Life, The Universe and Sci-fi

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Defiance: It's worth watching

I wasn’t convinced by Defiance at first. I like big science fiction and the trend towards trying to make it small bugs me. I liked the K-files as much as anyone but I also love Star Trek because it can do things other shows can’t. Defiance was never the X-files but it took time to convince me that it had real scope. Beyond that trying to run a video game and a TV show at the same time seemed a bit too ambitious.

In the third season I’ve been convinced. Not that the first two seasons were in anyway bad. The show always had interesting characters and wasn’t afraid to make them complex, but it also had some misses. I didn’t understand the aliens as well as I would have liked and at times it felt disjointed.

Season two had a more connected storyline and continued to make the characters more interesting but while the enemy was interesting it had a few issues. Mostly that some of the most interesting characters weren’t themselves and it wasn’t always clear what was going on. It also felt as if they stretched out some of the points just a bit too far.

Season three fixed these all. It started by having an interesting antagonist that was a lot of fun to hate, but who you could understand in some ways. This made the stories more connected to the central plot but it still had plenty of room for character development. But where it really worked was not stretching that out. At the first conflict of the season was beginning to grow stale they changed things up making for a far more interesting and bigger season. One that left the characters with important and difficult choices not just of what they could do but what they should do.

Defiance still isn’t my favorite show. It’s not even my favorite show that’s currently still on the air. But it’s one of the handful of shows that make me excited every time I see there is a new episode and after the season three finale I want to see more immediately.

I wasn’t convinced by Defiance at first. I like big science fiction and the trend towards trying to make it small bugs me. I liked the x-files as much as anyone but I also love Star Trek because it can do things other shows can’t. Defiance was never the x-files but it took time to convince me that it had real scope. Beyond that trying to run a video game and a TV show at the same time seemed a bit too ambitious.
In the third season I’ve been convinced. Not that the first two seasons were in anyway bad. The show always had interesting characters and wasn’t afraid to make them complex but it also had some misses. I didn’t understand the aliens as well as I would have liked and at times it felt disjointed. 
Season two had a more connected storyline and continued to make the characters more interesting but while the enemy was interesting it had a few issues. Mostly that some of the most interesting characters weren’t themselves and it wasn’t always clear what was going on. It also felt as if they stretched out some of the points just a bit too far.
Season three fixed these all. It started by having an interesting antagonist that was a lot of fun to hate, but who you could understand in some ways. This made the stories more connected to the central plot but it still had plenty of room for character development. But where it really worked was not stretching that out. At the first conflict of the season was beginning to grow stale they changed things up making for a far more interesting and bigger season. One that left the characters with important and difficult choices not just of what they could do but what they should do.
Defiance still isn’t my favorite show. It’s not even my favorite show that’s currently still on the air. But it’s one of the handful of shows that make me excited every time I see there is a new episode and after the season three finale I want to see more now.