Defiance, “The Beauty of Our Weapons”:

Here’s a good, classic example of Defiance at its best: A simple story of flawed characters doing their best, ripe with strong emotion and excellent performances from the show’s cast.

A scion of the Von Bach family, Conrad, has arrived in Defiance. He supplied weapons to Rahm Tak, but VBI does’t take sides, so it’s not surprising he’d also supply wares to Defiance.

What is surprising is that he’s doing so free of charge. He’s an old flame of Berlin’s, and he’s eager to win her back. Somewhat surprisingly, she seems receptive to the idea, putting her on a collision course with Amanda.

I really liked Amanda’s performance in this episode, and I thoroughly agree with her assessment of Berlin’s character.

I also have a strong suspicion Conrad is planning a double cross at some point. They didn’t mention that voice control on the weapons for nothing. And my personal experience with the Von Bachs is that they’re a slimey bunch.

Amanda isn’t the only one having a bad day, though, as there are rough times all around.

The fire in Datak Tarr has finally burnt out. Sentenced to death, he has no more schemes, no more insults, no more bravado. He has made peace with his fate, and he has only one last request: to die on the shaming wrack in the hopes of redeeming himself in Rayetso’s eyes.

This was probably the standout plot of an excellent episode. Tony Curran once again puts on a stellar performance, and Alak’s words at the end have got to be one of the most emotional moments in Defiance to date.

I very highly doubt they’re really going to kill off Datak, but I will admit I have no idea how he’s going to get out of this. But either way we got some excellent story-telling out of it.

Meanwhile, Stahma is little better off than her husband, having gone out of the frying pan and into the fire by seeking the aid of the Omec.

And finally, Nolan is put in an impossible position when his recruits for defending Defiance insist that Irisa join them, despite her issues. The end result is Nolan at his very best.

I’ve always said the greatest strength of Defiance is its characters, and “The Beauty of Our Weapons” is a great illustration of that. Nearly the entire cast puts on stellar performances, and their strength and humanity is a brilliant contrast to the brutality of Rahm Tak.

Berlin and Stahma’s plots are the weak points of the episode, but even those aren’t bad. They just don’t stand up to the awesomeness of the other plots.

Random fun fact: Most of the weapons seen in this episode are taken directly from the game version of Defiance. Though I don’t use any of them myself — I prefer the VOT models myself, if only for the sake of patriotism.

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Dark Matter, Episode Six:

It’s info-dump time!

With the aid of the android I have unilaterally decided is named Sally and a whole lot of hand-wavey technobabble, Five develops a means to dive into her own subconscious and uncover the lost memories of the Raza crew.

It’s dangerous, though. Five risks overloading her nervous system, or becoming lost in memories forever.

This is our first big glimpse into the crew’s lives before they lost their memories. It’s a very incomplete picture, with some characters’ memories not being explored at all, but the overall message seems to be that the crew wasn’t that bad after all.

Except Three. He really is that awful.

We now finally have an identity for Five, and to be honest, I’m a little disappointed. After all her weirdness, I was thinking Five would turn out to be the product of some freaky genetic engineering, or a prodigy, or a mastermind of some sort. The revelation that she’s really quite ordinary is a bit underwhelming.

For all that this is the most Five-heavy episode to date, I think the real hero of episode six is, uh, Six. Won’t spoil the reasons why, but he definitely comes out of this episode looking the best of the Raza gang.

It further cements what I’ve felt for a while: While One is eager to paint himself the white knight at every opportunity, Six is actually the most trustworthy and honourable member of the crew. He just doesn’t need to boast about it.

Something else interesting to come out of this is that Five may have learned how to access the vault without realizing it. How long before something jogs her memory?

Also, I’d like to point out that Two was strongly opposed to Five’s journey into their memories, and Five didn’t uncover any of her memories. I don’t know; still seems suspicious.

I’m a little on the fence with this episode. This kind of insight is something I’ve wanted for a while, but… There are still lots of unanswered questions. Really all of the memories Five unearthed only flesh out character backstories. We still have no answers to the mysteries of the crew’s current state. Which in and of itself might be significant.

At least we finally know who Five is/was, I guess.

Overall rating: 7/10

Defiance, “Where the Apples Fall”:

Ah, the subtle intricacies of Castithan family politics.

Datak and Stahma sold out to the VC to save Alak, but Christie’s death has left him uninclined toward gratitude. As soon as he returns to Defiance, he informs the authorities of their betrayal, spurring a town-wide manhunt.

I very much enjoyed watching the Tarr family self-destruct — Datak and Stahma both have such excellent acting that any episode with this much of the both of them is bound to be great — and I once again find myself impressed with how much Alak has evolved as a character. He’s actually kind of badass all of a sudden, and some of his deadpan comments really had me cracking up.

I do wonder where they go from here, though. Datak and Stahma seem to be up a creek without a paddle, and I struggle to see what the writers’ options are at this point.

I can’t see them being killed off — maybe one, but even that’s a stretch, and definitely not both. I also can’t see the people of Defiance being willing to forgive them after their betrayal, on top of all their previous shenanigans — they were powerful, but never popular. Maybe they might be transplanted to the game, but I don’t think the game has the resources to do that justice.

We’ll see.

While all of Defiance searches for the Tarrs, Rahm Tak’s wife arrives at his camp with surprising news from Brazil, and we learn far more about the Omec than anyone wanted to know.

Defiance is not pulling any punches when it comes to making their villains unlikable this season, that’s for sure. On one side we’ve got Rahm Tak with his virulent racism, his endless sadism, and his corpse desecration fetish, and on the other, we’ve got the incestuous, carnivorous Omec.

Fun times.

It is interesting  to learn Rahm Tak has gone rogue from the Votanis Collective. Helps to preserve the murky morality of the series by showing that the Collective has not sanctioned his atrocities, and it does explain why his army — while a danger to Defiance — isn’t that big. This isn’t some grand campaign by the Votanis Collective; it’s a madman’s deranged quest for bloodshed.

It does make this season eerily reminiscent of the plot of the game, though. If Rahm Tak starts trying to get a hold on some terraforming tech, it’ll really start to feel weird.

Overall rating: 7.7/10

Dark Matter, episode five:

Hard up for cash, the crew of the Raza is contacted by a man (played by Stargate: Atlantis veteran David Hewlett) who is apparently their agent, and he has a new job for them: Recover a damaged freighter. Sounds simple.

Do I even need to say it’s not simple?

No, it doesn’t take long for the crew to encounter a serious problem. A problem that rhymes with “lace rombies.” Apparently the freighter had recently visited the Umbrella Corporation homeworld.

As One and Three get lost in the labyrinthine halls of the ship, Two is attacked and infected, and Five discovers an exotic piece of technology aboard the Raza with the android’s* help.

*(Seriously, can she get a name already? People name their cars, and those don’t even talk back. Someone ought to have given her a nickname by now. Call her Sally — she looks like a Sally.)

For the most part, this episode wasn’t terribly impressive. As with last episode, the premise was fairly cliche, and it was easy to predict most of what happened. Also, a love triangle between One, Two, Three is not something I ever wanted to see.

That said, it struck me during this episode that Dark Matter is very good at two things.

One is giving everyone on the cast something to do every episode. Seven characters isn’t exactly an enormous cast, but it’s not nothing, either, and yet every episode manages to include a good sub-plot and/or at least one or two strong scenes for every single character. Nobody ever feels superfluous or unused.

The other is that every episode manages to advance the plot in some way. Episode five was mostly what I would classify as filler, yet we still have some major revelations. We’ve gotten yet more evidence that the Raza crew aren’t your garden variety homo sapiens, and there’s the mystery of whatever Five dug up.

I think these two strengths are a large part of why I’m enjoying Dark Matter so much, even though it’s often quite generic in a lot of ways.

You can really tell this show is the work of writers with a great deal of experience and mastery over the craft.

Overall rating: 7.1/10