[QUOTE=Acid Lamp]
Time travel paradox was resolved by stating that it’s an alternate timeline. That’s good enough for me, and probably everyone else but the hardest of sci-fi fans. Nobody is going to spend loads of time lecturing about time travel when there are dinosaurs to shoot
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I actually didn’t have any problem with that part of it. I’m good with the whole ‘alternative universe’ thingy. My problem(s) were…why didn’t they build the compound around the portal?? Why have people portal in from our time OUTSIDE OF THE FREAKING COMPOUND AND THEN HAVE TO HIKE IN? Problem B would be…why the hell would you send people to this alternative world without the weapons needed to defend themselves effectively?? :eek: Problem 3 would be…why the fuck would you not send through the industries needed to make something like this work?? Ok, I get that we had destroyed the earth with our evil industry, blah blah blah…but the survival of the species is at stake here. And you can’t tell me that by the 22nd century we wouldn’t have cleaner technologies than we have today. Get real. Problem D…if it’s an alternative Earth then we would know pretty much where all the resources are…why the hell would we have a major issue finding resources and have shortages (of all things) of iron?? For that matter, why not simply ship steel from our time to TN? We shipped those stupid electrical cars over, we could just build some freaking train tracks and ship train loads of refined materials over for the sake of the gods!
I can stretch my credulity only so far…and there was so much that didn’t make sense here that it would take several pages to go through. I get the whole ‘rebellious teen ager’ thingy, but lets get real here. These folks are coming from a dying world (we won’t even get into the fact that if they have the tech to take people from our time to 85 million years ago in an alternative universe why we don’t have technologies to fix the planet or to move the population to Mars or something like that), and the kids thought it was a good idea to slip out of the fortified compound and into the wild where there are theoretically deadly dinos roaming about, without weapons that could do more than annoy said dinos…and they did this TO DRINK?? They couldn’t build a still IN the compound??
I had seriously high hopes for this one, but it’s just SO bad. It makes Falling Skies look good!
Oh – one other thing. I missed the last half hour, so it might have been there (or I might have missed it elsewhere), but where are the farm animals? Unless they’re extinct from the fututre they came from, they ought to be well stocked with horses, bovines, sheep, goats, and the like. When the gasoline gives out or the electricity gets low, you’ll be able to get by on horsepower and exen. And cows, sheep, and goats are great ways to turn indigestible cellulose into edible protein. Pigs eat many of the same things people do, but they’re the most efficient meat=producers. They can’t be worried about Changing the Future – they’ve already said they’re “in a different time stream”. And, as many have argued (most notably Heinlein in Tunnel in the Sky), having animals along is the way to survive when high tech leaves you hangin’.
Ah, assume the end of the portal is fixed and wasn’t the ideal place to launch a settlement. Sort of like Civilization – you show up with your settlers and have to wander around a bit until you find the right spot.
But yeah, the settlers were chosen by a highly selective lottery/weeding out process and then just herded through the portal carrying , from what I could see, essentially nothing, with about the same ceremony you’d expect to see from someone herding onto a subway?
One has to assume then that there’s a pretty high energy budget for moving stuff into the past (which is why the meteoric iron is so important and why their armored vehicles appear to be made of tissue paper).
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
Oh – one other thing. I missed the last half hour, so it might have been there (or I might have missed it elsewhere), but where are the farm animals?
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AFAIK there aren’t any. I think it might have something to do with trying to lessen our environmental impact…or something. If they explained it I missed it as well.
Only if ‘exen’ are really fuel efficient. Why would gasoline or electricity give out or get low though? There should be plenty of natural resources available on this new world…and presumably our technology wouldn’t be limited to just what we have today (though I’d say that with our technologies today, assuming we could do the magic time travel/travel to alternative universe thingy, we could do better than these folks were doing).
I don’t think they are worried about changing the future here…my guess is this is the standard ‘crazy environmentalists have taken over and are doing really stupid things in the name of the environment!’ meme that we have going here.
Heh I’m with you on these but I’ll take a stab at armchair quarterbacking.
Portal vs TN location: Maybe the portal is rather dangerous to have around, or gives off weird radiation. Maybe the portal locale is just a geographically poor choice for a base camp. Perhaps the TN settlers prime directive is to have as little impact as possible, and thus chose to build in a natural clearing? At any rate, walking is indeed foolish. The transports should have been used, but it is possible that the portal throws off a huge EM field that screws up electrical systems.
Weapons: Well it would be hard to know exactly what you’d NEED until you’d have some years of experience with the fauna. Then you’d have to wait for it all to be made, tested, and shipped to you via portal. It also seems that they are making an effort NOT to exterminate the fauna. The compound seems pretty secure, so as long as you follow the rules you should be safe for now.
Industries: People and basic infrastructure come before industry if you plan to stay long term. I imagine there is little point in building and maintaining railways, storing and hording premined ore or metal goods until you have the people and facilities to work them. TN is designed as a fresh start for our species, not as a get rich quick scheme. (which I think is the sixer’s agenda) It seems to me that we are catching the colony at it’s most basic beginning point past first contact and base establishment. They don’t have a shortage, they DO know where the good stuff is at and apparently how to get it easily. The sixers control that territory. I would have shot the lot of them, but that’s just me.
Farm animals: Either they are eating synthetic proteins and used to it in the resource poor future, or those sauropods are being farmed. One brachiosaur will feed a lot of people for a LONG time properly processed. If the local animals are edible and able to be domesticated it’s better than introducing more OOT critters and diseases.
Space/ dirt : There isn’t any particular reason for things to be gritty and filthy. The camp has been established for some time, and this wave of settlement is permanent. Presumably there will not be hundreds of thousands more people coming. It sounded like there might be a few more waves and then that’s it. Society has to be rebuilt, and thus there isn’t any real reason for things to be all crowded and dingy. Keeping things pleasant until you can establish HOW and where to build without tearing up the planet again keeps the peeps happy.
[QUOTE=Finagle]
Ah, assume the end of the portal is fixed and wasn’t the ideal place to launch a settlement. Sort of like Civilization – you show up with your settlers and have to wander around a bit until you find the right spot.
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But it was within walking distance for out of shape and environmentally challenged and shocked civilians. Yeah, it might not be ideal, but I doubt it was more than 5 miles from the compound…build a freaking rail line (with enclosed cabs to acclimate the people to the new environment as well as medical facilities cars and maybe even orientation media that they could watch on their drive to the compound) and an enclosed/fortified fence to. We are talking about the resources from our (dying) world going into an effort to save the species…we can’t afford a couple miles of fence, some rail line and a few subway cars?
Totally insane. I guess I could see the lottery, since it would take time to build facilities for everyone (but really, why not push through more people and have less fancy houses? Did you see the one the Doc got?? :eek:), but it makes no sense to have them WALK to the portal and then walk to the compound (through the jungle) carrying their worldly possessions. That’s incredibly stupid.
It might be, but they moved a lot of stuff through. They had to move through heavy equipment (though it’s not in evidence) to build the compound in the first place. They should have moved through heavy industry equipment and stuff like helicopters and air craft…and a few geologist types who would know pretty much where all the mineral resources were. Plus a few miners and some heavy military equipment, including a gun that could kill a dinosaur (we must have one somewhere).
My problem here is that none of this makes sense. If humanities back is to the wall and our survival is at stake this seems ridiculously amateurish and silly. It looks like what a hopeless environmentalist (or a caricature of an loony, out of touch environmentalist) would conceive of as a great new colony.
According to the show THAT is what got us into trouble in the first place. I imagine that by sending back only the best and brightest they are aiming for a better future.
[QUOTE=Acid Lamp]
According to the show THAT is what got us into trouble in the first place. I imagine that by sending back only the best and brightest they are aiming for a better future.
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Sure…but it’s insane if the survival of the species is at risk. We could easily build industries and manufacturing facilities using just the technologies we have today that would have minimal impact on this brave new world yet provide for the needs of such a colony (and why only one colony, leaving aside the 6’er rebels? Why only from what looks to be the US?). Ship through a few USN nuclear reactors if you want clean power…why rely on solar that obviously still isn’t providing for all their needs??
I understand that this builds drama and plot, but it’s so silly…like I said, it’s like a caricature of the loopy, out of touch and totally unrealistic environmentalist getting in charge and running the project.
Yet they had PDA’s and medical equipment (that they presumably schlepped in from the compound…on foot…through the jungle). But ok…I’ll by that maybe there is something about the portal that makes it dangerous, but not dangerous enough to be within walking distance to the settlement. They could have at least built a freaking road though, and maybe give the people some push carts, at a minimum.
I’d say that a .50 cal bullet will kill anything that has ever walked the earth, especially if you hit it several times. We have armor piercing bullets that can go through light armor…they could go through a dinosaur the long way. These aren’t some alien armored creatures…they are just like really really big elephants or cows. Shoot an elephant in the head with a .50 cal bullet and it’s going to feel it, even if it doesn’t die. Shoot it in the chest and it’s going to die…especially if you shoot it more than once.
I get that they don’t want to completely exterminate the fauna…it goes with the loopy environmental theme, in the face of species extinction, but if the things are attacking you then you need to defend yourself. And if we are going to colonize such a planet then we are going to have an impact, regardless…we are the top predator after all, and we aren’t going to change. Unless you think people are going to be good with being hunted and killed by the local predators?
This makes no sense to me. If we could move in all the stuff we saw on the show it would be just as easy to move in bulldozers, helicopters, and refined materials as it is to move in solar panels and huge wind turbines (how the hell did they get THOSE through?? And why did they do so when it’s not providing adequate energy?). Get rich quick?? We are talking species survival here. They would have been better off having the earth nice as habitable and then saying we found this ideal world, and are trying some sort of Eco-friendly new colony thingy. When you are talking species survival it’s a bit more serious, IMHO.
I didn’t see any evidence that they were hunting (or even COULD hunt, since their weapons weren’t even effective against smaller dino types). They would have to figure something out, and if they were wanting to be all environmentally friends and all then they SHOULD have horses and other domesticated animals to supplement the technology. Personally I would bring domesticated food animals through but later on, after you had established a large human controlled zone. Me, I’d be bringing through technology…stuff that would actually allow you to build what would be needed to attempt to bring through more than a handful of lucky citizens from (I guess) the US. We should be creating a world where we can bring through millions of humans, not a handful. If the dinos have to suffer, well…they only had another 20 million years anyway.
I liked it. Needs more Dinosaurs and less family drama but I will stick with it for the 5 or so weeks I expect it to last (expensive show + mediocre ratings = Not long on the air).
Heck, I stuck through Falling Skies for 4 episodes…I’ll probably watch at least 1 or 2 more and hope it gets better. It would have been cool if the mystic carvings had been some sort of previously unknown sentient species that existed 85 million years ago…THAT would have probably kept my interest for a while, even with all the silly and unrealistic stuff.
It’s so bad I almost want to weep for the lost potential of a good science fiction show. I can’t list what’s wrong with it, either. I’ll just list what’s right with it - it’s shot beautifully. Most of the characters are easy on the eyes. Great idea for a tv show.
xtisme nailed what bothered me most, speaking about the markings on the stones “- It would have been cool if the mystic carvings had been some sort of previously unknown sentient species that existed 85 million years ago…THAT would have probably kept my interest for a while, even with all the silly and unrealistic stuff.”
The time travel is so unrealistic, why not throw in unknown species in dinosaur-land?
BTW, all you people who say this is worse than SyFy Channel movies of the week? Waaaay off base, this is far superior to those movies, as a general rule, on production values alone. Sure you wanna dis the show, but get real.
Another thing that (midly) angered me:
Not the right dinosaurs for the time period.
Brachiosaurus and allosaurus (I think that was the large one they were shooting at,) were ~150 million years ago, no 85. Plus, that whole “slasher” dino was made up, though obviously based on some sort of raptor…oviraptor or Utahraptor.
I’m sure eventually we’ll find out that it’s not just in the past and a different timeline from the future, but it’s so different that it didn’t even start out the same, so evolution took a different path, so somehow lots of very similar dinosaurs exist all at the same time, and also any old random fake dinosaur the producers want to invent.
Why would gasoline or electricity give out or get low though? There should be plenty of natural resources available on this new world…and presumably our technology wouldn’t be limited to just what we have today (though I’d say that with our technologies today, assuming we could do the magic time travel/travel to alternative universe thingy, we could do better than these folks were doing).