Me too. I'm an animal person, so any time a show like this involves more animals I'm happy.Indeed. I love having the horses around in general. I wonder what that's like on the set-- and how it affects the show's budget.
Spoilers The Walking Dead - Season 9 discussion and spoilers
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Technically speaking "The Walking Dead" has the most amount of animals of any tv show. I think zombies would be classified as a form of animal life at some point. They might have old human bodies but they have instincts more along the line of a animal. Only thing is the means in which to feed themselves and also create offspring just happens to be the same.
I assume they do have something close to thoughts seeing as how they must have a means of sending the needed impules to walk and even make choices such as how one zombie might join a herd while others just wonder about always searching for food. Some of them seem to even take rest breaks like the army zombie in the pilot who was just sitting there doing nothing , when Rick drops in. This the first episode of this season you had the guy in suit and tie just sitting around doing nothing. You also have the girl who picked up the Teddy Bear or how Morgan's wife seemed to know she use to live in their old house.
Jason
^^In The Walking Dead prose novels (set in comic continuity) zombies do retain muscle memory. In one case, a zombie was able to recognize a gun as a threat and stopped approaching the character holding the gun.
Can you give a link to some article or a quote?
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/l...-dead-showrunner-angela-kang-explains-1155577
From a more recent Angela Kang interview:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/l...-dead-showrunner-angela-kang-explains-1155577
From a more recent Angela Kang interview:
One thing that I've always found weird about TWD is that there aren't more animals. You'd expect to see a lot of feral animals, especially dogs and cats, but also farm animals. Plus you'd think survivors would like to have dogs around as an early warning system-- and they could probably also be trained to lead Zombies away from people.
That's something that they really haven't explored too much, unfortunately.
That sounds like more than muscle memory to me. It sounds like there's still some level of consciousness in there.
With food in short supply, most nomadic groups might avoid keeping animals, as they need as much care as humans, which explains why Woodbury, the Savior compounds (and outposts), and Terminus did not keep animals.
If I were a betting man, I would point to cowardly Kirkman as the reason zombie memory did not pop up beyond season one, where that first season (where the doll-carrying girl & Morgan's wife appeared) under Darabont--played in a logical fashion, which made the strange qualities and gravity of the outbreak feel real. Any plot or element that might force writers to answer "why" left with Darabont, and that's the one great failing of The Walking Dead.
Just caught up with the last two episodes. The first one didn't do so much for me, but the one that aired this week was better.
I've always loved Michonne, so seeing her having a cosy chat with Negen was a lot of fun. I'm also loving how much she loves Judith, and clearly sees her as her daughter.
I also enjoyed Gabriel and Jadis, and look forward to seeing where that thread is going.
Rick's injury was so-so.
The preview for next week seems to promise a huge hero exit, so time will tell.
I've always loved Michonne, so seeing her having a cosy chat with Negen was a lot of fun. I'm also loving how much she loves Judith, and clearly sees her as her daughter.
I also enjoyed Gabriel and Jadis, and look forward to seeing where that thread is going.
Rick's injury was so-so.
The preview for next week seems to promise a huge hero exit, so time will tell.
I just gotta ask - how would muscle memory allow a cognitive reaction to someone holding a gun. Your muscles don't recognize anything. The recognize a gun as 'dangerous to you' takes a cognitive reaction.
It was on Talking Dead, which is a TV show. Unfortunately I can't link to a TV show that aired in the summer. Whatever, we'll know for certain on Sunday.
"Muscle memory" is the term used in the book. Don't blame me for repeating what was written.
Yeah, I it is a bit surprising we don't see more animals running around.
Dogs could also help to fight off the zombies.
I don't know about that. The nomadic groups are essentially in the same position as the early humans who originally domesticated animals; the main difference is the ubiquitous threat of the Zombies. This may make the use of horses problematic, but I think dogs would be very useful and more than worth the resources needed to keep them around, especially since they would not only be useful in dealing with the Zombies, but also in hunting for food.
I wouldn't call it a failing, since it's a concept that's very common, if not universal, in the ZA genre. The inexplicable nature of the ZA is part of the horror. But it's definitely weird that it's not discussed more, or that people don't worry that the virus will spread to animals, et cetera. If it were me, I'd have some ideas about why it happened and what the implications are, but in Walking Dead it's already been established that the lack of explanation is an integral part of the premise.
True, dogs are fast and nimble so they're unlikely to get cornered like horses do. They could help with finding food and keeping watch. And think of how useful they would be any time a herd needed to be diverted. The next spinoff should be called Dogs Versus The Walking Dead.
Dogs not only require as much care as humans, but TWD established that the walkers eat animals (e.g. Rick's horse in season one), so I would not use dogs as some force against zombies, as they would face the same risk of being bitten / eaten alive as humans. Further, unless you have well-trained dogs, their barking and general rambunctious behavior would attract walkers--and enemies of the two-legged kind.
Well, its not so much a premise as it was Kirkman not wanting to be forced to even entertain the most pressing, obvious question anyone in a zombie apocalypse would have. Darabont was primarily responsible for the entire CDC plotline of season one, so while involved, the question was meant to be a part of the show's narrative to a degree. It was only after Darabont's controversial exit that the series--with Kirkman as its cheerleader--made all characters stupid, or clearly doing things that were as clueless as one could imagine, such as Milton's New Age-y experiments. Even if the living know that they are all infected, no one would just shove that aside and not try to find out its origins in the hope of developing a cure. Kirkman and co running from that makes just about every character suffer from a short attention span, and forget what happens when someone near you turns when you're sleeping, distracted, etc..
None of the characters are scientists, and they've been pretty focused on just trying to survive, so I can see these specific characters not really being that interested in trying to find the cause of the outbreak or trying to cure it.
As a viewer, I'm not really that concerned either, the show isn't about them trying to end the zombie apocalypse, it's simply about them trying to survive.
As for dogs and horses using up resources, they don't really seem to be struggling that bad right now.
These kinds of things are always going to have both good and bad things, and I'd personally say that the good with both dogs and horse would outweigh the bad.
They don't seem to be struggling for resources as much now that they are sharing between all the different communities, so sharing them with animals doesn't seem to be to much of a problem right now. They've also got plenty of people between all the different groups to help take care of them, although they did lose at least one of their horse people in the premiere.
As a viewer, I'm not really that concerned either, the show isn't about them trying to end the zombie apocalypse, it's simply about them trying to survive.
As for dogs and horses using up resources, they don't really seem to be struggling that bad right now.
Sending a dog after them, really wouldn't be that different from a person going after them with a knife, and a dog could probably do a lot more damage then one person could. Most of them would also be smaller and harder to catch.
It wouldn't really be that different from kids out running around, or people using using tools and equipment.
These kinds of things are always going to have both good and bad things, and I'd personally say that the good with both dogs and horse would outweigh the bad.
They don't seem to be struggling for resources as much now that they are sharing between all the different communities, so sharing them with animals doesn't seem to be to much of a problem right now. They've also got plenty of people between all the different groups to help take care of them, although they did lose at least one of their horse people in the premiere.
^I really enjoyed the first three episodes with them driving around and you'd see a random zombie milling around in the background. I also really liked how the zombies really got the drop on everybody during the riots. I would have liked to have seen more scenarios like that, and not them having to fight off random tyrannical guy for the umpteenth time.
I wouldn't say that dogs require as much care as humans-- they generally receive it in our civilized society, but we're talking about people who are reduced to the Hunter-Gatherer level. I wouldn't suggest using dogs as a force against the Zombies, since they really wouldn't be capable of inflicting the type of head injury needed to destroy them, but they could be used to draw the Zombies away, which would frequently come in handy-- and being generally smaller and more nimble than people, I don't they would have the same risk of being eaten. In any case, they don't turn when bitten and are more expendable than people in this context. As for rambunctious behavior, they can definitely be trained to be quiet, and they would arguably be even more effective against human enemies, because they can hurt human enemies.
That's the part that nags at me a bit. I don't mind that there is no answer and that nobody has the means to look for a cure, but people really should be talking about it and theorizing about it. They've had a bunch of these tin Hitlers to deal with, but never a religious fanatic preaching that the ZA is God's Punishment-- which is especially weird considering their location.
I loved that. It had an atmosphere that really hearkened back to Night of the Living Dead. There was one scene where Madison was in a car and saw a shadowy figure stumbling through the park-- homeless drunk or man-eating Zombie? Could have been either.
Its still unrealistic for everyone to never address the cause or seek a cure when it poses a constant danger. As recent as season 8, the mansion was under siege from zombies with mass casualties when one injured person died. The same high number of losses occurred in season 4 when teenaged Patrick turned overnight and set a zombie outbreak in motion at the prison. In the WD world, few to none are going to have the means to sleep alone or lock themselves away for protection (utterly impractical), so they are always at risk from someone known or unknown turning on them. Not trying to understand/stop the plague is the opposite of self preservation, and simply not the way people think when a population is hit with some disease outbreak.
A dog is not going to kill a walker. All it can do is bite body parts, but never kill the brain, so using dogs in that regard would be wasted effort / placing dogs in harm's way for no reason.
...and when the humans are low on food or themselves (from any source), how are dogs going to get regular meals? Where is it coming from? Hunting? If the humans are suffering from a lack of food, I would imagine some of the same food sources (the kind a Daryl would hunt for) would as scare for dogs.
Dogs would not go very far against a Saviors type of threat, where a few or a large group are armed with guns. A dog is not going to know to leap to take cover during a fight, or retreat until a better window of opportunity comes around. It would just end with a lot of dead dogs.
One does not need to be a "religious fanatic" to consider that a global plague raising the dead as cannibals--something with no historical/biological precedent--might be final judgement of some kind. My point is whatever the cause--whether biological or theological in nature--has been kicked out of all WD dialogue because Kirkman is too cowardly to even hint at a cause. That's his monumental weakness as a writer, when others were not afraid to explore the "why" at the same time as telling a horror survival tale. For the best example, take Richard Matheson, who actually created theories and medical reasons for the vampire plague of his seminal masterpiece I Am Legend; he didn't shy away from it, or have Neville conveniently stop thinking about the one thing threatening his life and future. That was a brilliant way of mixing real human behavior with survival horror, yet under the same circumstances, Kirkman, et al, ran away screaming from Darabont initially taking the series in that logical direction.
Me to. IMO the National Guard coming in and Martial Law taking place should have been the end of season 1 instead of a good chunk of season 1. Season 2 is living under Martial Law. Season 3 is all about trying to get out of LA that has been taking over completely by the Zombies. Season 4 is the boat to find a island or someplace safe. Season 5 which should proably be the final season is them making it to Europe and finding out the entire world has fallen and they have to deal with your first true Walking Dead Style Bad Guys group. Or Maybe the last link to the old government were you have a group of scientist working with military types that are trying to save the world but not by stoping the zombies. They already know that battle is lost but by deactivating Nukes across the globe so a nuclear wasteland doesn't happen in addition to the zombies thus giving any people left a fighting chance of someday rebuilding the world.
Jason
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