I've watched about half of the pilot to the new sci-fi series Defiance so far, and so far it is seriously disappointing me (having been a big fan of Rockne S. O'Bannon's Farscape), mostly because it seems to be a dick-measuring contest between alpha males (discredited though the concept may be). Rough male protagonist comes to the city which has a conflict brewing between the men of two families and then it just starts feeling like a display of different masculinities competing. Admittedly, the mayor of the city is a woman, who coincidentally is the only one who seems to be expressing doubt about her abilities in the series so far. Otherwise the women mostly seem to exist as daughters, sisters, prostitutes, and lovers, classic archetypes playing their background parts.
And it's just. So. Boooooring. Maybe this reflects a greater failure of the series to make me care for the characters, but a big part of that is that the genders seem like cardboard cutouts at this point. And for a series that's about the enormous changes that have happened to Earth after the arrival of eight alien races, it doesn't seem very imaginative. I think I will try to push through the first couple of episodes all the same and see if there's any improvement, but I'm not holding out hope.
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