The Revolution pilot is online now...

[theenglish]

stj, the key phrase in your post is "I think". It is all well and good that you have your personal opinions about the human condition, but it is conjecture. Revolution is speculative fiction, and as such its premise is just as valid as any other story in the genre.

The writers could just as easily have written the same plot and then set the characters in a Little Town on the Prairie or Gunsmoke setting, but then it would have been a different story.

You cannot just say a fantasy/sf story or novel is no good because you don't agree with a premise that can neither be proven or dis-proven.

[Mister Fandango]

sojourner wrote:

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So, "all" in this context is based on a known set of one crash seen on screen?

More like at least the three or four we saw in the premiere, most of which were taking place in the background. All of them, also inexplicably, had their lights on as they were falling, too. Just to make sure we could see them tumbling in the dark.

[Anwar]

Weren't their lights flashing on and and off?

[sojourner]

^Yeah, they were flickering. A conceit to make them visible for the audience. We only saw one close up enough to determine it was in a flat spin.

[Mister Fandango]

sojourner wrote:

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^Yeah, they were flickering. A conceit to make them visible for the audience. We only saw one close up enough to determine it was in a flat spin.

You really should go watch the episode again before continuing. They were all clearly spinning and falling straight down.

[stj]

theenglish wrote:

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stj, the key phrase in your post is "I think". It is all well and good that you have your personal opinions about the human condition, but it is conjecture. Revolution is speculative fiction, and as such its premise is just as valid as any other story in the genre.

The writers could just as easily have written the same plot and then set the characters in a Little Town on the Prairie or Gunsmoke setting, but then it would have been a different story.

You cannot just say a fantasy/sf story or novel is no good because you don't agree with a premise that can neither be proven or dis-proven.

I think the point of citing Katrina was to provide evidence that Revolution's negative view of humanity was acceptably plausible. A plausible conjecture in SF is always better writing than an implausible. I must repeat that Katrina in reality is evidence that this negative view of humanity is a politically correct assertion made in defiance of facts, as an avowal of a particular worldview. Therefore the shenanigans on Revolution are forced, artificial but artless, meaningless, boring. Obviously, this is my judgment. But it is directly related to judgments about humanity and art. You may disagree with these particular views, but both kinds of judgment are relevant. The success (or lack of it) in any kind of art is not separable from larger considerations about society, history, humanity.

[FluffyUnbound]

The writers have clearly established that absolute murderous chaos instantly broke out and only the baddest asses like Miles and his Sith apprentice Bass were able to cope. This strikes me as nasty minded nonsense.

Who said it was instant?

The simple fact of the matter is that without the transportation network in near-constant use, the population of North America is currently not in the right place(s) to be fed.

So it doesn't matter if people would want to band together and do mutual good to deal with the crisis. It doesn't matter how noble anyone is. Seven days after the transportation network goes down, there won't be enough resources to go around in any reasonably urban area. And that means that somebody's going to eat and somebody's going to starve. If you don't think the determination of who is who will be made with violence, you're crazy.

Personally, I think everyone would start out helpful. Barbecues on city streets. Restaurants giving away all their food before it spoils. Surgeons providing medical attention under mirrored sunlight. And that would last a solid week.

Then the food would run out in the most densely populated areas, and all of that would go away.

That has nothing to do with having a reactionary worldview. It's just a matter of math. There won't be enough resources. Some people will be willing and able to use violence to secure resources and some won't. Such a situation unfortunately favors those with fewer moral scruples.

[Star Wolf]

In fact they suggested it was not instant as the Marines were sitting in the quarters for weeks awaiting orders and the family waited before loading the red flyer wagon to escape their city/suburb with the magic amulet.

[Mister Fandango]

The show is just badly done, plain and simple.

Even looking at Chicago, the only damage that's been done that I can recall off the top of my head comes from the ridiculously overgrown plant life or crashed trains (why they crashed, I have no idea; though I could be misremembering a massive wreck) and airliners. All the windows and doors in the buildings we've seen were in place. There were no signs of large fires or riots. Cars, when we saw them, were just abandoned and maybe had their doors left open. But beyond that, no real signs of the chaos that should and would have occurred. Hell, the only violence we've seen in flashbacks have only involved one or two people.

The fact that the people at Monroe's base actually were just sitting pretty and doing nothing while "waiting for orders" is the biggest WTF of them all.

[Starbreaker]

NBC is claiming 29 million people watched Revolution.

[SG-17]

...... So steam power works now? Technology just jumped from late-18th century to mid-19th century level.

Where are the steam ships? Where are the steam tractors? Where are the factories? Steam power still existing allows for everything from mass production to airships to rudimentary tanks.

You've got steam wagons, steam rockets, steam tanks, steam cannons, steam ships, steam tractors. This whole world just went steampunk. How the hell did the world just collapse when steam power still works? We had a country that stretched from sea to bloody sea even before the telegraph!

Maybe this means that countries like the United Kingdom stayed relatively intact, isolated from the outside world, small area, still heavily uses steam engines.

[Star Wolf]

It all went on hold until enough corn came off of the farms that a great majority of the population was not tied down producing and moving it. Because while someone may wanted to invest in a steam engine that person who was not investing but taxing would eat their seed corn.

[Anwar]

Are there that many steam engines left around these days? I'd imagine that after the initial chaos and death, the sheer decimation of the populace and infrastructure across the now divided country would make it hard to make new steam engines.

[UssGlenn]

we can barely repair the working steam locomotives that are still running now. There are not very many places that have the set-up for that. And how many of them would still be available with trained workers after civilization collapses. So basically, The trains from the various steam train associations are available for them to use but it's only a matter of time before something breaks that they can't repair.

[SG-17]

Books aren't gone, most cities seem to be intact. Hell, Monroe is based in Independence Hall.

An organized force like the Monroe Republic should have been able to get steam power back into general use fairly quickly. There are plenty of steam locomotives still running today and there are entire museums dedicated to the preservation of steam engines. Steam locomotives and engines are fairly simple devices in all honestly. As long as they don't catastrophically fail, repair is not difficult.

It just seems out of the blue to me. This is the kind of thing that messes up shows for me. I'll still watch it, but it just won't feel right.