'Revolution' on NBC - Page 3

Honestly I won't even give it a try because most likely it'll be pulled halfway thru the season. If it somehow survives I'll catch it on Hulu or reruns over the summer. Sad but that's the way it is now with these shows on Network TV.

I'd hope that any way you slice it, we could agree that Sci Fi is a tough genre for TV .. hell, it's a tough genre for film, for that matter ..

Effects have to be pretty sophisticated these days, a plot thats fresh .. (which is really tough as it's all about been done before) .. actors that can pull it off .. writers that make it plausable .. etc ..

By the way, could they give anymore away in that preview? I mean we already know the dad dies and this guy the daughter runs into on the way to find her uncle is part of the militia.

It's like "let's give things away because we're NBC and we know this will be cancelled anyway."

Well, kind of...

The spark plugs are fired by an electronic ignition control module. That has a chip in it and has since the last time cars or motorcycles had mechanical points. Even then, though, it's possible those chips are simple enough to be unnaffected. Without that ignition control module, you couldn't sync the plugs firing.

But, assuming all chips are dead, you'd have to go back further than the 50's or 60's to get to mechanical ignitions.

I would certainly expect to see people - at least in the short term - tooling around on vintage Nortons, Vincents and Harleys and in Model T's from the the early 1900's.

As noted, lead acid batteries used by cars shouldn't be affected by anything that kills electronics. Rechargeable batteries would potentially be toast since they could lose their ability to know when they are drained or charged, but that wouldn't apply to car batteries - especially unsealed ones.

As far as electricity, a basic carbed generator should also continue to operate along with incandecent light bulbs.

The biggest issue long term would be a steady supply of fuel for those devices.

My guess, if this were real, people would find a way to convert those vintage vehicles and generators to run on moonshine. That, and "horse thievin'" would once again be a hangin' offense...

They may address some of these issues in the show. It's 15yrs later, maybe for the first few years there were brutal fights over all older cars.
But really, I just need some good ol' fashion TV science to explain to me why they don't work and I'll be fine with it...

It takes a leap of faith to even start to enjoy any fantasy setting so take the jump and go with the story.

Who's to say it was an EMP strike? Coulda been something like what happenned in The Day the Earth Stood Still, a movie made in the early 50s before anyone knew about IC chips or EMP disruption for that matter.

If they can keep things consistent we'll be lucky. On Jericho, initially only old cars ran, but the flat panel tv in the bar fired up just fine, there just weren't any broadcasts to pick up. Then in later eps late model Suburbans were running just fine.

I think that's the point: it can't be an EMP. EMP's wouldn't affect ordinary batteries or light bulbs. Even fluorescent bulbs would work as long as they didn't use an electronic ballast.

Even if the electric plants were hosed, there are plenty of other ways of generating power, including windmills.

Finally, just turning off an EMP device (like apparently was shown in the teaser) would not suddenly allow devices damaged by the pulse to run, such as the computer.

My guess, we'll eventually get some Star Trek style technobabble about dampening fields and the like.

Then again, the scene where the device is turned off so the computer can run lacks logic in another way:

Think about it, if it's large enough to affect a wide area, suddenly everyone nearby would have power and such again. All those devices that may have been left on when the power went out would start up again. That would make plenty of people curious. It wouldn't make sense if it only affected the area where the computer was. Why would you only dampen yourself?

I just really question how well this was thought out.

I'll at least check it out to see if maybe my impressions are wrong, though.

In the source material from which the concept for this series was stolen, the leading speculation is that the loss of technology was the doing of "alien space bats." The author has declined to comment.

I think you have it backwards. The device is turned on to make the computer run, not off, since it lights up. It's most likely able to block whatever disables electronics in a small area, which is enough to allow nearby devices to operate. This suggests that the guy who originally had the device knew enough about what was going on to design a countermeasure for the effect, but he couldn't find a way to counteract it on a large scale.

Ah, OK - I just merely assumed the device was the "evil device".

Of course, it still makes no sense. What would it be doing? Blocking dryer ghosts that steal socks and make everything full of static cling?

What could it possibly be doing that a whole lot of sheet lead and copper mesh couldn't also do?

The only way you could take out technology on such a large scale as instantly as implied here is via radio waves, power surges, power cutoffs, radiation or some sort of magnetic field. All those could be combated by more traditional means.

Even if it were some sort of high frequency carrier wave (that can penetrate lead and reach far underground) that contains a "shutoff" signal that all electric devices can read and obey, you could combat that by building devices that won't respond to it.

I'm just not sure I buy the whole collapse of civalization thing. While certain resources might become rare, hard and expensive to obtain, we've gotten around that sort of thing in the past when the world was at war. For example, World War 2 prompted us to create things like improved versions of synthetic rubber and soybean-based plastics. We learned to live with rolling blackouts and got serious about recycling materials. High gas prices in the last several years have made people more conscious of how efficient vehicles are and how much gas we waste by not combining those quick trips to run errands. Plus, every time there is a large scale natural disaster, people get smarter about being prepared for emergencies.

Sure, there would be plenty of people unable to cope, but the idea that the governemt would fail and we'd be essentially living in medieval times again is pretty far fetched.

Don't get me wrong: I'll still at least see if they pull it together and make it make sense. I was skeptical about the idea of sending people back to dinosaur times in Terra Nova, but it turns out that was the one thing that actually made sense when it looked like it was simply where the portal rather than they created it with intent to go back there. At that point, dinosaurs still were a better alternative than a lack of breathable air. Too bad they sent back completely unrelatable people and their annoying offspring...

This is amazing. More than three months before this show hits the air and there are already three pages of comments about it here! Seriously?

The same thing happened with "The Event", "Flash Forward" and "Terra Nova". Each of those, like this one, were meant to be a game-making show for the network.

Of course, look what happened to them...

Ok, now this is making more sense to me. If there was something like a "global EMP" then everything that was on at the time would be fried, but things that were off wouldn't and you could certainly build new thing using electronics. Shouldn't be that hard to build Model T era cars again pretty quickly.

But if there is some sort of "field" that is keeping electronics from working then that makes more sense (as it is) that even 15 years later they haven't even recovered the basics of electronics. And this device blocks it out.

You guys *really* need to go read S.M. Stirling's "The Change" series, starting with "Dies the Fire."

I knew Rodney McKay wouldn't leave the ancient shield on the planet of children. It's probably at Area 51 right now.

Checking in.

The thread title could be changed to fit the forum better
"Revolution" on NBC HDTV, or something similar.

So I guess I didn't search well enough to find this thread, but now that I'm here, my comments:

Saw this teaser trailer on NBC, so went to Youtube to check out the full length. It's certainly an interesting premise, and shouldn't be too expensive to make (except when they go to the big cities, like Chicago). Reminds me of what Jericho could have become, and a little bit of The Hunger Games, what with the attractive young lady archer in the trailer.

My only problem, it's on NBC. That right there tells me it's probably cancelled already.

Since when has Jon Favreau had the idea he could actually direct?

Probably when people started paying him to do it,

hmm a resonant field that increases resistance to electrons shifting orbits??
hmmm anything under a milliamp so bioeletric works but chemical to electric above milliamp is SOL??
no working batteries above milliamp ?

and whats the name of the SONG? that played during the rev. trailer martial arts scene???

Clipped from "Touched" by VAST(Visual Audio Sensory Theater).

My guess is since Iron Man was such a smash hit, he probably thinks it's because of him.

Actually being on NBC is probably a good thing. They suck at ratings and if it does even halfway decent it'll survive. Look at Chuck, got 5 seasons.

My concern mostly would be Monday at 10...LOT of competition. I think it might be better on Friday's paired up with Grimm with Grimm as the lead in.

maybe is has some to do with the cubs wining the 2012 world series.

I wonder if the show will address the fact that if every computer and electrical component suddenly dies, nuclear plants will not go out quietly?

While it's true for the 30-40 years old technology that was used in the Japan ones, most would just automatically shutdown. They either get flooded with water, moderator rods get dropped or the fuel rods themselves get removed, all based on gravity and the death-switch concept...

The premise on which this will hang will be iffy at best. I won't dwell on it if the scripts are good. However, I already have a problem with how the actors are dressed and made up. Every hair in place, well dressed and clean doesn't jive with post apocolyptic. If they also import 2012 values along with teen angst, I'll be dropping out quickly. The trailer suggests that perhaps society will have changed and operates under more ruthless rules, but from the look of the cast of pretty boys and girls, I won't get my hopes up.

I'll be giving this a try -- for me, the similarity with SM Stirling's "Emberverse" is a feature, not a drawback. Assuming that it doesn't turn out to be outright plagiarization, of course...

I'll note another series of books that is a different take on the "technology quits working" premise, and that is John Barne's "Daybreak" trilogy. I've enjoyed that one as well as the SM Stirling books -- and they're very, very different takes on a similar premise. So I'm hoping that "Revolution" can provide another different take on it.

As for the idea that it's doomed because it is on NBC...well, that's what I thought would happen to "Grimm". I note that it is coming back for a second season.

Thanks Keenan.