While the world waits for the final season of Game of Thrones to arrive, Syfy is bringing another slice of George R.R. Martin's bibliography to TV viewers in the form of its latest spacefaring thriller Nightflyers. For the show's big panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Syfy revealed the first major trailer, which lays out the central narrative and conflict before driving up the creep factor. Watch it below.
This trailer is quite a bit more substantial than our first look at the show, and it was quite a big event for it to make its debut. For the most part, there was a lot to like, and I'm a sucker for any kind of spaceship spookiness. The main plot thrust was kinda ham-fisted in there in unspectacularly, but everything's gotta start somewhere, right?
For Nightflyers, it starts with an Earth that will no longer be capable of supporting the global population. Enter the Nightflyers crew, who set out on an arduous journey to find a way to save humanity (that wasn't pinned down in the trailer). Partially led by former The Night Shift star Eoin Mack as the impassioned Karl D'Branin, the team of brilliant scientists apparently don't get too far into their grand mission before things start defying explanation.
As we can see in the promo, electrical and equipment malfunctions become the norm, fires start breaking out, people are getting trapped, and potentially dead children start reappearing wearing red slickers. No one knows who, if anybody, can be trusted. But they seem to have a good idea that something is very, very wrong with the ship, and that it should never find its way back to Earth again. It doesn't look good for this crew, which is also made up of Gretchen Mol, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bryan O'Bryne, Sam Strike, Angus Sampson, Maya Eshet and David Ajala.
Nightflyers made its debut at Comic-Con during a year when Game of Thrones sat out, with Season 8 having recently wrapped much of its principal filming. But George R.R. Martin wasn't around to do any promoting, since he's only part of the show as a de facto executive producer, given his exclusive deal with HBO, where he has the Game of Thrones prequel projects coming down the pipeline. As well as his long-awaited novel The Winds of Winter, assuming he'll ever finish it.
Though Nightflyers is on Syfy, the former home of spacey series like The Expanse and Dark Matter, the vibe seems to be skewing a bit more to horror. With that big silver decoration, there are already visual connections to make with the always disturbing Event Horizon, and one can only hope it gets crazier from there.
Be sure to stock up on whatever is going to save humanity from destroying the planet, because Nightflyers is coming to Syfy this fall. Stay tuned to find out when that date will be, and check out our summer premiere schedule to see when new and returning shows are hitting the small screen soon.
