There has been a rise in new science-fiction shows recently, but to my mind most of them --- including two by the man who ostensibly can do no wrong --- have failed badly. It's a pity, because I'm a big sci-fi buff and prior to this year there hasn't been a huge amount of new shows coming out of the studios. But up to now I feel nobody has got it right. Some of the shows have been too closely based on movies, such as Falling Skies' intriguing similarities to movies like Battlefield LA and Skyline, or Spielberg's other hopeful, Terra Nova's badly-veiled attempt at Jurassic Park IV, or just poor attempts at crude meshing of sci-fi with cop show, as in the quite godawful Continuum. Then there have been the cancelled shows. Despite its panning I liked the new V, and a few other shows. But hold your breath and cross your fingers, because it looks like one may finally have got it right. Currently into its third episode, and airing over here at almost the same time as the US of A, Defiance is not so much the story of an alien invasion so much as the aftermath of that, and I don't mean in a Falling-Skies-Fight-Back way. No, in Defiance the aliens, a mixed lot who go under the umbrella term of Votans, pretty much put paid to any resistance by accidentally terraforming Earth till it's hard to recognise it as the world we once called home. But there is one place that seems to retain some vestiges of the old Earth, and it's an enclave situated in what used to be St. Louis, Missouri. Here, under the still-standing immortal arch, the town of Defiance is a place where humans and aliens co-exist, mostly. With elements of Alien Nation, V and the BBC's--- unfairly, in my view --- panned-then-cancelled Outcasts, Defiance chronicles the struggle of the city's inhabitants to live in peace with the new alien population, and as in all such situations there are occasional clashes of ideologies and cultures. Into this setting comes Joshua Nolan and his alien daughter, and the newly-sworn-in mayor of the town, Amanda Rosewater, soon offers him the position of Lawkeeper, basically the sheriff. A typical loner and drifter, Nolan begins to put roots down in Defiance and is instrumental in helpiing save the town from an outside attack by metal killer aliens who look like they'd rob the T-2000's lunch money and send him crying home to mama. It's after this event that the mayor offers Nolan the badge, which he accepts, to the annoyance of his adopted daughter, who wants to proceed in their quest to see the fabled "paradise" of Antartica. That's all fairly basic, really, until it becomes clear that the ex-mayor, played with hard-edged smiling menace by veteran of the big screen Fionnula Flanagan, is plotting the destruction of the town for some purpose as yet unknown, and has help. One of her people on the mayor's staff almost manage to achieve these ends for her, shorting out the forcefield that surrounds Defiance and protects it from the roving aforementioned Terminator-ass-kickers. The leader of the Votans seems also to have his own agenda. Smiling and courteous on the outside, his warm expression conceals the teeth of the killer shark, and he does not seem to care very much for the humans his people share the town with, therefore he is less than pleased when his daughter falls for one of the humans, though his wife sees the alliance as an opportunity. Of course, it's early days and we have no way of knowing whether or not the show will last the course, but it has good pedigree, having at its helm Rockne S. O'Bannon, whose last major outing, the stupendously brilliant Farscape, was so good that even when cancelled its fans demanded a followup movie to tie up the many loose ends in the story, and got it. Farscape still stands today as one of the premier sci-fi TV shows ever to hit the air, and is remembered fondly by its legion of fans. Mind you, he was involved with the ill-fated V too, and that got unceremoniously cancelled, so as in much in life, amd most in TV, nothing is certain. We just have to hope that this time, the suits see the potential in the series and let it run. It's certainly shaping up to be a really great show, if they can just give it a chance. Hopefully the viewing figures --- which is all network executives are interested in, anyway --- stack up and the series makes it to the end of its first season, where we can all start the letter-writing campaign should they then decide not to renew it. Defiance, like the terraformed Earth of its story, is very new and just getting used to its surroundings. It needs time to grow and mature. Let's hope it gets that time.