Defiance Episode 1.04 The Devil in the Dark

Crazy, gross, mutant bugs are crawling all over town eating people. Okay, they're not eating everyone, just the tasty people. One victim was killed while in bed with Kenya at the NeedWant (while she poured cooking grease on him. How's that for a kink?), and the other while running in the woody part of town (Didn't he learn anything from the two-hour premiere? Stay out of the woods!).

Over at the Tarr house, Datak manages to insult Christie's cooking and generally be a jerk. When these monsters, called Hellbugs, come after Christie (who's staying with the Tarrs), Datak slays the beast and delivers a future classic hero line: "Perhaps we should dine out." Stahma, who's sensitive to Christie's general unhappiness, and the effect it could have on her owning the world, suggests that they all go over to Rafe's house together. Soon after the matriarch spins a lie about how Alak risked his life to save Christie (and it works - Alak scores points), Nolan comes in with Doc Yewll and a futuristic beepy thingy that the Votans are so fond of. It reads massive amounts of Hellbug attack pheromones on Christie's clothes, meaning she, along with the two successful kills, was targeted for attack. While Christie cleans up, Nolan asks Rafe if he knew the others - Bowen and Taggert - and Rafe says that he bought some land from them about 15 years ago.

Irisa, going through boxes of documents for the investigation, comes across a photograph of a field and has a vision of it burning (the photograph, not the field). It's the property Rafe bought. She rushes there and Nolan follows fast, fearing she's having one of her post-traumatic stress episodes, but when he arrives and she's writhing on the ground, clutching a shard of mirror, he knows it's something more.

Irisa knows it, too, because she sees a vision of a full-grown Irathient woman named Rynn, one of the Spirit Riders, as a child while her parents are murdered on that very plot of land. The murderers? Bowen and Taggert. Over Nolan's protests, she seeks out Sukar, the leader of the Spirit Rider gang that helped win the battle against the Volge (and also held Irisa and Nolan at gunpoint). When she asks where Rynn is, he says he doesn't know - but he might be able to help Irisa use her visions to do find her.

In a sweaty ceremony that makes Nolan uneasy, Sukar guides Irisa to the memory of young Rynn seeing her parents murdered by Bowen and Taggert, and then to the grown woman as she takes an elevator to the bottom of an unused mineshaft. Sukar brings Irisa out of the trance and they, along with Tommy, Nolan, and some big bombs, go in search of Rynn. Irisa's vision was true - Rynn is hiding underground (along with thousands of Hellbugs and their giant, pissed off mama) with enough of the pheromones to destroy all of Defiance, and when she tosses a grenade filled with the stuff at the law party, Irisa knifes the woman just enough to still her.

Nolan grabs the grenade and throws it at the Hellbug matron (this thing is as big as Town Hall), and her babies scent it and attack her. The distraction is enough for them to get the elevator going up up up and for Nolan to shoot one of the bombs he left there, destroying the vermin once and for all.

In other destroying news, Sukar's relationship with his adopted daughter, Rynn, are pretty messed after she shot him and he helped land her in prison. Sukar makes Irisa a new kind of surrogate daughter, which is not cool with her old adoptive father, Nolan, but at least he still gets to watch over her as she has debilitating nightmares night after night. It's one of the joys of being a human parent to an alien child. The father/daughter dynamics are on a roll, as Rafe returns his baby girl to the Tarrs' and knows he has to do some letting go, as well.

Remember, Defiance isn't just a TV show - it's also a game. Where you can blow up Hellbugs all on your own! Explore the world of the game.