Defiance season 3 episode 11 review: Of A Demon In My View

This review contains spoilers.

3.11 Of A Demon In My View

The title of this episode is borrowed from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. The whole line goes, “From the thunder and the storm / And the cloud that took the form / (When the rest of Heaven was blue) / Of a demon in my view”

How you personally mesh that with what happens on the show I’d say is up to you, but I took it as meaning that Kindzi was a constant threat and in this story she takes full form as the true nemesis of this season.

But before I get to her, I’d like to whine about how poor the opening sequence, in which Irisa was released from the overturned truck, was. People are generally unharmed when they’re pinned by metal beams so heavy they can’t move them, really? That silliness wasn’t even balanced by the reappearance of Berlin and her unique bondage/combat look. It’s not subtle, but it gets her noticed in a world knee-deep in aliens, I guess?

Though I liked Berlin’s character last season, I’ve found her much less interesting this year due to the way that they made her the only person who really cared about Tommy. I hope she’s over that now, because it was a bore and she has the potential for more dimensions. Her helping Irisa hints at that, but she could easily have a relapse.

From here, after a brief interlude with the Tarrs, we get right to the meat of this story: Kindzi’s plans for a Dread Harvest. She’s invited everyone along, even if most people might want to pass on it.

Quite why Kindzi keeps her father alive is unclear, because it just provides him with an opportunity to escape with the help of Nolan. The whole Nolan subplot about how Kindzi removed the Arktech from his brain was quite confusing, because it entirely contradicted something we were told early in the season. Specifically that if one part of the tech stopped working in either Nolan’s or Irisa’s head, then the other would die. Well, that didn’t happen, did it? If you are going to make up rules and tell the audience them, then you should stick with those, surely?

What the episode at least did offer in the Omec parts was an explanation as to how they can get to and from the ship, which was sadly missing previously. How long have they been able to do that, because they couldn’t when they first arrived?

They also have a flashback to the time when the Omecs first located Earth, when they intercepted a radio signal from 1978. They hear Bobby Day’s 1958 hit Rockin’ Robin, so one might reasonably assume that they’re just 20 light years from Earth. In cosmic scale terms that’s like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of Texas, only to pick up the first piece of hay and find the needle stuck to it. Given how long it took them to reach the planet after that also hints that their ship can only achieve a proportion of light speed, making interstellar travel a very long endeavour.

But back to Kindzi and her devious plan to feed on the other races once she’s woken up all her race. With the exception of Nolan getting loose, it all seems to be going as she intended. Most bad-guy archetypes have a nice side and dark side, but Kindzi has at least four or five different personalities depending on what she’s trying to achieve. She moves from being passive and deceptive to sad and then ultra-violent in just a few moments. That doesn’t make her easy to read, as she could react to any given situation in multiple ways depending on her mood.

When she eventually fatally stabbed T’evgin, my initial reaction was that given how he’s been heralded at every opportunity as incredibly strong he’d be back. But I don’t really see that you can recover from having your heart eaten, irrespective of who takes it out. Unless he has backup organs that haven’t been mentioned, he’s not coming back from this.

That said, I do think he’s left a surprise for Kindzi on the ship, perhaps a self-destruct if she moves its orbit or brings its weapons online. He might even have given some control of it covertly to someone else, Stahma perhaps?

I’ve concluded this because otherwise I can’t really see how she can be defeated plausibly, as she’s holding all the cards, including the one marked Yewll. If the Doc can overcome her control then the balance will shift, I predict.

However, what’s so far not been explained is the scene of violent death on the ship that Stahma saw a while back, which might have been the result of another previous mutiny.

With just two more episodes to go the pieces are in place for an interesting finale. We need a few surprises, because this season has been somewhat short on them. So far season three hasn’t been as good as one or two, but it’s not yet beyond redemption.

Read Billy’s review of the previous episode, When Twilight Dims The Sky, here.

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