I’m having a hard time not seeing this as some sort of weird Dark Matter/Secret World crossover.

The Raza crew needs cash. The only way they know how to get it is through some good old fashioned space piracy.

Nyx has a suggestion for the perfect mark… or so she says. This being Dark Matter, of course she has an ulterior motive. In the process, we learn her history and the source of her preternatural combat skills.

Basically, she’s one of the Connected. Somehow I’m not surprised the Dragon made it to the space age.

This was a very well-balanced episode. We got some action, we learned a lot about Nyx, we got some development of for rest of the cast, and we discovered a new faction in the galactic mix. A little something for everyone.

The Connected Seers make for an interesting addition, a bit more heavy on the sci-fi than what we’ve seen on Dark Matter so far. On the whole I welcome their addition, but I am a little concerned the show’s villains’ gallery is getting a little crowded. Now we’ve got Seers, the empress of Space Japan, the corporations, and Wesley Crusher to deal with. That’s a lot of ground to cover for a show with only thirteen episodes to a season.

It was good to see Nyx get fleshed out some, but I think I liked the smaller developments for the other cast members better. Six and Three’s bit seemed a little by the numbers, but it needed to happen. Five developing some suspicions of Devon is good. I like that Sally can apparently switch back and forth between her old and new personas — I think I would have missed her old one if it was gone for good.

What really impressed me was Four’s solution at the end. I saw it coming (har har), but I wasn’t sure the show would be willing to go there. I’m glad they did. Bodes well for the future that the writers aren’t the sort to pull their punches.

This also marks arguably the first time we’ve seen significant space battles on the show. It was good to see those cannons on the Raza finally get some use. A portend of things to come?

Overall rating: 8/10

So if the Seers are the Dragon, I guess that means the corporations are Illuminati. Come to think of it, the GA uniforms do look a little like the Lumie PvP armour.

No Templars in sight, though. I suppose they’re probably stuck on Earth while this century’s Dame Julia struggles in vain to figure out how to fly a space ship.

Damn, for a show that didn’t even have episode titles until recently, their title game is on point.

The title is better than the episode, but the episode isn’t bad.

Having decided not to shoot Six out an airlock, the crew plans to use his GA insider info to track down and exact revenge on One’s murderer, Jace Corso. But of course the galaxy’s most wanted criminals won’t find it easy to infiltrate a GA outpost.

This is where Sally the android comes in. With her new upgrade, she can infiltrate human society with ease, and because she’s simply property in the eyes of the law, she’s far less infamous than her human comrades.

The new Sally is going to take some getting used to. I long suspected she would find some way to become more human-like, but even so, the sudden and dramatic change catches me a little off guard. I think I like the new her, but it’s definitely a big adjustment to make.

With the information they need in-hand, the crew is off to find Jace Corso, and take their retribution. But not all is as it seems.

It’s a bit of a strange episode because it feels a bit like two separate episodes smashed together. Sally becoming more human, and then the hunt for Corso. There’s a sharp change of direction in the middle of the episode.

On the whole I think I liked Sally’s half better. The latter half was still mainly good, but it had some rough patches.

There’s a lot of leaps to further the story that don’t make a lot of sense. Where’d they find a blowtorch? Where’d the Marauder come from?

The ending wasn’t all it could have been, either. Maybe I jumped the gun, but the set-up was so full of tension and intensity that I kept expecting something truly spectacular to happen. A big reveal or maybe even a cliff-hanger leading into a two-part episode.

Instead, we got a confusing deus ex machina and a return to normal. While confronting Corso needed to happen, little was done to advance the over-arching plot beyond Sally getting her upgrades.

It’s not bad. But it could have been better.

Overall rating: 7.2/10