At first glance Nightflyers and Game of Thrones have nothing in common outside of being both based off of George RR Martin books of the same name, however as the show goes on and once it concluded I felt like there was enough shared between the two to say that if you like Game of Thrones you will probably like Nightflyers. Nightflyers is about a team of scientists making their way into space to contact an alien spaceship but its really about the crew and how they fall apart in this cabin fever environment of being stuck on a spaceship for months at a time. Although the setting is different, its unmistakable that its written from the same author of Game of Thrones as the show unfolds and takes many unexpected twists and turns you will be reminded by how George loves to play with your expectations.
The first episode starts out with a cold opening that gives us a glimpse ahead to what can be expected in the final episodes in the series but is also deliberately misleading for reasons I won’t spoil. We see a tree from the Nightflyers biosphere floating in space while the nightflyer crashes into it, something terrible has happened here and the show kicks off with this central question of what happened to the Nightflyer in its voyage. We then see one of our protagonists Agatha Matheson, played by Gretchen Mol on the run from another crew member Rowan played by Angus Sampson. No context is given for why she is on the run but we see she is putting out a distress call for anyone who finds the nightflyer to not dock the nightflyer. Shes able to get the distress call out before Rowan finds her forcing her to kill herself or be at the mercy of Rowan and the axe he wields.
Its a brutal scene and contrasts to the rest of the first episode, it lets us know the show is going to be playing at high stakes throughout the entire show. However in retrospect after finishing the show this scene feels oddly out of place to what is really happening. After this we are introduced to the remaining crew including our protagonist Karl D’Branin (Eoin Macken) and Thale (Sam Strike), a psychic brought on board the nightflyer as a prisoner to communicate with the alien ship. The best performance in the show in my opinion goes to Sam Strike, hes isolated from the rest of the crew and quickly gains a reputation for abusing his psychic powers.
Anyone who comes close to him is liable to have their whole sense of reality distorted and I thought his arc and how he changes over the episodes to be the most interesting part of the show. Its one of several of the elements that keeps the show from falling into the familiar rut of being a haunted house story in space.
There are elements of that here though and you do get a sense that we might be treading in places that other shows like Haunting of Hill House did better in the first few episodes but its not too long before the show flips the script on you and throws some unique ideas into the mix that keep it from being too predictable. By the end of the show each character has had his or her own story arc explored independently and they are all brought together at the end of the show that I felt was a satisfying ending.
When I first heard about this show I got really excited, unfortunately George did not work on the show and in some ways it shows. For whatever reason this show has gotten some really harsh reviews that I don’t think are deserved here but the show is far from perfect. For one this show does not at all feel like a horror story. The show has a more space thriller vibe which I enjoyed but don’t walk into this thinking of it as a horror show. There are other times where characters storylines such as Lommie’s just struck me as completely uninteresting, they no doubt wanted to go for the horror vibe but the show doesn’t end in a cabin fever in space situation like the opening suggests which is surprising in a good way but also kind of disappointing that this was even pushed as a horror show to begin with.
George RR Martin once said the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself and I think Nightflyers illustrates this pretty well and introduces enough new ideas to keep me coming back. If your a fan of the author or of thrillers in general this is worth checking out
Nightflyers is available on Amazon prime with the first two episodes for free while the rest of the season will cost for 24.99 or is entirely streamable through on demand or the SyFy channel.
7/10
