Just watched the second episode. Surprised no one's commented on it yet. Overall, I'm liking the show.
At the moment, I think the biggest downside is the plotting. But then again, I suppose that's to be expected. It's just that every turn of events once the premise of the episode had been set up was quite predictable. I knew the moment the Mayor's assistant awoke from his coma that he would escape and eventually be killed when Nolan and Rafe went after him. Just as I knew that with Nolan gone, Irisa was going to interfere with the Castithan ceremony, which would in turn cause things to escalate with the Mayor and Nolan having to intervene; forcing Datak to back down. And of course, in order to maintain him as a credible antagonist in the viewer's eye, Datak would of course still kill the guy anyway and retaliate in some fashion.
However, where the plotting was predictable, I thought the lessons and characterisations were pretty clever; whether intentional or not. With the former, where lots of reviewers criticised the lesson about accepting other cultures to be a tired Aesop, I felt that wasn't the main message. Rather, it was something else entirely. Namely, it's that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. It didn't matter whether Irisa cut him loose or not. The guy didn't want to be saved and so, there was nothing anyone could do save him. Nolan mentioned it right at the start.
Likewise, this episode shed light on Rafe's character and possibly why he disapproves his daughter's relationship with Datak's son. It was revealed that he tried becoming a photographer following the alien terra-forming of Earth but gave up as the scenery was too painful a reminder of all that he had lost. In addition, we also learned he then went into the mining business. The former makes me think he's likely bitter towards the aliens over everything he's lost while the latter bit shows that he's able to adapt in order to survive. Which explains why he's willing to work with aliens. While he doesn't like them, he's willing to tolerate them.
On the subject of characterisation, something I should have mentioned about last week was how efficiently the show established Nolan and Irisa's personalities and relationship. Irisa's initial silent treatment and Nolan's eventual getting her to open up by singing very quickly highlighted their father-daughter relationship.
Heh... now that I think about it, it's quite hilarious how often Nolan sings in order to get others to open up to him. Hmm... would be useful as an interrogation technique.
