I think it has the potential to be a good show. It seemed to try a little hard in the first episode, but most pilots do that, especially since you basically have to introduce the entire cast of characters at once.
One thing that strikes me as a major nit–this is set 10 years after a nuclear airburst, the pulse resulting from which scrambled the computers. However, computers, beepers, cell phones, and the like still play a major role in society. How long would the effects of a pulse truly last? It seems a little odd to me that the world is plunged into a huge depression by the utter scrambling of the computers, yet 10 years later computers are still in heavy use.
I was thinking about the whole “pulse” thing in relation to the jumbled tech in Dark Angel.
Pulse would:
Wipe financial institutions (e.g., Fight Club)
Kill most manufacturing (all the robot based stuff, at * least) for a very long time - this is presumably why they’re still driving 2000 model cars
Kill all advanced R&D
FUBAR much of the military (most of the air force, all advanced weapons control systems for the Army/Navy, ICBMs and most missile systems)
[On second thought, scratch some of that. Presumably the Pentagon, NORAD and such are hardened against nuclear attack - hopefully this would include shielding against the resulting EMP.]
As for computers and stuff, I’d need a CS major to help me. But I believe that computer chips are hard coded to perform certain operations. The PSX modchip, for instance, contains about 4 lines of code and does nothing but answer the region checks. Therefore, I believe CPUs should still be able to process and that anything that doesn’t have a flashable BIOS (which presumably means it’s similarly hardwired) should still work properly, assuming they can be demagnetized (which might/should happen when you run a current through it, redistributing electrons?). If this theory’s true, pagers should almost definitely work, along with some (older) models of cell phones.
Of course, since your computer’s BIOS would be hosed, you’d have to get a new one from overseas (which is presumably not “pulsed”) and since most OSes are on CD anyway, you this should be able to allow you to get your computer working fairly painlessly. And assuming the telecoms (not to mention the electricity) can get their equipment working within, say, five years, the level of connectivity and tech shown in DA is theoretically possible.
The depression screws me up a little, though. I mean, any time there’s a great deal of (re)building or other forms of manufacturing that needs to be done, hasn’t there been, historically, a financial boom? I mean, I remember a sound bite from history class that “war is good for the economy,” and this seems like a similar scenario. Although, since the financial institutions were reportedly wiped… Eh, enough of this, back to work for me…
Oh, and for the record, I taped DA, watched the debates.
I’m on the west coast so I got to see both. I thought it was pretty good. Remember when X-files first came out? No one really watched it or seemed to like it until about season 3 or 4. Ok so there wasn’t much hype for the series premiere of Xf, but still…
Saw the debates first, then the pundits for 30 minutes or so, then Ms. Alba. It was funny. I thought they implied a mostly western states EM pulse, which would be bad but with manufacturing, etc. on the East Coast I think we would recover within a few years. Plus with the world economy the way it is (multinationals from just about every country own manufacturing sites, etc. in just about every country) there would be a lot more self interest in rebuilding. Also, in the interest of survival, when the infrastructure fail you spread out, away from cities into the more rural areas. Just a thought. I still enjoyed it. The characters are interesting, although the bad guys seem kind of cardboard.
The first thing I found odd was that, in twenty years, people are going to be using the exact same slang words that they are now.
Jessica is quite the dish, but I’ve seen better performances on Pirates of the Caribbean.
I was a little confused about the EMP thing too…in much of the show, it seemed like life was pretty much business as usual (although, in the beginning, there were more of the standard “post-apocalypse” scenes than there were towards the end).
Personally, I don’t think it’ll last (but then, I thought the same thing of “Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place”).
and, yeah, caught both the debates and the show.
I thought it was OK, I didn’t have a problem with the future being similar to our current use of technology (It’s called suspension of disbelief, folks). I think she might provide a decent follow up to Buffy, or at least give me a viable option to plain ol’ Angel. I also liked the judicious use of Matrixish effects. They could have easily pushed that too far.
I gather that a terrorist EMP bomb exploded over the continental US, wiping out “everything east of the Rockies” that was electronic. This destroyed the US financially- all our money ceased to exist. Presumably this left us at a big disadvantage relative to Europe, the Pacific Rim, etc. and the US never really recovered lost ground.
