Defiance Cancelled

I’m way overdue to post a free chapter of Rage of the Old Gods, but some sad news has come up that I do want to cover briefly.

I suppose the title of this post is something of a giveaway, but yes, Defiance has been cancelled after three seasons.

It’s a disappointing piece of news, though not entirely a surprising one. Defiance was never a ratings juggernaut, and its viewership had dropped sharply with the third season. A lot of people criticized the show’s sudden turn toward the darker, so that may have contributed to its failing popularity. It also may have been the result of SyFy playing musical timeslots with it over the last few seasons.

Whatever the reason, Defiance is gone.

This saddens me, but perhaps not as much as you might think considering I’ve been a fan since the start.

The fact is that Defiance has struggled badly to maintain a consistent quality over the years. It had a very weak first season, a very strong second season, and a very mixed third season. I’m badly tempted to blame this on my own pet peeve and say the Omec killed the show, but there’s no way of knowing that.

What upsets me more than the loss of Defiance the show is the loss of Defiance the world. As up and down as the show was, the universe it took place in was fantastically detailed and endlessly fascinating. Defiance had a better eye for detail, a richer backstory, and a greater potential than almost any other setting I’ve ever seen.

Now we’ll never know what the story with the Volge was, or why the Kaziri was on Earth so long ago, or what the cultures of the Sensoth and Liberata or like, or where the Gulanee fit into Votan society…

I will also greatly miss Datak Tarr and Doc Yewll.

Now, Defiance the game still exists, but it’s never been a huge hit, either, and without the show to prop it up, I suspect its days are now also numbered. I should probably make a point to spend time with it while I still can.

One could be optimistic and speculate that the story could continue through the game, with the show’s cast voicing their characters in-game as has already happened a few times, but I doubt the resources or willpower exists for that.

First Continuum, now Defiance. Well, it was nice to have a glut of sci-fi well it lasted.

At least there’s still Dark Matter.