TV Review: 'Dark Matters' -- 3.5 stars

Dark Matters

3.5 stars

Wanna give yourself nightmares? What better provocation than reallife mad science?

John Noble of “Fringe” brings his creepy vocal bearing to the host-narrator gig on this chronicle of what the preshow advisory calls “scientific research that some may find controversial and disturbing.”

Each hour recounts three historic tales of “questions that should not be asked, experiments that should not be performed, doors that should stay forever closed.”

Dramatizations featuring subtly surreal computer backgrounds and eerie electronic music share screen time with contemporary physicists, neuroscientists and engineers explaining the hows and whys of what happened.

The fun starts tonight with the U.S. military’s “Philadelphia Experiment” to make a warship invisible, then moves on to ponder a possible Soviet plot to create an ape-man army, before concluding with Thomas Edison’s determination to prove AC power dangerous by arranging for the electrocution of animals (and eventually even humans!).

On TV:
“Dark Matters” premieres Wednesday night at 10 on the Science Channel.