The Defiance Thread - News about the Show and Game

Everything is Broken: A story all about Stahma and her husband..




And the alluringly chunky Kenya..




And their betrayals..




And lies.




Was all I needed. All the rest of that guff was a load of silliness. I laughed out loud at Irisa's wrap around bra at the end, yes this is game gear for the fabulously female.

Glad to see the E-reps roll in. I assume Datak and Stahma's redemption in season 2 will come about when they help oust them.

 

I'm wondering about this amazing secret sex act that Stahma performs on Datak.. which seems to be the usual sex against the wall deal that television likes so much. I'm thinking if that is all there is, this amazingness that Datak realizes Stahma learned from Kenya, then maybe it's unusual to Castithans because it is without preamble? Perhaps Castithan society demands all kinds of ritualistic foreplay and dropping that entirely is what whores do, not married couples?

So does that mean Kenya told Stahma that Datak likes this or does it mean that Kenya slammed dear Stahma up against the wall one evening and had her without all that elaborate chit chat and tea.

Also, what was that about the Votans searching for that crashed ship for 3000 years.. has it been on earth for 3000 years?? Or was it something they searched for and la dee dah someone actually had it and took it off into the diaspora and crashed it on earth the same time all the other Votan stuff fell from the skies.

 

"Everything is Broken" -- Spoilers ahead!

That episode title sums up how I feel about the episode. The past couple of weeks, I thought the show was finally becoming good, and this just blew it all to hell.

Just when I thought the revelation about the keys inside Irisa meant all that destiny/Chosen-One stuff was nonsense, it turns out to be the climax of the whole thing and makes her the destined savior/destroyer after all. Ugh. I am so sick of stories about destiny. I don't want to see stories about characters at the mercy of forces they can't control. Such characters have no agency. I want to see characters making choices that determine outcomes. I want choosing ones, not chosen ones.

I really hate what they did with Stahma. I'd come to believe that Stahma was truly Datak's equal partner, the Lady Macbeth who saw him as her perfect tool for the ruthless pursuit of ambition, and I guess I believed it because I wanted to, because it was much more interesting and empowering than the alternative. Having her turn out to actually be a terrified, subordinate female at the mercy of her domineering husband, able to be bullied by him, is far more cliched, and it weakens her profoundly as a character. In fact, hell, I don't believe it. It doesn't fit what's been established about her character. She should've had a plan in place for any contingency. She should never have made the mistake of giving away that she'd been with Kenya, and she should've had a good explanation ready if he did find out. In particular, if she knew how dangerous Datak could be to her if she crossed him, then she should've had a plan already worked out well in advance, and been ready to stab him in the back before he saw what was coming. They've taken a great, Machiavellian character and stripped her of her intelligence and strength, and that ruins her, makes her boring.

And it sucks that they've apparently killed off Kenya. She was perhaps the most interesting, least cliched character on the show. A legal, respected sex worker who enjoys her work and is accepted by the people close to her is a novel kind of character for American TV (Inara from Firefly fit the first couple of parameters, but her love interest resented what she did) and her life was interesting to explore. Now they've taken this intriguing woman and stuffed her in a refrigerator. Worse, they don't even acknowledge it. We don't see Amanda or Nolan or anyone becoming aware of Kenya's death; it just gets lost in the clutter. That's just sloppy.

Indeed, a lot about this whole series is sloppy. There's still so much exposition we haven't gotten. The mystery of how the Volge got onto the Arks hasn't even been touched on since the pilot. There are still many unanswered questions about Arkfall and the terraforming and how the St. Louis Arch managed to survive, a mystery that the producers hinted they would address. (I guess we're supposed to conclude the ship under the city had something to do with it, but what?) Moreover, they've suddenly thrown us this new information that contradicts all the established backstory for the series. How the hell can the Votans have been searching for this ship for 3000 years? They were travelling through space in suspended animation for the past 5000 years. And we didn't even get any exposition beyond that one cursory reference. You don't just toss aside everything we knew about the show's universe so cavalierly and then drop it.

And good grief, could the E-Rep characters have been any more cartoony short of having moustaches to twirl? Sure, with Barry Flatman as the colonel, it was a given he'd be mean and nasty to the point of camp, but that "Black Jonah" guy was deep into the camp... uh, camp. He was a total caricature of malevolence. The one mercy here is that they just had him talk about torture rather than giving us gratuitous torture-porn scenes on top of everything else wrong here.

Oh yes, here's another thing wrong: The loose ends from last week were completely forgotten. Last week, Alak felt betrayed that his participation in Datak's plan had gotten his friend killed. He was torn between his loyalty to his father and his new obligations to his wife and her family (and the threats from Rafe). It seemed he might foil Datak's plan by revealing what he'd done. Also, Kenya knew how Stahma (and, she thought, Datak) had tricked her, and she had no reason to conceal it now that she no longer believed Stahma needed protection. So either or both of these characters could've revealed what Datak did and saved the election for Amanda. But Alak was shilling eagerly for his dad and didn't seem the least bit troubled, and Kenya didn't say a word to save her sister's campaign. It's incongruous, inconsistent. It's having the plot shape the characters' choices, rather than the reverse.

(And Kenya was sporting an oddly Morticia Addams-esque makeup design this week, her skin almost Castithan-pale. Maybe foreshadowing her imminent death?)

I'm not sure there's anything about this episode I liked. It left me feeling betrayed and disappointed by a show I thought was finally earning my respect.

 

Great review Christopher

TOTALLY AGREE. Thought we were going to get a straight tech explanation to blow away all the religious mumbo jumbo, but instead we get a load of the usual. And not a usual that rises above my dislike of that storyline either.

Is it wrong that I want to believe she's still playing everyone?



Of course it doesn't work because she was genuinely terrified in the voting booth.

Maybe she was terrified because she knew it would be the death of Kenya?

I don't think Kenya will turn out dead.. and perhaps Stahma is really attached to her in some way and has just drugged her into unconsciousness and hidden her away somewhere safe?

That Stahma getting caught out all hinges on one sex act was pretty silly.

 

Hmmm, is that a prediction...

or a fantasy?

 

Oh dear JRulez what are you implying..

She can't be dead! She is the only character I enjoy looking at!

 

I thought this one was ok, and it was definitely not one of their better episodes.
It would have been nice if we'd gotten at least a little bit more information about the keys and the ship in the mines.
And what was with the kid Irisa saw? Was it literally supposed to be Irzu, or was all of it some kind of a hallucination brought about by the keys? I've never been entirely clear how literally we're supposed to take all of the Irathient spirituality.

I was disappointed to see them kill off Kenya, I've always liked Mia Kirshner. I didn't have that much of a problem with Stahma killing her though, I wouldn't have expected her to go against Datak like that.

 

What if everyone "recently" dead came back when Nolan came back?

Nicki is locked in her coffin and can't get out.

 

The kid is a representation of Irisa herself at the age when the silver key was first implanted in her by the cult, just before Nolan found and adopted her. Evidently it's the keys speaking to her, the same way the golden key spoke to Quentin through the image of his late brother.

 

Same actress? Same actress.

 

Benz was hardly in the finale. She voted, heard the result, had a 30 sec chat with sis and then...went to bed for two days or something. She could have been worked into the Datak murdering the Colonel part easily, but if that was too contrived we could have at least got a reaction shot of her to the E.Reps rolling in.

 

Finale should have been a double ep to fit it all in.

Also, Kenya isn't dead.

 

I always though it was funny that Kenya and Amanda were never in the same place at the same time.

They're obviously the same person with with a blond wig and a dark wig.

 

Don't insult Kenya like that! Amanda is dull and suburban or would be if there was such a thing as a suburb. Amanda is without personality or charm. Or passion. She's a glass of milk.

 

You know what happens in X-Men Comics when you least expect it?

Secret siblings.

In the beginning Cyclops was an only child.

Now he's the eldest of three and counting.

His daddy spent a decade dating a puttycat.

That could have been fun if she had a litter.

 

Having just watched the finale myself, meh. Enjoyable, but very predictable. Datak wins the election, is betrayed by E-REP and Irisa meets her god.

"Black Jonah" and his own personal goon squad, seriously? The guy is a Nazi caricature and his soldiers are a bunch of gruff tough hardasses with battle scars and eyepatches and all have three day stubble on their faces.

So, things are set up for an epic battle in the season 2 premiere where the people of Defiance will band together to rend off an E-REP invasion. After they've won the status quo will likely be restored, Amanda will be mayor again, Datak will continue on as though these past few weeks never happened. Nolan will be reinstated as Lawkeeper and all will be good again.

 

Robin Williams watches Defiance: http://www.tvguide.com/news/robin-williams-watchlist-1069325.aspx

Heh, you never know who is watching...

 

I was about to bad mouth Robin.

Then I laughed, because I remembered him from Wilfred last year.

Here's the thing.

If Robin Williams wants in on something, he gets in.

Just turn up on set uninvited and says "I'm Robin Williams, someone get me a script and a coffee."

He's NOT on Defiance or Game of Thrones because he likes to sit back and watch the show.

It's amazing the slivers of fate that protects us from true horror.

 

The cast of Defiance is going to be at the Toronto Fan Expo this week, I think.

 

This Robin Williams news is so cool, Mork would definitely improve the show.