DEFIANCE Grounds Out

Episode 102 “Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go”

Uhm… OK.

I’m not going to go blow-by-blow on this, because a lot of it just … well … hrm. Yeah. The show’s still holding together, but there were moments I was scratching my head and wondering just how much experience the writers have.

Firstly, the deserter from last week — Elah Bandik — is being tortured in the town square for his cowardice, and it’s something that really gets into that whole “it’s their culture” thing, which begs the question: is Defiance going to try for any political statements like Battlestar Galactica did? Because here’s an argument for assimilation into a culture, rather than let everyone live separate and apart from each other in the same town.

Amanda certainly has her qualms about it, and even says the town charter isn’t being honored. So this is just lazy administration, then? Nolan, of course, isn’t one to stand by, but he’s a good soldier, following the mayor’s orders not to interfere. Irisa is beside herself, and we get clues that she’s gone through similar treatment.

Meantime, Ben — the mayor’s dead assistant who tried to blow up the shield generator on Endor for Defiance — has been awakened by the tall skinny co-conspirator of the ex-mayor. Ben has been tasked with making up for his failure by trying again — the goal of wiping out the town seems to be a really big deal to these people for some reason. I still don’t get why Mayor Nicki just didn’t do whatever she needed to do while she was running things. She says she ran out of time, but what exactly does that mean?

Nolan and McCauley go down into the mines after Ben, who’s taken a lot of explosive something-something down with him, and it’s enough to make Really Bad Boom, so they have to stop him. Now there’s a ticking clock. And we have not one, but three different instances where either Amanda or Nolan have to remind McCauley that “we need Ben alive” — naturally, he ends up dead.

But the big reveal of the hour is the fact that buried under the alien terraforming is the remains of the original city of St. Louis. Complete with a nuclear reactor that apparently has enough juice in it that one single person can turn it on… what-the-what?

Wait. Never mind. Syfy video game. Moving on.

Some shots look straight out of a video game environment — maybe Aliens: Colonial Marines or something, with the dark caves and scaffolding and such. Clearly there are cross-over imagery planners on the production team. But the idea that there’s a maybe-working nuclear reactor in Old St. Louis, where the buildings are still relatively intact and there’s plenty of room, makes me wonder why they don’t fire up the reactors and move out of Cargo Container Ville. I mean, really… this blew me right out of the show.

Some more nice moments between Irisa and the Deputy. I should learn his name, but I figure he’s doomed. Mainly because he’s the token African-American on the show, and he’s already getting popular with fans. And if he has some kind of relationship with Irisa, killing him off would add … drama. (ahem)

And the Romeo & Juliet soap continues. Mama (Jaime Murray) is just a little too hands on with the son, for my taste. Creepy. And I’m not sure it adds anything to the show, except to make her character seem creepy. We get that she’s manipulative as all get out, and her story about meeting her husband plays well, so do we need the creep factor layered onto that? I don’t think so.

So it’s a “meh” episode for me.

[Official site on Syfy]     [Previous Recap: “Pilot”]