Defiance could be television's next big show

As I sat at home sick this weekend, my cell phone buzzed on the table next to my recliner. My good friend from back home had texted me, asking if I had had a chance to check out the new series on SyFy - Defiance. Little did I know this message would turn me onto what could become the next big hit in television.

The plot of the show centers around Nolan, a former soldier who is turned lawmaker in the fledgling town of Defiance, which sits upon the ruins of St. Louis, which was destroyed decades ago by an alien race known as the Votan.

The years-long conflict between the humans and the Votan became known as the Pale Wars, where the two races fought for the right to survive. The Votan aliens had fled to Earth after their home planet was destroyed. Not realizing that Earth was already inhabited, the alien race sought to settle the planet, only to be met with suspicion and hostility by the human race.

In the near future, when ‘Defiance’ is set, the seven alien races that make up the Votan inhabit Earth alongside humans after a ceasefire was declared. The two most prominent races in the show are the humans and the Castithan, who are very humanlike in their appearance, but border on albino on the human appearance scale.

Nolan and his “adopted daughter” Irisa are living in the Badlands, seeking to trek south to the coasts of Antarctica, in hope of finding peace from the conflict that has engulfed, and for the most part, destroyed much of Earth.

In their travels, a sequence of events bring the pair in contact with representatives from Defiance, where they face a choice of whether or not to stand with this loosely united band of aliens and humans, or continue on with their final goal of reaching Antarctica.

The show captures all the elements necessary to take television by force - romance, action and a constant unknowingness that permeates the plot in every episode of the series.

For those of you who have seen TNT’s ‘Falling Skies’, this is a lower budget program comparable to that.

The final aspect of this SyFy project is that there is a companion video game for the younger generation that loosely follows the events of the program.

This is one of the first times this has been done, and only time will tell if the dual-platform experience will catch on. Either way, ‘Defiance’ is a must-see program that has a strong plot, albeit somewhat weak CGI that could soon take television by force.