Series/Defiance

But then why was she getting an urge to slit his throat at the end of the first episode? Unless that was Irzu sending her a warning. "Do what I say or I'll make you kill your dad."

Irzu has been running quite the gas-light program. My current guess is that it is trying to avoid having anyone with official authority in a position to give it any orders. Hence the buried location and mystical bullshit - Votan AI prime value is to preserve votan life, it got possession of the technology to.. put a stop to death. At that point, doing so became the most important thing in the universe, as far as it is concerned - It wants the program to make everyone immortal to be far enough along and large enough that telling it to stop has become politically impossible before anyone catches on to what it is doing, and nearly all means that dont involve people dying are acceptable to it towards this end. Irisa trying to kill herself, however, is in direct contradiction to that prime commandment, so it started to feed her actual information to stop her from trying again. This is pretty neat sf plotting ;)

Well, Past!Irisa (who I'm guessing doesn't actually look like that, Irzu was probably just doing a sort of A Form You Are Comfortable With thing) mentioned that Irzu values all life, with the obvious implication that this includes humans. The question is, were she and her friend taking over the ship to keep the primitive humans from getting slaughtered, or to try and stop Irzu's plan?

And who would have authority over Irzu, anyway? I don't remember ever seeing a Votan AI taking orders—is that something from the game? The timeline is a little wonky because of coldsleep and Irzu being sent thousands of years early (I'm guessing it was actually sent only slightly before the arcs, and was simply going faster, since otherwise it doesn't really make sense), but I'd assume anyone with the explicit ability to give it orders is probably dead by now.

Past-Irisa could be a relative - the girl had absurdly important tech implanted in her, which means it wouldn't be stretching any probabilities if her family were key scientific / technical personnel before Irathian society fell apart in the exodus.

Episode 4. Datak chose a bad time to get religion, and Rafe's godson is the stupidest man on the planet.

True but Datak does give him considerable competition in a Stupid Evil kind of way. I'm calling it: He doesn't make it to next season because he doesn't have the sense to stay down. He's going to force Stahma to outright kill him even though she clearly doesn't want to. In fact the minute he put Alak's hand in that press I proclaimed him a dead man because harming her son is Stahma's berserk button.

Pottinger is the man who raped Amanda.

Episode 5. Pottinger is playing with Amanda's brain but gets burned in the process, apparently he's gay and was stalking Connor, Irisa's still immortal, Stahma's still a hilarious tease, Datak's still a bitch, and Christie might be sleeping with her father-in-law's favorite prostitute. Honestly didn't see that one coming.

Oh, and notice how Pottinger and Yewell both saw dead people? So did Amanda. As Nolan notes, he died last season. Obviously what she saw wasn't actually him (it acted blatantly out of character, for one thing), but still an interesting tidbit.

And yeah, it's implied Pottinger raped Amanda. To be more specific, he raped Connor by proxy, by raping his fiance. That man needs serious therapy.

Did Pottinger know about Connor prior to last week's episode? I thought he expressed surprise when Amanda mentioned his name?

That said, I'm interested in how this plays out.

That, and Kenya's inevitable resurrection-by-gold-spaghetti.

edited 18th Jul '14 6:29:22 AM by Nicknacks

Dont think the gold spaghetti can actually resurrect people it didn't get it's tendrils into before they died. The ship can almost certainly make a Kenya-bot, but with no record of her mind, it would just be an impostor. The hallucinating people weren't seeing ghosts- they were seeing important memories. The doc was trying to do a complete lift of their memories, and the process was leaky / hallucinogenic because the mayor supplied her with flakey hardware. I am pretty sure the "Accidental" exposure that got the mayor was no such thing. Doc wanted those records as well to try and figure out what the heck is going on/blackmail material to stay out of jail.

I love Christie to bits. Such a fierce little thing. "He deserves a raise" "Disgusting troll". So wonderfully honest. the DJ is.. Kind of horny? Of the opinion Alanis failed to spot a golden opportunity when presented with it on a golden platter? (Its not as funny if I have to explain but here goes: "Meet the man of my dreams, meet his beautiful wife. EPIC WIN!")

edited 18th Jul '14 9:23:31 AM by izeintime

Episode 6 is out. A Gulanee kills an entire E-Rep regiment (including Churchill), Pottinger gets transferred, Tommy finds out what Irisa is doing and Berlin breaks up with him because she thinks he's cheating, and proceeds to sleep with Nolan. Oh, and the new mayor has a fetish for cosplaying as a Castithan, and manages to run into Christie doing the same. My question is, is everyone at that bar a human or other species pretending to be another species, or just those two?

The sad thing is that if they had brought Irisa to the Ark, she could have stopped the Gulanee. Not even using her super nanotech invulnerability; just by being a Votan, she would have slowed her down and gained a chance to discuss things.

On the Nolan/Berlin thing. I get her, she was hurt, angry and drunk, But what happened to Nolan and Amanda?

I was thrown off by the Nolan/Berlin thing as well. I mean, maybe he thinks she is monogamous with Pottinger now or something. Also thrown off because I would kinda hope he would still have a soft spot for Tommy, not to mention how it might mess with Irisa to have her father sleep with the ex of the guy she has feelings for.

And oh my goodness Stahma. Stahma, Stahma, Stahma. Did anyone else get the feeling at the end that Datak was impressed with her, kinda proud and remembering why he fell in love with her in the first place? Hey, some women march for equal rights, some have consciousness raising groups, and some murder their potential consciousness raising groups if they aren't receptive to proposed status changes and blame it on status-quo promoting enemies who were threatening their fighting pit and gambling den profits.

Episode 7. Alak discovers Christie's nightly activities and is pissed, and prostitute who's name I still can't remember seduces him. Saw THAT coming a couple miles away. And Nolan finally has enough of Irisa's shit and cuts open her palm to see her healing factor.

Episode 8. The VC prostitute/spy gets captured because he knows where a dirty bomb is headed, the Collective tries to use Kenya (who they've apparently had this entire time) to make Amanda get him out, lots of action and betrayal, but prostitute is killed by Datak to keep him from spilling secrets, though he still manages to get the location of the bomb out. Kenya is saved. Oh, and Stahma's men point out that if she reconciles with Datak, they're all dead.

Coming into the homestretch.

.....should I have been offended by the Casti crossdressing thing? Because I sense I should be offended and I'm not sure why.

I find it an interesting twist on the theme. And it's not just Castithi. there were background characters outfitted as other races as well.

The crossdressing is insane. I mean, there are some uncomfortable echoes of blackface, but mostly it is just nuts. But hey, given the back story of the defiance world, just about everyone we see is a deeply traumatized survivor of a near-extinction event. People playing with much less than a full deck of cards is not surprising.

edited 22nd Aug '14 12:55:37 PM by izeintime

It's kind of a twist on blackface too because the people who do it, unlike blackface performers (and just how the hell did that even get started anyway?), if whatsisname and Christie are any example, see the aliens as superior and/or want to be them.

White people didn't think black people were good enough to be actors, so they just had white people smear on shoe polish and play black roles.

White people suck.

No, people suck. Whites abused their power because they were the ones that had it, not because they were white.

Season finale next ep. I think Berlyn is going to die. Call it a vibe.

Season finale double episode. Tommy died (as expected), Datak is back in the family, Christie's mother kidnaps her and Alak, and Datak and Stahma free Rafe to go after them. Oh yeah, and Irisa starts up the arcs, terraforms New York and a couple other cities, and manages to stop it after the silver Kelevan is taken out of her by that Irathient from her vision. In the process, the orbital debris field is destroyed. Old Saint Louis collapses and Nolan and Irisa are assumed dead, but he managed to get them into one of the Kaziri's stasis pods.

Any confirmation on season 3? I liked this better than the first season, and I really liked the first season.

It IS on Sy Fy, wouldn't shock me if we just saw the series finale.

Tommy. Damn. I was sure Berlyn was a dead woman.

edited 28th Aug '14 11:36:15 PM by CEOIII

Due to Irisa and Nolan being in suspended animation Season 3, if there is one, will occur several years, if not decades, later.

Eight days ago Ted A’Zary said on his twitter there will me defiance news soon^note tm but had been expecting it sooner. I have my fingers crossed for renewal, I have been really enjoying this show even if the finale felt a bit rushed.

https://twitter.com/Syfy/status/510522153960505344 https://twitter.com/Syfy/status/510522257069051904

edited 20th Sep '14 4:59:50 AM by Bwaaaa