Saturday, April 20, 2013

Defiance: Welcome to the Fold

I just finished watching the series premiere of the new SciFi program Defiance that takes elements of Firefly and Farscape and pushes them together to make something just as awesome. The Farscape influence is not only clear but definitely not accidental as one of the developers was none other than Rockne S. O'Bannon.

The show is a nice mix of post-apocalyptic war, sci-fi and Western with Dexter veteran Julie Benz as the Mayor of the town of Defiance and Australian-grown Grant Bowler as Nolan, the Han Solo-style ex-marine turned lawman. The first episode introduces you to the new Earth in 2046 where alien races have arrived and, after a long war, a shaky peace has been established. In the new frontier-style world everyone must fight to survive where of course the races don't necessarily all get along. The world is very much a character in this show, too, which is wonderful.

The characters are full and, although not complete yet, I expect them to be people to be reckoned with. There is already a family feud, a sassy brothel-owner, a wise-cracking doctor, a traveling ex-marine and his alien daughter - it promises to be quite a ride. This pilot episode is even remnant of the first episode of Firefly with its fighting and Farscape in its creative alien make-up.

Most interestingly is the idea that there is a video game of Defiance which ties directly into the show and things in the show affect the game and vise versa, so it will be intriguing to see how the experiences mirror and change each other.

My only fear is that this will become another wonderful one season show if not enough people watch it - so please get out there and check it out!

Mahalo.