Since many people have compared this to The Village, what if it’s more than one village? Say it’s still 2014 and Village #1 is Wayward Pines and Village #2 is what we’ve glimpsed of the supposed outside now? Maybe it’s some meta experience to see how everyone handles something like that. Now why anyone would want to know that, I have no idea, but I am pretty sure that there’s no way all the cards are on the table half way through. There has to be a “twist,” right, Mr. Shamalama-ding-dong?
I don’t think there is time travel, i think they got brought in because they were causing trouble themselves. They had actually figured out where Burke had gone at that point.
Exactly -
No time travel in the sense that they are moving back and forth - but when they went looking, it was decided at that point to put them in stasis as well.
So, in 2014 - they “disappeared” to keep the secret safe.
in 4028 - they were woken up to placate Burke.
From the tv show - its ‘implied’ that this was cause and affect - that the sheriff was sent to bring them there at that time specifically - but that’s not necessarily the case.
Burke is probably one of several potential sheriffs that were selected and put in storage. My guess is he was woken up when he was because Pilcher & co were getting tired of Pope and needed a replacement. So Burke get’s woken up, and put threw all kinds of weird tests to see how much he can figure out on his own. His wife & son were selected back in 2014 simply because someone thought Burke would cooperative if the 2 most important people in his life were brought along for the ride (& also so that they would have leverage on him). As to who’s making all their consumer goods; if what the headmistress said is true then society didn’t collapse until the 22nd century. Perhaps nanotechnology and universal assemblers were invented by then?
Ignoring the first part of this, then the other question that keeps coming up is why the lack of transparency? Why did Burke have to be tricked or fooled or whatever, why are the adults kept in the dark? As others have said, they could have found plenty of willing volunteers and the Doctor could have chosen whomever he wanted from that pool rather than the train wreck they seem to deal with on a daily basis with their current method.
It’s possible they tried a more open system, and it didn’t work. There’s no telling how long they’ve been trying this - and the system of indoctrinating the kids must be pretty new - it seemed like all the kids who have ever been inducted, are still kids.
The coin said (IIRC) 2095 and, again IIRC, she said it hasn’t been used in nearly 2000 years. I think it’s safe to assume they’ve been there less than 50 years. My guess is that it’s closer to 15 or 20. Long enough to iron out the major kinks and start concerning themselves with The First Generation (or rather, kids that can start breeding in 5-10 years). I don’t think we’ve met any residents who claim to have been there longer than 12 years, have we?
But I just can’t see a good reason for not explaining what’s going on or, better yet, a good reason for not telling people what was going on beforehand.
Also, it could have just been the makeup, but I’d swear Pam looked older in this episode than she did in earlier ones.
ETA, and I don’t buy the idea that since one kid told his mom and she killed herself therefore no one can ever tell their parents because they’ll all kill themselves notion. That’s just stupid and it insults the audience’s intelligence. It seemed like sloppy writing to me so they didn’t have to explain it.
I think the suicide scenario is just a “boogeyman” type of story to try to keep the kids from revealing “the truth”.
- this -
also recall that Burke refused the “brain treatment” - we can assume that the other adults did not, and whatever that treatment was allows them to be more complicant overall - they all realize its not ‘quite right’ - even Ms ToyMaker has finally given in to the lifestyle.
It’s even worse than that. The whole story that “one kid told his parents and they killed themselves” implies that the truth was being kept from the parents even before that. So what was the reason for lying to the adults before the suicides?
Another thing. Why tell the kids? If keeping the truth from the adults is so important, then why tell the kids, especially at such a young age when the chances of them telling their parents are high?
Speaking of the coins, didn’t the teacher say that the coins were the last remaining bits of the earlier human civilization, just as the audience was seeing Ethan seeing the still-recognizable ruins of Boise? Seems like the teacher is telling a mixed bag of truth and fiction (though she might actually believe it all).
If so, then why not just use those technologies to prevent the predicted scenario?
Exactly. And even if we buy the “Pilcher predicted humanity’s decline” scenario, how is the solution to put a bunch of people in hibernation and wake them up 2000 years later? And even if that were a viable solution, the way they’re going about it is totally counter productive.
Maybe Pilcher is a megalomaniac who was right about his predictions but instead of preventing the problem chose instead a self-serving solution that would put him personally in charge of everything and then convinced some others that his plan was the only solution. (Hell, maybe he’s a pedophile who’s grooming the kids so that he can “add to the gene pool”. Okay, probably not since it’s network TV.)
Maybe the rest of the series will be about a power struggle between him and Burke.
I now fully understand the reviews I read from before the show started. They boiled down to: “Don’t worry, everything will be explained by episode 5. It won’t be a good explanation, and if you think about it at all the whole thing falls apart, but they do at least give an explanation.”
The whole thing seems so arbitrary. Why did Mr Super Predictor have them go into stasis 80 years before they needed to? The society that minted the 2095 quarter could surely have done the stasis project just as effectively as the 1999-2014 team.
4100 (or whatever) sure feels arbitrary. Was there 2000 years worth of radiation to avoid or something? I can’t help but imagine Pilcher’s thought process as: “We could come back in 2500, but fuck those people. We’re waiting another 1500 years out of spite.”
The secrecy and involuntary nature of the project are of course ridiculously over the top stupid solely for the sake of drama, but at least we can overlook that specifically because it’s only in service to drama. Sort of like how people on another planet always take off their space helmets – which is monumentally stupid and implausible – solely so we can see the actors’ faces. So I’ll cut them a pass on the obvious drama deal.
The timing bugs me, though. Why go to sleep 80 years before you need to? What’s so special about 4100 that that’s the proper time to wake up? Why not wake up before the abbies fully mutate and hunt them into extinction?
As far as the timing goes, he probably couldn’t predict exactly when things would change so maybe he deliberately overshot so they didn’t end up too early. Or maybe he did wake up earlier, assessed the situation, decided it was too soon and went back into stasis.
I still think though that Pilcher may have motives other than just “save the human race”, and it’s still possible that the story being told to the kids is total or partial bull.
Maybe he caused the problem that ended civilization and caused the “abbies”. Maybe he’s a believer in eugenics, set out to “perfect the human race” but whatever method he used didn’t work as planned and he realized that within x generations humans would degenerate and so he then came up with a plan B of choosing what he considered genetically desirable individuals and putting them into stasis, etc.
Are we to assume that Pilcher and the nurse put themselves into hibernation as well?
as for “going to sleep 80 years to early” - could be explained that Pitcher predicted the inevitable collapse and in a cult like fashion went into hibernation in 2014 - with the idea of being awoken in 4028 and learned not only was he right, but just how bad things had become (the abbies, etc).
Having the quarters does not mean they retrieved the quarters when minted - but dug them up later.
Of course. How else would they still be alive?