Defiance - S2E10 & S2E11 - Bottom of the World & Doll Parts
Previously, on Defiance: “Painted from Memory”
Defiance served up two hours this week now that Dominion is on hiatus.
Defiance S2E10: “Bottom of the World”
Treasure Doll gets too clingy with Alak, and he ends their affair saying he loves Christie and the baby. He goes home and apologizes to Christie about the club incident but leaves out his affair, so she uses her new Casti skills to make him swear formally that he won’t shame her anymore. Then he puts the final nail in the coffin with Treasure Doll when she picks Christie up for lunch, telling her he doesn’t love her. Stahma overhears and visits Datak at the NeedWant, asking for help removing Treasure Doll “from the playing field.” His price, however—reconciliation—is too high.
Ambassador Tennety returns, trading barbs with Amanda and heading to the mines for a tour. A trembler sets off a cave in, killing Tennety and trapping Amanda and Pottinger, giving him time to sink his claws into her even further as they slowly suffocate. They finally kiss, and he tries to convince her to kill him so she’ll have enough air to survive. Hard to tell if that was a serious offer or a ploy, but he confesses that he’s a monster, which, as we know, is Amanda catnip. With the help of Rafe’s team, Nolan and Berlin lower into the mine to rescue the pair, reaching them in the nick of time. Berlin breaks it off with Nolan because he clearly still cares for Amanda, but Amanda runs after Pottinger.
After a hint from Nolan about the cause of the cave-in, Rafe takes Quintin back to check their weaponry, finding a grenade missing and guilt on his son’s face. Quintin angrily admits he did it to save his mother, then knocks Rafe out, pinning the crime on him. Rafe falsely confesses to Nolan, who doesn’t buy it for half a second but tolerates the lie for the moment. Quintin retrieves his mother, Pilar McCawley played by the original female badass Linda Hamilton, from the Votanis Collective and proudly tells her he duped Rafe into taking the fall. She slaps him silly, saying that if Rafe took the fall, he did it for the family, not because Quintin is a criminal mastermind… which he ain’t.
Irisa tries to steal a terrasphere but is tripped up by Nolan, who hauls her around on the Tough Love program for a bit before she gives him the slip. To re-steal the terrasphere, she needs Tommy’s help, so she tells him she needs it to make her normal again, kissing him. Obviously it’s a trap, but his care for her overrules his reason and when he delivers the pod, she Irzu’s him. She then uses the terrasphere to activate squid-like transport pods which ascend and claim her followers, storing them in the matrix of the buried ship below.
Epic Quotes:
- Amanda to Tennety: “Thank you, but I already work with prostitutes.”
- Stahma to Datak: “Your price is too high. I’ll gut the little whore myself.”
- Pilar to Quintin: “Such a stupid child.”
Defiance S2E11: “Doll Parts”
Deirdre Lamb, aka Treasure Doll, spins Hole’s “Doll Parts” on the turntable for her listeners and receives an unseen guest in the Arch for brunch. Moments later the record skips and she falls screaming to her death.
When Nolan goes after Irisa, Amanda demands a deputy badge and plays Nancy Drew, questioning Alak at the scene. He claims he had nothing to do with it, so she and Berlin head to Deirdre’s room, turning up a memory disk and her client book. Most recent client? Datak, who says “it was a family matter.” They then confront Alak with the disk, which reveals their affair and his threat, and arrest him. Stahma reminds her jailed son that his wife isn’t Casti and demands fidelity.
As Christie vents to Stahma about her dad’s bomb arrest, Stahma comforts her as only she can, offering that they all do terrible things to get what they want. After a handmaiden finds the bloody Arch microphone under Alak’s bed, Stahma pays a charity visit to a dying Casti, enlisting him to take the fall in exchange for making his daughter a handmaiden. Bloody mike in hand, Amanda has no choice but to accept the man’s false confession. Stahma and Datak then accuse each other of the murder, and upon realizing it’s neither, she breaks into chilling, awesome laughter.
The newly freed Alak comes home to find a bottle of abortifacient poison in their bedroom and Christie soaking in the bath. She says Treasure Doll invited her to brunch, offering her poisoned juice which her Casti-pregnancy-enhanced senses revealed. Deidre attacked her and they fought viciously, Christie throwing Deirdre through the window. Turning to Alak, Christie demands his promise not to put their child in danger again and, speaking in Casti, invites him into the bath. Checkmate.
At the Votan camp, Irzu’d Tommy gets the drop on Nolan, but Tommy’s body suddenly rejects the infection. Nolan explains that it’s actually ArkBrain, nanobots from the AI on the buried Votan ship Kaziri. He and Tommy put together that it’s “saving” the chosen before beginning the terraforming process anew and hatch a plan to stop it.
So Tommy delivers Nolan as a “prisoner” to Irisa who screams that she can’t save Nolan because he’s evil, that he never loved her, etc. He refuses to accept the hateful onslaught, baiting Sukar into a fight so Tommy can plant positronic charges. They blow, knocking the infected out, and Tommy and Nolan make off with Irisa, driving through the night. But she awakes, crashing the car, stabbing Tommy (NOOOO) but refusing to kill Nolan for Irzu, and escapes. The concussed Nolan struggles to drag Tommy back to town.
Epic Quotes:
- Stahma to Christie: “The most we can hope for is that what we want is worth the evil we do.”
- Amanda to Berlin upon her holding up a pair of Treasure Doll’s Ben Wa balls: “I’d put those down and wash your hands.”
- Datak to Amanda: “Last week you were a madam, this week you’re a lawkeeper. What’s next, a pantomime artist?”
