Anti-Climax Boss: General Rahm Tak is built up as the most threatening antagonist ever faced on the show, but he never gets his big confrontation with the protagonists, instead dying of instant vaporization to a Deus ex Machina. The only time he's even in the same location as the main characters is when Irisa and Nolan trash his base camp in the third episode. The intense, personal confrontation that seems to be built up is instead given to Lieutenant Bebe.
The trend is repeated with Kindzi, who is built up to be faster and stronger than any human and almost completely resistant to injury. She ultimately shows up near the end of the season finale, fights Nolan on even ground for half a minute, and briefly overpowers him only to get stabbed in the head after dropping her guard and thrown into a spinning engine blade.
Applicability: The backstory bears a resemblance to the European refugee crisis of 2015: an international coalition (Earth/the European nations) finds itself having to deal with large numbers of desperate people (the Votan/refugees and migrants).
Almost all covers of old Earth songs are pretty awesome, such as "Come As You Are", "Time After Time", "Ooh Child" and "What's Up?" (which includes an English and Votan version of the song).
Complete Monster: Defiance is a world of Grey-and-Gray Morality, where heroes and villains alike have flaws and redeeming qualities in equal measure. The same cannot be said for the third season's two successive Big Bads:
General Rahm Tak, formerly of the Votanis Collective, is a brutal military commander also known as "The Beast". Despising humans, Rahm, after going rogue, sets out to destroy Defiance and slaughter it's human population as part of a genocidal crusade to create a purely Votan world. Slaughtering humans as he goes, Rahm keeps the heads of his victims on display in his camp, wipes out the McCawley family, and forces Datak and Stahma Tarr to act as his spies in Defiance by holding their son hostage. When Rahm's wife offers him clemency on behalf of the VC, Rahm murders her, drags her body through his camp, and sends her head back to his former superiors. Upon reaching Defiance, Rahm has his men slaughter hostages at the NeedWant and go on a killing spree throughout the town while his lieutenant infiltrates Defiance's militia to destroy it from within. Beneath a gregarious facade, sense of humor, and fondness for human culture, Rahm is a deranged madman, feared and despised by those who know him and who manages to darken an already grim series.
Eksu Tsuroz Kindzi is a particular vicious and sadistic Omec. Starting as a subordinate to her father T'evgin, Kindzi's first appearance has her try to eat an unconscious Nolan, and she later murders a curious child who poked her with a stick by stabbing the stick through his eye. After T'evgin takes in a wounded Stahma, Kindzi terrorizes her, even revealing the Omec's plans in the hope of forcing T'evgin to kill her. After cloning Doc Yewll, Kindzi hunts and slaughters the clones, moving on to citizens of Defiance when this grows boring, later using Omec technology to enslave the real Yewll. Disgusted by T'evgin's Heel–Face Turn, Kindzi mutinies against and ultimately murders her father, planning to conquer Earth and use its populace as slaves and food for the Omec. Kindzi then leads her followers in devouring innocent people, and tries to eat Stahma's baby grandson in front of her out of spite toward the Tarr family. Equally brutal to her own people, Kindzi goes on to kill one of her lieutenants for questioning her and forcing other Omec to eat his corpse, a taboo in their culture. Rejecting any notion of peace or compromise and considering all other races as nothing but cattle for the Omec to enslave or devour at will, Kindzi is nothing less than a savage animal, a monster even by the standards of her own people.
Growing the Beard: The general consensus is that the first part of season 1 garnered a lot of negative responses, but from about the 9th episode, the show seemed to be finding its voice and getting better reviews.
Season 3 is getting even more positive reception than the previous two, thanks to a strong new antagonist, tighter episode plotting, and a high quantity of [Wham Episodes.
Every single scene with Pottinger in Season 2 becomes this after Season 3's "Dead Air". That masked E-Rep soldier who raped Amanda in New York? She was working alongside him, sleeping with him, and confiding her darkest secrets in him for the better part of an entire season.
Deidre's friendship with Christie becomes harsher when you find out that Deidre is a Yandere who's obsessed with Alak, and all of her advice to Christie is intended to backfire and drive Christie and Alak further apart. And then she tries to ply Christie with poisoned food so that she'll suffer a miscarriage...
In the first episodes of season 3, a book about Irisa's exploits is treated as a joke, between the contemptible cover cheesy writing. In "The Beauty of Our Weapons," the Defiance militia nearly crumbles because they expect her to be a badass killing machine because of the book, and she doesn't want to be that, and can't because of PTSD from what she did that got immortalized in the book.
He's Just Hiding: A handful of fans wonder if Andina could have survived her Neck Snap fate late in season 3.
Hilarious in Hindsight: A former soldier with a past he's ashamed of, trying (as of the end of season 1) to save his superhumanly gifted daughter from being abused and exploited by unscrupulous forces sent from a place called Columbianote The name of the capital region of the Earth Republic... will they eventually come to a lighthouse?
Jesse Rath would later play another alien that required heavy makeup and a white wig, whose species name started with C and ended with "an": the Coluan Brainiac 5 on Supergirl (whose love interest's actress, funnily enough, was also named Nicole with the last initial M.)
A throwaway line about Robert Pattinson playing the astronaut lead in the action-drama film about the Bravery 9 is clearly meant to sound silly, seeing as his acting career at the time was pretty much defined by The Twilight Saga films. A bit over a decade later and seeing him in a high end action or drama film makes a lot more sense.
Between Stahma and Christie, which is especially played up in "In My Secret Life", where Christie joins Stahma and Alak in the family bath.
Canonically between Stahma and Kenya.
Berlin and Irisa have some chemistry, even if they hate each other. Berlin gets right up in Irisa's face (like... inches away) and gives her a pat-down. She later ends up pinning her against a car.
Berlin: Irisa's a real pretty name. It'll look good on the arrest report.
Christie and Deidre, the girl Alak hires to handle the record-playing on the Arch. Of course, it later turns out that Deidre wants to kill Christie so that she can have Alak all to herself...
Stahma Tarr is the beautiful, elegant wife of Datak Tarr who hints that she took him as a husband after murdering her original fiancee. Loving Datak for his ruthlessness and ambition, Stahma connives for him to obtain a seat upon the Defiance city council, later murdering her extramarital lover when she threatens Stahma's life with poison. Betraying Datak to leave him in prison and run his criminal enterprise through their son Alak, Stahma repeatedly outplays those around her in an effort to secure her holdings and ambitions while also keeping her family safe.
Datak Tarr began only as a "nobody with a wicked smile" who connives and claws his way to power in Defiance. Bringing others into his debt, Datak makes himself a figure of power in the community until he is overthrown by his own wife, the above Stahma. Reflecting on his flaws, Datak grows and even shows contrition to befriend people who want him dead, reconciling with Stahma and their son before rising even higher. When the genocidal Rahm Tak threatens Defiance, Datak "proves" his loyalty by severing his arm in front of an impressed Rahm Tak, only to reveal he hid an explosive in the limb, escaping as Rahm Tak and his men are completely wiped out, saving the city and making himself a hero in the process.
Moe: Andina's awkwardly shy facial expression and generally caring nature can inspire surprisingly warm feelings about her.
In-universe, Nicolette killing Hunter Bell was this for Yewll, who broke ties with her after that. Sending the Volge and trying to irradiate the town certainly weren't nice either, but the last straw, for Yewll, was killing Jarred the bartender to cover up the former. Yewll killed her to stop her from doing anything worse.
Datak's slaughter of the Spirit Riders was pretty bad, but he hits it in-universe when he scars Alak's hand for betraying him. Stahma had him beaten to a pulp and took over his business outright for that.
Pottinger may be slimey and ethically-lacking, but he really tops himself in "Painted From Memory". He paroled Yewll for the purpose of using her skills making Indogene spies that look human to create a convincing copy of Kenya, whom he would then "find" and present to a grateful Amanda. Since the process severely reduced the copy's lifespan, "Kenya" would then die and he could woo Amanda while she was vulnerable. Even Yewll found the idea sick, though she wasn't in much of a position to object. The worst part is that it worked out for him in the end, even though it didn't go exactly as planned. And then in "Dead Air", he's revealed as Amanda's rapist.
Scraping off Doc Yewll's skin to save an Omec in the name of the greater good of restarting gulanite production qualifies, since it means Nolan and Amanda have pretty well broken any trust she has for them. In addition, this could backfire badly as her medical skills were instrumental in helping commit atrocities during the Pale Wars, which the VC are all but openly aiming to reignite. Suppose she sides with them as a result?
Even for an Omec, Kindzi crosses it when she murders her father. In the eyes of the other Omec, forcing them to cannibalize another Omec is the final straw.
As of season two, Tommy earns a place on the scrappy heap after becoming an E-Rep collaborator.
Nolan gets some hate during the second season as well. His jerkass nature has been amplified by his search for Irisa, and finding her again hasn't really helped.
Minor character Gail the miner is rather easy to hate, due to being a violent and volatile racist and an all-around Jerkass with no redeeming characteristics.
Unusually for a show like this, with consistently good and creative special effects, the Castithan makeup can be spotty at times. Sometimes you can see where the pale makeup ends and the actors' actual skin color begins (usually around the neck).
Season 1 implemented CGI in some bizarre ways, such as Ben Darris fleeing in an obviously CG version of his Impala, which is wrecked in CG.
Season 3 has the destruction of the St. Louis Arch, which features some of the most obvious CG in the series. Made more bizarre for the fact that it's such a powerful moment otherwise, and that it happens in the same episode as the below-mentioned
In the final episode, most of the scenes aboard the Omec ship are obviously cheap green screen, and Kindzi's demise just looks off.
More of a "special effects failure due to lack of communication" event, but in the Season 2 episode "Painted from Memory," when the Kenya clone arrives in the Paradise/San Francisco area via land coach, there is a shot of the Golden Gate bridge that can be seen when she arrives. The bridge model used in the scene isn't the model used in the game. The model used in the show was a previous version of the bridge design that looks complete with some additional bits added to it, which had been seen in one of the videos explaining what Defiance was before the game's launch (as well as an initial teaser). In the actual game, the bridge is partly buried under terraformed earth while the other half is damaged and serves as the entryway into the San Francisco area of the game world.
The Gulanee provide a species example. Despite their interesting appearance, abilities and backstory they are the only race in the Votanis Collective not represented among the Defiance characters.
It's doubtful that any fans were happy with the treatment the McCawleys got in season 3.
Andina. A well-liked, well-developed character who has some good dynamics with the Tarrs and off-handedly gets her neck broken by Kindzi when she attacks just for shock value.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The show's effects are movie quality, and that's a huge compliment for a television series. If nothing else, because a game is being made along side it, there's likely some cross-contamination of digital assets. On the other hand, some assets are show specific - the entirety of the mines in "Down where the Dead Men Go" save for the entrance itself, interior and exterior, were CG as seen here.
The Season 2 finale has the destruction and terraforming of New York City by the Kaziri's terraformers.
Season 3 has the destruction of Camp Arrowhead.
"My Name Is Datak Tarr And I Have Come To Kill You" packs two in quick succession: Datak lopping his arm off in a horrifically realistic close-up and the stasis nets exploding and vaporizing Rahm Tak's camp.
The Grand Finale gives us a whopper: the Omec ship taking off with Nolan at its helm, followed by a surreal final scene following its trail through the universe. Some of the most impressive special effects work in the series, saved right for the end.
Video Game
Broken Base: There was one regarding the playerbases of Defiance and Defiance 2050 (the separate relaunch) and cited as the one that eventually killed the game as players of the former refused to move to the relaunch due to changes to character progression, locked content and the fact that you couldn't completely transfer your characters to the newer version while players of the latter believe that the original version was too outdated in many ways and the changes of 2050 aren't as bad they claim or make the game better and less of a hastle to play.
Recently, due to the closing of the game servers, a lot of fans hold Gamigo responsible due to their history and business practices of purchasing MMO gaming companies. Typically, Gamigo will purchase a company with an MMO that has a rather active fanbase. After doing so, Gamigo would then proceed to layoff a bulk of the programmers until there is a bare-bones crew to keep the game running, leaving the game without any chance of receiving any major bug fixes, and then raise the prices for their in-game store's items in hopes of maximizing profits by milking the pre-existing fanbase. Without a full team and the money going into their pockets, this also leads to no new content being developed. The combination of all those factors lead to the pre-existing player base eventually leaving until the game is no longer sustainable, leading to the game's eventual closing. With Gamigo purchasing Trion in 2018 and the closing of both versions of the game just three years later, it's clear they are continuing this business model. Essentially, the death of both versions of the game is the video game version of Screwed by the Network (see Trivia for game).
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Multi-projectile Rocket Launchers and Detonators (grenade launcher) are the most used weapons during Arkfalls and Sieges (which is a point defence against hordes of enemies-type event) because of the damage they can deal to multiple hostiles at once. However, having multiple players using them at the same time can cause the performance of the game to dip or even cause server crashes.
Demonic Spiders: The Volge are huge damage sponges with strong melee attacks, energy weapons and homing missiles, making them a nightmare when they come in big waves during World Events.
Goddamned Bats: Hellbugs. Their existence is one of the game's most annoying cons. It's bad enough that they tend to pop up when fighting other enemies, but each of the different enemy types is powerful yet boring to kill: the swarmers are brittle but small and fast, the armored bugs can take a LOT of damage and explode when you finally hit their weak points (oral, boobs, and butts, and these are sometimes armored), and the archers are surprisingly weak but also surprisingly annoying with their emp / tar spitters.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: This was how many reviewers and some veteran players felt with the 2050 re-release due to the fact that it was the same game (bugs and exploits included) but on a new engine with a few tweaks here and there and a new class progression system.
The Problem With Licensed Video Games: The game's launch was rife with bugs, server issues, and lack of content, getting mediocre reviews from critics as a result. However, the game eventually outlived the series it was supposed to advertise thanks to the addition of more story content, gameplay & bug fixes, fun-if-simple arcade-y gameplay and most importantly - going Free-to-Play. But then, it was slowly murdered by the company Gamigo after purchasing Trion Worlds (see above Broken Base for details).
The Random Events are considered this by many fans due to how frequent and repetitive they are, specially the Hellbugs-related events.
The Threat Level scaling system can one for newer players as it increases or decreases the level of enemies in a Conflict Zone/Arkfall based on the level of players participating in them, the fact that many to most players already reached the level cap (6000 EGO in the original version) can cause a Conflict Zone/Arkfall to go from threat 3 to 10 just by entering, turning a reasonable challenge into a unbeatable meatgrinder.
The fact that Defiance and Defiance 2050 were separated games on PC with totally separated playerbases and the fact that you can't completely transfer your characters from the original to the new version due to the changes to weapons, classes and items. This was cited by the remaining playerbase of the game that it eventually killed the game.
So Okay, It's Average: The critical consensus of the original game after most of the bugs and server issues were fixed, with many feeling that the game doesn't bring anything new to the MMO genre and with gameplay and graphics that feels straight out of the mid-2000s not helping its case.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: One of the reasons many fans of the original game didn't migrate to the 2050 re-release as 2050 changes the free-willing character progression system to a strict class system, weapons no longer can be upgraded indefinely, forcing players to constantly get new weapons due to how fast they become useless against stronger enemies, useable items are now abilities for specific classes and some Post-release content is locked until you finish the main story or reach a specific EGO level and the region of Silicon Valley was never added into 2050. The 2050 version of the game didn't even include all of the Episode missions, but a limited number of them.
of "Everyone Says Hi" used to close out the series as Nolan wanders the stars like he's dreamed of.