Dept. of Defiance

[kaffy_r]

First Look at Defiance, S03

From a mixed gumbo of Doylist and Watsonian viewpoints on what I think were the first two episodes, which apparently ran as one:

1. I am so glad it's back on; I was afraid they'd cancelled it. We're catching up on it now, since it started airing on SyFy last month.
2. But, wow, they eliminated practically the entirety of one family, and I'm not sure it's a smart move, plot or flow-wise. 
3. I will miss Rafe MacCawley. 
4. Christie MacCawley was extremely brave.
5. Linda Hamilton plays "dangerous crazy" beautifully; understated, cheerful, utterly batshit ruthless.
6. I still enjoy the emotional interplay between Nolan and Irisa, and Stephanie Leonidas' Irisa is still a believable teenager, albeit a teenager who was possessed and had the power of a godlet at one point.
7. I was glad to see the Omec appear - great, scary antagonists, although their initial appearance and actions were a little uneven - and impressed with the continuity of the series, since the showrunners and back story both mentioned a Votan species that had been left behind, as far back as the beginning of the series.
8. Stahma!! Datak!! My favorite badass, and just plain bad, but still weirdly awesome, couple. Stahma's actions were unforgivable, but completely understandable. She'll undoubtedly take vengeance on someone for backing her into that particular corner. She just has to stay alive to do so.
9. Ram Tak, aka The Beast, makes Datak look like Desi Arnez. But his admitted menace pales in comparison to that of the Omec.
10. For some reason, I loved the fact that they were obviously really filming in winter. That must have been a joy. 
11. Doc Yewl, my favorite morally ambivalent character ... I still love her. And right now I want to give her a hug, and take her away from Defiance. Trenna Keating plays all sides of Yewl beautifully, including the "so scared that bystanders should pay attention to what she's scared about" part she played in the first two episodes. It's hard to see our hard-as-nails doctor be that undone by fear. 
11. The set-up, with the advancing Tak forces, the two Omec on the ground, and their ship above, makes certain that Defiance will continue to be extremely high tension.
 

Comments

[muccamukk]

Did Graham Greene finally win free of that show? I was watching for him for a bit but didn't get into it. He's such a great actor who ends up in so many dubious projects.

[kaffy_r]

It's definitely not a show for everyone's tastes, but it presses a lot of buttons for me, in a good way, so I'm kind of hooked on it. Graham Greene's absence, however, is going to be big; his character was really complex. You're right about his track record in some other stuff. He had a bit part in a truly awful television movie about the Halifax Explosion, and he was the only good part of the movie. I've always thought that the explosion would make a fantastic movie - but that one wasn't it.

[muccamukk]

I really liked Irrisa and Nolen's relationship, and Amanda and Kenya's as well, plus Rafe was the best, but the aliens were like... the Elizabethians, and the totally ripped off from First Nations people, and I wanted them to be more alien. So I was excited about it, and then forgot to watch. Oh well.

Apparently he was in one of those rip off DVD movies that was called, I swear to God, Atlantic Rim. I hope his kids are all through college soon, man.

Though the all male, all First Nations version of As You Like It sounds cool.

[kaffy_r]

Though the all male, all First Nations version of As You Like It sounds cool.

*blinks*

Yeah, I think that would be interesting to watch. Heh. (Atlantic Rim? Yeesh.)

I knew going in that the aliens were only going to be alien in the same way that people of different cultures are alien from each other, which is what, from a Doylist perspective, the showrunners wanted them to be; they're stand-ins for "the other". From a Watsonian, in-show perspective, they couldn't be too alien, because, to survive on even a terraformed Earth, they'd almost certainly have to be oxygen breathing bipeds.

From a writing point of view, we can only posit aliens that are somewhat similar to us by looking to cultures we know of, whether that's intimately or only coincidentally. So the alien cultures were going to be imprecise mirrors of Earth cultures, no matter how creative the writing team. And I think that one always has to walk the knife edge, as a writer, between incorporating bits of culture from which you don't come into your creation, and simply appropriating things wholesale, in a way that's disrespectful of the cultures from which you borrowed. In the case of Defiance, I think they walked that knife edge successfully.

(For instance, you mention one of the races that you called a rip off of First Nations cultures ... I assume you meant Irisa's species, the Irath? When I watched, I was thinking "hippy rip-off" which, to be sure, means some sort of second hand appropriation of First Nation, since hippies borrowed, willy-nilly, from everyone. But once it's second-hand appropriation, I tend to think that it ends up in the "simply borrowed" category.)

I'm intrigued that you mention Elizabethans; are you thinking of the Castithans? I was thinking that the original Castithan culture was a mash-up, then boil-down of all of Earth's most gender-essentialist and clan-centric cultures (particularly Japanese culture.)

[muccamukk]

I don't know why the aliens bothered me this time, as I'm happy to watch Star Trek and Babylon 5, which have even less alien aliens, and I know they have to afford the make up so they can't get too out there. Cheesy SF is usually my jam.

I'm trying to remember the episodes, as this was three years ago, and I only saw a few, but the one where Irisa gets... something sick? And they have to have an elder cure her via a drum circle in a sweat lodge? I think. It was pretty blatant, from my perspective, and it seemed like they were pinging all of the Mysterious Savage tropes. But of course they probably got more developed if I'd stuck with it.

Ha. Yeah, maybe Japanese. I was just going with "Uber-formal society where women are inferior and everyone is plotting, and also is painted white." Why gender essentialist the same way humans were four hundred years ago? Why not do something actually interesting with gender? Oh well.

[kaffy_r]

Yeah, I think I remember that one; again, it felt more like Hippy (a term I'm using at least semi-ironically) than First Nation, but that episode was, I agree, closer to being "magic primitive." And then they scienced it, made the point that the Irath were originally pretty much as technically advanced as the other Votan species, especially in terms of biology; introduced Irath characters that were as far from Mysterious Savage as you could imagine, and in general, made them a very complex mix of characteristics.

Why not do something actually interesting with gender?

I thought about this, and I'll grant you that they could have done something like that.

On the other hand, exploring the interpersonal dynamics in a society with extreme gender essentialism can be endlessly fascinating - and it does hold up a very large and extreme mirror to what we still deal with today on Earth, everywhere on the globe.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

*Drive-by squishes*

[kaffy_r]

*receives them with happiness*

[scarfman]

I confessed I watched that double opener, tweeted, "I thought you couldn't get Game of Thrones on Hulu," and unsubscribed.

[kaffy_r]

Since I haven't watched GoT, but know a fair bit about the show, and have read the books, I'm betting you're talking about the violence? Those two were a shade more violent than many of the earlier seasons' violence, but my bet is that it will recede a bit as the season goes on. Still, I definitely understand that the show isn't everyone's cup of meat.

[scarfman]

I did enjoy Defiance up till now and acknowledge that indifference-quitting at this point isn't necessarily rational, but the ratio of main character deaths to minutes of development of story in this double-part opener was just too high for me.

[kaffy_r]

I've watched four episodes now, and I, too, am having to rebalance myself after the main character deaths. However, the plot development has been very interesting, especially in the way the relationship between Nolan and Irisa is changing, and of course, I want to know what happens to one of my favorite characters, Doc Yewl.

I don't think indifference quitting is irrational at all. I tried watching Orphan Black, and didn't get beyond two or three episodes, because I really didn't like the characters I'd seen to that point. I know that's not rational, because a lot of people whose views I respect really love the show. And I've never watched Community, despite many friends again being in love with it. But I guess that's indifference-failure-to-launch. Heh.