Dark Angel is an American science fiction action drama television series that aired on Fox from October 3, 2000, to May 3, 2002. Created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee, it stars Jessica Alba in her breakthrough role. Set in 2019, the series chronicles the life of Max Guevara (Alba), a genetically enhanced runaway supersoldier who escapes from a covert military facility as a child. In a dystopian near-future Seattle, she tries to lead a normal life while eluding capture by government agents and searching for her brothers and sisters scattered in the aftermath of their escape. Dark Angel was the only show produced by the company Cameron/Eglee Productions, with principal photography in Vancouver, at Lionsgate Studios.
The high-budget pilot episode marked Cameron's television debut and was heavily promoted by Fox, reaching 17.4 million viewers. The first season, which was shown on Tuesday nights in the United States, received mainly positive reviews and won several awards, including the People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Drama, and averaged 10.4 million viewers per episode. Alba's portrayal of Max also received mostly positive reviews and several awards. For the second season, the show was moved to the less desirable air time of Friday night and received some criticism for new plot elements. It suffered from a drop in ratings, averaging 6 million viewers per episode, and was canceled.
A series of novels continued the storyline, and a video game adaptation was also released. Dark Angel is considered to have gothic and female empowerment themes; Max followed a long line of strong female characters in Cameron's work, including Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. Cameron was also influenced by the manga Battle Angel Alita. Dark Angel is considered to be part of a wave of shows in the late 1990s and early 2000s that feature strong female characters, alongside Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, La Femme Nikita, and Alias.
Plot
Season one In February 2009, a genetically enhanced nine-year-old female supersoldier designated as X5-452 (Geneva Locke) escapes along with eleven others from a secret U.S. government institution code-named Manticore, where they were born, raised, and trained to be soldiers and assassins. On June 1, 2009, months after the twelve X5s' escape, terrorists detonate an electromagnetic pulse weapon in the atmosphere over the U.S., which destroys the vast majority of computer and communication systems, throwing the country into chaos.
Ten years later in 2019, the now 19-year-old X5-452 (Jessica Alba), who calls herself Max Guevara, struggles to search for her Manticore brothers and sisters. In the recovering United States, which is now barely more than a developing country, she tries to live a relatively normal life and evade capture by Manticore, which wishes to recover its lost asset. Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), an underground cyber-journalist with the alias Eyes Only, attempts to recruit her to help fight corruption in the post-Pulse world. She initially refuses but accepts after Cale is rendered a paraplegic while attempting the assignment for which he was attempting to recruit her. A romantic interest buds between the two. While assisting Cale, Max also makes a living as a bicycle messenger at Jam Pony, a courier company, along with her friends Original Cindy (Valarie Rae Miller), Herbal Thought (Alimi Ballard), and Sketchy (Richard Gunn). Other X5s are periodically introduced, most significantly the unit leader Zack (William Gregory Lee). The Manticore hunt for the escaped X5s is led by Colonel Donald Lydecker (John Savage). Near the end of the season, Lydecker is betrayed by his superior, the even more ruthless Elizabeth Renfro (Nana Visitor), and he defects from Manticore. He aids Max and Zack in an assault on Manticore headquarters. Max is badly wounded and captured. Zack, who has also been captured, commits suicide to provide Max with his heart, as she needs an X5 heart transplant to survive.
Season two Cale exposes Manticore to the world. Renfro decides to burn the facility to cover up the evidence and is killed in the process. Aided by Joshua (Kevin Durand), a transgenic with conspicuous canine DNA, Max escapes the facility and frees the other transgenics, including Alec (Jensen Ackles), a fellow X5 and clone of Max's brother Ben (also Jensen Ackles) whom she was forced to kill in the first season, who later joins Jam Pony. When Max is reunited with Cale he immediately becomes ill and almost dies. Max discovers that Manticore has infected her with a virus specifically designed to kill Cale, and the two must avoid all physical contact to keep him alive. Max learns that Joshua was the first transgenic created by Sandeman, Manticore's founder. Over the course of the season, it is revealed that a millennia-old breeding cult has bred their own advanced humans who rival the Manticore-produced transgenics in their abilities. Ames White (Martin Cummins), a government agent tasked with eliminating the freed transgenics, is revealed to be a member of the cult. When a strange message written in Max's genetic code makes an appearance on her skin it is revealed that Sandeman is a renegade from the breeding cult and Ames White is his son. White is still loyal to the cult and hates his father's transgenic creations with a passion. Believing that the special sequences Sandeman buried in Max's DNA are a threat to the breeding cult's plans for the extinction of normal humanity, they attempt to kill her, but she escapes to Terminal City, an abandoned part of Seattle where hundreds of outcast transgenics have been hiding. When the police begin to surround Terminal City Max convinces the other transgenics to stand their ground rather than run. The series ends with the military surrounding Terminal City as the residents raise their newly designed flag from one of the buildings, and wait for a possible invasion.
Cast and characters
The first season introduced Jessica Alba as the main character Max Guevara (X5-452), a genetically enhanced transgenic super-soldier who escaped from a government facility named Manticore. She works as a bike messenger for the courier company Jam Pony during the day and as a cat burglar at night. Michael Weatherly played Logan Cale, the show's second most prominent character. Cale is a wealthy cyber-journalist and vigilante who operates under the alias Eyes Only. He recruits Max to assist with his campaign against corruption and crime in return for helping her find information on her fellow Manticore escapees. Main roles were given to several of the couriers at Jam Pony, including Valarie Rae Miller as Cynthia "Original Cindy" McEachin, Richard Gunn as Calvin "Sketchy" Theodore, and Alimi Ballard as Herbal Thought. J. C. MacKenzie played Reagan "Normal" Ronald, the company's boss, and Jennifer Blanc played Kendra Maibaum, Max's first roommate, and John Savage played the main antagonist, Col. Donald Lydecker, who is trying to recapture Max and the other Manticore escapees.
The Lydecker character is written out of the series early in the second season, and Herbal Thought and Kendra Maibaum do not appear at all. Season two introduces Kevin Durand as Joshua, an experimental creature from Manticore who has distinct canine facial features. It also brings back Jensen Ackles as Alec McDowell (X5-494), who is an identical twin of Ben (X5-493), one of the original 12 escapees from Manticore, and introduces Ashley Scott as Asha Barlow, a resistance fighter who has a romantic interest in Cale. Martin Cummins portrayed the season's main antagonist Ames White, a National Security Agency agent tasked with destroying the Manticore escapees.
Production
Background
Following his success with the film Titanic, director James Cameron teamed up with Charles H. Eglee with whom he had previously worked on projects including Piranha II: The Spawning. The two formed a production company, Cameron/Eglee Productions, and began working on ideas for a television series. They considered several options, including a family drama, before deciding on the idea of Dark Angel. Cameron said they began with the idea that Max would be a genetic construct who "looked normal on the outside but was different on the cellular, genetic level. We explore what that could mean." Cameron was influenced by the manga Battle Angel Alita, which he was originally intending to adapt into a film after completing Dark Angel.
Dark Angel would be the first and only work by Cameron/Eglee Productions. Max followed a long line of strong female characters in Cameron's work, including Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. Cameron said "it's a win/win situation" as "women respond to characters who appear strong and capable" and young male audiences "want to see girls kick ass". Later they decided to set the series in a post-social collapse world, saying that the hysteria surrounding Y2K served as inspiration; in the series, an electromagnetic pulse previously destroyed every computer in the United States. Working titles for the series included "Experimental Girl" and "Maximum Girl". The project marked Cameron's television debut; he worked mainly as a writer and executive producer for the series.
Casting and filming
More than a thousand young actresses were considered for the part of Max. Cameron started reviewing audition tapes when the field had been narrowed down to twenty or thirty applicants. He was initially not impressed with Alba's audition tape, saying "she had her head down, she was reading out of the script ... she didn't present herself all that well. But there was something about the way she read the script that copped an attitude that I liked." Cameron continually reviewed the audition tapes but kept coming back to Alba's, eventually deciding that he needed to meet her. Alba was hired for the role before the script was written. Eglee said: "We had the benefit of being able to write a script kind of backward, we were writing for this actress, with her cadences and her rhythms and her sensibilities and her attitude and her slang." To train for the role, Alba spent a year doing martial arts and gymnastics and riding motorcycles.
The two-hour premiere episode cost up to $10 million to produce, and Cameron reportedly "brought the pilot in on time and on budget". Subsequent episodes had a considerably smaller budget. Fox spent heavily on the promotional campaign for the premiere, paying for theatrical trailers, billboards, and guerilla marketing. Cameron took a "very basic view" of the show's chance of success, saying: "If it flies, it flies. If it doesn't, it doesn't ... If people connect with it, which I hope they will, fine. If we don't find an audience, we deserve to be off the air. It's that simple." Eglee admitted the series had been "routinely over budget" in the first season, and feared that this would be a factor in whether or not the show was renewed for a second season, though Cameron downplayed these concerns.
Fox "just barely" renewed the series for a second season. The budget for episodes in season two was $1.3 million each. After the intended director of the final episode did not work out, Cameron decided to step in and fill the position. He did this partially for the experience but also to show the network the potential for a third season. It was his first experience directing a TV drama.
The producers were initially told a third season had been approved, but two days later Fox informed them that the series had been canceled.
Dark Angel was set in Seattle, and filmed in Vancouver at Lions Gate Studios. Other filming locations included the Vancouver Art Gallery, as well as Buntzen Lake and Riverview Hospital, also in British Columbia.
Unproduced season