The Revolution pilot is online now...

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Gotham Central, Sep 4, 2012.

  1. Takeru

    Takeru Space Police Commodore

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    He doesn't actually work on the shows he slaps his name on, he's involved with the pilot and that's pretty much it. I think Alias was the last real Abrams tv series.
     
  2. DarthTom

    DarthTom Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Ah. Abrams is such a big baller now he's getting up their with Spielberg that simply an endorsement of a series sells the project.

    Good for him. :)

    Let's hope the next Trek film was as good as the last one.
     
  3. Scout101

    Scout101 Admiral Admiral

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    Don't like the map, and there should be WAY more 'wastelands' (i.e. death/plague zones). Basically anywhere there was a major population center, should be gone. Large portion of the east coast should be a dead zone. What do you do when you have millions of people in one area, that can't grow food, they don't have transportation out of there, and they are armed?

    Almost all of them would die, and most of the rest would have horrible diseases that would spread around. California, New York, Chicago, Atlanta - gone. Midwest might do better, just by being able to get to less population density, and better farming conditions in short order. In the big cities, though, anyone left would be left because they ate the others. Not really tv-friendly, though...
     
  4. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    But 15 years later? No, there would just be bones, no danger of diseases. No reason for them to remain "wastelands". The wastelands presented on the map are there because without technology that area is a freakin desert.
     
  5. The Green Mushroom

    The Green Mushroom Commander Red Shirt

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    A blackout like the one they had would be bad. Possibly even worse than the one in the Dies the Fire series that Revolution ripped off...uh, is inspired by. The people in the Revolution blackout still have guns to make the killfest killier.

    But, and I'm not the first to say this, it has been 15 years. Even if everyone in the East Coast cities has died, I can see many reasons why people would want to move back in:

    • Much of Pennsylvania and some of upstate New York would make for reasonable farmland once they have been fertilized by the Yuppies.
    • Without people and, more importantly, industrial fishing, the fishing grounds in the North Atlantic and the Long Island Sound would make for good living
    • Think of the raw materials that could be salvaged. In the Stirling series, the characters stated that it is far easier to mine for metals in a dead city than in the ground.
    Most of the original population would be gone, but I would find it unbelievable if the area wasn't colonized.
     
  6. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, as an Arizona native, I know I sure wouldn't stay here if all of the power went out. The only thing that makes living here bearable for the majority of people is air conditioning, and without that most of the people here, myself included, would probably move somewhere more bearable.
     
  7. Scout101

    Scout101 Admiral Admiral

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    Assuming that everyone that survived was well outside of a city or suburban area, though, and stayed outside that fallout area for 10+ years, why would they be in such a hurry to move back? I'd think that once you set up a life somewhere and live there 10 years, you're unlikely to move right back into NYC or Chicago, for example.

    And metal/raw materials would still exist, but pretty much anything else of value would have been consumed/destroyed as the cities of millions of people slowly self-destructed. And you'd likely still have those bands of cannibals and savages, and remnants of disease/filth would still be around.

    Honestly, anyone that was anywhere NEAR those areas during the collapse would likely never want to return. You'd have lived to escape it, or seen refugees that had SEEN some things, or fought off the remaining savage survivors, etc. You'd put that city in your rearview mirror, associate it with some horrific things, and pretend it never existed. Just around NYC, for example, you've got probably 25-30 million people within say 50 miles or so. Even if a few thousand get out and survive, that's a LOT of death, and violently so.

    And just to respond to a few of the comments, very familiar with the Dies the Fire series, big fan. Gets a little, uh, fantastic as it goes on, but the first few feel pretty 'real' as far as how things go down. Hoping there's eventually payoff with that series that both ties it to the Nantucket books, and resolves the overall cause of the Change. Great to resolve the overall plot in Montival, but I want the big answers, and think we're down to the last book or so here...
     
  8. Mister Fandango

    Mister Fandango Fleet Captain

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    Realistic depictions of what would happen is something this show neither gives a flip about nor even remotely tries to recreate. Chicago, for example, is bustling with life (yet still overgrown and treated as if it had been abandoned for decades if not centuries based on the overgrowth). Why, it's downright peaceful save for the Monroe bullies marching around like Nazis.
     
  9. Caliburn24

    Caliburn24 Commodore Commodore

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    ^Which is what the show wants to establish. The idea that the militia bring order and peace of a sort. As they flashback in future episodes to Miles and Monroe forming the militia that will become even more clear.

    The sad part is the militia would be the good guys, if they didn't act like thugs. And they don't need to be thugs, except that they are written that way because the show needs bad guys. The writers of Revolution need to establish soon why the militia is bad in principle, other than just their actions.
     
  10. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    Right, we've seen what the people have to do (give up firearms, pay taxes with crops, occasionally people are conscripted) to be citizens of the Republic but we've yet to see what the Republic offers the people.
     
  11. Star Wolf

    Star Wolf Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The spy killed one of the rape gang. A roving militia is surely doing more then consscripting boys. I would suppose they also suppress crime, or did at first.
     
  12. FreezeC77

    FreezeC77 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I kind of wonder what happened with the rest of the world. In the Stirling series we find out about it as the series moves along. The situation in this show is different because of gunpowder/bullets still working (Which means steam power should work, but whatever)

    So I wonder if we'll see sailing ships hitting the coasts. Also the Monroe Republic succeeding must have had something to do with their knowledge/access to the base they were stationed at so that makes me wonder what do you think happened to US soldiers stationed in other countries?

    I could almost see North Korea taking over South Korea and reunifying as one nation. South Korea is much more dependent on technology and half of the entire population lives in the Seoul metro area. So you figure that wipes out almost half the population of the country right there, then you get into the other large cities like Busan and Incheon and see massive deaths.

    North Korea on the other hand is used to dealing with low food supplies and doesn't have very modernized farming (which leads to food shortages) so they're better positioned to deal with a transition. Even if half their population was wiped out they'd still post-blackout probably have 5 to 10 times the population of South Korea post-blackout/deaths.

    The US is sitting there with 30,000 troops, but with all their modern equipment then rendered useless they'd be pretty spectacularly outnumbered by North Korea's surviving military (assuming that the US troops can feed themselves and survive).

    Would be cool to see a backstory of a soldier who was on an aircraft carrier when the blackout happened as well.
     
  13. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    North Korea would have a big problem controlling it's troops after the blackout - no communications. I could see that whole nation balkanizing quite rapidly as the commanders actually stationed with the troops setup their own little kingdoms.
     
  14. The Green Mushroom

    The Green Mushroom Commander Red Shirt

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    I can easily buy that the militias started out as being a good thing. Initially I assumed that Monroe and company were like a bunch of redneck "hate the government" militias that became popular back in the 90s and then became the Tea Party. But it seems that Monroe and Uncle Whatshisname seemed to have started off with a simple premise: the blackout destroyed the government, let's rebuild it. At some point they went off the rails. I don't think the show needs to show that the militia is a bad idea, just that Monroe's militia is a bad idea. It could be as simple as Monroe never bothering to create any sort of civilian government but anointing himself as ruler and crushing anyone who questioned him. It could also be more complex: Monroe believes he is a good man, he doesn't want to be killing people or taxing them to death, but at some point he gradually became more and more corrupt to the point where he is the problem but doesn't know it.

    Or he could just be a loser who decided to get back at society for being mean to him. In Dies the Fire, the leader of the bad guys was a history professor who recruited his buddies from the Renaissance Fair and a biker gang and restored ordered. Only he totally lost the plot by driving extra mouths into exile and marching into battle under the Eye of Sauron.
     
  15. Tom

    Tom Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Anyone pick up the reference to Steven King's 'The Stand' when Miles said his name was Stu Redman ans Charlie was Franie LOL
     
  16. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    hehe, that's the second time we've gotten a "The Stand" reference if you count the mysterious bad guy being named Randall.
     
  17. FluffyUnbound

    FluffyUnbound Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I think the absence of guns makes the Emberverse killfest worse, not better.

    If there are working guns, you get a situation like Africa where warlords keep their supporters fed and it's the meek who starve. So it would be like the worst Ethiopian famine ever, but still within the range of human experience. The food would belong to the best supplied military force that could come up with a workable paper communication system the fastest.

    Without working guns, there's no way to impose even evil order. You get total chaos because for the first time in about 6000 years there would be no armed and trained rulership caste that can sacrifice some people to save the rest. You'd be left with people literally fighting over scraps of food with baseball bats and butcher knives.
     
  18. Jono

    Jono Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Interested to see where this goes and if it can maintain my interest. Still have trouble getting a grip on Charlie. She seems to swerve from one extreme to the other multiple times in a single episode. They seem to want her to be the conscience and innocence of the show while also being Xena, but I don't feel they're really getting that balance right.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2012
  19. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, I was surprised that they had her struggling so much with killing a guy in the last episode, and then killing with no problem whatsoever this week. That seemed like a pretty extreme shift. I could see her being a little more willing to kill after last week, but I would think it would still be at least a little hard for her.
     
  20. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    It may have to do with the distance involved. She's an archer, which explains why she's lousy at close-range combat. She likely never had to kill any animals up close before.

    Last episode she killed a guy right there in front of her, whereas here she did so from a distance.