I watched the first two episodes of the new show yesterday, and was pretty impressed.

Premise: five thousand years ago, in a nearby binary star system, an alien race called the Indogenes realizes that a wandering rogue star is headed towards their system and will destroy all life. They contact several of the other intelligent races of the binary system and together they build a refuge fleet and head to the nearest system that has a planet that could support them - Earth. At the time they were completely unaware of Humanity. They reach Earth early in April of 2013 and discover Human civilization. Not prepared for a massive war, and having spent five thousand years learning to get along themselves (if shakily sometimes), they decide to negotiate for land to colonize. Despite being given small territories in Brazil and other areas it's simply not enough for their full population, which remains in stasis on board the Arcfleet. Then the Votan (the aliens collective name for themselves) ambassador to the UN is assassinated on live TV by a pro-human fanatic, sparking off riots that escalate into total war. Just as both sides begin to tire of the ceaseless conflict, the Arcfleet explodes in orbit, killing 90% of the Votan refugees. Wreckage from the fleet crashes to Earth, including several terraforming devices that survive reentry and begin transforming massive swaths of Earth into semblances of the Votan worlds including adding native flora and fauna. With the increasing chaos, soldiers on both sides of the conflict in L.A. put down their weapons and begin helping refugees, sparking more soldiers all across the planet to do the same despite command orders to continue fighting. Those first soldiers who put down their weapons were known as the Defiant Few.

Our hero, Nolan, was one of the Defiant Few who became a drifter, and somewhere along the line adopted an Irathient girl named Irisa. The Irathients are known for being a bit feral and more earthy and spiritual than some of the other Votan races.

The action takes place in the town of Defiance, the post-terraformed remains of Saint Louis. Two main families have controlling interest in Defiance: Rafe McCawley's human family owns the local mines that employ most of the townsfolk; Datak Tarr is a Castithan gangster who controls the cities criminal element to support his own family.

The story-writing is pretty good, most of the characters we've been introduced to so far are very cool, even the villainous ones.  

New episodes air on SyFy on cable on Mondays 9/8c, not sure when they are airing the episodes online, which is where I'll be watching them.

I'm not big on shooters but if you are interested, there's a game that runs alongside the series.

Check them out here: [link]