'Defiance' recap: 'Past is Prologue'

BY MELISSA HARKNESS


After last week's events, the town mourns Mayor Nicky and Datak ramps ups his campaign for mayor. He makes an elaborately late appearance at her wake in the middle of Amanda's eulogy. And the fight is on, folks. A few of the townsfolk are absent though. Doc Yewll is busy trying to destroy the Golden Key with some sort of energy beam. Tommy and Irisa have little interest in wakes either. They're holed up at his place with Tommy trying to read a large book aloud to Irisa. She doesn't appear to appreciate fine literature and instead entices a little nookie instead. The sexy time is interrupted by Irisa having a severe and painful reaction to whatever Doc Yewll is doing to the pretty artifact.

We haven't mentioned Kenya and Stahma's illicit relationship in a while. Stahma appears to be preoccupied during their latest session, and inadvertently (on purpose) calls Kenya a prostitute. This starts a mini catfight which leads to Stahma apologizing and confiding to Kenya that Datak is planning on having Amanda murdered. Obviously, Kenya runs to Amanda and Nolan with this bit of news, though she refuses to name her source. Nolan wants Amanda to cancel the debate the next day in the market square, but she insists. Datak meanwhile, subjects Alak to a Casti shaming ritual. To earn back his father's favor, he must complete a task for good old dad.

As the town sets up for the debate, Alak sits on a balcony above the market with one of his fellow stoner Casti friends. It would appear that he is asking him to shoot someone below right between the eyes. As Datak starts into one of his smarmy speeches about buddying up with the Earth Republic, Nolan patrols the crowd. Irisa, however, gets one of her “feelings” and disappears. She ends up at Doc Yewll's place and heads straight for where the Golden Key is hidden.

Luckily for Doc Yewll, she doesn't find the concealed safe. Back in the market, Amanda takes her turn at the speech giving. She delivers a nice one, describing some other towns that the E-Rep has helped that don't sound like very good places to live. Suddenly Nolan spots the kid on the balcony aiming a rifle at Amanda. He runs over but when the shooter doesn't stop, he shoots him. The kid tumbles to the dirt and it's revealed that his weapon was actually a paintball gun. Well, you can imagine what fun Datak has with this fiasco. The good news is that Kenya finally figures out that she was being played.

She's not the only one, either. Alak realizes that this was all part of his father's plan too. A plan that caused him to get one of his friends killed. Don't worry, though. Datak still has more for weak little Alak to do for him.

Despite Datak's best efforts to get the town Council to repudiate Nolan, Amanda adamantly remains in support of his record of saving the town. In so doing, she falls right into his evil little plan. He uses Alak to get on the town radio and divulges some not very flattering news about Nolan's past as a soldier. He's even managed to get a damning little snippet of audio featuring Nolan being very mean about the aliens. It would seem that back during the Pale Wars, Nolan killed an innocent Votan and was tried in court for it. The audio recording was of his testimony. He wasn't very nice, but it was war time after all. Rafe is sitting at home and hears all of this as well. He is not very pleased either. He has his miner goons nab Alak and smack him around a bit. He then warns him to be very careful, or he will end his daughter's marriage. And he doesn't believe in divorce. Oh Rafe, he is such a smooth talker.

Speaking of smooth talkers, Kenya pays Stahma a visit. She barges into the house screaming her name, furious at Stahma's manipulations. Poor Kenya. She still believes that Stahma is an abused and frightened little wife. She finally threatens to tell Datak all about the two of them. Stahma calls her bluff and claims that he already knows, but Kenya doesn't believe her. Instead, she doubts that Datak would allow such shame as his wife having sex with his own favorite whore. To which Stahma stiffly promises that this will not end well for little Kenya. She ridicules her a bit and then reveals that she loves Datak for his cruelty. They are a team. She then escorts Kenya to the door and throws her out.

Nolan, being the good guy that he is, goes to tell Amanda that she needs to fire him. She steadfastly refuses. She makes a very pretty speech about how Defiance is all about new beginnings and that he's not the person he used to be. Nolan isn't swayed however. He decides to leave town, but not before kicking Datak's ass a little. Just as he looks as if he might do some permanent damage to the Castithan, Irisa steps in and stops him. They walk away, but Datak just can't shut up. He screams insults at them until Irisa walks back and puts a boot in his face to silence him. I really, really, like this girl.

As Irisa and Nolan are loading their roller with supplies to leave Defiance. Doc Yewll starts another attempt to destroy the artifact. She had earlier been studying some x-rays of Irisa from when she had the weird reaction earlier in the episode. It would appear that there are some sort of filaments all through Irisa's body. Irisa herself has been having some strange flashbacks of something the cult did to her as a child. As Doc fires up her lasers again, Irisa collapses in the mud screaming. Nolan immediately picks her up and carts her over to the hospital. Doc Yewll was expecting this and is ready.

She claims that Irisa has some sort of spinal parasite and that it needs to be removed immediately. She then throws Nolan out. Back with the unconscious Irisa, she pulls out her scalpel and starts to make an incision. Some of the filaments begin crawling out of the girl, while ones from the Golden Key in the room above are reaching down. The unconscious Irisa continues to play back that childhood scene in her head. It appears that they held her down and placed one of the artifacts on her back. It looks as if it buried itself inside her body. Perhaps this is the source of Irisa's strange visions. Suddenly, she half wakes and believes she sees an Irathient girl standing over her, beckoning her to follow. She then escapes, beating up Doc Yewll a bit on her way out. When he hears the ruckus, Nolan breaks down the door, but he's too late. Irisa has broken out the back door and is gone. Later we see her stumbling through the woods following her spirit guide. She eventually collapses, but it would seem she is not alone. A pair of boots walk up to her and kick her slightly. Looks like Rynn didn't run too far from Defiance after all. With only one episode left, I wonder if we will find an answer to this new little riddle.

If you've missed any episodes of Defiance, Syfy is running a marathon on Monday, July 8 starting at 9 a.m. ET leading up to the finale at 9 p.m. ET.

The season finale of Defiance, “Everything Is Broken” airs Monday, July 8 at 9PM ET on Syfy.