By ANDY GILCHRIST
Staff Writer
It is becoming more and more difficult for science fiction to succeed on television. Today’s television landscape is filled with police procedurals and sitcoms, with few sci-fi shows on the schedule. Even fantasy series, like Game of Thrones, Grimm, and Once Upon a Time, seem to be becoming more popular. It’s rare that a science fiction show will make it to the air, let alone do well in the ratings.
The Syfy channel is attempting to change that, though, with their newest scripted series Defiance. The series takes a look at a post-apocalyptic, post-alien invasion world that is damaged beyond repair. But, it’s really about people coming together and helping each other out in tough times. It’s also about race and class, as the interactions between humans and aliens clearly represent race relations and class struggles in the present day. Overall, Defiance is a well-made show that speaks to larger issues, rather just serving as entertainment.
The series takes place nearly 15 years after a war between humans and aliens, who were seeking a new planet to live on after theirs was destroyed. In this new world, Joshua Nolan (Grant Bowler) and his adopted daughter Irisa Nyira (Stephanie Leonidas) travel the country searching for alien artifacts to sell on the black market. While being chased by a group of mutants, they are given sanctuary by Defiance, formerly the city of St. Louis. The town had been the site of a cease fire that inspired peace across the globe and ended the war more than a decade earlier.
But now, tensions between man and alien threaten to tear the town apart. New mayor Amanda Rosewater (Julie Benz) struggles to keep the town together as tempers begin to boil over. On one side are the humans, led by mining magnate Rafe McCawley (Graham Greene) and his family; on the other are the aliens, led by the ambitious Datak Tarr (Tony Curran) and his equally ruthless wife Stahma (Jaime Murray). When a murder almost begins another war, Nolan becomes the new sheriff of the town, with Irisa as his deputy, in order to stop the violence. But, finding the killer leads them into a much deeper conspiracy that seeks not just to destroy Defiance, but change the whole world.
Defiance comes from the mind of Rockne S. O’Bannon, creator of the cult sci-fi series Farscape. The series shows the aftermath of the war between man and alien instead of the war itself. In this way, the series is attempting to tap into the success of The Walking Dead, which also shows the aftermath of a worldwide disaster. Overall, though, the series has much more in common with the legendary sci-fi series Firefly than anything else. At its core, the show is about people coming together after a war with aliens and trying to find their place in a strange new world. They are led by an ex-soldier of that war and must overcome conflicts from both outside the town and within it in order to survive.
But the show is more than just entertainment. It confronts very real issues that we deal with every day: race and class. Though the town doesn’t appear to be segregated, the tensions between humans and aliens are one of the biggest driving forces on the show. The native humans look down upon the aliens as different, lesser beings, while the aliens see the humans as arrogant people who usually can’t be trusted. Meanwhile, the aliens appear to be richer and more powerful within the town, creating a conflict with the humans, who mostly survive through mining. While the show is its most exciting during its fistfights and gun battles, it is at its strongest when dealing with real world issues that affect us even today.
Syfy’s newest series Defiance is a great show that is not just entertaining, but also speaks to issues that affect the world today, such as race and class. While the action within the series alone would make it worth watching, its emphasis on the important issues makes it more than just another sci-fi show. If every science fiction show can put action and special effects into the background and put characters and emotion at the forefront, then there might be a new wave of sci-fi programming on the horizon that is better than the genre has ever been.
