Killjoys Season 1: Discussion and Spoilers

[cylkoth]

That would be an interesting twist...but his backstory is already pretty loaded. An abusive father, addict mother whom he was forced to care for alone after Dav took off. Then hustling and adventuring... before Attempted grand theft spaceship, and partnering up with Dutch.

Not impossible to add in, between the hustling and adventuring, but you don't want to cram too much into a character's background.

 

[Greg Cox]

That would be an interesting twist...but his backstory is already pretty loaded. An abusive father, addict mother whom he was forced to care for alone after Dav took off. Then hustling and adventuring... before Attempted grand theft spaceship, and partnering up with Dutch.

Not impossible to add in, between the hustling and adventuring, but you don't want to cram too much into a character's background.

Except that everybody on this show has complicated, messy backstories they don't want to talk about. Pawter is a slum doctor who is also royalty who is also a secret junkie who once killed a patient while high. Dutch is a royal orphan turned child assassin turned bounty hunter who apparently has a husband we've never heard about before and a special destiny that even she doesn't know about. D'Avin killed his entire squadron, was brainwashed and memory wiped, and who knows what else. Khylen (sp?) is secretly a high-ranking officer of the Rack, part of whom are secretly conspiring to stage a government coup. Etc.

Revealing that Johnny found (and lost) religion sometime before he met Dutch doesn't seem like a stretch by comparison.

(Yikes! It's nearly 1 am. I'll have to pick this up in the morning.)

 

[sojourner]

I took the Rat King's comment more of an indication that he saw "something" in John that John didn't see. More of a future calling than a hidden past. Which is a well worn trope in this type of situation. The pretender becoming the truth.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Didn't the monk give D'Avin a holy book to give to John a few episodes back?

 

[Christopher]

Note that John waited until the last minute to reveal that he knew the blessing ritual by heart, and how uncomfortable he seemed the whole time they were posing as monks. This is a part of his past that he doesn't want to fess up to just yet, not even to Dutch or his brother.

Or maybe he was embarrassed because it's a faith that doesn't get a lot of respect within Quad culture.

And don't forget that the Rat King didn't believe John when he tried to explain that he wasn't a real monk. "I don't think you get to decide that."

Key word, "decide." My reading is that the Rat King meant that the sincerity of John's blessing suggests that he's starting to become a believer even if he's not ready to admit it to himself yet. Or maybe just that the Divine can work through the hands of people who don't even realize they're doing Divine will. John thought it was just an act, but the King sensed a deeper sincerity and power in it. So he's not saying "I know you used to be a monk," he's saying "Don't hide from your potential future as a monk."

There's a reason they included that whole business with John performing the ritual--and it wasn't just to show that he has a good memory and reads a lot. Look at his body language. He was looking shifty and uncomfortable the whole time they were posing as monks.

And someone on the verge of a religious conversion, or simply an opening of his mind to new ideas, could be uncomfortable about admitting it to himself.

 

[Forbin]

The cinematography people, however...yikes! Some of the glares, over-washing, and offensively bright back-lighting were just unpleasant to watch. Some episodes in the middle range of the season over-used blurred focus lenses for questionable effect. The producers really need to re-think their aesthetic for future seasons.

Oh, but I LOVE the cinematography! It's so creative and different. Sleepy Hollow was doing something similar in season 1. So many shows are shot in boring standard TV style, it's wonderful to have some visual artistry to feast on!

 

[Christopher]

By the way, Michelle Lovretta has said that she's open to the possibility of a Dark Matter crossover. That would be tricky, I think, given that Killjoys does seem to be much more distant in time and space. Although it wouldn't be anywhere near as poor a fit as the enforced Eureka/Warehouse 13/Alphas crossovers from a few years ago.

 

[kitik]

By the way, Michelle Lovretta has said that she's open to the possibility of a Dark Matter crossover. That would be tricky, I think, given that Killjoys does seem to be much more distant in time and space. Although it wouldn't be anywhere near as poor a fit as the enforced Eureka/Warehouse 13/Alphas crossovers from a few years ago.

If Dutch and her crew got a warrant to take down the crew of the Raza as they were passing near the quad, who would win? (Other than the usual tv teamup answer of them winding up as friends/working together/etc.)

The Dark Matter folks are pretty tough, and Two is an actual superhuman, but the Killjoys are actual professionals, who are fully trained and have their memories mostly intact. The Raza crew would have to have a pretty good plan set up beforehand to trick their way out of a beatdown from Dutch and Johnny, who are pretty damn clever themselves.


Actually, wouldn't it be sweet if one of the shows was cancelled, and as a goodbye, the characters of one show just completely killed everyone from the other? Never happen of course, but what an epic final crossover that would be. Go out with a bang.

Could Two be related to the Red 17 program? The highly-skilled and hard-to-kill folks seem sort of similar. I doubt they'd make any sort of crossover that centrally related to the plots of both shows though. Something more simple along the lines of "let's have a bar fight and then drink beers and be friends".

 

[Christopher]

I'm more concerned with how they'd justify them being in the same place and the same century. Killjoys is so far in the future that humans have apparently forgotten they came from Earth (judging from the scarbacks' blessing), and in a distant "star cluster" called The J, implicitly a separate galaxy or globular cluster. Dark Matter is apparently relatively close to Earth, given the mention of familiar star names like Vega and Arcturus, and it's near enough in the future that people still watch Star Wars.

I suppose things could be fudged to put them in the same time frame; DM's worldbuilding is so irritatingly vague that I suppose the familiar references wouldn't be any more anachronistic than the 2010s slang and pop songs in Killjoys. But at least it would take a great deal of travel for the two casts to interact. I don't know, I think I'd prefer it if they just established a common universe and kept the links subtle, like maybe revealing that events in Dark Matter's time helped set things in motion whose consequences are seen in Killjoys, or maybe that one of the evil corporations in DM is an ancestor of the Company in KJ.

 

[kitik]

Suffice it to say, I'm okay with these two shows never crossing over. It probably wouldn't be worth the effort of jamming the square peg into a round hole. That said, from a spaceship standpoint, it seems like the Raza could beat the crap out of the Killjoy's spaceship. It seems much more heavily armed. It seems like the corproations in DM are almost at the point where they could just about send a fleet of imperial star destroyers in to completely wipe out any signs of life on a planet they wanted to sterilize. Killjoys has all these relatively small bombers making runs that seem to take much longer to destroy a city.

Although, from a technology standpoint, the Dark Matter folks also found (observed/ran away from) a pretty ludicrously powerful weapon at the end of the last episode. It wouldn't be completely outrageous if one of the DM corporations was working on some sort of wormhole device that might allow the crew of the Raza to make contact with the Killjoys universe. That type of scientific experimentation seems to be going on in the DM universe.

 

[Christopher]

Suffice it to say, I'm okay with these two shows never crossing over. It probably wouldn't be worth the effort of jamming the square peg into a round hole.

I'd be content with the occasional Easter-egg reference to establish a common universe.

Although, from a technology standpoint, the Dark Matter folks also found (observed/ran away from) a pretty ludicrously powerful weapon at the end of the last episode. It wouldn't be completely outrageous if one of the DM corporations was working on some sort of wormhole device that might allow the crew of the Raza to make contact with the Killjoys universe. That type of scientific experimentation seems to be going on in the DM universe.

The reason for all the crossover speculation is because they could so easily fit in the same universe already -- they're both humans-only universes with corporate rule and FTL travel (implicitly in Killjoys, since people come to the Quad from other star systems). But if the shows are in different centuries/millennia and different galaxies, a wormhole could work to connect them.

You make a good point about DM's technology being more advanced, even though it seems closer in time. That could be evidence that they don't share a universe. Or it could be evidence of an Asimov-style future history where civilizations fall and rise again, losing and rediscovering technology over the course of millennia.

 

[sojourner]

Even on Earth in the present day, technology is not evenly distributed.

 

[JD]

By the way, Michelle Lovretta has said that she's open to the possibility of a Dark Matter crossover. That would be tricky, I think, given that Killjoys does seem to be much more distant in time and space. Although it wouldn't be anywhere near as poor a fit as the enforced Eureka/Warehouse 13/Alphas crossovers from a few years ago.

If Dutch and her crew got a warrant to take down the crew of the Raza as they were passing near the quad, who would win? (Other than the usual tv teamup answer of them winding up as friends/working together/etc.)

The Dark Matter folks are pretty tough, and Two is an actual superhuman, but the Killjoys are actual professionals, who are fully trained and have their memories mostly intact. The Raza crew would have to have a pretty good plan set up beforehand to trick their way out of a beatdown from Dutch and Johnny, who are pretty damn clever themselves.

I'm thinking it would probably be a pretty close match up. Most of the Raza crew is good in a fight, but we've also seen Two take out some pretty big groups of heavily armed thugs. D'Avin would probably be a pretty close match with most of the Raza crew.

Actually, wouldn't it be sweet if one of the shows was cancelled, and as a goodbye, the characters of one show just completely killed everyone from the other? Never happen of course, but what an epic final crossover that would be. Go out with a bang.

That would be a fun way to end one of the shows.

Could Two be related to the Red 17 program? The highly-skilled and hard-to-kill folks seem sort of similar. I doubt they'd make any sort of crossover that centrally related to the plots of both shows though. Something more simple along the lines of "let's have a bar fight and then drink beers and be friends".

I don't know if that would work.

Spoiler: Friday's Dark Matter.

I got the impression from what The Android said, that Two was a completely artificial life form, while Red 17 appears to be enhancing people who have already lived to adulthood.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Didn't Kylen say he killed Dutch's husband? And that's why she didn't talk to him for 6 years?

 

[Greg Cox]

Didn't Kylen say he killed Dutch's husband? And that's why she didn't talk to him for 6 years?

The phrasing was ambiguous. He says he "tried" killing Dutch's husband. Which could mean he killed her husband but didn't get the results he wanted. Or it could mean he tried to kill her husband, but did not succeed for some reason.

 

[Aragorn]

So if Level 6 involves reanimation, does that mean Khylen was the leader of the mining colony who died in Dark Matter?

 

[Shawnster]

I'm more concerned with how they'd justify them being in the same place and the same century. Killjoys is so far in the future that humans have apparently forgotten they came from Earth (judging from the scarbacks' blessing), and in a distant "star cluster" called The J, implicitly a separate galaxy or globular cluster. Dark Matter is apparently relatively close to Earth, given the mention of familiar star names like Vega and Arcturus, and it's near enough in the future that people still watch Star Wars.

I think you're reading into things just a little bit. I do not see anything that sets one show centuries ahead of the other. Everything looks the same. Dark Matter has FTL clone/thought transfer and bio-synthetic humans. That's quite advanced technology and easily on par with the tech we've seen on Killjoys.

As for the scarback blessing, I've taken that to be referencing Qresh. This was the motherworld of the Quad. As Qresh grew in population, the ecosystem grew more and more strained to the point that the moons had to be colonized and settled. Seven generations ago those people "exiled" to the moons were promised land on Qresh for their descendants. Seven generations - or, say 200 years? That's plenty of time for a religion to grow (the Mormon faith, for example, is not quite 200 years old yet), especially among downtrodden people who have been promised a chance for their offspring to one day return to their motherworld.

Without any specific references to the location of The J, I dont see why we can dismiss that it isn't in our galaxy. The Milky Way has between 200 and 400 billion stars. We've not mapped much of the galaxy yet. The J could easily be in the Delta Quadrant (to borrow a phrase).

Don't get me wrong. I am just as willing to accept these are set in separate universes. I simply do not see anything that would prohibit the two from being in the same universe.

 

[Christopher]

As for the scarback blessing, I've taken that to be referencing Qresh. This was the motherworld of the Quad.

Not the part I'm referring to. Here's the actual litany:

http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=347&t=20033

And the roots grew. The seed traveled, from a home that we've forgotten, finding soil on Qresh. And the roots grew. From one world to two moons, one mother tree to unite us all. And when we rise, her branches hold us. And when we tire, her trunk shelters us. And when we die, her roots will carry us home. Praise the trees.

So "a home that we've forgotten" is not Qresh, it's the place from which humanity came to Qresh. Implicitly, it's Earth, because that's where "the seed" -- human life and the biomes that humanity has brought with it across the stars -- originally came from.

Without any specific references to the location of The J, I dont see why we can dismiss that it isn't in our galaxy. The Milky Way has between 200 and 400 billion stars. We've not mapped much of the galaxy yet. The J could easily be in the Delta Quadrant (to borrow a phrase).

While there are star clusters within the galactic disk itself, they consist of very young stars only recently emerged from their stellar nurseries and still closely associated. By the time they get old enough to have habitable planets, they've been scattered by the currents of the disk and are no longer clustered. So if there are inhabited worlds in something called a "star cluster," that implies one of the globular clusters in the halo of a galaxy -- or perhaps it implies that the term is being used loosely to refer to an actual galaxy, which is entirely possible given the crappy understanding of astronomy you find in most SFTV shows.

Okay, I went to the Syfy On Demand channel on my cable and rewatched the opening moments of the first episode. It begins with a flythrough of what looks like a bright orange spiral galaxy, more compact, fat, and fiery in color than the Milky Way. Once it passes over the core of that galaxy, the caption "J Star Cluster" appears, then fades out as the vantage passes out of the galaxy and closes in on a single star sitting alone in its outermost fringes. The camera swoops over the star to reveal the four worlds that are identified by the caption as the "Quad Planetary System."

Granted, one can't take astronomical images too literally in sci-fi shows, but it certainly seemed to be saying that the J Star Cluster was that orange spiral galaxy. It couldn't have been a cluster in the halo of that galaxy, since the Quad's star was just floating there all by its lonesome; the J itself was the only agglomeration of stars visible in the sequence. So I think we can safely conclude that the J is meant to be a different galaxy, far from the Milky Way. And that, along with "a home we've forgotten," implies the show is quite a long way in the future.

Don't get me wrong. I am just as willing to accept these are set in separate universes. I simply do not see anything that would prohibit the two from being in the same universe.

Huh? I never said they couldn't be in the same universe, just that they'd probably be in different places and times within that universe. Like, say, Star Trek: Enterprise vs. Star Trek: Voyager, or The Caves of Steel vs. The Foundation Trilogy -- same universe, different eras. So continuity cross-references would be possible but direct character crossovers unlikely.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

I don't think we should take religious texts too literally. "A home that we've forgotten" could refer to lost morals or values, not necessarily Pern-like forgotten origins.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think we should take religious texts too literally. "A home that we've forgotten" could refer to lost morals or values, not necessarily Pern-like forgotten origins.

Maybe, but it is suggestive of universes in science fiction literature in which the birthworld of humanity is literally forgotten or known only in legend, as in Asimov's Foundation series. What we've seen of the Killjoys universe is consistently suggestive of such a setting -- the distant galaxy colonized by humans, the distinct culture and religion and terminology with no mention of anything specifically Terrestrial (discounting the 21st-century pop music). Even the apparent humans-only nature of the universe feels Asimovian. (I wouldn't say Pern-like because that was a case where a single colony had lost its technology and knowledge of its history, forgetting not only Earth but the rest of the galaxy. The Quad is a spacefaring civilization in regular contact with other star systems. Not a lost colony, but just one out of countless colonies in an intergalactic spread, a human diaspora so vast that its origins are obscured by sheer numbers.)