Defiance: S01E01 and 2 - Pilot.

I know I have a new Kyoryuger still left to review but my laptop is fixed, everything is on hiatus, so let's pick up a new show!

To be honest with you, I knew very little about Defiance beyond, 'wait a minute, there is a video game?', well that is a lot of faith you have in your show! Predictably the reaction to the pilot was a mixed one, with most of the criticisms coming down to either claims that Defiance lacked originality and that it was perhaps too sci-fi jargon heavy for a mass audience. And what did I think? Well...

Apparently much of Defiance's back story is painted in the MMO, which I will not be playing, and personally if they don't make the show and the game independent of one another in at least the key areas, this is a recipe for disaster because all you're doing is forcing people to play your video game and basically pushing anyone away who doesn't. This is just stupid, who the hell thought this was a good business practise?

Defiance is set in the near future on a terraformed post-war Earth. Our heroes are made up of a former soldier/tracker called Nolan and his adopted, alien daughter Irisa. Rather badly plotted plot convenience lands them in the town of...NAME DROP...Defiance which is named after a battle Nolan himself fought in. From there on in we basically get a slapdash collage of characters, plots, concepts and resolutions directly lifted from much better properties to the point where I don't even feel like I want to go into any detail about what happens.

Defiance wants to appeal to every sci-fan fan and so in turn ends up appealing to no one. As said, every plot point, every theme, it's all from somewhere else. Much like the last Doctor Who episode, Defiance borrows from much better properties and does little justice to them, making the lack of originality all the more unforgiving. There is the rebel half of the human race, the authoritarian half, each race has their own conflicts with other races and religions, there is the whole 'it's kinda like the wild west...only with aliens and lasers' stuff, you know the drill by now. You've seen this before and you've seen it done so much better.

Does racism, family and personal freedom really have to be the main issues and themes of every sci-fi thing ever made? Can't they bloody explore something else? How can a genre like sci-fi which in its very nature is limitless be so samey, bland and uninteresting most of the time. When the original Star Trek TV series was doing it back in the 60s it was a reflection of the America at the time and yes, as sad as it is with just how relevant many of those episodes still feel, we have come at least a little further, so can we maybe explore something other than just having the plot screaming at us 'Freedom is good! Racism is bad!', we fucking get it.

This lack of originality undermines some of the much stronger aspects of the episode as well. The show has a lot of fun with character interaction and has a cast that blends and mixes together very well. Although for the most part the show takes itself very seriously there are some genuinely very funny moments between the quirky and natural feeling character interaction with witty, intelligent dialogue that has a great sense of flow. But how can I praise any of the character relationships or complexities, when all of it is stolen from elsewhere? None of this is yours to praise.

If the lack of originality doesn't kill it, the awful pacing sure does. Defiance takes itself very seriously and you're basically going to need a notepad to keep up with all the tech, terminology, races and rich history of the show as it pounds you over the head with it in a violent and constant bombardment. I don't actually mind a dense mythology or mind a show that gets on with it but this show chucks so much information at you, so many characters and other things, at such a constant and brisk pace, it can be pretty overwhelming for the majority of the episode.

And because it's chucking so much shit at you constantly, it has very little time to explore what it is actually chucking at you. After the hour and a half I had at least a hundred new words for my vocabulary but fuck knows what any of them mean. And often, even at key defining moments, the episode resulted in bullshit jargon rather than any actual explanations meaning we had to swallow more shit than we actually got to follow along. Shouting out made up science fiction words to avoid having to actually explain and provide logic to something is the weakest, cheapest, most pathetic and insulting form of science fiction writing. We've come a long, long way from the days when that was okay, here Defiance just felt utterly juvenile and stupid. If the thing had slowed down, introduced the information, mythology and characters more slowly, Defiance could have freed itself from its unoriginality and provided more fulfilling viewing. But it didn't, so...

Visually Defiance is extremely inconsistent as well. It's overly reliant on cheap and shit looking CGI, poorly integrated green screen environments and even faker looking sets which sadly undermines a lot of visual world building. It has some neat ideas and does a good job of making the world at least feel lived in but does little to convince than any of it is actually real. This is no Oblivion.

Although there are some really fascinating and interesting designs for a lot of things in the show, our lead alien Irisa is of a race of Votan who basically look like humans with no eyebrows. And even her race, with their minimal design, still manage to look cheap with contacts so crappy they give the original Twilight a run for its money. If their eyes are basically the centre point to their design, couldn't you have put some effort in? For that matter, why couldn't Nolan have been partnered with one of those cool wolf, bear, spider things? Or one of the ape race? Oh yeah because that wouldn't be sexy and if we don't appeal to a teenage audience we might as well give up...

Despite some pretty weak special effects, the action sequences have a surprising amount of polish, especially for a TV show. Even action shows normally showcase extremely clunky and poorly staged sequences but here it almost has a movie like quality feel when the energy blasts start flying or the fists start swinging. This all leads to an epic and climactic action sequence with a sense of scale and cinematic quality that we just don't often see in TV shows. Albeit a climactic action sequence that is plucked right out of an Asylum film, but still...

Unlike say, the SyFy Original films, which for the most part prove to be pretty enjoyable, Defiance doesn't know its limitations. Ambition is all well and good but its ambition is so beyond a mark the show can reach. And although the finished product was by no means terrible, it wasn't particularly good either and I just don't understand why you'd pick this over things like Farscape, Eureka, Mad Max or Firefly? And why would I want to play your game when I already own Fallout 3, New Vegas and BioShock?

Honestly though, as weird as this may sound, I guess I'm kind of happy as well. More often than not, at least for me, a TV pilot is frankly perfect. It has lavish production values, the script and plotting is tight, the performances are fantastic...of course it needs to be, that pilot hooks you in and then they spend the rest of the series putting in half as much effort COUGHArrowCOUGH because they've already got you. And so if Defiance's pilot is as flawed as it was, maybe this is a sign that Defiance has room to grow and get better, rather than get gradually worse. I'll give it one more episode before calling it. Right now though, this was pretty awful.

Pros;

• Strong chemistry between the cast.
• Some good dialogue.
• There are some interesting alien designs. 
• Some polished action sequences.

Cons;

• Not a single shred of originality. 
• Terrible pacing. 
• Stupidly idea heavy and explanation and exploration light.
• Stupid.
• Weakly written.
• Cheap cop outs. 
• Bad plotting.
• Awful CGI. 
• Some absolutely crap alien designs. 
• A real need to appeal to teenagers.
• Unconvincing world.
• It doesn't know its limits. 
• Or give a reason as to why this needs to exist.
• Why doesn't sci-fi just fucking do something else? You hold so much potential and just retread the same ideas and themes over and over and over a-fucking-gain. I'm so fucking bored.

Think About It!

-Locke

What would you rate, 'The Pilot'?