Main cast: Craig Fairbrass (Timarek), Dominique Pinon (Stanley Summers), Eriq Ebouaney (Kaskoff), Nathan Rippy (Guard), and Andy Chase (Guard)
Director: Guillaume Lubrano
The USS Atlanta is a big space craft doing whatever it is doing when the Métal Hurlant asteroid smashes right into it head on. Stanley Summers, one of the engineers, manages to dash into an escape pod manned by the pilots Timarek and Kaskoff (who have no intention of waiting for the others to join them) – just in time too, as they take off shortly before the rest of the ship explodes. Well, they can sit cozy and wait for rescue, right? Well, soon they begin to tire of the other people’s company, and things become worse when they realize that there is not enough oxygen left for all three of them. Maybe it is time for some drastic action…
Three on a Match could have been a tense, taut space thriller, but instead, it suffers from what seems like a case of schizophrenia. It starts out farcical, with the lady captain bitch slapping her officer to get him all riled up so that he can have angry sex with her – just the way she likes it – while two officers guard the door outside, exchanging sarcastic remarks about what is happening at the other end of the door. And then the asteroid hits, and things in the escape pod becomes more serious, as Stanley becomes the brunt of scorn from and even some mild bullying by Timarek and Kaskoff. And then, they learn that there is not enough oxygen… and the drama never escalates. Things just happen, but without any change in urgency or pacing to give me the sense that things are building up and going somewhere. The twist is cute, but by that point, I don’t have much enthusiasm to care about it.
When the episode ends, I’m all, “Okay, I’ve seen this; now, what’s next?” with a lot of indifference weighing on me. No, really – while Dominique Pinon is adorable, the whole thing is a bit too tentative and tries too hard to play it safe. As a result, it’s merely okay. I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen better, but I probably won’t remember much about this one.
