All the Omec wake up and invade, and all the building of trust and hope for Trek-like peace ideals are thrown to the wayside. I guess we shouldn’t have expected anything else, eh?

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When you put together your starship’s crew, there are certain roles you just know you gotta fill. You got the captain, who leads the crew for better or worse; you got the science guy (the brains), who tells you what the weird anomaly that’s about to destroy the ship is doing; and you got your tough guy (the brawn), whose job is to look intimidating and kick the bad guys’ asses. You can have more, of course, but you just have to have these three at minimum. Being the captain is pretty sweet, and the science guy is living his dream, seeing all these rare and unknown phenomena. The problem with being the tough guy is that, well… when the new bad guys come to your corner of the galaxy, they tend to play by prison rules, which means they’re coming to kick your ass first. This happens to poor Worf so many times that he’s become the poster child of this sequence of events, what TVTropes calls “The Worf Effect.” The Borg, The Jem Hadar, random androids… Worf faced them all, and got tossed aside as a result.

But once in a while, it’s time for the Tough Guy to prove why we call him the tough guy and regain the respect he deserves. In honor of Defiance‘s Omec problem, here are 4 moments when they managed to do just that, and look awesome doing it.

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Nolan is taken to South America and found guilty of murder.

…Just kidding. Did you really think Nolan would be held responsible for his actions? Then you haven’t been watching the same show I have. Sigh… nope, a bunch of easily avoided mistakes happen and we lose one of the good things about this season. Somebody wake up Sukar, time to go soul-spelunking in the underworld!

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After taking a month off, the Obscure SciFi Primer returns with a strange cross-genre offering, Century City. Century City is a sci-fi legal drama–quite possibly the only sci-fi legal drama ever, actually. Airing on CBS in 2004, it managed to film a mere 9 episodes, and of those, only 2 actually made it on TV before it was canceled, so it never really had a chance to succeed at all. Think of all the awful shows you’ve watched throughout your life: even those likely got a 13 episode upfront order produced. So was Century City really that bad, or did it simply get shafted even worse than Firefly and all our other cut short favorites? Let’s find out.

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For those still developing a taste for sci-fi, the prospect of jumping into a major franchise can be an understandably daunting one. With some of them having literal weeks worth of footage accumulated, it’s hard for a newcomer to know where to start. The beginning would seem to be the obvious answer, but that’s not always the case, especially with the numerous shows that suffered through low quality in their early days. Sometimes it can just end up turning you off a show that you might otherwise love; I know I personally had a hard time getting into both Babylon 5 and Stargate when starting from the beginning, but was able to try again with later episodes and really dig in. Other shows have just been running so long that early installments can be hard to watch with how dated they are, something a pre-existing investment in the show can help to counter. The best way, often enough, is to find a so-called “gateway episode,” one that’s enticing enough on its own to pique a viewer’s curiosity into continuing on their own.

So if you’ve found your way here and are wondering how to try out a big franchise, or if you’ve got a friend or loved one you’re eager to convince to watch with you, here are 4 big franchises and the episodes that I personally feel are perfect for introducing people to them.

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People everyone thought were dead come back to town, and Nolan fucks things up royally once again. In other words, just another day in Defiance.

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If you’re a member of a relatively young race, just emerging onto the interstellar scene after discovering some means of traveling faster than light, it’s a big old galaxy out there. Odds are, you’re not the first to go into space. Heck, you might’ve been beaten to the punch by millions of years, by alien species that no longer exist (at least on this plane of reality). The lucky ones will strike out into a galaxy with adventure and hidden treasures around every corner, all set up by their thoughtful predecessors. If you aren’t so lucky, you might find yourself in a galaxy of traps and disasters lying in wait, left behind by those negligent early races… or worse, the situation you’re left with is outright malevolent!

Here’s how you can quickly survey the galaxy and decide what’s in store for you out there among the stars.

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T’evgin shows his commitment to peace through killing, While Nolan enters a self-destructive spiral a little too rapidly. Everyone’s mad at him, which normally would be fine. The only problem is… this is the one time he doesn’t actually deserve it!

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When you’re shooting a TV series or a film, sometimes real life gets in the way, and forces some changes to the plot. This is often expensive or problematic, so they’ll try to avoid it as much as possible (for example, giving Dr. Crusher and B’elanna Torres new oversized coats to hide their actresses’ pregnancies when the characters weren’t). But when it comes down to it, reality can force your hand–either due to budget reasons, or sudden illnesses or deaths, or scheduling conflicts, or even censorship, the original plan just flat out isn’t possible any more. Something new has to be made up, and fast. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, sure, but without those complications, we’d have missed out on some classic moments. So, let’s celebrate the good that came out of the bad by looking at these, 4 great scenes that nearly didn’t happen.

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Episode 8 has an incredibly wordy title, probably one of the longest episode titles I’ve ever seen, but it’s also one of the best episodes of Defiance ever. Maybe they should just start giving every episode a ridiculously long title?

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