I was looking forward to Defiance, especially after seeing the cast list. Grant Bowler, Julie Benz and Jamie Murray have all excelled in Dexter and Outrageous Fortune, but the script they've been handed doesn't give them one solitary chance to exhibit their talents. The writing is on a par with a third rate computer game cut scene, choking on its own clichés, dialogue is non-existent, characters tell other people who they are, or what they are doing, but no one actually has a real conversation with someone else.
The opening scene establishes that Earth is visited by aliens, then we see their decimated fleet floating in orbit, now earth is a wasteland and different species of aliens are everywhere. I was still getting comfy in my seat and I had no idea how we'd gone from earth invasion to Mad Max meets Babylon 5 in about one minute. It doesn't get any better.
We're introduced to a young couple and told they're in love, their families don't approve, but we don't get to see them being in love, which is how you convince people your story is real. The girl's father at one point says he's going to kill her lover and storms off, next scene he's in a brothel where lo and behold, the boy is playing cards. How did the father know the boy would be there? Does this family man frequent the brothel enough to know they hold card games and that her lover will be there at that moment? It's lazy, derivative garbage.
Now for the director, time after time, tension building opportunities are squandered. The 'lovable rogue' character is running through some woods carrying a wounded girl. It soon becomes apparent they are being hunted by animals moving so fast we can barely see them, they surround our plucky hero in a flash and then proceed to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING whilst he shoots them one by one, and they clumsily fall over in an animation that looks like it was ripped from a video game circa 1990. Then our hero runs out of ammo - oh the tension - only for a Deus Ex Machina to arrive (in the middle of a forest remember) just in time to save them.
Then there's the props, how do you show your audience you're in the future? You make everything glow blue, from guns, to drinks, to surgical equipment, to knives, to alien artifacts, just make 'em glow blue and voila, the future.
From the one dimensional characters to the woeful sets and props, shocking script and inept direction this show is a mess. Honestly, I don't think I've seen a pilot this poor before. This is a catastrophic failure of epic proportions.
The opening scene establishes that Earth is visited by aliens, then we see their decimated fleet floating in orbit, now earth is a wasteland and different species of aliens are everywhere. I was still getting comfy in my seat and I had no idea how we'd gone from earth invasion to Mad Max meets Babylon 5 in about one minute. It doesn't get any better.
We're introduced to a young couple and told they're in love, their families don't approve, but we don't get to see them being in love, which is how you convince people your story is real. The girl's father at one point says he's going to kill her lover and storms off, next scene he's in a brothel where lo and behold, the boy is playing cards. How did the father know the boy would be there? Does this family man frequent the brothel enough to know they hold card games and that her lover will be there at that moment? It's lazy, derivative garbage.
Now for the director, time after time, tension building opportunities are squandered. The 'lovable rogue' character is running through some woods carrying a wounded girl. It soon becomes apparent they are being hunted by animals moving so fast we can barely see them, they surround our plucky hero in a flash and then proceed to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING whilst he shoots them one by one, and they clumsily fall over in an animation that looks like it was ripped from a video game circa 1990. Then our hero runs out of ammo - oh the tension - only for a Deus Ex Machina to arrive (in the middle of a forest remember) just in time to save them.
Then there's the props, how do you show your audience you're in the future? You make everything glow blue, from guns, to drinks, to surgical equipment, to knives, to alien artifacts, just make 'em glow blue and voila, the future.
From the one dimensional characters to the woeful sets and props, shocking script and inept direction this show is a mess. Honestly, I don't think I've seen a pilot this poor before. This is a catastrophic failure of epic proportions.