Dark Matter canceled by Syfy after three seasons

In what feels like a far-too-often tradition for us, we’ve found yet another reason to get tremendously bummed out at Syfy. Today, the news was confirmed that Dark Matter was canceled officially after three seasons on the air. Even though the show was creatively incredible this season and retained more than 85% of its 18-49 audience — and this is without evening mentioning the show’s DVR numbers — that apparently wasn’t enough to make the network happy.

Before we go down the rabbit hole of ranting more, let’s bring you the statement from creator Joseph Mallozzi’s official blog about the news:

It is with great sadness that I confirm the news.  Syfy has cancelled Dark Matter after three seasons.

To say that I’m incredibly disappointed would be an understatement.

I’ll save my comments and field your questions in a future blog entry.  For today, I just want to extend a heartfelt thanks to my amazing crew, my wonderful cast, and to all of you, our incredible fans.

You all deserved better.

This is a tough cancellation to digest, mostly because it was really over the past year that we had a chance to discover Dark Matter in the first place. Syfy has broken our hearts many a time in the past (see: Alphas), which is probably in turn why we’ve been a little bit more wary to get into some of their programming in recent years, whether it be just as a viewer or as a journalist. Well, we went all-in with Dark Matter this year and it was fantastic. The writing was superb, the performances lively and heartfelt, and there was an imagination present for all involved here that was somehow reminiscent of both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Doctor Who at the same time. It’s a show that millions more probably would love if they were to A) know that it exists and B) given it a chance.

The reality here is that this is a hyper-competitive industry these days, and that makes it very harder for any show to get attention. Multiple that tenfold when you’re talking about a science fiction show, which sometimes takes even more effort to convince people to watch who are not typically fans of the genre. Dark Matter fought the good fight, and to a certain extent we were aware that the cancellation was possible. Mallozzi even shared some of his thoughts on the show’s future with us earlier this summer, saying that he was “a little bit more nervous about” a renewal this time around than he’d been in the past. With that, we were prepared for it, but it still stinks given that Dark Matter was a great part of a Friday lineup that celebrated creativity and individuality. It harkened back to some great sci-fi of old and there aren’t any other destinations like this on TV.

If this is the end, we’re going to miss the Raza crew very much. We’re going to comment a little bit more about this when we’ve let some of the initial frustration die down.

For now, feel free to share some of your thoughts on the cancellation in the comments.