Killjoys vs Dark Matter: the Battle of the Fans

When you think back to your favorite science-fiction series what is it that comes to mind? For some it could be Farscape with its Jim Henson make-up and animatronic Pilot. For others we think fondly of Firefly and how nothing has quite filled our hearts quite like the misadventures of the Serenity and her crew. Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Stargate and even BBC hits such as Doctor Who and Red Dwarf all hold a place in the hearts of science fiction fans. But, with the exception of Doctor Who, all of these shows have the same thing in common – they’re gone from our television screens and we haven’t seen anything similar in quite some time.

Space used to be the final frontier, but it seems that no one wants to go there anymore. We’ve lost our imagination and sense of exploration. The SyFy Network, however, is seeking to bring that back. While shows like Defiance, Helix, and Ascension (wait, we don’t talk about Ascension) – um, Twelve Monkeys! Yes, Twelve Monkeys! While these are all decent shows, none of them have returned us to the cosmos. Sure, Defiance has had some nice shots recently out in orbit, but it’s not what we want really. What we want is to not be earth-bound any longer. What we want is to sail from planet-to-planet in some lost galaxy having ourselves one helluva intergalactic romp. We want to return to the stars.

Enter Killjoys. Enter Dark Matter.

Both of these shows have returned us to where we, as science fiction fans, truly belong. Killjoys throws us into the boots of intergalactic bounty hunters. Dark Matter sees us as part of a crew of spacefaring mercenaries. Both of these series made an epic launch on to our TVs and into our hearts. Then something happened. Dissent arose. A disturbance was felt in the dark void of space.

“Killjoys rules! Dark Matter sucks!” “Dark Matter rules! Killjoys sucks!”

We began to tear at each other’s love of the wrong series. Our fandoms, as they tend to do, collided and many of us took sides. But why? To get to the bottom of the matter, I teamed up with my fellow writer and resident Talk Nerdy expert on Dark Matter, AJ Mullican, to discuss what it is that makes Killjoys totally better than Dark Matter.

AJ: You mean what makes Dark Matter better than Killjoys. [Laughter] Tell you what: let’s let the people decide. I’ll ask you some questions, you ask me some questions, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.

Here you have it, people: Killjoys vs Dark Matter: the Battle of the Fans. AJ and I turn the tables on each other, interviewers becoming interviewees as we sound off on our favorite things about each show.

Click the links below to see our interviews and see what makes each show great.
[Killjoys] [Dark Matter]