I did find the book to be silos within silos within silos, right down to individual people. Juliette’s feelings of being alone, Walker’s self imposed exhale, a major new character in the second half of Wool. One of the major themes is isolation, and the metaphors are written with a 2x4, as my high school English teacher used to say.
It’s the I Silo nation.
Yeah subtle it is not.
Not having read the books but having read the spoilers:
Summary
Is the authors view that curiosity and technological advancement actually are responsible for humankind possibly destroying itself? That the plan to outbreed such was a justified one. From the synopses it seems so, despite a fortuitous conclusion.
I need to preface this by saying I’m the one who read Ayn Rand and kinda missed the politics. Shakespeare isn’t advocating uncle killing, he just writes one of his characters to do that. Rand doesn’t really believe this stuff, it’s just part of the story, right? Oh, wow… Anyway, I was young.
I interpret the books more to have the theme (I think this is too generic to be a spoiler, but I’ll blur it anyway) we all have to come together to solve our problems; the divisions are what got us in trouble in the first place.
I caught the first episode of Season 2 last night. Not sure what time zone Apple uses for their new releases, it was available ~9-10 pm eastern for me.
A bit of a slow start this season but I am interested to see where things go.
I am curious why hundreds of people from the second silo left after the first few dropped dead so quickly? The first man out with the flag was dead at the top of the stairs. Perhaps they were forced out for attempting a coup?
As for the flag guy I think
I got the impression that they all just rushed out in droves, seeing freedom ahead. Even without suits it might take a minute for the atmosphere to kill them. And the people in the back probably kept pushing forward, not being able to see the folks starting to die. And of course with the door open it would start seeping in. Still, it did seem like a lot of bodies outside, probably for the dramatic effect.
I probably want to say more about the episode but I’m not sure what the spoiler policy is.
I will say at the end I was thinking “damn it Apple tv for making us wait a whole week for the next one!”
I thought the episode was OK. I did think it was (kind of by necessity) very dark. I was watching on my living room in a big relatively nice TV, and I could barely tell what was going on when she was first trying to cross the gap.
I do hope we get some clarification on how any lights are still on at all. Is she surprised? Does it seem impossible or is it expected due to some reserve backup minimal power things that would last for years, etc.
I guess it depends on how long it has been since the coup attempt. It looks like 90% of the Silo is flooded (which adds more questions*), which means that the generator is also down. Battery backups would only last so long without another energy source.
- Where did that much water come from? If the Silos are connected the pressure from 1000+ feet of water would blow out any door.
Re the spoilered question:
One possibility is that they really thought the Outside was habitable (note “LIES” scrawled on the viewscreen in the refectory). Or there may have been a sense that since the silo was dying anyway, “Whether or not the Outside is habitable, better to die Out than In.”
Since I’m spoilered anyway — am I the only one who thought the voice behind the door was female?
^QFT.
(Spoilers up through the most recent episode in this post).
What are people thinking of this season so far? I think it’s been a bit of a mixed bag. The definite highlight has been the interaction between Juliette and Steve Zahn as Solo. Really well done, so much sympathy for what he’s been through.
The politics-of-the-original-Silo stuff has been more mixed. For instance, I thought the scene where Bernard showed the VR glasses to the judge as she was dying was incredible. But most of the rest of that plotline is fairly nonsensical.
Still, definitely looking forward to each new episode.
The political intrigue is getting a little tired. The Juliette scenes in the other silo are much more interesting. I wish the story was her continuing to discover other silos and survivors rather than her trying to get back to the dreary one she escaped from.
I like the idea of it. It’s a different take on a dystopian future. But I don’t see where they can go with the current plot line that doesn’t just get to be more of the same. I can really do without Common and Tim Robbins for much longer.
I think that she is trying to get back before Silo 18 goes the way of Solo’s. He mentioned that a failed cleaning pushed everyone to want to go outside.
This season seems to be going very slowly so far. As with Season 1, I think that they could have fit everything into 8 episodes.
I’m enjoying it but not thinking too hard about it.
There’s been both good and bad in the past few episodes. On the good side, the actual storyline this past episode in particular was gripping. I loved seeing inside the Legacy, and Steve Zahn as Solo is fantastic.
On the other hand, we have the sudden return of baffling nonsensical physics or engineering… in particular the rocket made by people who can’t possibly have ever made a rocket before but somehow shot straight up the entire Silo.
Super eager to find out who is with Juliette and Solo in Silo 17.
I’ve been finding this show frustrating. On the one hand, the production values, acting, world building, and overall “tone”, for lack of a better word, are fanastic.
On the other hand, the characters are constantly acting in baffling and unjustifiable ways, with no respect for the way actual human interactions or motivations work.
For instance, from this most recent episode:
-the “family”, who has been living totally alone in a ruined silo for decades, see a new person, the first new person they’ve ever seen, and express zero curiosity of nay sort. Instead they immediately get into a fight with her. And then they bafflingly somehow think she might be able to open the vault, with absolutely no justification for why they might think that.
Meanwhile, in the other silo, the engineer lady meets a mysterious guy who she should assume is her enemy, casually decides to take him down to the most secret place she knows without asking why, and then, just… leaves him there.
And then he finds out the water is super shallow. Which somehow has NOT been established by the generations of Mechanical people who we know have been exploring the area.
Just baffling.
If at any point you’re about to give up on the show because of this, you may as well read my spoilers, especially the ones towards the bottom of that post. That’s all I can say without giving it away. If you want to just read my last spoiler paragraph, that will explain your frustration (while spoiling a major thematic point) without giving away any details.
(eta: I gave up on the show for this exact reason, and I’m glad I did after spoiling the books for myself. It’s a shame, because the production and world building really are top tier.)
I was thinking about this thread the other day and I’m a little surprised it’s dwindled down to basically no discussion. This season does feel dragged out, though. I feel like we could’ve done the first 9 episodes in 4 or 5. We’ve had repeats of the same conversation without any plot movement over and over again between Juliet and Solo and a lot of the rebellion plot. And there are very few likable or interesting characters among the people fighting the rebellion.
I do think Tim Robbins is putting in a really interesting performance and I find Bernard interesting. I think we’re supposed to hate him because he’s usually the main antagonist, and he’s done some bad shit. But the dude has crazy burdens. He has the lives of 10,000 people in his hands and he seems like he’s mostly losing, he’s burdened with a lot of knowledge that he desperately wishes he could share with people but can’t, he tried to talk to Mary because she’s the only person he could even talk to, but she blew him off.
I did feel some excitement when the algorithm spoke to Lucas Kyle at the door because that felt like real plot movement was happening. I think the legacy has probably been the most interesting part of this season. The final episode might be pretty good.
But it seems like made for streaming shows are hardly ever making it past 3 seasons nowadays, I don’t know why they’re dragging out the plot so much. There are 3 books of material and we’re spending the first two season on book one (from what I understand, I’ve never read them). It seems like we could quicken the pace a lot.
I’m certainly not giving up on it. It’s frustrating, but there’s enough good stuff to keep me watching. (I’ve read the books, but long enough ago that I only remember some overarching “spoilers”).
I just watched the finale… And I’m screaming my head off because I cannot believe that I’m gonna have to wait another what, six 912 months years? Maddening…
Although watching the season has been unbelievably irritating because I haven’t been able to “watch” it barely at all seeing as it’s ridiculously dark. I’m sure it’s not quite as dark on televisions, I watch it on my iPad, but I recently was able to watch it on my Roku and it wasn’t that much better. Crazymaking. It’s like Game of Thrones all over again…
Lots of movement this episode, pretty entertaining, but not much in the way of answers or advancement on the central mysteries. Glad the down below people weren’t complete morons. Watching Bernard being a dick and getting humbled was fun.
I don’t like that we didn’t see the rest of the conversation that the voice in the tunnel had with Lukas. When Lukas tells Bernard, and Bernard becomes distraught and then goes outside, he seems to imply that it’s just knowledge that everyone in the silo was going to die no matter what he did. But that can’t be what it is, because the algorithm gave Mary Meadows the same information and clearly the silo wasn’t being considered for being exterminated then. She and Lukas both quit instantly, and Bernard became distraught upon learning whatever it was.
Bernard, when meeting Julia in the tunnel, talks about how it was all out of his hands, out of anyone’s hands, but IIRC Bernard already knew there’s some sort of command silo and it has the power to kill everyone, so I don’t know what he would’ve been told that would’ve made him so distraught about it. I may be wrong on this point though because I can’t remember specifically when we learn that.
So I’m not sure if it’s weak writing – the secret is that someone else can kill everyone in the silo, which Bernard already knows – or if there’s a better reason (something still secret to the audience) but they’re dragging it out. Either way, I don’t like it.
I think it would have to be something like “we know what ruined the environment and it will never be habitable ever again and these silos will only last a few more hundred years at most, at which point humanity will be extinct” or something along those lines to cause such despair.
I thought it was funny when the algorithm told Bernard to GTFO but his wife could stay. She’s definitely the brains of their family.
I don’t like that they brought out the flash of a vibrant world during the power shutdown last season which we discussed a lot earlier in the thread. They’re using it as a reason that the crowd decides to go outside, but they didn’t explain how that flash happened, and as we discussed, it really doesn’t make any sense. So bringing it back to drive the plot without explaining it is a massive plot hole.
I don’t think the little flashback/preview to the next season was as compelling as they think. Maybe it means more to book readers. But it didn’t really tell us much or make me wonder where things are going with that plot line. It seems that the dirty bomb may just be a cover up for something else (maybe the proto version of whatever ends up scorching the Earth?) because the reporter mentions “if” it was really a dirty bomb, and the guy with the futuristic geiger counter said no one really triggers it, suggesting there may not really have been radiological contamination.
I need to re-watch it, but I think solo said something to the effect of when they blocked the poison in his silo and people went outside, they didn’t die at first. Is that evidence that the outside isn’t really poisoned, and the blast of some sort of vapor they do when someone is going out of the airlock is the actual poison that kills people that go outside? That would make sense if his silo blocked it and therefore people didn’t die when going to the surface, but he was vague about how the people who went outside died. Starvation? How would he know?