A while back, I wrote about a couple posts about the Tarrs, one of my favorite parts of Defiance. I did a Relationship Spotlight on the whole Tarr family as well as a Favorite Characters post on Stahma. Now, I’m coming back around and highlighting son Alak too (a few Alak-related spoilers.)
There’s an interesting divide on Defiance between the older and younger generations. We have humans who remember Earth before Arkfall and Votans who fled their home planets on the Arks, with a good number on both sides having fought in the Pale Wars. But we also have the people who grew up knowing only the new world of humans and Votans sharing the planet, including Votans who’ve never seen the homes their parents came from. Within the Tarr family, and specifically through Alak, we get some of the show’s best examples of this disconnect.
Throughout the series, we see that Alak has feet in both the Castithan culture he was born into and the human culture that surrounds him. Even though his social circle is mainly Castithan like himself, he has no problem falling for Christie and pushes back repeatedly against his father’s dislike for his human fiancée. He serves as an occasional referee between his parents and Christie – he stands up for her when Datak disrespects her, but at the same time, he’s not shy about his opinions when he thinks Christie’s interest in Castithan culture verges on fetishization/exploitation. He chafes at his parents’ old-world adherence to family honor, but he won’t demure from flaunting his high-caste shanje liro status when he needs to.
(Side note, I love the little touches in Jesse Rath’s portrayal of Alak to show how he’s both thoroughly Castithan and thoroughly of Earth – after loving Rath’s performance as Brainy in Supergirl, I knew he knew his way around playing an alien, but this example from earlier in his career is also pretty great. Unlike Datak and Stahma, who have a very deliberate way of speaking English, Alak sounds 100% “ordinary guy” underneath his white skin/hair and monochrome Castithan threads. But at the same time, he’s one of the first major characters we see dancing in that trippy, undulating Castithan way, and there’s one particular scene where he cries out in shock and horror, and in that moment, he doesn’t sound the least bit human.)
On a personal level, Alak doesn’t mind benefitting from his family’s wealth but isn’t interested in taking part in where it comes from, Datak’s organized crime. He has his own interests, for one thing – he’s fanatically into the music, running the town radio station and manufacturing vinyls to sell. He’s also focused on his own future, wanting to make a different life for himself and Christie than the one his family has. Furthermore, he’s simply not hard or cunning enough for the family business. In season 2, when he’s forced to take the lead in Datak’s absence, it’s easy for Stahma to use Alak as a figurehead so she can run the gang behind the scenes (Castithan society is hardcore patriarchal.)
Honestly, for living in a frontier town in a post-apocalyptic society (and the son of a crime lord, no less,) Alak can come across as surprisingly soft. He doesn’t seem quite built for this world, what with the periodic invasions from hostile armies or the occasional hellbug attacks. But it would be wrong to call him weak. Simply getting engaged to Christie in the first place displays strength, in terms of both facing societal rejection of human/Votan marriages and risking his parents’ disapproval – though they go about it in different ways, both Datak and Stahma abuse Alak, and it takes courage for him to defy them or talk back to them despite knowing how they might respond. Between their abuse and their manipulation of him, they attempt to control Alak and hold him back, but he keeps pressing ahead, even if he does so fearfully.
When he finally starts getting out from under their influence in season 3, Alak begins to thrive as he gets positive encouragement from Nolan. He takes his life more decisively into his own hands, he throws himself into helping to protect the town from the latest crisis, and he starts to develop the will he needs to set crucial boundaries with his parents. As someone who was rooting for him from early on, it’s great to see.
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