“That fight scene. There’s no denying when they concentrate on action, they can do a good job and here it was a rambunctious one-on-one with a nice steady camera angle that let the fight breathe on its own, something I have great respect for in the world of cinematography. Two and Ishida are the most capable hand-to-hand fighters on this show and it was only a matter of time when they would clash against each other. Very enjoyable fight to watch and it was given a substantial amount of time to tell.”
“Two and Ryo’s fight was beautifully choreographed and strangely sentimental at the same time; I wish they would fight more often. (You know what I mean.)”
“The next award goes to Best Fight Scene of the Season. I’m not even going to qualify that statement with a “thus far” because the likelihood that any fight scene will top this one is remote. Two and Ryo finally having it out physically and with words was as thrilling as it was necessary. The choreography, power, level changing, shifts in momentum, and editing had my eyes dancing. The emotional weight had me aching.”
One of the most buzzed about scenes from last night’s episode of Dark Matter, “Hot Chocolate”, was that showdown-throwdown between TWO and Ryo Ishida. An overwhelming response from fandom for this sequence, so I want to take a moment to give a special shout out to actors Melissa O’Neil and Alex Mallari Jr., stunt doubles Anita Nittoly and Allen Keng – and an extra special shout to director John Stead who choreographed and shot the extended battle. John is terrific at what he does and I trust him completely. And how much is that? Well, here’s an excerpt from the script that describes the fight sequence –
“She launches herself at him and they fight. It’s glorious!”
And the rest was up to John.
Further thoughts on last night’s episode, “Hot Chocolate”:
“This for me was perhaps one of the strongest episodes of the season and we can only wait and see what some of the consequences are likely to be.”
“This was a terrific ensemble episode. They all had big parts to play in this episode.”
Get ready, Dark Matter fans, because the next five episodes are going to be STRONG!
“It was just so pleasantly unexpected that Ryo would have such a grand plan to take back the blink drive! And it’s amazing that he would have the time or the wherewithal to persuade Two that he didn’t kill Nyx or that he doesn’t want revenge. Of course, he might be “full of — ship is registering strange power fluctuations” but clearly Two was affected by the confrontation, leaving it up in the air whether the coming conflict will involve Ryo as an adversary or a powerful enemy-of-my-enemy. The mere possibility is exciting!”
“Now, this is the kind of episode I’ve been hoping for this season. I don’t know if it quite counts as a bottle episode, since most of the show tends to take place on the standing Raza sets as it is, but this week we got a great ensemble story that brought together the entire cast and let them kinda wail on each other. Ahhhh … camaraderie.”
“This episode started off looking like it was going to be a weak entry, then quickly evolved into something magnificent and refined. Right down to having one of the last scenes be Five doing The Android’s hair, which was heart-warming callback.”
“So many questions going in and boy did they give us some very unexpected answers.”
And, finally, my weekly post-episode chat with Kelly Townsend at TheTVJunkies
“After we finished Episode 304, Paul [Mullie] said we had to write something in where they have to go to the space station and get the wall replaced. I was like, “ehh, it feels like such a cuddly thing to do,” and he said, “what, is it just gonna stay there?” And that tweaked something in me, so I wanted to find a place later on in the season where they were gonna walk by that wall and comment on it. I told Ian [Brock] to hold onto that wall, and I remember after we shot the episode, Liz [Gregg] in costumes, said “if that’s part of the architecture now, are we ever going to see that again?” Then when she read Episode 308 she was very excited. She came up to me and said, “You did! You were good to your word, we did see him again.””
