TV REVIEW: Dominion Breathes New Life into a Weary Format

By Liv Tadesse

While Dominion’s plot may somewhat recycled, its engaging characters bring necessary and interesting life to this new series from Syfy.

It’s appropriate that the city chosen to explore post-religious apocalypse is Las Vegas, or as it’s called within the show, Vega. The brash, sinful decadence to which its predecessor has been linked in popular cultural consciousness fits side by side with the cynicism Dominion presents.

It’s too early to tell whether or whether not the series will explore the wealth of themes it has touched on, and although at first the overarching theme appears to be one of dichotomous leadership, it’s clear, midway through the pilot, that it’s power. It reflects the world’s cynicism, which is also reflected through Claire and Alex and through General David, played with utter gusto by Anthony Head. (Tom Wisdom is as impressive in his role as Bettany was, if not more, embodying every inch of Dominion’s darker Michael).

A general’s lust for power is expected, but the subtle understanding with which the two young leads are written took me by surprise. It would be easy to have Alex as a superficial rebel philosophically, but Dominion takes another path with the idea of the Messiah. Alex from beginning to end considers himself an authority, unsurprising considering he grew through his teenage years with an archangel personally delivering his punishments, but this, unlike most characters like him, doesn’t blind him to the inescapable power of societal structure. A smooth talker, he manages to secure the love of the daughter of the most powerful man in Vega, promising his dreams of escape safety in her inherited authority among other human strongholds.

However, in direct contrast to her introduction, Claire is not the Yes-Man to Alex’s Messiah. Dominion offers a host of female characters and she is the most intriguing. The higher the class, the worse off the women are, and just as Alex strives for the power of freedom, so do most women in the show – but the fact that one or two are content within their roles speaks to Dominion’s diversity.

Thorn may be a senator, but she’s busy investing in her romantic attachments to an archangel, who paradoxically provides no security. Noma is content as a soldier while Bixby is a ball of constant tension. Arika luxuriates in the power of her position and the politics it brings, selling girls with a hunger for what their price brings. With the safety of House Riesen potentially gone in the future, Claire suddenly holds a host of sincere albeit misdirecting hesitations at the opportunity of escape. When she frames David rising in power as dictatorship, as if she’s never heard a word of Alex’s grievances, her father rightly “calls her out” by asking what the difference is between his current rule and her idea of David’s. But that’s not the only person Riesen does call out. He does the same with David, implying that Claire’s machinations are at the same level as the general’s.

Claire is a refreshing take on the oft-maligned love interest of the Messiah, and not one I expected with the pilot’s opening. She complements Alex, and with the reveal of his markings, undoubtedly the show’s cynicism at peak, they may be at odds in the future and that is a welcome showdown.

The fantastic nature of the show as well as the sudden and deceptive Romeo and Juliet-esque romance might off-put at first, but giving up early would mean missing out on Anthony Head, as well as his character summing up the show in dramatic delivery: “Religious theater is one thing – this is politics.”

Dominion airs Thursdays (9-10 p.m. ET) on SyFy.