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defiance_tv2013-04-22 03:46 am
aryas_zehral) wrote in defiance_tv2013-04-22 03:46 am
Entry tags:
Pilot Episode Musings
Heya,
I’ve watched the Pilot three times now so I thought I should maybe write down what I thought of it, jot down a few notes, and then, um, this happened. :/ Apparently I have lots of thoughts, some of them sort of intelligent, some of them shallow and probably inconsequential. And, in a revelation surprising to no one, apparently its the characters and their interactions that appeal to me.
For ease of navigation/keeping to the topic it has subheadings. :)
Irisa and Nolan.
I like that Irisa may be an alien but she is definitely a teenager on the brink of all out rebellion. Her default expression seems to be judging and unimpressed with a side of sullen. She seems constantly pissed off at Nolan, which he takes with a bland expression with a pinch of fond amusement, but when it comes down to it she (literally in the case of giving the scalpel back to the doc or in the encounter with Datak after the fight) looks to him for guidance. Similarly he wanders off to see the mayor and seems unconcerned a lot of the time, lets her leave town if she wants to, and yet still knows how to win her round (who’s up for a sing-a-long in the car?) and is father-ly enough to remove a drink from her hands in the bar as if deciding she’s not old enough to have it. I adore that, at the end, after all the fighting with the Volge is over and after her storming off in a angry scared huff (and then coming back with reinforcements), their response to each other is grins and hugging. Even if, five minutes later, I’m sure Irisa would deny it entirely. As teenagers do.
Question: Why does Nolan never lead with “she’s my daughter”? It’s repeatedly “my companion” which leads to the Mayor asking about their relationship. Has he learned not to because of the way people respond to a human raising an Irathiant? Or is he worried that she will be made a weakness, a target if she is known as something special to him? He didn’t have to call her his daughter after all. She could just have stayed his travelling companion. She could have been dumped on the next set of spirit riders he came across or even, if he didn’t trust spirit riders, the next mixed race community he went through. And that’s only if he wanted a likelihood of a positive outcome for her. I imagine, in the world that is, a lot of very nasty things could have happened to a child all alone especially an alien child in a world surrounded by humans who are probably more than a little pissed at the aliens that came and fucked up the world.
What did her bio-parents do that made her think that Nolan killing them was saving her? What age was she when she was rescued by him? Unless Irathiants can remember from birth then she needed to be old enough to form memories enough to know that it was a bad situation. Unless, of course, she thinks he rescued her because that’s what she’s been told and because of what she’s observed of other Irathiants.
Where does Irisa get the crimpers for her hair from? Seriously, they leave everything behind when the Spirit riders steal their roller but later she still has crimps in her hair. Did she borrow them from someone? Does her hair naturally do that? Does she keep them in her pack as precious? Was she carrying a pack during the escape through the woods?
Two Houses Both Alike. (yeah I know, most obvious reference ever)
The Tarrs.
Is Stahma on her husband’s side or her sons (or her own)? She seems to be doing a lot of work managing her husband, does not seem overly pleased with how he treats that man who approaches him in the street or herself, and is calculating when she looks at him. She plays at subservient but I get the feeling she is very much the power behind the throne. Do you think she’d be up for a bit of poison if she felt her husband was getting out of hand? Is it all a power grab or is it her trying to make the best out of a bad situation? I think its probably mostly a power grab but I wonder if she married him for his position and then found him even more distasteful than she expected. I wonder if she even likes him let alone loves him. I found myself thinking that all her pushing for him to leave Christie alone, to encourage Alak and Christie, to think of The Mines might not be because she wants the power but because she wants Alak to be happy? To be with the girl he likes even if she is a McCawley? I wondered if it was the machinations of a woman who wants what’s best for her child even if that means defying her husband.
Is Alak wearing contacts as well as having his hair dyed blue? I ask this because his parents eyes are both pale pink and his are blue. I noticed a girl in the crowd at the Mayor’s speach, a human girl, also sporting blue streaks in her hair so Alak is conforming to a wider human?/cultural? fashion? How old do you reckon Alak is? He must have been either not born or very young when the armistice was declared. I feel I should go off and look up information of first-gen/second-gen immigrants and their interaction with larger communities to explain the younger generation wearing more human clothing while their elders wander around in Castithan robes.
The McCawleys.
I actually don’t have anything much to say about this family. From the mise-en-scene of their family dinner (from the very fact that they are having a family dinner) they seem very... traditional. Rafe at the head of the table, female housekeeper in the place of a wife actually doing the work, the expectation of obedience and the family looking immediately to him. Rafe is clearly of the opinion that humans > Voltans based on his interactions with the Tarr’s and with the housekeeper- asking if the dish she was serving was one of her relatives? WTF Rafe? His eldest son (Luke) seemed to be following his father in this outlook.
Given that Luke seems to have a similar outlook to his father (albeit more defensive, violent, without the certainty regarding position and power that his father has), I’m wondering just what he was up to with Ben, why he was meeting him in the woods. There’s a lot of possibilities - maybe he had seen Ben do something suspicious so had followed him to find out what it was, maybe he was working with Ben and had had a change of mind, maybe he had been a patsy for Ben and had only just realised what he had gotten himself into, or maybe he and Ben had been having a relationship and were meeting in the woods and had argued about that and not anything actually related to the Big Plot. That last one seems unlikely but still, since when does that stop me from thinking of it?
Christie seems sweet, the baby of the family, and so far not much else. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t more defiant and strong than she currently looks. Quentin seems desperate for his Dad’s approval (middle child syndrome much?) but I have hopes that he will turn out to be more like his sister than his father - i.e. not expecting the aliens to be default bad/lesser. Maybe between him, her and Alek they can issue in a brave new democratic world of equals. Irisa and Tommy can help.
OK. Maybe I had more to say than I thought.
Datak Tarr and Rafe McCawley
Datak is such a follower. He wants to be a big man but I think he’s very much a little, petty man. Rafe is a bigot and a bully. Both consider themselves better than everyone else. If they were on the same side, and liked each other, they’d probably find they have a lot in common- except the things they have in common are the things that mean they will never be on the same side. I think they mean to take over that town, make it their own private kingdom. I think, so far, this has been the direction things have been going. I wonder, with Amanda in charge, Kenya clearly an up and coming member of society, the women in their families poised to defy or manipulate them, will they are going to turn round at some point and realise that the women have let them talk, while slowly making the world into their image? Do you think Nolan is going to be more old guard (paternalistic, violent, bully) or new guard (democratic, supportive, violence where needed)?
Alak Tarr and Christie McCawley
Man I hope these kids survive this, make a life for each other and break away from the machinations of their families. I know they are very saccarine so far but its cute. I expect horrible things to happen but I can still hope they come out the other side stronger and still together, right? And without Alak becoming hard, becoming like his father and the same with Christie. It would suck if they got married and then Christie found herself having to manage him the way Stahma has to manage Datak.
Irisa and Tommy
I think they could be odd-friendship BFFs. She disconcerts him. Repeatedly. Yet, of the people she interacts with, he is the one she lets knows the most about her (although, probably, because she finds it amusing to disconcert him). He saves her life on the battlefield. With Nolan taking on the role of Lawkeeper and the scenes from the next episode where Irisa is armed and defending someone in the sheriff's office, it seems Irisa and Tommy will be working together so there could be a lot of opportunities to develop this odd friendship. I’m thinking they could have a siblings vibe?
Amanda and Kenya Rosewater.
Why is Kenya called Kenya (which to my mind is a bit of an unusual name) when Amanda has a “normal” one? I had this whole idea that maybe Kenya was destroyed and her parents named her after it in honor but the actress is 38 and the aliens arrived 33 years ago so that doesn’t work. Maybe... maybe they went on holiday to Kenya and she was conceived there? I’m so over-thinking this.
Have to admit, for the first few minutes of their interaction, I was gearing up to ship them and then! Unexpected Sisters! Ugh. At least I found out before I’d started generating backstory. Or fic. And now that I know, I can celebrate sisters being strong, supporting, defending and championing each other. I can root for them keeping control, making their town a better place even if not the image of the world that their elders would have approved. If they make Nolan the love interest for both of the siblings - and cause a riff between them as a result- I will be Very Not Pleased. And, yes, the capitals were intentional.
Ex-Mayor Nicky Riordon’s plans.
Did she only put Amanda forward to be her successor because she could be manipulated and would be weak when facing an army? Is this going to be her “fatal flaw”, her initial mistake because Amanda will turn out to be stronger than intended (and will defy her expectations)? How did she know Amanda? What did Amanda do before she was the mayor?
What is the Kadzeri? What does it do? Why does she want it?
What is the “back-up plan”? And why does she call them the survivors? What are they surviving (presumably the back-up plan)? It will either be something very violent or something like a virus. I would probably go with a virus, something target to specific genotypes (aka the Voltans), if it were me but that’s because I’m mean and evil and really like stories about viruses running out of control and attempts to either survive or cure them. It could also be, like, a weapon held over from the Pale Wars or maybe something to try and undo the terraforming. The world (that we have seen) is filled with weird alien plants, mutated animals and bridges over dried up riverbeds. I can’t imagine anything can turn that back but maybe there is a (scifi) way to remove the Voltan genes from the biomass... which gets us back to the whole virus idea.
Other Questions and Comments.
“How many men did you lose when the 99ers collapsed the tunnels?” Who are the 99ers? Why did they collapse the tunnel?
How often can they use the word “stakho”? Seriously, was that just the word of the episode? Maybe it was just because I’ve watched it multiple times now but it started really standing out to me as overused. Also, why didn’t they translate it when Datak used it during the battle??
Did anyone else expect them to start using Farscape words? I was utterly convinced Doc Yewell called Irisa a “tralk” until I rewatched and realised I’d completely made that up!! Also, I actually looked up the cast list to see if the woman who played Jool in Farscape was the female Irathient in the car with the Spirit Rider Leader. She wasn’t.
Less a question, more a comment, but I love the aesthetic of the Irathients/Spirit Riders: the goggles, the red hair, the bikes, the stripes, the colours, the vaguely steampunk-nomad feel of it all. I like that you can tell that Irisa has been raised by a human because her outfits conform to the human’s way more than any of the Voltan groups.
Doc Yewell is such a stereotypical grumpy doctor. It’s awesome. Lol. I feel I should care about her backstory but I kind of ... don’t. I just want her to be around acting scathing towards everyone but brilliant and dedicated.
Obviously its still early days so not entirely sure what happened when but the Voltan fleet arrived 33 years ago and the armistice was declared 15 years ago. So that’s a window of 18 years of what? Fighting? Did the Pale Wars last the full 18 years. And if it was 15 years ago that the ships fell and the Arks unintentionally released the terraformers then that’s a really really quick terraforming event (or is it still ongoing?). Where does all the backstory on Wikipedia come from (and how accurate is it)? It has dates and information and stuff. Is it from the game? Do I need to play the game to get the most out of the series because, ugh, don’t wanna!?
How many times have I used the word defiance/defy in these musings? Clearly its not just the name of a town, its not just a group of historical warriors, but a theme for the show. Children defying parents. People defying expectations. Soldiers defying orders. Defying the odds. Have they made a promo video around the word “defy” because, if not, they should. Maybe for a future season?
So those were my thoughts. What were yours?
I’ve watched the Pilot three times now so I thought I should maybe write down what I thought of it, jot down a few notes, and then, um, this happened. :/ Apparently I have lots of thoughts, some of them sort of intelligent, some of them shallow and probably inconsequential. And, in a revelation surprising to no one, apparently its the characters and their interactions that appeal to me.
For ease of navigation/keeping to the topic it has subheadings. :)
Irisa and Nolan.
I like that Irisa may be an alien but she is definitely a teenager on the brink of all out rebellion. Her default expression seems to be judging and unimpressed with a side of sullen. She seems constantly pissed off at Nolan, which he takes with a bland expression with a pinch of fond amusement, but when it comes down to it she (literally in the case of giving the scalpel back to the doc or in the encounter with Datak after the fight) looks to him for guidance. Similarly he wanders off to see the mayor and seems unconcerned a lot of the time, lets her leave town if she wants to, and yet still knows how to win her round (who’s up for a sing-a-long in the car?) and is father-ly enough to remove a drink from her hands in the bar as if deciding she’s not old enough to have it. I adore that, at the end, after all the fighting with the Volge is over and after her storming off in a angry scared huff (and then coming back with reinforcements), their response to each other is grins and hugging. Even if, five minutes later, I’m sure Irisa would deny it entirely. As teenagers do.
Question: Why does Nolan never lead with “she’s my daughter”? It’s repeatedly “my companion” which leads to the Mayor asking about their relationship. Has he learned not to because of the way people respond to a human raising an Irathiant? Or is he worried that she will be made a weakness, a target if she is known as something special to him? He didn’t have to call her his daughter after all. She could just have stayed his travelling companion. She could have been dumped on the next set of spirit riders he came across or even, if he didn’t trust spirit riders, the next mixed race community he went through. And that’s only if he wanted a likelihood of a positive outcome for her. I imagine, in the world that is, a lot of very nasty things could have happened to a child all alone especially an alien child in a world surrounded by humans who are probably more than a little pissed at the aliens that came and fucked up the world.
What did her bio-parents do that made her think that Nolan killing them was saving her? What age was she when she was rescued by him? Unless Irathiants can remember from birth then she needed to be old enough to form memories enough to know that it was a bad situation. Unless, of course, she thinks he rescued her because that’s what she’s been told and because of what she’s observed of other Irathiants.
Where does Irisa get the crimpers for her hair from? Seriously, they leave everything behind when the Spirit riders steal their roller but later she still has crimps in her hair. Did she borrow them from someone? Does her hair naturally do that? Does she keep them in her pack as precious? Was she carrying a pack during the escape through the woods?
Two Houses Both Alike. (yeah I know, most obvious reference ever)
The Tarrs.
Is Stahma on her husband’s side or her sons (or her own)? She seems to be doing a lot of work managing her husband, does not seem overly pleased with how he treats that man who approaches him in the street or herself, and is calculating when she looks at him. She plays at subservient but I get the feeling she is very much the power behind the throne. Do you think she’d be up for a bit of poison if she felt her husband was getting out of hand? Is it all a power grab or is it her trying to make the best out of a bad situation? I think its probably mostly a power grab but I wonder if she married him for his position and then found him even more distasteful than she expected. I wonder if she even likes him let alone loves him. I found myself thinking that all her pushing for him to leave Christie alone, to encourage Alak and Christie, to think of The Mines might not be because she wants the power but because she wants Alak to be happy? To be with the girl he likes even if she is a McCawley? I wondered if it was the machinations of a woman who wants what’s best for her child even if that means defying her husband.
Is Alak wearing contacts as well as having his hair dyed blue? I ask this because his parents eyes are both pale pink and his are blue. I noticed a girl in the crowd at the Mayor’s speach, a human girl, also sporting blue streaks in her hair so Alak is conforming to a wider human?/cultural? fashion? How old do you reckon Alak is? He must have been either not born or very young when the armistice was declared. I feel I should go off and look up information of first-gen/second-gen immigrants and their interaction with larger communities to explain the younger generation wearing more human clothing while their elders wander around in Castithan robes.
The McCawleys.
I actually don’t have anything much to say about this family. From the mise-en-scene of their family dinner (from the very fact that they are having a family dinner) they seem very... traditional. Rafe at the head of the table, female housekeeper in the place of a wife actually doing the work, the expectation of obedience and the family looking immediately to him. Rafe is clearly of the opinion that humans > Voltans based on his interactions with the Tarr’s and with the housekeeper- asking if the dish she was serving was one of her relatives? WTF Rafe? His eldest son (Luke) seemed to be following his father in this outlook.
Given that Luke seems to have a similar outlook to his father (albeit more defensive, violent, without the certainty regarding position and power that his father has), I’m wondering just what he was up to with Ben, why he was meeting him in the woods. There’s a lot of possibilities - maybe he had seen Ben do something suspicious so had followed him to find out what it was, maybe he was working with Ben and had had a change of mind, maybe he had been a patsy for Ben and had only just realised what he had gotten himself into, or maybe he and Ben had been having a relationship and were meeting in the woods and had argued about that and not anything actually related to the Big Plot. That last one seems unlikely but still, since when does that stop me from thinking of it?
Christie seems sweet, the baby of the family, and so far not much else. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t more defiant and strong than she currently looks. Quentin seems desperate for his Dad’s approval (middle child syndrome much?) but I have hopes that he will turn out to be more like his sister than his father - i.e. not expecting the aliens to be default bad/lesser. Maybe between him, her and Alek they can issue in a brave new democratic world of equals. Irisa and Tommy can help.
OK. Maybe I had more to say than I thought.
Datak Tarr and Rafe McCawley
Datak is such a follower. He wants to be a big man but I think he’s very much a little, petty man. Rafe is a bigot and a bully. Both consider themselves better than everyone else. If they were on the same side, and liked each other, they’d probably find they have a lot in common- except the things they have in common are the things that mean they will never be on the same side. I think they mean to take over that town, make it their own private kingdom. I think, so far, this has been the direction things have been going. I wonder, with Amanda in charge, Kenya clearly an up and coming member of society, the women in their families poised to defy or manipulate them, will they are going to turn round at some point and realise that the women have let them talk, while slowly making the world into their image? Do you think Nolan is going to be more old guard (paternalistic, violent, bully) or new guard (democratic, supportive, violence where needed)?
Alak Tarr and Christie McCawley
Man I hope these kids survive this, make a life for each other and break away from the machinations of their families. I know they are very saccarine so far but its cute. I expect horrible things to happen but I can still hope they come out the other side stronger and still together, right? And without Alak becoming hard, becoming like his father and the same with Christie. It would suck if they got married and then Christie found herself having to manage him the way Stahma has to manage Datak.
Irisa and Tommy
I think they could be odd-friendship BFFs. She disconcerts him. Repeatedly. Yet, of the people she interacts with, he is the one she lets knows the most about her (although, probably, because she finds it amusing to disconcert him). He saves her life on the battlefield. With Nolan taking on the role of Lawkeeper and the scenes from the next episode where Irisa is armed and defending someone in the sheriff's office, it seems Irisa and Tommy will be working together so there could be a lot of opportunities to develop this odd friendship. I’m thinking they could have a siblings vibe?
Amanda and Kenya Rosewater.
Why is Kenya called Kenya (which to my mind is a bit of an unusual name) when Amanda has a “normal” one? I had this whole idea that maybe Kenya was destroyed and her parents named her after it in honor but the actress is 38 and the aliens arrived 33 years ago so that doesn’t work. Maybe... maybe they went on holiday to Kenya and she was conceived there? I’m so over-thinking this.
Have to admit, for the first few minutes of their interaction, I was gearing up to ship them and then! Unexpected Sisters! Ugh. At least I found out before I’d started generating backstory. Or fic. And now that I know, I can celebrate sisters being strong, supporting, defending and championing each other. I can root for them keeping control, making their town a better place even if not the image of the world that their elders would have approved. If they make Nolan the love interest for both of the siblings - and cause a riff between them as a result- I will be Very Not Pleased. And, yes, the capitals were intentional.
Ex-Mayor Nicky Riordon’s plans.
Did she only put Amanda forward to be her successor because she could be manipulated and would be weak when facing an army? Is this going to be her “fatal flaw”, her initial mistake because Amanda will turn out to be stronger than intended (and will defy her expectations)? How did she know Amanda? What did Amanda do before she was the mayor?
What is the Kadzeri? What does it do? Why does she want it?
What is the “back-up plan”? And why does she call them the survivors? What are they surviving (presumably the back-up plan)? It will either be something very violent or something like a virus. I would probably go with a virus, something target to specific genotypes (aka the Voltans), if it were me but that’s because I’m mean and evil and really like stories about viruses running out of control and attempts to either survive or cure them. It could also be, like, a weapon held over from the Pale Wars or maybe something to try and undo the terraforming. The world (that we have seen) is filled with weird alien plants, mutated animals and bridges over dried up riverbeds. I can’t imagine anything can turn that back but maybe there is a (scifi) way to remove the Voltan genes from the biomass... which gets us back to the whole virus idea.
Other Questions and Comments.
“How many men did you lose when the 99ers collapsed the tunnels?” Who are the 99ers? Why did they collapse the tunnel?
How often can they use the word “stakho”? Seriously, was that just the word of the episode? Maybe it was just because I’ve watched it multiple times now but it started really standing out to me as overused. Also, why didn’t they translate it when Datak used it during the battle??
Did anyone else expect them to start using Farscape words? I was utterly convinced Doc Yewell called Irisa a “tralk” until I rewatched and realised I’d completely made that up!! Also, I actually looked up the cast list to see if the woman who played Jool in Farscape was the female Irathient in the car with the Spirit Rider Leader. She wasn’t.
Less a question, more a comment, but I love the aesthetic of the Irathients/Spirit Riders: the goggles, the red hair, the bikes, the stripes, the colours, the vaguely steampunk-nomad feel of it all. I like that you can tell that Irisa has been raised by a human because her outfits conform to the human’s way more than any of the Voltan groups.
Doc Yewell is such a stereotypical grumpy doctor. It’s awesome. Lol. I feel I should care about her backstory but I kind of ... don’t. I just want her to be around acting scathing towards everyone but brilliant and dedicated.
Obviously its still early days so not entirely sure what happened when but the Voltan fleet arrived 33 years ago and the armistice was declared 15 years ago. So that’s a window of 18 years of what? Fighting? Did the Pale Wars last the full 18 years. And if it was 15 years ago that the ships fell and the Arks unintentionally released the terraformers then that’s a really really quick terraforming event (or is it still ongoing?). Where does all the backstory on Wikipedia come from (and how accurate is it)? It has dates and information and stuff. Is it from the game? Do I need to play the game to get the most out of the series because, ugh, don’t wanna!?
How many times have I used the word defiance/defy in these musings? Clearly its not just the name of a town, its not just a group of historical warriors, but a theme for the show. Children defying parents. People defying expectations. Soldiers defying orders. Defying the odds. Have they made a promo video around the word “defy” because, if not, they should. Maybe for a future season?
So those were my thoughts. What were yours?