Killjoys - Why you should watch

So I recently got done with Season 5 (the final season) of Killjoys. What is Killjoys? Well it's a great recent Sci-Fi franchise by SyFy network that for some inexplicable reason most of the pop culture pundits I look at have just said nothing about it (this includes those on both sides of the political spectrum). Honestly it's confusing to me in an age when the press emphatically whoop about diversity and representation that this show isn't being brought up at all. Instead the press seems to be flitting between trying to claim Batwoman is being unfairly maligned by the audience and that the Watchmen show is also being unfairly targeted. Killjoys just sort of drifted by unnoticed or so it seems.

It's odd this is a show that has a strong black woman lead (though I'm guessing it somehow doesn't count as she's from England and part Norwegian too). The show also has: a ruler whose a lesbian, a gay couple later on, a bisexual guy a woman scientist and a storyline with rich themes about inequality and exploitation of people by corporations. Yet no-one in the press who'd normally be all over this seems to have given a shit.

(Taken from Tumblr)

Hey minor confused sort of rant about the media over I should probably talk about the plot etc. Killjoys follows Dutch / Yalena Yardeen , played by Hanna John-Kamen (Ready Player One, Antman and the Wasp, Game of Thrones), and Johnny Jaqobis, played by Aaron Ashmore (Smallville, Lost girl, Warehouse 13) as a team of bounty hunters working for the R.A.C in the Quad which is a small star system in the J star cluster. The set up initially seems to be villain of the week with early episodes representing bounty hunting missions for the team. However after episode 1 D'avin Jaqobis, played by Luke Macfarlane (like 2 episodes of Supergirl), joins the team as Johnny's ex military brother who the company wanted dead for an unknown reason. Combined with Dutch's fairly mysterious past and the ominous Khlyen, played by Rob Stewart (Suits, Slasher etc) the series presents plenty of mysteries and longer running plot threads to create a continuous story. There's also the implied story of a hidden underground planning to revolt against the corporations who own and control the sector set up. As Season 1 progresses the villain of the week format quickly drops away as the series ties more elements together into a running narrative and many different plot threads all start to collide and combine into a major running storyline. Season 2 then pushes this format further and really feels like the show hits the ground running.

The story

Created and written to be a story in 5 seasons Killjoys manages to keep to present mysteries to the viewer along with the characters but also not overplay the mysterybox angle of people watching merely to get answers to the mystery. Instead the mystery feels organic to the story and often revelations are made to the audience, and characters in the show at a decent pace such that it never feels like there is a great mystery being held over people's heads too long. The mysteries aren't why the show wants you to keep watching, it wants you to keep watching for the characters for the way characters have to get round various problems and the Sci-Fi staples of some gun fights and hand to hand fights / future sci-fi tech ideas.

Images unless otherwise stated taken from IMDB

The show is well written with characters that very much are 3 dimensional characters with strengths and weaknesses of their own with none of them really falling into being a stereotype, at least not for long before they're revealed to have more depth. I mean sure a character may be a warlord but in to paraphrase a characters own words when he's scared by an alien bug "I was a Warlord, I dealt with bullets and being shot at I wasn't a buglord". The mysteries make sense and don't drag on, the plot moves at a good pace with some pretty cool twists. The writing comes off as something quite similar to the feel of Stargate Atlantis, with serious moments of drama and character development being able to happen alongside moments of levity a characters joke among themselves or fire off the odd quip or have moments of banter. It would have been very easy for lesser skilled writers to end up writing Dutch as a Mary Sue, but she very much isn't one, she has flaws and weaknesses, she has areas she's not as good at and has to defer to others. When fighting Dutch is portrayed as far better trained and it being her training that lets her win rather than some misguided attempt at having her overpowered even the most jacked up body builder with raw strength, this creates an enjoyable dynamic to the fight scenes and real sense of threat and danger as Dutch sometime gets thrown round the place a fair bit, in later series even ending up somewhat bloody and bruised. 

All the main and secondary cast pretty much are shown as being fleshed out characters even sometimes down to their own hobbies. 

I don't want to spoil the 5 season story hence not mentioning many specific points but I will say each season does feel like both its own arc to a greater or lesser extent and also part of a greater story arc too.

Performance

Performance wise, it's solid across the board with everyone seemingly bringing their A game. It feels almost wrong to highlight one specific performance because everyone seems to have fully committed to their roles however I will highlight Alanna Bale who plays a character I won't name because it's a major spoiler. I will however says I can imagine it being a difficult role to pull off and Alanna pulls it off with giving the audience a performance that is both menacing but also has the character seeming like at any moment she could go full on psychopath but is trying to barely restrain herself. In this case I want to say again I'm highlighting her more due to the seeming difficulty of the material and execution of it as the whole cast execute the material they're given extremely well it's more I'd say Alanna got the slightly harder material to pull off.

Effects

Effects wise the shoot outs and action sequences are cool. The CGI star systems are good and for season 1-3 the spacecraft shots are quite high quality, however I will say the end of season 4 and season 5 do see a drop off in this quality with some of the stuff looking only slightly upgraded visuals than Babylon 5 was giving people, if this was due to time, budget or changes in the FX department I can't say but the end of season 4 & most of 5 do noticeably cut back on the CGI space shots and those that are shown are far lower quality than previous ones. I will say the practical effects work and in some cases creature work is quite good and reminiscent of but better than the work on Dr Who spin off Torchwood Children of Earth.

The Killjoys ship in Season 1 (captured image from the show)

A ship from season 5 (captured image from the show)

Set wise it's clear there's been quite a lot of effort put into the sets and locations such that it's not all gravel quarries and there is a variety of sets and locations that do seem very distinctly different.

Themes and commentary

I like the idea of talking a little bit about some of the things touched on in the show because it gives you some idea of it is for you.

A running topic throughout the show is the idea of class disparity. With the rich elites who own part of the corporation or are considered it's board members being overly opulent living very well and observing old elaborate traditions. The rich on Qresh  are contrasted against the bottom of the pecking order and those under the company boot the residents of the planet Westerly which is a mining and industrial planet owned by the corporation. The promise being if you and your family work for the company for a number of generations (I think it's like 5 generations) then the 6th generation will be allowed land of their own to farm and cultivate on the more luscious more hospitable and far less polluted planet Leith. The quite often self centred aspect of the residents of Qresh is often on show as are their eccentricities and motivation to climb yet higher by killing off rivals or taking control of said families to gain more land and more shares in the company or even become one of the 9 ruling families. 

A theme that emerges later on and persists is the question of what it means to be human, what makes a person human which I'd say is quite a big Sci-fi theme but it's handled without it feeling overly heavy it's a theme that's just there and explored.

There's also what I can only describe as a Lovecraftian streak that emerges later on relating to extremely ancient alien races and saying much more would be spoiling things.

 Why you should watch in my opinion

So I get to give you my reasons to watch the show and yes they are highly subjective.

Reasons I enjoyed it. 

- It initially plays as a fairly formulaic slightly pulpy Sci-Fi about big evil corporations but quickly expands to what I'd consider a big concept Sci-Fi but without losing its enjoy ability. I'd say it's kind of akin to Stargate Atlantis in feel but with Stargate SG1 style exploration of big ideas and concepts.

- Male Gaze. No really. So often the term is thrown around by certain people on the internet often in the context of it being a bad thing but I am a male and Hanna John-Kamen is extremely attractive. Now being very attractive alone isn't a reason to bring up Male Gaze (no matter what some will say) it's the camera angles and shots used that lets say show off Hanna John-Kamen's assets from time to time, such as one memorable shot in season 5 that manages to have the shot almost looking down a sports bra. This is the kind of thing moral busybodies would claim is so offensive and or obscene it feels like something from a bygone era, but in a good way, like it's something modern Sci-fi had lost and Killjoys found and picked up. As a character it shows Dutch as both highly skilled and deadly yet still very alluring. 

- It's literally a complete show. Other than some loose plot threads at the end which the show very much leaves the viewer with the impression they'll sort themselves out and you don't need to watch, the show does end. It doesn't give some big cliff hanger ending or To Be Continue. It was written and completed so you do get in my view a fairly decent ending, not the best ending ever but you're not getting a Game of Thrones season 8 style stinker of an ending . In an age of shows baiting another season then not getting renewed, it's refreshing to have a show that was written with an end point in mind and reaches it.

- For all the elements that sound like the normal "Woke" crowd would be all over this they're not because the show isn't message mongering with most of its stuff. It's a show first without beating people over the head with the themes or feeling the need to try and link it to [current year events]. Hell it even happily takes a shot at the kind of holier than thau woke twitter crowd at times. The most notable example being a look and smirk between Dutch and D'avin of what can only be described as saying "These guys are crazy", when while infiltrating a sort of religious hippie commune thing the head calls for Brothers, Sisters and Non binaries to gather round. In part also because this is the only time in the show there is such a comment either with the implication being most other places people are more concerned with just getting by.

- Season 1-4 are on Prime now and I'm sure some time next year Season 5 might be put on there by SyFy sometime next year at the latest so if you have Prime and the time to watch it you're losing nothing and if you love it you've got 4 season you can watch.

- There doesn't seem to be a lot of Sci-Fi series about these days that manage the kind of tone of Killjoys with a generally light hearted tone which makes the times it get serious much more impactful. The series isn't po-faced or trying to be dark and gritty even if the world of the show is a dark gritty world in many aspects.

So for those of you looking for something to watch this may well be the show for you and unlike many other shows this one had the ending that wasn't some giant super important cliff hanger and honestly I wouldn't say no to a spin off movie or something tying up the last loose ends but the ending the show got was satisfying and did feel like a decent way to end it without some big cliff hanger.