Riese: Kingdom Falling Review: Steampunk Has Come to Syfy

A melding of steampunk and fantasy, Riese: Kingdom Falling is an intriguing new web series with the right building blocks to make a fantastic new show for the Syfy Channel.

Riese tells the story of a young woman who wanders the land of Eleysia with her wolf companion Fenrir as a fanatical religious group called The Sect hunts her. Riese is actually Princess Riese, the only surviving member of the former ruling family of Eleysia. The Sect murdered her entire family and installed the queen’s cousin Amara onto the throne.

Amara is portrayed as a power hungry tyrant with no regard for her people. She rules through violence and fear and views Riese as a threat. She dispatches Herrick, an infamous magister of The Sect to hunt and destroy the lost princess as a heretic.

Meanwhile though, The Sect has its own plans for Eleysia. It appears that they are the real power behind the throne and are only using Amara to achieve their goal of purifying the land of non-believers of their goddess Sonne and to install a new ruler from their own ranks.

But all is not lost as a group of heretics and rebels have banded together calling themselves The Resistance, fighting against The Sect and Amara to get control of their land back. Rand, their leader, is also looking for Riese. He seeks to restore her back to the throne and end the oppression of Amara’s reign.

Riese’s first season is off to a great start and has the building blocks to be a good series with a well-developed storyline and a great cast of actors. Each episode ranges from nine to eleven minutes long and while we get more into Riese’s backstory and the crazy things that The Sect does, the only unfortunate shortcoming is the limited character development. Understandably it’s challenging to present a well-rounded character in such a short amount of time, but the first season does lay the groundwork for what could be a complex set of individuals.

As the main character, we know that Riese (Christine Chatelain) is good-hearted, brave, and caring. She puts herself at risk in order to help people in need, but has also killed when forced to. She is probably the most well-rounded character as we see her struggles to survive and wrestles with the inherent need to aid victims of The Sect. At the end of the first season Riese comes to a crossroad where she must choose between her birth rite as a leader or her own desires to reclaim a lost loved one.

Amara (Sharon Taylor) is probably the next character that has gotten the most face time. She seems pretty one-dimensional though as a stock character of the evil queen hell bent on maintaining power. We do learn that she has to fight to keep her crown from The Sect and she’ll do anything to get what she wants.

Other members of The Sect are Trennan, Marlise, and Herrick. But before we talk about the individual characters, let’s examine this fanatical religion. It is the most fascinating part of this series because of the juxtaposition of man and machine. Members of The Sect chose to give up parts of their humanity in order to bring them closer to their goddess.

This is evident through Trennan (Patrick Gilmore), The Sect’s ambassador to the Empress, who has a mechanical device strapped onto one eye. Trennan is my favorite character because he’s the most developed next to Riese. Right away we are shown that he has developed feelings for Amara but is also sworn by his duty to his religion. He struggles with serving her and The Sect at the same time while worrying about his own safety and well-being in the process.

On the extreme end we have Herrick (Ben Cotton), who is more machine than man. He appears to be the stereotypical evil henchman. I’m curious to learn more about his backstory and hopefully we’ll get that in the future. His costume is the most visually interesting one and reminds me of Kroenen from Hellboy. In fact both characters wear masks and are mostly mechanical.

Lastly Marlise, played by Smallville’s Allison Mack, is a character we are only beginning to learn about. She is manipulative and seeks to eliminate her rivals via intrigue and deception. This is a refreshing role change for Mack, whom I’m used to seeing as the righteous Chloe Sullivan.

Syfy regular Ryan Robbins (Sanctuary, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate: Atlantis) plays Rand the leader of the Resistance. Robbins does a great job with the limited story his character has been given at the moment. All we know is that he is the rebel leader and that he’s focused on finding Riese to aid the Resistance. I smell possible love interest here in the future.

His second in command is Lieutenant Gaeta; I mean Garin, played by Alessandro Juliani of Battlestar Galactica notoriety. Not much is known about Garin either, except that he doesn’t agree with Rand about finding Riese. But the man’s got some skill with a weapon and it’s also nice to see Juliani in a distinctly different role from Lieutenant Gaeta.

Overall Riese: Kingdom Falling is a fantastic start to a series. While the costumes and sets were great for its limited budget, what really made a difference in the production quality was the use of Red One cameras. The detail of snow falling, fires, shadows, and action sequences were enhanced for our viewing pleasure. Also I must mention that the video editing and musical score were also great and kept each episode flowing and transitioning well.

Steampunk is a genre we hardly see in live action and Riese is a great addition to its ranks. Here’s hoping Syfy picks it up as a show because it would definitely bring a new flavor to its lineup that is in great need of some fresh meat. Lastly, Riese is narrated by Amanda Tapping of Stargate SG-1, how can Syfy not make this into a regular series?

Watch Riese: Kingdom Falling at http://www.syfy.com/riese/.

For television reviews and interviews, click here.

Images courtesy of Syfy.