The Man in the High Castle

[DarthPipes]

I didn't see a thread for it so I started this one.

Amazon debuted 13 pilots today for free, one of them being an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. I just finished watching it and I have to say it's off to a very good start.

I'm not one to start a thread so if anyone else wants to pick this up, feel free...

 

[Icemizer]

I thought it was ok. I found the Nazis were poorly thought out and all over the place. Brown shirts, black uniforms, grey uniforms did they just pull costumes off the rack willy nilly? Also found the music to be a less than outstanding. But the story was good enough that I would watch if it went to series.

 

[JeffinOakland]

TMITHC is my favorite PKD novel.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I love the novel and I really, really want to watch this, but because I'm living in Belgium right now, Amazon has blocked my access.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

I thought it was excellent. Very well done. I haven't read the novel, I care nothing about the correct uniforms for the Nazi soldiers or the music (c'mon, it's a TV show, not a feature film)...all I want is to be engrossed in and entertained by a story. And I was by this. And I was completely taken in by the premise. Completely.

I hope this gets picked up by Amazon, because I want to see more of this alternate world. I'll also read the book because of it. So all in all, great job Amazon for giving compelling stuff a shot that would otherwise be a neutered 3 part miniseries on SyFy.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I enjoyed it, and I'd definitely like to see more. The acting and dialogue was kind of wooden, but the premise and the world of the story remains fascinating. It's been a long time since I read the book, but they seemed to touch on the major themes and references while obviously reinterpreting some things to fit a TV show, but in a good way. The production design is well handled and I loved the opening credits. Hopefully this gets picked up by Amazon.

 

[DarthPipes]

The critical reviews for this show have been really good so I think that bodes well for a pick-up. Apparently viewer response has been great so far.

One of the changes I think was very smart is changing The Grasshopper Lies Heavy from a book to a film. Works much better for a visual medium.

 

[RAMA]

Very excited about this project. I just saw the promo on facebook yesterday and ill be watching it later!

RAMA

 

[Yoda]

It was pretty good. So this was being developed for Syfy at some point right? And they went with garbage like Ascension?

Maybe I shouldn't completely trash Syfy until after I watch the 12 Monkeys premiere a little later. I have high hopes for that.

 

[Lexx Shrapnel]

So out of the 13 pilots how many will be continued?

 

[RAMA]

The title sequence is getting some notice:

http://io9.com/man-in-the-high-cast...utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

[Icemizer]

I found the title sequence dull, flat and unmoving. The choice of song also bothered me as it probably would not have been written in the alternate timeline of the show. I felt it just started the show on a slow and uninteresting note.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

So based on my immense enjoyment of the pilot, I got the book on Kindle. I've never read a PKD book before. And, well...this might be hard going. He uses comma splicing and sentence fragments. A lot. These work in moderation, but using them too much disturbs the flow of the writing IMO.

Frank Herbert wrote somewhat the same way, and that was part of the reason I only made it halfway through the "Dune" books.

I'll try my best to ignore it and enjoy this book. Hopefully it's not constantly distracting.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

I found the title sequence dull, flat and unmoving. The choice of song also bothered me as it probably would not have been written in the alternate timeline of the show. I felt it just started the show on a slow and uninteresting note.

So you don't like the music, you think the Nazi uniforms are inconsistent (even though it makes sense that different jobs or ranks/positions would require different uniforms, and maybe things have evolved since it's 1962 and not 1942?), and now the title sequence bothers you too?

Jeez, just fast-forward past the title sequence if there are more episodes. Or don't watch the thing.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You're at a party and you complain to your friends about the fat girl who you know you're going to sneak off with as soon as you're drunk enough, so that your friends won't suspect that you're into her for real and mock you for low standards, and more so that if you're caught underneath her, you have already laid the foundations to argue that it was a one time thing you're doing for science.

(I should be describing a social sequence that happened in the early 1950s, but I'm probably not.)

Outward expressions of hate is often camouflage for internal fires of desires that are not appreciated/recognized by your immediate social group.

(If I was ever actually talking about real people, I still hope it's people from the 1950s.)

Self loathing and denial, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Good to see Joel De La Funte get work in TV again (he was Paul Wang on Space: Above and Beyond back in the 1990's.)

I've never been a fan of this kind of sidewise history, for a lot of real-life historical reasons (there's no way that Germany would have been able to conquer the USA and Canada, even if they managed to link up with Japan; Russia would have united with the USA to kick butt of both of them, and Hitler was full of crap as a strategist. Also, I'm partial to the argument put forth by the author of Moon of Ice which posits that the Nazi vision was for a unified Europe under the control of Germany-which is also the outcome of the novel/TV movie Fatherland.) Still, I suppose it'is good to have this kind of sci-fi show on TV, even if it isn't the space opera we're used to-and one based on a famous sci-fi novel, to boot.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You're not thinking in atomic war terms.

Whosoever is bombed first, surrenders hours later unconditionally.

There was no foot war lasting years across the States.

America surrenders before a single panzer has touched US soil.

It's really just a question of which city was removed from play.

It wasn't till the cold war that leaders were trained to not give a shit about the world ending in fire.

"Fuck you. Bomb me you ####. Fucking bomb me you giant pussy."

Khrushchev to Kennedy 1962.

I can see America surrendering immediately after being bombed once. (No offence.)

Russia on the other hand, under a psychopath like Stalin, Germany would have run out of bombs, and he still wouldn't have given Hitler the time of day.

How many Bombs did the Nazis have?

America bluffed Japan into surrender in the real world. If they had known that it was going to take another 4 to 6 months for the allies to make their third bomb, the terms of Japanese surrender would have been very different or nonexistant.

After hypothetically destroying New York and Kansas with maybe 5 bombs in early 1944, did they stop and ask for surrender because they are not monsters, or because like America vs. Japan in the real world the alt Nazis had spent their load?

 

[sttngfan1701d]

If Hitler had gotten the Suez Canal and access to the Middle Eastern oil fields, and the Russia campaign had gone a little differently and the Germans had equipped properly and captured Moscow and then gotten to the oil in Siberia...who knows what would've happened? And if the battle for Midway had gone to Japan?

The pilot alludes that the War lasted until 1952, mentions that the "H-bomb flattened Washington" and alludes to Germans landing at Va Beach...but I agree with Guy...if the Germans had gotten the A-bomb and H-bomb first, and had taken out Washington DC with a bomb, and if they captured Hampton Roads or bombed the Norfolk Naval base in a Pearl Harbor style attack and maybe flattened a few more cities (like New York) with A-bombs or H-bombs bombs, the US would've surrendered, just like Japan did in the real world.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

From what I recall from the book, a different president was in charge of the US (I think FDR was assassinated prior to the war) and his actions (or rather inaction) was a decisive point as well.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

^ Just got the book and I have to find time to read it...I'm still only a few pages in and currently struggling with PKD's writing style, but I'll push on.

Going by the pilot, though, the alternate-universe Nazis have seriously superior technology, and of course, the pilot only references the Axis dividing the US, not the world (as the book did, I believe?). Perhaps if the show is actually made they will flesh all of that out and reference it later. I hope they do, anyway. The world-building is what engrosses me the most about this sort of thing.