Dominion,\u201d premiering Thursday night, is strictly cheapo-apocalypto, but it\u2019s one of the more interesting efforts from the SyFy network lately, which, despite its hopeful marketing slogan (\u201cImagine Greater\u201d), keeps churning out shows that are resiliently mediocre \u2014 beyond even the B-movie heritage of its namesake genre.<\/p>\n
Picking up from the aftermath of a little-noticed 2010 theatrical flick called \u201cLegion,\u201d this new series is an action drama about a world abandoned by God, in which the archangels Gabriel and Michael work out a grudge match on a forsaken Earth. Gabriel has nothing but animus toward the human race; Michael, for his own reasons, has taken pity and helped the remaining humans defeat Gabriel and his vast army of lower angels (a.k.a. \u201ceight-balls\u201d), who are like rapacious beady-eyed zombies with wings.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years after that battle, \u201cDominion\u201d is set in a fortified city once known as Las Vegas, now called Vega. Here, on what used to be the Strip, a militarized government uses the Bellagio as both capital and palace, while everyone else scrapes by in a caste system. Michael (Tom Wisdom) keeps watch from his bachelor-pad aerie atop the old Stratosphere hotel, as both protector and adviser to the citizens of Vega.<\/p>\n
Fed up with the city\u2019s politics, a rebellious young soldier named Alex (Christopher Egan) plans to sneak away with his secret love, Claire (Roxanne McKee), who is the daughter of the grand high muckety-muck ruler of the city. Things get complicated when Alex\u2019s father (Langley Kirkwood), believed long dead, returns to Vega with bad news that Gabriel (Carl Beukes) is amassing a new legion of eight-balls and assassin angels at a lair in the Rocky Mountains.<\/p>\n
The people of Vega \u2014 some of them anyhow \u2014 believe strongly that a messiah-type savior will be delivered unto them and vanquish the monster angels once and for all. It\u2019s hard to imagine that anyone watching \u201cDominion\u201d won\u2019t figure out right away who that person is, but I\u2019ll refrain from spoiling it anyhow.<\/p>\n
I often steer clear of reviewing SyFy\u2019s offerings, not because I don\u2019t like science fiction, but because there\u2019s often so little to say about the shows. There\u2019s usually a mildly intriguing premise followed by a suffocating amount of formulaic plots and dialogue. For fans, there\u2019s a safe space in predictability; it\u2019s mac-n-cheese for every meal. In \u201cDominion,\u201d I happen to like the whole notion of reclaiming some of the more brutal aspects of angel mythology from the warm fuzziness of cherubs and blessed do-gooders, but soon enough in the first episode, the show becomes a paint-by-numbers exercise.<\/p>\n
On that note, I\u2019m always delighted to receive an advance copy of a show in which the painting \u2014 in this case the special-effects job \u2014 isn\u2019t finished, not only because it makes me laugh when I see the wires or the rudimentary backdrops, but because it\u2019s a good reminder of how hard it is to make seamless, enjoyable entertainment out of technical parts.<\/p>\n
This is science-fiction\u2019s greatest legacy \u2014 taking us on a journey, but doing it on a bare-bones budget. If you only notice the tricks, then the story fails; SyFy\u2019s shows routinely demonstrate that today\u2019s tricks have gotten too easy, which is why \u201cDominion\u201d feels like it is unintentionally telling a separate story of a world in which humanity is held captive by quickie CGI.<\/p>\n
Who will be the angel to save us from all that?