The Walking Dead Season 3

[DarthTom]

Enterprise is Great wrote:

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‘Walking Dead’ Return Draws 10.9 Million, Sets More Basic Cable Ratings Records

What's even more impressive about that is they achieved those ratings without Dish Network who dropped AMC earlier this year. Dish Network on its own has 10 million customers.

[Gotham Central]

Scout101 wrote:

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They generally do so because it's over a shorter time span, though. When you just need to show the infection and then a week or a month of running panic, the long-term issues don't come up. And you usually just either kill off the main characters, or the surviving 2-3 head off into the distance in a car, or a boat, or whatever. It's somewhat rare that you're dealing with a situation several months, or in the case of TWD, about a year after the initial event.

You're right, though, usually a lot of hand-waving about the How and Why of it. Resident Evil took about as good a crack at it as any, but even then, it gets pretty fuzzy when there's a large group of zombies that should have to eat, but don't want to eat each other. They had the virus re-energizing the cells, which in the short term, is fine.

With TWD, you've got the long time frame, and even seasonal changes to deal with. Starts getting tougher to ignore those sorts of things in the long term. Maybe they can go a month without food by burning through every reserve in the body, but a year later? You show the zombies decomposing a bit, but in the Gerogia summer heat, with the decomposing gases and no way to cool? BLAM!

I appreciate what we've been getting (minus the season long 'search' for the girl on the farm that just DRAGGED), but I wouldn't mind more mythology on this one. I ENJOYED the CDC part. For the most part, we've stayed with Rick's perspective, so we don't know much of anything about what happened, how it happened, if there's anyone anywhere able to do anything to help. We woke up in Zombieland, fully established. I'd like at least some more bits and pieces filled in at some point, even if we don't get the full story.

Things like warp drive are easier to gloss over, it's basically just magic because you don't know anything about any of the components (and believed to be physically impossible, give or take, so you can just push the 'i believe' button and move on). With this, you know what the human body is made of, how it reacts to various conditions, what it takes to fuel it, heal it, rest it, etc. It's a tougher leap of faith, because it isn't asking us to believe in magic, it's asking us to ignore things we actually KNOW stuff about.

It's cool if you show zombies having to eat the flesh of the living to gain energy and survive. And maybe there's something there that they can't get from other dead people, which is why they don't eat each other. But then you gotta show them eating, can't leave them dormant, or wandering around a pharmacy for a year without consequences. Can't bake them in the sun without cooling off, sweating, or drinking water/blood, and then not have them looking like a squishy mummy later on.

I'm enjoying the show a lot, and know they're stuck with certain premises that they're playing to, just saying it's harder to suspend disbelief when the subject is something we know more about. Zombies are a great horror subject (and why the Borg were so great when they came out originally), but just don't hold up to a long-term project without more explaination or eye-rolling disbelief.

Seriously, you're arguing about the scientific plauseability of ZOMBIES

Dude don't do that. Tehz Magik!

Zombies are automatically exempt from any known laws about temperature and decomposition because by definition, dead things don't get up an walkaround without some serious external intervention that changes the rules.

[Cutter John]

Gotham Central wrote:

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Noise is also why settlements inevitably attract roamers. Civilization means noise, which will in the long run produce a herd.

Hmmmm, in which case I may have to add "hang a bunch of pots and pans in a tree before heading off in another direction" to my zombie survival tips list.

[Sindatur]

Cutter John wrote:

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Hmmmm, in which case I may have to add "hang a bunch of pots and pans in a tree before heading off in another direction" to my zombie survival tips list.

That would be a great strategy, unless they're coming from the direction you run off in, in which case, you just rang the Dinner Bell

If you know exactly where all the Zombies in your negihborhood are though, it could be very effective

[Mark_Nguyen]

I think another element that differentiates this episode with all the others that come before it, is that the group is actually on the offensive for the first time in the TV show. They've had reasons to head into the jaws of the horde before, but this is the first time they have been actively engaged in killing zombies for a purpose, rather than offing the ones that get in the way of a respirator or pregnancy test or missing girl or whatever. Having a goal like that makes us sympathize with them and want to see them win, in a more visceral, kinetic way than we have thus far. It's quite a change, actually; one we'll see more of later (per the comics) and something I hope they can keep up with believable quality as we see here.

Mark

[RJDiogenes]

Gotham Central wrote:

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Zombies are automatically exempt from any known laws about temperature and decomposition because by definition, dead things don't get up an walkaround without some serious external intervention that changes the rules.

Yeah, exactly. Whatever is animating them is also preserving them. That's how I see it, too.

[MPH]

Alpha Romeo wrote:

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Don't forget that there is a lot less time that has gone by on the show than IRL.

Been about a year now since the zombie outbreak the corpses should be rotting now and think the series probably only has 2 seasons left before it starts getting implausible.

[sojourner]

I'm going with part of the virus's changes is to make the zombie body more resistant to decomposition.

[Mark_Nguyen]

Remember that there are most likely multiple forces at work here. Many in the comics fandom like a theory that a zombie bite contains and transfers some incredibly rapid and resilient bacteria or virus that will kill you very quickly via fever, etc. Then, ANOTHER virus already present will activate upon death (or possibly cessation of brain/neural activity), resulting in reanimation. It's a one-two punch.

Mark

[SG-17]

sojourner wrote:

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I'm going with part of the virus's changes is to make the zombie body more resistant to decomposition.

I also think that the virus releases a toxin into the saliva of its hosts so bites become fatal. Like Komodo Dragon's but much more severe.

[propita]

Something's gotta be pretty resilient if the dead are still walking around!

What if it's closer to the Vashta Nerada idea? A bacteria that infests every cell and forces the movement? But you'd still have the problem of feeding the bacteria...if there's no fresh food and it can't eat itself (or the dead), why doesn't the bacteria die? Maybe the sitting zombie was dormant (that is, the bacteria inside the zombie was dormant making the zombie dormant), but then wouldn't more of the zombies be dormant by now?

[the G-man]

sojourner wrote:

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I'm going with part of the virus's changes is to make the zombie body more resistant to decomposition.

Yet we see decomposition, going all the way back to the first episode and "bicycle girl."

[Caligula]

Something I've been thinking about ever since "Better Angels".... Excusing for a moment what would surely be continuously escalating hostility in the Rick/Lori/Shane triangle, I wonder if much of what is to come in Season 3 would still go down if Shane had survived up to this point.

Note: I still think he died at exactly the right point in the series, from a dramatic standpoint, and in one of my favorite episodes thus far, but I can't help speculating on what his approach to the situation would be, and if certain characters' deaths would be prevented with Shane's presence.

[Scout101]

Gotham Central wrote:

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Seriously, you're arguing about the scientific plauseability of ZOMBIES

Dude don't do that. Tehz Magik!

Zombies are automatically exempt from any known laws about temperature and decomposition because by definition, dead things don't get up an walkaround without some serious external intervention that changes the rules.

Lame copout at best. If they just started flying, you'd have a problem with it, so there IS a limit to what you'll accept as 'normal' when it comes to this already imaginary creature. Seems my limit is just a little closer to what actually exists, whereas your limit involves more 'magiks' from the get-go. Certain conceits are required, I just like it to make a little more sense, I guess.

From what you're saying, though, you'd have no leg to stand on if you bitched when they started flying...

[Cutter John]

I like Max Brooks explaination that along with jellifying the victims blood, the 'zombie virus' toxifies the victims cells, rendering it toxic to living creatures including flies, and the bacteria that causes decomposition.