As soon as mid June hits you can expect three things: sunburns, short-shorts, and season premieres of TV shows.  This past week/end gave us several returning series, and two new ones.  We’ll start with last Thursday’s offerings:

Defiance (SyFy, Thursday nights):
Once upon a time, the SyFy channel was called Sci-Fi, and had one of the best selections of genre shows on television.  Then, something evil came into the land of science fiction, casting a chair wielding shadow over all the stargates and battlestars.  (I appologize to any of my friends who think WWE or F or whatever the heck is called fits into the category of ‘science fiction’)  Those loyal to the cause thought our network was lost for all eternity to the sway of Smackdowns and RAWS.  Just when we thought all hope was lost, a new series cast light over the peoples and fans, a light called Defiance.

Too hokey?  Sorry-not-sorry.  In the current realm of TV offerings, there are very few that rely solely on character driven stories rather than sex-drugs-reality niches.  I was pleasantly surprised with season 1 of this original scripted sci-fi drama, the official description for those of you not familiar with it:   post-alien invasion terraformed Earth which is a measure of wild western boomtowns with some technologies and given by other species.  The story begins in the year 2046: Earth has been radically transformed, causing changes in topography, the extinction of plant and animal species, and the emergence of new species. The series follows Joshua Nolan (Grant Bowler) and his adopted Irathient daughter Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas), who have put down roots in Defiance, a city-state community where humans and several extraterrestrial races, collectively known as Votans, coexist over the partially re-built ruins of St. Louis.

I STRONGLY suggest catching up on the first season and the mid season minisodes if you haven’t already done so.  Season two starts where the minisodes leave off, Nolan has traveled across the country to San Francisco in search of his adopted daughter Irissa after she took a swan dive into a brightly lit cave.  Things are VERY different back in the town of Defiance, the local government run army has assumed control, the former Mayor is now the Madame of her missing sister’s brothel, and the powerhouse Castithan couple is sepparated by Datek’s jail sentence.  I felt the start to the season was strong, maybe not AS powerful as I was hoping, but I am delighted at how dark the show runners seem to be taking the characters and story.

Dominion (SyFy, Thursday nights):
I have to start by saying I find it amusing how many of the big networks are trying to one up each other with the same type of stories for new shows.  The most recent examples would be AMC’s Turn before Starz premieres Outlander, NBC’s Hannibal before their Aquarius, and SyFy’s Dominion before NBC’s Constantine aires.  Admittedly, I didn’t know what to think about this new warrior angel show, the initial synopsis of it says it is the continuation of the Paul Bettany film Legion, taking place several years after the film’s timeline.  The warriors of Heaven lead by Gabriel, jealous of God’s love for the mortals, has laid waste to most of the planet in his quest to eradicate all humans from Earth.  The Archangel Michael is on the side of the humans, as he was in Legion, projecting the ‘chosen child’ from the invading hordes of winged attackers and their possessed ghoul hosts.  And one of the armored warrior angels looks like a love child of Magneto and Arc Angel from The X-Men.

The show takes us to transformed Las Vegas, now called ‘Vega’, which is a brightly lit stronghold of life and glitz. We have both a commander guy in charge of the military General Edward Riesen played by Lost alum baddie Alan Dale, and a supreme high counsilman of sorts David Whele played by Anthony Stewart Head.  They both have children, and there is a romantic triangle in play the first 20 minutes in.  I’m VERY intrigued, and I wasn’t expecting to be.  I’m also not a watcher of Supernatural, but I would assume many of those fans would enjoy this show as well.

The Last Ship (TNT, Sunday nights):
Based on the novel of the same name by William Brinkley, The Last Ship begins with a mass virus outbreak that kills roughly 80% of the population in a very short time.  There is a naval vessel out in the middle of the Arctic, theoretically doing war games….for four months….with zero contact to the outside world.  Rhona Mitra plays Dr. Rachel Scott, a research scientist secretly working on a cure and the first reason I couldn’t take this show seriously which I’ll explain in a minute.  The second thing was the amount of explosions in the first act of the show, four helicopters with rockets trying to blow up guys on snowmobiles, making me think TNT broke into the middle of the premiere with a showing of View To A Kill.  Did I mention Michael Bay is executive producing?

Now, about the not taking the show seriously…..DR. SCOTT you guys.  Even Wil Wheaton agreed with me.

I’m searching for more to say about it, but that’s really it.  Many of my friends who are service men and women are pleased with it, however, so there is something to be said for that.

Falling Skies (TNT, Sunday nights):
Alien invasions, humans enslaved, disease, kidnapped children, strange technology.  Returning for it’s fourth season, this Noah Wyle starting drama has had it’s ups and downs, but Doug Jones always seems to show up in the nick of time to save everything.  This show sort of sneaked in under the radar, TNT didn’t do much advertising, and so many now fans didn’t find out about the show until midway through it’s first season.  It had just about anything a modern sci-fi drama fan could want from a non-nudity cable show, like Moon Bloodgood and fantastic special effects that didn’t remove the watcher from the reality of the situations.  The walking Mech suits are fantastically designed.

In all honesty, as a fan, I’m not sure if the show has more content for a fifth season.  We’ll have to see how the now adult alien/human child (who totally looks like one of the Castithans from Defiance now) and her zen garden continue to influence the war thirsty Pope and his cronies.

True Blood (HBO, Sunday nights):
Vampires once ruled the cable channels on Sunday nights.  The series based on the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris, hit home screens fast and hard with fangs bared.  It was novel, these southern vampires and their antics.  But something happened towards the tail end of season 2/beginning of season 3:  everyone lost their accents.

I’m not saying that to be sensational, I mean they literally stopped sounding as Louisianan.  We have a New Zealander (Anna Paquin), Englishman (Stephen Moyer), Australian (Ryan Kwanten), Swede (Alexander Skarsgard), and a handful of Americans all trying to sound like Southerners.  My theory is when they  lost their show runners (they’ve gone through at least two full house cleanings of crew), the nuanced details of the show went by the wayside, replaced instead by MANY more fully nude sex scenes, and having everyone do a basic ‘American’ accent.

My interest in the show stopped around the third season when the author at DragonCon commented she and the show runners decided to move the storyline away from the existing plots laid out in the books because “That would make no sense, y’all know how those go, where’s the fun in that?”.  Which, as a fan of GOOD retelling of GOOD stories, I took with a grain of salt, because one can never know a writer’s vision until it’s on published paper.  The integrity and passion of the True Blood stories has dramatically diminished, making me roll my eyes anytime someone mentions it or it’s time to watch.  This is it’s final season, btw.

Orange In The New Black (Netflix, bingewatch):
Something special happened with this all-at-once original series from Netflix based on the real life story of one Piper Chapman and her experiences in prison.  The first season was all anyone talked about for at least a week, garnering a well deserved word of mouth five star rating most network shows would give their first string producers for.  Although I STILL want to know what the Maple Syrup Incident was and why it’s now contraband.

Season 2 of the series was released all at once, making the question “How would you enjoy it: all at once or once a week like a regular series?”  We opted for the three episodes in a night method, making it last just long enough to really make me want more.  The character of Red who former Starfleet Captain Kate Mulgrew plays is one of my favorites, her hair is just an added bonus.  If you haven’t lost three days to the show yet, do so now, it’s highly entertaining and enjoyable, can’t wait for season three.  Next year.  At some point.