Defiance

The year is 2013 and an alien collective known as Votans have arrived at Earth to populate the planet only to find it already occupied by humans. The collective is made up of seven alien races from the Votanis star system located in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. They were forced to flee their planets when their star system was destroyed by a stellar collision. They traveled in hyper sleep for 5,000 years before their arrival, but humans did not welcome the Voltans with open arms. Instead, they only allowed a small percentage of them to populate selected areas of the planet until they could arrive at a compromise with their negotiations.  This left millions of Voltans in hyper sleep in the Ark ships in orbit around the Earth.

10 years passed with little progress being made on negotiation until one of the Votan ambassadors was assassinated by a human. That act began the Pale Wars between Humans and Votans. Seven years later the Ark fleet in orbit carrying millions of Votans still in hyper sleep was destroyed in a massive explosion and debris began falling onto the planet, known as the Arkfall event. The Votans claim a human was the cause of the explosion and humans claim it was a Votan weapon that malfunctioned. The result of the Arkfall was the release of the Votan terraforming technology carried in the Arks.  Terraforming technology was originally intended to be used on Earth by the Voltans to help adapt the planet to their needs and was supposed to have been introduced very carefully with much planning. Now that the technology has randomly fallen to the planet in an uncontrolled process, the planet began changing causing plant and animal life to mutate thus creating some very dangerous species and changing the face of the planet.

The Pale Wars ended shortly after. Both sides had fought to the point where they could not continue, they were both physically and mentally exhausted. The planet had changed from the terraforming technology and as a result created an alien planet, if the Humans and Votans were going to survive the Earth’s new mutated elements, they needed to work together.

Defiance is a new  SYFY channel series on Monday nights at 9pm EST/8pm CST and picks up in the year 2046, 13 years after the Arkfall event. Nolan (Grant Bowler) is a Pale Wars veteran and nomad that scavenges technology from the Ark fragments that occasionally fall to the planet’s surface and sells that technology. His traveling companion is his adopted Votan daughter, Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas).  More specifically she is Irathient, a marauding near human race with a natural talent for tribal warfare and she has the spunk to prove it. After being robbed and escaping from an Irathient gang known as Spirit Riders, the two find themselves being rescued by a group of humans from the town Defiance, formerly known as St. Louis.

After being patched up by the local doctor Nolan and Irisa begin to find a way to make some money so they can resupply what was stolen from them and leave town. They soon find themselves in the middle of corruption, murder, and a nasty Votan race known as the Volge on the way to Defiance to destroy it.

The story line of the show went very well; it kept my interest and had some good action. The only turn off was the show incorporated some of the video game visuals. For the most part that was ok, but at one point it was very evident and somewhat cheesy. Gamers can also play the video game “Defiance” and see how the game and the show tie together. Overall the new series appears to have it all; love, hate, corruption, and action. Hopefully the remaining episodes will stand as strong as the pilot.