Why 'Defiance' is the least original show on TV

You might have heard of the new and original sci-fi drama Defiance from the internet or SyFy's fastidious marketing campaign or during sex with me because for the last week it's all I've been able to think about. And after finally getting around to watching the feature length pilot, a few things have struck me.

Truly, the SyFy channel has produced nothing of note since its inception. Nothing but a parade of low-budget, throwaway shite tailored for nerds without the eye for cynical, critical judgement so endemic to our kind. Let's face it, TV is not the medium for fans of sci-fi and fantasy. Barring Game of Thrones (and that's just HBO's Rome with more dragons), we're tragically under-served on the small screen. So it came as a pleasant surprise to me when I heard that a rollicking star odyssey with a little money behind it was on its way.

Let's get the boring stuff out of the way first. I have a lot of time for the ambition on show here. It doesn't just reflect the budget; if Michael Bay has taught us anything it's that pouring a developing nation worth of cash into visual design is never a guarantee of good looks but there's a particularly good use of colour here. Too many post-apocalypses are all muddy brown and dismal grey vistas of ruined buildings and dust. I live in London, I see enough of that even without all the rapey bandits.

Sure I could go on pointing out Defiance's already detailed lore, decent character designs and other ways in which it's pretty good, but isn't it more fun to just rip on it for stealing from Firefly? Of course it is and it does. It's a Firefly clone without shame is what it is. True, there are worse programs to plagiarise from but sadly, SyFy copied all of them as well.

'Evil' red lights, fake curse words and rampant softcore sexuality from Battlestar Galactica.

This might get me spat on in the street (except only outside Comic-Con) but Battlestar Galactica was just Hollyoaks in space. Or, err, what do you guys across the pond have? The Brady Bunch? That should upset some people. Anyway, it was conceited, repetitive and looked worse than Bill O'Reilly after a drunken amateur face painting session devolved into a knife fight.

No doubt it was an effort to be faithful to the original '78 version that no-one remembered or cared about. But the only attempt to bring the formula into the modern day was to occasionally show Starbuck's meaty thighs while she pranced around in Ripley's cryo-sleep outfit from Aliens. Let this be a lesson to anyone thinking of rebooting classic nerd TV: they all looked like arse back then because the tech wasn't there to prevent everything from looking like arse. You're only doing it as fan service and they'll all complain anyway regardless of what you do so you might as well make the Cylon Centurions not look like brushed stainless steel kettles or the Raiders like Fisher-Price toys.

Don't get me wrong, Battlestar Galactica was still fun. I remember a few, sparse moments with something resembling fondness and clearly so did the producers of Defiance. Main protagonist Nolan is in the titular town less than ten minutes before PG-13 screwing the madame (with a terrible misunderstanding of how brothel management works) in a sex scene with all the eroticism of trainspotting and less nudity. Nolan has already been established as a character that thinks with his dick at this point but his doesn't have the problem-solving talent of Don Draper's. He's a clutzy Casanova now and in one season's time still will be. But maybe with a few more scars and a thousand yard stare.

Because he'll probably have seen shit, yo. 

I feel like I've spent too long belittling Battlestar so let's speed this up. The Votan race's ships all have the ridiculous crimson lights that are the international sci-fi sign for 'owners of this technology are evil' and the ludicrously named Irathient race of aliens have some swears that sound just enough like boring Earth curses to carry a modicum of weight when Nolan or his Irathient ward, Irisa expel them and to avoid the interstellar wrath of the frackin' censors.



Aliens with make-up and protagonist unconcerned by lack of Earth vagina from Star Trek.

A wise man with a sexily silky voice once said that 'Commander Worf's head looks like a fanny' and not only was he right, but welcome to touch me wherever and whenever he likes. Look I get it, CGI is expensive and if you want to have recurring characters with a lot of face time that're non-human, you need a cheaper way to announce that fact to the section of the audience that's too drunk to listen to the script.

Sci-fi has taught us that aliens are just like us. Except with the minutest variance in face skin. The Irathient (Christ, I can feel my genitals taking my use of that word as proof that I don't need them) have smaller noses, dumber contact lenses and a circular tattoo at the bridge. If you were a speciesist, it wouldn't take many space beers for you to make a terrible mistake at the town of Defiance's silent disco.

I will never blame you. Sometimes even I forget. 

But of course, Nolan ain't no bigot. He adopted an alien as his daughter so it's only a matter of time before he gets space fever and beds one of the series's seven non-human races. I swear, the only reason none of the more boneable aliens have blue skin is because Shatner's legal team would fast wire down onto the set and mow down all the writers with photon rifles.

Literally everything else from Firefly. 

Please, can you spare any change? We haven't eaten in weeks. 

Defiance doesn't exactly play its themes close to the chest. Once you've given a grizzled stranger a 'lawman' badge you've officially given Subtlety license to take the rest of the season off.

Sci-fi is no stranger to the whiskery and whiskey-soaked insertion of Spaghetti Western influences. It could be argued that it all started with the bloated father of all modern space shenanigans, Star Wars. The ne'er-do-well smuggler, the conscience-lacking bounty hunter in the employ of the nebulous invader, the damsel in distress; it might not have been intentional but the tropes of Sergei Leone were there.

Of course it was Joss Whedon who made it stylistically prevalent. The crew of Serenity are outlaws. They carry glorified six-shooters, yada yada. So when you make a sci-fi TV series with even the slightest horsey-whiff of Old West, you expose yourself to comparison to Firefly. And one of the things I oddly love about Defiance is that the creators don't give a fuck about it. They approach their Western themes with outright enthusiasm. They gleefully introduce racial disharmony amidst aliens and humans as if it's in any way original. They've created a civic society whose dynamics are so utterly derivative, it's almost charming. Almost.

I don't know about you, but I'm putting this juvenile theft down to genuine excitement that people have thrown actual money into SyFy's mouldy cage for once. And you people don't have Dr Who, so whatever anybody says about Defiance, it's worth keeping. For now.

Letters to the Editor: 7 Examples of Women's Magazine Readers Being Powerfully Insane

In my ongoing war against bad sex advice I've summoned dark forces using the power of Cosmopolitan's dingbatty editorial tone and more directly explained why some of the industry's advice is stupid using the dark power of writing jokes about them. Ironically, most of those same suggestions fell out of the malnourished brains of male readers so for that reason and round three, I thought I'd give women's magazine writers the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Maybe their terrible, terrible products are all their audience's fault.

I'd always suspected that not all the columnists and editors at Cosmopolitan and the like have to be stupid and lazy for their magazine to read stupidly and lazily. It could all be being sabotaged by the retard section of their fanbase that would flood their office with hateful emails the moment anyone in editorial dared be sensible about anything. Or maybe it’s some kind of coded message from alien assimilators to their mothership in orbit that our young are ready for harvest.

But enough conjecture. Let's do this right. With cold, hard science.

Ok, methodology. The first step was reconnaissance. Obviously, that required me to actually buy and read some women's magazines again so I dipped into the company budget for a fistful of cash and went to Tesco. Second: safety first. I donned my protective latex gloves -- just because I'm willing to put my sanity on the line for science doesn't mean I'm about to risk catching 'the gay' -- and prepared my brain for stupid as best I could.

Please enjoy my findings below.

Iron Man, as a shining example of both healthy relationships and a tender, considerate lover, will be acting as a consultant through this entire process. He'll pop up whenever things get too technical for an Iron Mansplanation and they will. Often. Women's magazines are lousy with industry jargon. For example:

Forums are a great window into the internal machinations of an online community -- you can really get to know the kind of people in there.

For example, if a video game forum's first 12,000 threads are all just 'FAG' and the n-word control C & V-ed until the cat that was tied to the keyboard escaped, you know that there aren't any moderators and the internet is just running as it always does -- hatefully. At this point you can safely assume no-one will report you if you try to solicit sex there. Which is a kind of pointless thing for me to say as if you're on a video games forum, you've been trying to get laid this whole time.

Forums are also a great source of data for my scienceing. Not only do they not require me to spend money or touch a magazine covered in ads for nail polish, but I can also get reader on reader readings. Double the results for no cost? Forums really are like sex with fat women. And especially as terrifying. Anyway, let's have a look at how women's magazine readers treated each other online.

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RE: "To swallow or not to swallow, that is the question..... ?"
"What is the general feeling on this?

What do you do? Do you like it?

I love giving my OH a blow job but when it comes to that crucial moment I just can't bring my self to have cum in my mouth let alone swallow it, I do have a sensitive gag reflex but is there a way to get past this[?] "
-Boosh82, unknown.

RE: "To swallow or not to swallow, that is the question..... ?"
"If you have him tell you just before he is about to cum, you can put his penis as far back in your mouth as you can and that way the cum won't touch any of your taste buds! I have always swallowed, but this tip does make it that bit easier then just have a sip of water shortly afterwards job done."
-MoogleBear, unknown

Results: Well they certainly have the same talent for making sex sound gross. We’ve been talking about sex for about half a minute and I already feel like a child molester. Although it is kind of inevitable if a discussion about the male orgasm is only punctuated by emoticons. This is what it would look like if your priest only flirted with you over MSN Messenger.

Conclusion: Sorry MoogleBear and Boosh82, you’re both for the sex ed gulag.

Bonus Conclusion: Well not really, because one of you can’t possibly be real. For all you normals, a moogle is a small furry and very fictional species of winged adorableness from the Final Fantasy series. Any girl that keen on that esoteric a video game reference who also swallows, mind you, would not be able to type advice on a forum while she’s being hounded for sex by literally every nerd everywhere at all times. And definitely not while she's busy violating the space continuum by existing against all probability.

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Next up, we have a more traditional letter to the editor scenario from Cosmo.

"I get a rash wherever my boyfriend's semen touches me. Could I be allergic?"

-Curiously anonymous

"You could be. 'Women's bodies can react to proteins in their partner's semen and to medications and foods he's eaten that can be present in his ejaculate,' says Jonathan Bernstein, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati. Symptoms include an itchy rash and vaginal swelling and soreness.

First, see your doctor. She can rule out other problems such as an infection. If that's not the cause, see an allergist to test for semen sensitivity. If positive, you can use condoms, or your allergist can develop a specially prepared antidote for your partner's semen, which she inject into you to prevent symptoms from cropping up [presumably again]."

-Cosmo

Results: If you felt a curious tingling sensation in the crotch just now, that was just your body instinctively trying to chemically castrate itself.

Conclusion: Cosmo are the clear winners here. That is forthright, unambiguous and reasoned advice. And I like the assumption that our doctor is a woman too. You know, I've given Cosmopolitan a lot of shit over the years for pretending sex is actually more complicated than putting a banana in a jar of mayonnaise just to fill their pages but they've done good here and I'd be happy t-

Oh damn! That sound means it’s time for the quick fire round! All brace please.

"I built a papier-maché woman that has a crotch made out of a rubber flap. Sometimes I'll put Vaseline on my face and slide through the flap like I just got born. One time I did it at work — I looked so young, my coworkers were stunned."
-Lucy T., Raleigh, NC

I’ll need a huge government research grant to test it further, but I have a feeling that’s goddamn crazy.

This maniac writes like she's trying to get on every government watchlist at once. Does she think they’re chocolate mailing lists? The next sentence might get me in trouble too, but if this monster's still out there, what's stopping her REDACTED in Whitehall with a cucumber up REDACTED minister REDACTED's left ear while he REDACTED chicken drumstick in his REDACTED hole?

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"I thought you were joking about the [November 2010 issue of Glamour] magazine being the biggest in 20 years, so as a prank I put it on top of the door and asked my friend to come into the room. Without going into too much detail, I guess I’ll just say that both my friend and I learned you were not joking. I just sort of quietly walked out — it wasn’t my house. R.I.P. Diane."
-Lindsay P., Gary, IN

I don’t think women’s magazines employ the same doctor-patient confidentiality agreements as medical professionals so if Glamour's response to this wasn’t just ‘you’re under arrest’, then they should at least be sued for selling a deadly weapon without licensing.

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RE: "Would You Rather Be Fat & Happy? Or Thin & Sad?" [April, page 136]"
"Thin and sad. Or, if it's an option, extra thin and suicidal. Or, if at all possible, a skeleton that killed itself. Ashes that crumbled off a skeleton that killed itself. A gust of wind blowing through the eye socket of a skeleton that killed itself. A fart seeping from the asshole of a corpse that shit itself to death. In case those are ones I can choose."
-Edith Z., Brooklyn

What th- wait what? Is that some ancient curse? What could it possibly be other than a spell to reanimate warlock corpses? What would write into a magazine with something like this?

I don't hit women but whatever an Edith Z is, it can't be human. This reads like it was brainstormed in furious screeching and typed up with the points of bloodied talons. Which leads me to believe one thing: Harpy. And I'd definitely punch one of those. In fact, I'm a fan of the God of War franchise, so I've done much, much worse than that to shrieking mythical bird monsters.

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OK, we’re back and there’s time for one more.

“Dear Cosmo,

I was very disappointed in the May 2012 “Sex Issue” of your magazine. I felt that your sex tips were exclusionary to people like me and my boyfriend. People with food allergies.

The tip I found most upsetting was “Try placing a donut on your man’s shaft. Then go down on him while slowly devouring the tasty treat.” You see, Cosmo, I have Celiac’s Disease, which means I can’t eat wheat flour, the #1 ingredient in donuts. It’s tragic to think of all the ways this negatively impacts my sex life. Not only will I never be able to eat a donut off my man’s member, but bagels are out too. Same goes for pretzels or hot dog buns. What about cheerios, you ask? No way, I’m allergic.

It gets worse. My man is lactose intolerant. That means we also can’t follow your advice about covering my breasts in whipped cream and rubbing them on his face. Please help those of us with food allergies. You’ve ignored our needs long enough.

Love,?"
-Gluten Free Girl & Lactose Intolerant Lad

Results: Why are you two even attempting sex at all when you should clearly be sealed in some kind of plastic incubator? You two sound so frail, someone sneezing next to you on the bus is an extinction level event. Printing out your medical records probably costs 10% of the Earth’s forests.

“Dear Gluten Free Girl and Lactose Intolerant Lad,

We apologize that you felt marginalized by the sex-tips included in our May 2012 issue. To amend for our oversight we offer some alternatives below:

1) Try covering your body in his favorite Dairy-Free, Gluten-Free food and wait for him naked in your bed. Turn your bed of love into a bed of lettuce or a bed of potatoes.
2) Try wrapping cold cuts on his johnson. Then, turn up the heat by going down on him. Tear the meat off his member while also satiating his sausage.

Love,?"
Cosmopolian Magazine.

They really did spell the name of their own magazine wrong, didn’t they? But that’s OK because Gluten Free Girl spelled the name of her own disease wrong earlier.

That seems like too many meat-related jokes. Don’t Cosmo adhere to the comedic rule of threes? And turning your ‘bed of love into a bed of lettuce or a bed of potatoes’ sounds like a lot of messy effort and way too dry without gravy. With all the ‘cold cuts’ and vegetables it would surely be a lot easier to just go have sex at a Carvery.

And way to go, Cosmo. Two hyper-allergic lovebirds are upset you suggested they eat something they’re allergic to and your counter-suggestion was ‘try the that-thing-free version of that thing?’ Remember that Gluten Free Girl managed to email this question in to you without eating all the vowel keys so it’s probably safe to assume that she knows you can buy food without specific things in. Assuming she’s that stupid in the first place is somehow even more stupid. And I think its catching because now I can’t remember where my house is or what doughnuts are for.

Hey fuck you, Iron Man.

“Dear Cosmo,

Thanks for your timely response. Unfortunately, it didn’t help at all. That’s right, I’m a vegetarian. I won’t be turning my boyfriend’s sausage into a meat-stick anytime soon. Thanks for trying, I guess.

Love,?
Gluten Free Girl

PS: Your magazine is really heteronormative.”

Conclusion: ... Holy... holy shit. You know what, Cosmopolitan? I take it all back. You guys just can't win.