AMC's The Walking Dead Season 1 Discussion & Spoilers

[Obiwanshinobi]

Grant coz he looks like the mythbusters guy?

[Temis the Vorta]

ObiWanShinobi wrote:

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Grant coz he looks like the mythbusters guy?

Yeah probably. Okay then Glenn.

[Canadave]

Just saw the second episode. Fantastic stuff, even if it wasn't as gorgeously shot as the first episode. I need to get my hands on the graphic novels, I think.

marillion wrote:

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So.. Another great episode.. But now I'm wondering.. What about the people in space, either in the shuttle or in the Space Station...

Think they were brought down when it became clear that the world was going to hell in a hand basket?

Think, if they're still up there, that they're wondering why no one at Houston has called in a while? "Ummm.. Guys? Hello?..."

Different zombie property, I know, but...

... in World War Z, the crew of the ISS ends up stuck up there as everything goes to hell in a hand basket during the Great Panic. So they do their best to keep vital satellites working to help Earth, and use the station's cameras to record what happens on the planet as best as possible. Unfortunately, due to the fact that it took years before they could be safely brought down, all the crew has taken a massive dose of radiation, and all die of cancer within a decade of the end of the war.

[Mark_Nguyen]

I liked how WWZ treated basically every significant aspect of human civilization in its narrative, including what happened to our various space initiaitves. Still:

In "real life" there's no real way the ISS crew could have been able to maintain satellites, let alone the station itself for much longer than a year. They need quarterly resupplies from Progress cargo ships to maintain a crew of six as it is, to say nothing of an army of support personel on the ground that do a lot of the actual work to keep ISS in orbit.

The WWZ scenario seems to indicate that the ISS was a little more "finished" than the real one (it had the X-38 escape vehicle, for example, which they used to send the nonessentials back to Earth) and the orbital community had a Chinese station they salvaged supplies from (using a real-life robot ship they modified to take them there) to stay up there for five years before a derivative of Virgin Galactic came to get them. The whole thing was exhaustively researched and for a real-life space buff like me, read real enough to make me wonder how astronauts actually WAOULD handle a zombie apocalypse.

[Canadave]

Mark_Nguyen wrote:

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I liked how WWZ treated basically every significant aspect of human civilization in its narrative, including what happened to our various space initiaitves. Still:

In "real life" there's no real way the ISS crew could have been able to maintain satellites, let alone the station itself for much longer than a year. They need quarterly resupplies from Progress cargo ships to maintain a crew of six as it is, to say nothing of an army of support personel on the ground that do a lot of the actual work to keep ISS in orbit.

The WWZ scenario seems to indicate that the ISS was a little more "finished" than the real one (it had the X-38 escape vehicle, for example, which they used to send the nonessentials back to Earth) and the orbital community had a Chinese station they salvaged supplies from (using a real-life robot ship they modified to take them there) to stay up there for five years before a derivative of Virgin Galactic came to get them. The whole thing was exhaustively researched and for a real-life space buff like me, read real enough to make me wonder how astronauts actually WAOULD handle a zombie apocalypse.

I have the impression that WWZ is supposed to be still a few years away, which is why the ISS is so much further along than where it actually is. Of course, it's hard to say for sure since there are no dates given in the book, but that's the overall impression I get.

And I'll admit that it is one of the few segments that really stretches credibility, but I don't mind all that much because it's also really, really compelling. You feel for that crew, stuck up in space, and unable to do anything to stop the horrors they can see playing out below them.

[PsychoPere]

A quick note, courtesy of comics creator Robert Kirkman (via Twitter):

Robert Kirkman wrote:

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This week's 3rd episode of @WalkingDead_AMC is preceded at 8pm by episodes 1 & 2 with barely any commercials. Tell your friends!

[RJDiogenes]

They're also available on On Demand, along with some behind-the-scenes stuff and the first chapter of a Motion Comic.

[Joel_Kirk]

So far, I'm pretty impressed.

I can't say I really have a favorite character yet, since many portrayals will be different from those in the comic series; and there are still a lot more characters coming.

I forget Laurie Holden's character in the comic, but she(or her characters, rather) hasn't fared too well lately...(Silent Hill, The Mist...

I'm hoping her character in The Walking Dead 'makes it.' (Of course, I'm going to have to break out my comics again).

I can't really say much more since this I'm only the second episode, but I'm looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds...(Onscreen, that is).

[FluffyUnbound]

Somehow even though I don't have AMC any more, InDemand still lets me watch AMC shows.

I have a few nitpicks about the first episode: if the zombies can be evaded as easily as Morgan has been evading them ["Stay quiet at night and they wander away in the morning"] then the zombies really should not have been triumphant. And the logistics of Rick's hospital stay don't really seem to work. But I can and have put up with much greater logic flaws in zombie fare, so I can definitely work with what I've seen so far.

[RoJoHen]

FluffyUnbound wrote:

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if the zombies can be evaded as easily as Morgan has been evading them ["Stay quiet at night and they wander away in the morning"] then the zombies really should not have been triumphant.

Well, it was heavily implied that it started out as an epidemic. People were getting sick with a fever, and it was a disease they didn't know how to fight, so a lot of people ended up getting infected. It wasn't until they died from the fever that they became zombies.

It's not like somebody became a zombie and started spreading their zombiness around.

[watermelony2k]

In the comics, if you die of natural causes you still become a zombie -- bite or no bite. Everyone on Earth is already infected and destined to become a zombie. I'm not sure if this applies to the TV series, who knows -- they might go a different direction.


About, what, 200,000 people died daily? So in one day and without warning, 200,000 people resurrect in their deathbeds as zombies, infecting confused coroners, loved ones, and doctors. The next day, 200,000 people again die of mostly natural causes + newly infected humans. Not sure if it happened worldwide all at once, but if it did, it'd be hard to contain something that was literally everywhere and appearing exponentially.

[Dorian Thompson]

It would be the first wave that got so many people zombified. They wake up, chomp on unsuspecting nurses and loved ones and boom!! Millions infected in a day or so before anyone knows what's going on.

[sojourner]

Yep, Merle's a moron. Only he would choose to cut off his own hand instead of either cutting through the bolt the handcuff was attached to on the roof or cutting through the handcuff itself.

[Dorian Thompson]

That's what I was thinking. Maybe the tool he had wouldn't cut through metal? Maybe just chopping off his hand clean was the faster option than sawing through handcuffs? The monsters were at the door. The clock was ticking.

[Zombie]

sojourner wrote:

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Yep, Merle's a moron. Only he would choose to cut off his own hand instead of either cutting through the bolt the handcuff was attached to on the roof or cutting through the handcuff itself.

That hacksaw probably wouldn't be able to cut through the cuff links all though I personally would have tried before even thinking of cutting of my hand.

His brother is as big an idiot as he is.

Gotta feel sorry for Shane. Why wouldn't he think Rick was dead if the hospital had never been evacuated or as it was over run with Zombies. I would have thought the same thing especially given Ricks medical situation.

Are they calling them Geeks? Hilarious.