genre tale like The Cabin in the Woods. This person's the do-gooder hero, this one's the tough chick, this one's the spacey River Tam surrogate, and this guy's the a-hole. Oh, and I'll let you guess (from the image at the top of the page) which one doesn't talk much and is great with swords and martial arts.Unfortunately, the cliches present in Syfy's new deep-space mystery series, Dark Matter , aren't meant to provide commentary on the genre, or work to turn conventions on their ear. They're just there because Dark Matter is a somewhat lazy, generic space show that isn't able to rise up and shake hands with its own fun premise. The hook is good, the execution is not.And because we follow six blank slates (and one android, which has caused some to label this series as an updated version of Lost in Space), the actual space world they inhabit is also forced to be as bland and generic as they are. Cryo-chambers. Smugglers. Mining colonies. Evil, imperial "multi-corporations." There really isn't anything new here. Nor is there any humor or spark or any zest that might help make this first hour enjoyable.By the end of "Episode One," most of the crew discovers who they are and what their mission is (and it's not hard to predict), though nothing serves to explain the separate "Space TV" paradigms they all fell into when they emerged as vacant lots. Until this big end moment though, they all go by numbers (denoted by the order they exited cryo-snooze).Marc Bendavid is "One," the handsome flavorless lead whose default setting is altruism. Rounding out the rest are Melissa O'Neil as tougher-than-One "Two," Anthony Lemke as selfish smirker "Three," Alex Mallari Jr. as kung-fu "Four," Jodelle Ferland as vision girl "Five," and Roger Cross as chaotic neutral pilot "Six." Lost Girl's Zoie Palmer caps off the crew as the cyborg. Throughout these initial forty plus minutes, the gang uncovers clues in the form of a cache of guns, a giant metal door, and an outskirts mining colony in imminent danger. It's a set up that holds promise, and may yield interesting future results, but feels lifeless and uninspired here.