• Genres: Action, Sci-Fi
• Tagline: Engineered To Raise Hell.
• Plot Synopsis: 12 genetically enhanced childern escape from a military base that created them. 10 years later, after The Pulse, a magnetic bomb that destroyed every computer in USA, has struck, Max Guevara, one of the 12 escapees, is a bike messenger in (what’s left of) Seattle and with cyberjournalist, Logan Cale, she tries to rid the world of crime and corruption, avoid her creators and uncover her past.
• Plot Keywords: TV Series Pilot | Flashback Sequence | Bicycle Messenger | Cat Burglar | Lasersight | Genetic Engineering | Seattle Space Needle | 2010s | Adultery | Bar | Bicycle | Burglary
• Directors: Morgan Beggs, Kenneth Biller
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: May 20, 2003
• Run Time: 999 minutes
• ASIN: B00005JLJM
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,966 in DVD

Editorial Reviews

One of TV’s more interesting tough-girl action shows, Dark Angel is a distinctive blend of the personal, the adventurous, and the politically aware. Cocreators James Cameron and Charles Eglee present a complex scenario of biological super-science and social collapse in which their gene-manipulated heroine and hacker-journalist hero can genuinely make a difference. In this first season they also provide an adversary who is a lot more than just a conventional villain.

Jessica Alba is impressive as Max, bred and trained as a super-soldier but reclaiming her individual humanity; Michael Weatherly is scruffily attractive as Eyes Only, who sits semi-paralyzed in his eyrie above Seattle uncovering crime, corruption, and other skullduggeries and assigning deadly errands to the woman he hopelessly loves. Jon Savage has real authority as Lydeker, a man who has stretched his conscience to the breaking point, but is not personally corrupt. Some of the best episodes–”Prodigy,” for example–are ones in which Lydeker and Max are forced into temporary alliance. Early on, the relationship between Max and the other workers at Jam Pony–the courier firm that provides her with a cover identity–is a little forced, but later on the two parts of Max’s life are more successfully integrated: “Shorties in Love,” for example, is a genuinely touching tale about Diamond, the doomed criminal ex-lover of Max’s lesbian roommate. Dark Angel was never a perfect show, but at its occasional best it manages to be simultaneously funny and dramatic. –Roz Kaveney