Dark Matter - episodes 1-5

Android (Zoie Palmer), Four (Alex Mallari Jr), Three (Anthony Lemke), Two (Melissa O'Neill), One (Marc Bendavid), Five (Jodelle Ferland) and Six (Roger Cross).

Six strangers wake from suspended animation in a distressed spaceship. They have procedural memories - how to operate the ship, how to fight, how to move and speak and all the basic stuff - but no clue who they are or how they got there. The ship's android tries to kill them, but once her security protocols are cancelled she becomes a part of the rather odd crew. With no names, they number themselves in order of waking.

The Android unlocks some of the ship's mainframe and reveals that the six are mercenaries, apparently hired to wipe out a small colony on a planet that a massive corporation wants to take over. Instead, they help the colonists to fight of the invasion attempt. Over the next few episodes, the crew struggle to keep the ship repaired despite a lack of funds and to discover who sabotaged the ship and erased their memories.

They become stranded near a supernova and then visit a space station to raise funds. Here, One and Three are almost killed by an exact duplicate of One who claims to be the original. They are then contacted by an old handler who puts them on a salvage mission with plague zombies, during which Two is bitten but shrugs off the 100% terminal disease and heals the bite in hours.

Over the first five episodes of Dark Matter, a series created by Stargate alumni Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, the crew of the starship Raza struggle with trust and identity (notably, all six tacitly or explicitly reject their old identities in favour of their numbers,) with hints that none of them may be who they seem to be, or indeed be strictly human. The show owes something to the likes of Firefly, Blake's 7 and Deepwater Black (to be a bit obscure,) although with its squabbling ragtag crew it is probably closest to Farscape, just without aliens.

One is the nice guy idealist, although his original self, Jace Corso, is more of a smiling psychopath, which raises a question over how much of the original personality remains with the memory gone. It is clear that each of them has a fully realised personality, just not whose.

Two is a pragmatist, and the default leader of the crew simply by being the no-nonsense, take charge one. She is also smart and observant, counting cards in a casino without even understanding quite what she's doing, and capable of killing half a dozen mob enforcers on instinct.

Three is the Han Solo of the crew, brash, cocky, selfish, but with hints of a heart of gold. Actually, he might be the Jayne, since he names his guns. One and Three both show an interest in Two, who seems inclined to prefer Three as unlikely to get serious, and the two men are often paired up to exploit the dramatic and comedic potential of their personality clash.

Four is the strong, silent type, and the only one with any notion of his true past, having discovered he may be the heir to a vast empire who murdered his father. He is Asian, talks a lot about honour and loves swords, but I'm sure we can get past that.

Five is the odd one out. She's just a kid, but a technical savant, and begins to dream the memories erased from the others without context.

Six is a gentle giant and the pilot of the group, who assigns himself as Five's guardian and, like One, acts as a conscience for the more pragmatic members of the group. Props are to be given for not casting someone who looks like Roger Cross does as the heavy, although Four limits this to a partial credit.

Finally, the Android is constantly perky and slightly baffled.

Dark Matter doesn't do anything hugely new, but it recombines the elements of its science fictional DNA into an entertaining whole, and it may yet have a twist when the crew's nature comes out in the end.