So was Marshall/Matheson/whoever the big bad leader of the militia is, he was the father of the family on Terra Nova.
The muzzleloader thing makes no sense, all the tens or hundreds of thousands of rounds of modern ammo would work fine 15 years later. 50 years later probably. Firearms do not need electricity to function. Plus the leader of the group that killed the father had a very functional modern semi-automatic pistol. Maybe the militia purposefully withholds the more capable weapons from the low-level soldiers? The big bad leader seems to be a hardass, branding his soldiers and all.
ETA: I liked the show fairly well. It reminds me of Terra Nova a good bit with the “too clean” appearance, shifting alliances, and family-first sensibilities.
Ha ha ha! That MUST be it. Her character must have annoyed me on Terra Nova to start with. I swear, she barely got a sentence out in Revolution and I wanted to kick her in the face.*
Actually, I didn’t mind Terra Nova early on. As it continued though, it started to suck (more?). It had potential, it really did, but it was all… shat to hell…
Take care and happy viewing!
*Attentive posters may have noticed I mention kicking people in the face a little too often. Specifically, Zooey Deschanel. Rest assured I have no actual plans to kick anyone in the face, I just have psychotic irritation issues.
What was that show a couple years ago, Flash Forward? Now that had an intriguing pilot. I lost track of it when I left on a trip and it was cancelled by the time I returned. It wasn’t great but it had the potential to be good. This one = no potential. Cancelled by mid-season?
I watched just to see if they’d have any sort of science-fiction concept to explain their premise. I was disappointed.
They didn’t even offer an explanation for why society fell apart so badly. That one should have been easy: If transportation failed, the cities would become death traps. There’s not enough food or other resources stored to supply most of the population, so if it stopped being shipped in, I’d expect a huge die-off. Which would lead to some disease problems among the survivors, that would kill another bunch. By the time society reorganized itself, the only survivors would be those in rural areas and the small number who found a way out of the urban areas before things got too bad.
But that would seem a bit too dark and horrible to the network, probably. And would still fail to explain why they weren’t using steam and water power.
I didn’t watch because I couldn’t get behind the premise of the show. I could buy all electrical devices in use being rendered non-functional for some reason. But I simply cannot buy that all electricity has stopped working. I’m not the brightest bulb in the world but I bet I could figure out a way to make a steam engine generate electricity. I better patent that idea. I don’t see how any device could prevent some of those old Briggs & Stratton small engines from working. They don’t even have spark plugs.
Maybe it wouldn’t be enough, but I can’t imagine the government not “raiding” every railroad museum and tourist railroad with a working steam engine – oil-fired, coal-fired, whatever – and pressing them into service (draft the people who run them now for the skilled & semi-skilled labor) moving grain & coal trains into the cities and operating fast messenger trains since telecommunications don’t work.
And how is the government going to coordinate these nationwide activities with any efficiency in a world completely lacking in electricity.
President in D.C.: Hey, you peons. Each one of you take one of these letters and start walking to all the railroad museums on the way telling them to give you their trains. Feel free to draft anybody around who knows how to run them. Oh, and shove all the trains currently clogging up the right of ways off the tracks as you go.
Then take the trains and tell the stores and farmers to give you all their food so that we can efficiently distribute it around a nation which essentially has no monetary system any more. They’ll do that because you have this letter from me, and they’ll probably be looking for something to do anyway since making sure they’re families eat and don’t get killed in the panic will have become boring by the time you get there.
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I think that maintaining anything like social order, in the short term, will be very difficult. Especially since we don’t yet know the extent of whatever physical rules changed. Gunpowder still works but maybe only up to a certain size of explosion. Maybe the gas laws have changed so that once a certain pressure is reached they get squishier and pressure increases no more. Ridiculous yes, but then so is that idea that electricity could just be turned off.
Another thing that did strike me as unlikely was that it doesn’t seem to me that 15 years without maintenance would result in the structural failure of the Golden Gate Bridge but maybe I’m wrong.
I noticed those also. For the last, yes, candles get damn expensive real fast. True, parafin candles are kinda cheap, but those are gone by week 12, let alone year 12. Beeswax is hard to find and expensive.
Not to mention- why the hell doesnt geeky guy or medico/brit gal carry a weapon? I mean, at least a freaken hiking staff?:rolleyes:
How does Medico/brit gal keep her accent for 12 years?
Why did the villain just walk off and leave Dad there bleeding out? Either finish him off or take him with you. How can he be so sure dad is gonna die?
Really- walking into Chicago and the* very first person* they ask turns out to be the Uncle?:dubious: I mean, I thought it was gonna be a quest.
Hunting? Deer? Howso? If the Overkill Hypothesis is right, 50K humans armed with spears made hundreds of megafauna species go extinct in under 1000 years.
Since guns still work, how the HELL are there still deer or anything bigger than a field mouse alive after 300 million dudes armed with 200 million guns hunt them for food for a decade?:dubious:
Now in Dies the Fire, guns dont work either, so that makes sense.
gaffa- some crazies shoot WWI surplus ammo. Yes, that is a I, not a II. Mind you, 100 yo ammo is problematic as all hell, but 20 yo ammo is just fine.
My step-grandmother has had hers for 60 years. And she’s Australian (at least the actor is).
They didn’t ask the first person they saw in Chicago, they asked the guy in a position of authority inside the building they’d been directed to. But I’m sure that 25 minutes of watching them ask random people would have made great television.
So, the military guy’s men presumably know that he’s been searching for Matheson for a long time, so why on earth would they put a bullet right into him? I really, REALLY hated that scene - so much wrong with it. A more realistic scene - the villagers tell the asthmatic kid to knock that shit off before he gets them all killed.
No, she hasn’t been back to Germany since the early 50s and it isn’t like she’s awash in the large German speaking community in Portland Oregon.
But I know plenty of people who have been in the US for way longer than 15 years who still have easily identifiable accents.
Among adults I don’t really have any experience with people eliminating their accents unless they’re specifically trying to.
And how do you know it was the first person they spoke to. They went to a building none of them (except of course the guy in their party who got married there) before. I don’t think it is a flaw that the show didn’t go into detail of showing them asking for directions.
They also didn’t show them stopping on the way for bathroom breaks but I don’t think that suggests these people lack excretory functions.
I used to know a guy who had a British accent because his parents were British - I don’t think he ever spent any time there at all (beyond maybe visiting occasionally). My point - the accent isn’t the thing that is bugging me about this show.
It had potential, it really did, but it was all… shat to hell…
