The Revolution pilot is online now...

[Anwar]

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.

[Star Wolf]

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.

[FreezeC77]

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.

[sojourner]

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.

[The Green Mushroom]

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.

[Tom]

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

[sojourner]

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

[FluffyUnbound]

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.

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.

[Jono]

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.

[JD]

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.

[Anwar]

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.

[JD]

Yeah, I could see that being a good explanation. Didn't she shoot a guy in the pilot? I just remembered that now.

[tomalak301]

I've been watching Revolution and somewhat enjoying it and I'm finally caught up. I think a problem I have with this show, amongst other things is the brutality of the Militia to prove a point that they are evil. It's citizens are bad and must be wiped out, and then you have Militia being the good guys with good families and all that stuff. I think it stems from a big problem in that I want to see this society after this blackout. I'm interested in the concept of human nature having to live without electricity and how they manage. To make the Militia the one dimensional villains seems counter productive to that goal.

I know it's early and I'm liking what I see but I really hope we get more fleshing out of the societal relationships and "what gives". How did this great divide happen, and it seems there are very few good people left. Also, the 15 year gap is still bothering me in that they could easily be telling this story with a shorter (Like a 2 or 3 year) gap. What the heck happened in 15 years to get society to be this way.

As for Charlie, I like her but I wonder what if they got a better actress. I think then she would have been a much better character than what we've seen so far. I'm optimistic she improves and hopefully as the season goes on, we will see that.

[stj]

Billy Burke is a bore. It's not the actor, I've seen him do other stuff. His Philip Stroh on The Closer was truly badass, as well as evil, and Burke earned complete conviction in the character. Antihero is a tired old cliche and about the only TV series to successfully spawn one is Breaking Bad.

David Lyons isn't bad either, but neither his Bass nor Monroe personas seem real. The main villain and the antihero being so dreary really hurts the show. Maybe they should retcon Bass and Miles as lovers and Bass turns into Evil Monroe when Miles leaves him? Desperate, but desperate measures are called for.

Incidentally, so far as nanotech handwaving for the black out goes? There isn't even a suggestion of what precisely nanotech is supposed to actually do to stop electric currents from flowing. Swarm in to make insulation? Discharge all currents? But where to? And wouldn't any of these make visible changes?

Also overlooked in nanotech marvels is the question of where the little buggers get their energy, deposit their wastes and obtain materials for the new ones they make. It would be very much as though there was a massive bacterial overgrowth. Or possibly it would be more like galloping mold? And they are supposed to have been able to break into every sealed battery on the planet! How? Tiny diamond drills? Sulfuric acid that somehow doesn't cause any visible damage? It's not like the nannites would know one already got into this battery, so that a single practically invisible hole is all the evidence left behind. They'll all bore in, however they do it, and damage the casings.

Lastly of course, the probability is that anyone using an oil lens microscope, which does not operate on electricity, would be able to see them, even if there wouldn't be enough magnification/resolution to reveal much about the structure.

Also, what wavelengths would the amulets us to send off signals to the nannites? The nannites are so small that that for each to receive a signal the wavelength would have to be at least in the UV range. Hey, look, Ben's necklace makes my jeans glow! That's a pretty high energy signal. But if the nannites clump to make a longer wavelenght signal receiver, again they are easily visible.

In a movie, you can ask these questions on the way home. But in a TV series, when you just ask yourself these questions during a commercial break, it makes a difference. The passage of a week can really make willing suspension of disbelief even tougher. I suppose the first resort of the scientifically illiterate, quantum woo, will eventually come to mouth.

Lastly, mileage may vary, but the insistence that only the most ruthless brutality could restore "order" and survival seems to me to be more an ideological assumption demanded by a reactionary world view, than a legitimate dramatic possibility.

[Mister Fandango]

I just want to know what kind of bad ass batteries all these devices have. An iPhone and portable CD player that've held their charges for 15 years? Tiny little amulets that can produce a massive effect after (assumingly regular usage) during the same amount of time? A makeshift PC with no visible power supply?