'Revolution' on NBC - Page 4

The show is based on a simple concept unlike say a show based on ShwartzChild radius temporal gradients.

After seeing the promos, I'm all in for this one ..

and if anyone wants an excellent read on the topic ..

One Second After by
William R. Forstchen

http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765327252/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Really looking forward to this but I am a bit gun shy going into it and the thing hasn't even been released it. I doubt it will make it, like so many before it, because it isn't another cop show, medical show, or something with CSI in the title.

The more that watch, the better the chance of more show .. that's always the key ..

I'll give it a chance because mediocre sci-fi is better than most of the procedural stuff on TV nowadays.

However, I'm curious how a plane that was affected and drops from the sky - still has its navigation lights on all the way to the ground.

Aw, some young digi artist was probably really proud of those lights he created for that model. Now he may never get work again...

"Look, they interact with the smoke and atmosphere perfectly..."

;D

This was posted in the wrong thread yesterday,

TV Notes
'Revolution's' 'Lost' Reunion: Elizabeth Mitchell Joins J.J. Abrams Drama as Series Regular
By Lesley Goldberg, The Hollywood Reporter's 'Live Feed' Blog - Jun. 30, 2012

It's a Lost reunion for NBC's Revolution.

The upcoming freshman drama from Lost's J.J. Abrams and Supernatural's Eric Kripke has brought in former Lost star Elizabeth Mitchell as a series regular, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The adventure drama, starring Twilight's Billy Burke, is set in a world that exists after every piece of technology including cars, planes, computers, phones and lights mysteriously black out forever and follows a family struggling to reunite in the post-apocalyptic world.

Mitchell will play Rachel Matheson, mother of Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) and Danny (Graham Rogers), who is described as a beautiful and warm parent who's terrified of the ordeal that her children will face as they navigate the dystopian world. Mitchell (Gia) will appear in flashbacks.

She'll replace Andrea Roth, who played the role in the pilot, and join new castmember Daniella Alonso, who will play a new character, Nora, a rebel fighter.

Mitchell played Dr. Juliet Burke on Abrams' ABC island-set drama Lost from 2006-10. The Revolution role marks her first series regular gig since she spent two seasons starring as Erica Evans on ABC's V reboot. More recently, she appeared in a guest stint on NBC's Law & Order: SVU.

Mitchell is repped by IFA Talent Agency, Kritzer Levine and Hirsch Wallerstein.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/revolution-nbc-elizabeth-mitchell-lost-jj-abrams-343674[

Like many of the other posters, (both here and on many other sites) I too heard about the show and assumed that S.M. Stirling was involved. I too then looked at the cast photos and trailer and groaned in disappointment. For those who are wondering about the science behind the “power-and-explosive-combustion-stops-working” thing plays out keep in mind that (at least in Stirling’s case) the story is working in the tradition of taking one key element of our society and standing it on its head to see what happens – what’s important in the embervers series isn’t really why the power stops working, but how humans behave when everything changes. I have to say that the Stirling books are terrifying and, based on what happens in many western cities during long blackouts, I fear not all that far from the truth of what would really happen. My only hope is that the series will draw more readers into the books, and the realization of how great this TV series could have been, but most likely will not… {sigh}

I love how the couch critics roll out worthless opinions on shows that they have not even seen, for cryin' out loud ..

Looking forward to the show ...

The only issue with this is, while it works for a hanful of books or even a movie or two, it's a bad way to sustain a series.

After a while, you need a good over-arching mystery to keep things interesting. Otherwise, it's just back to farming and sword forging each episode. People's reactions only have a short time frame before work needs to be done to get things rolling again. Mad Max makes a great movie trilogy, but would be endlessly dull as a series as we wonder just how long people can go on driving from place to place with supercharged cars despite massive fuel shortages. Plus, after a while, you run out of people to put in the Thunderdome.

The mystery of why things no longer work, the discovering the truth and finally the fixing of the problem are ways you keep things moving forward. In order to do that, there has to be a believable reason for it all that doesn't sound like hogwash when it's revealed. Even when a fix is found and the problem is solved, there's great potential to explore the rebuilding of society. Will we make the same mistakes? What sort of corruption will take place? While some segments of society stay in the dark ages intentionally?

The answer to the mystery is a hard sell when you consider they've taken even non-electronic electrical devices out of the mix and apprently newly created devices won't function either. That doesn't mean they can't pull off some sort of satisfying cause - it just makes it really hard to not leave yourself open to a whole lot of analysis from the Interwebs...

Now, you can say all you want about people being too picky when they post about a show, but that's your potential audience talking.

Lost did a great job of embracing that skeptical audience and changing their perceptions about characters and situation as things were revealed on the show (at least up until the magic light cave, anyway). For the first few seasons, even things we thought would never make sense ended up having simply and ordinary origins. A lot of folks that doubted or picked elements apart before the reveals ate an awful lot of crow when it came together. Had they been able to continue that path of everything coming down to a simple premise, the show would have been better for it. Where the show went wrong for those who loved the show, but hated the ending, is trying to give the series some sort of twist we weren't supposed to see coming. Had it come down to some dark ambitions from Dharma, Hanso and "the Others" coming together into some private little conspiracy, it would have been able to keep everything that came before, yet still allowed our characters to create a satisfactory ending for themselves.

If Revolution can create a realistic reason why this situation happened without it ending up being some sort of Rube Goldberg device that is complicated for the sake of the mystery, they might just have a great show on their hands.

The problem is, I fear that even if they come up with something good, I suspect the show will likely pander to the 18-28 crowd with cheap relationships and silly dramatics overshadowing the whole thing. I very much hope to be wrong about that, though.
Edited by NetworkTV - 8/3/12 at 10:26am

The only issue with this is, while it works for a hanful of books or even a movie or two, it's a bad way to sustain a series.
The problem is, I fear that even if they come up with something good, I suspect the show will likely pander to the 18-28 crowd with cheap relationships and silly dramatics overshadowing the whole thing. I very much hope to be wrong about that, though.[/quote]

Quite right, of course - it makes for a great book but would become a touch thin week to week. I just found the images in the trailer [using deep dramatic trailer voice] "in the future, when electricity fails, fashion, eyeliner, hairspray and cleavage survive..." I would be so much more enthusiastic if these folks looked like survivors of the end of the world and less like extras from the out takes of The Hunger Games...

Mgkdragn is also quite right of course, and I will wait to see it. Believe me, I WANT this to be great. I think the frustration (for me at least) is that this seems to be very close *cough* *cough* to a brilliant set of books that I'm really attached to. I can't count the number of times I've thought, "WOW, this should be a series or a series of films" I caught a glimps of the trailer and thought "WOW, this is it!! Someone's done it!"
I hope they have!!

I prefer to remain optimistic on these type things .. give the show a chance and don't go in with any pre-conceived ideas ..

I feel that if the show bases the blackout on the premise of "it's a show, pretend its real", that people on the interwebs will go along with it. When Doc Brown tells us that time travel is made possible by the flux capacitor, we take his word for it. When the Priest tells us that the Fifth Element when combined with the other four can stop great evil, we believe him. When Peter Parker is bit by a radioactive spider and gains spider-like superpowers, we're on board with the concept.

When Han Solo tells us the Millenium Falcon does .5 past light speed, we believe him. When Han Solo says it made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, that's when we start to get suspicious. The latter makes no sense.

Where LOST went wrong is when it tried to tell us everything had a basis in reality, when it obviously didn't. There was no scientific (or even pseudo-scientific) explanation for a magic light cave, whether in-show or not. Everything else was presented as having a valid explanation, whether real or not, except for that cave. They just said, "Hey, look over here! This cave glows, chewed up that other guy, and spit him out as a smoke monster!"

Haven't we seen this before? 'Flash Forward, The Event, Awake, Terra Nova Journeyman, and a bunch of others... all those Big Mystery, high concept serialized sci-fi-ish shows that all crashed and burned. Only LOST survived to maturity, only to see a flawed & frustrating finish tarnish its luster. I loved them all. {sniff}

But few others did, seemed like. Even sci-fi fans were merciless in picking apart their flaws. Perfect becomes the enemy of good. Negative energy sunk those shows, more than bad writing or acting. Sci-fi fans eat their young.

Hope they give this one a chance.

Every time I forget about all this, someone comes along to jog my memory.

This is semi-OT, but I just finished reading Lucifer's Hammer, and really feel like it would make a great series (if done right) and/or big budget movie! I know it's dated now (Late 1970's), but I think it definitely translates even better using "modern-day" issues/scenarios.

I could, but won't, list the names of 4 or 5 posters in this forum that I know are going to rip this to shreds. Its usually the same names that do so yet they will watch week after week.

When I was capturing the NBC network to check something out, I caught a promo for the series.

A big, very big, mistake they are making with the series is that you will notice that the power went out in buildings fro m the ground floor up. Not fast, but relatively slowly. If electricity was no longer working at lower floors, how the hell was electricity getting to the upper floors?

If they want us to believe that electricity can no longer be generated, the power loss would be from the source (generator plants) outward and would happen faster than the blink of an eye.

I know, they wanted dramatic effect. OK, if you want dramatic effect, have the lights go out at the farthest distance from the source and work back toward the source.

While I too will be checking out the series, at least they could have put a little more thought into what they did for the loss effect.

I'm an Electrical Engineer, and I had no problem with the visual effect of lights going out one at a time. You'll also notice the lights on the freeway scene go out one at a time... it's simply a visual effect. I'm sure we'll find plenty to fault with this series, but depicting the power outage is probably not going to be one of them.

It wasn't the issue of the lights going out slowly, which could be an effect of why electricity failed, but how they went out. Having electricity flow through an area that has been affected to an area that isn't was wrong.

They could have done that a lot better and more effectively.

BTW, this isn't the only show that has done dumb lights going out effects.

No they won't.

It has to have something in there that sounds plausible. There has to be some sort of cool, sciency name or a realistic sounding theory on how it works or it ends up being silly in a series that takes itself seriously. Just saying it works isn't enough. It has to sound like it works, like a warp drive or a deflector shield.
It should be pointed out, that the premise of the flux capacitor is that it came about after Doc Brown wacked his head on the toilet. But, even when it's conceived that way, it still has plenty of other stuff to support it: the flux capacitor runs on plutonium, has a time computer to control it and specifically uses a DeLorean (due to its stainless steel exterior) that must travel at 88 MPH to achieve time travel. That's a lot of excellent detail for a comedy movie where the main character dates his own mother.
This idea has been a cornerstone of thousands of years of mythology. The idea is, the Earth has balance. When you achieve balance, you can unlock the full potential of the power of the Earth. Combine that with the Gaia concept (essentially Mother Earth), and you have the foundation of not only creation myths aplenty, but the plots of several movies including Final Fanatasy: The Spirits Within.

Essentially, it's a concept supported by religious beliefs that make it no more rediculous than movies depicting Christian concepts.
But has anyone other than the fictional Peter Parker ever been bitten by a radioactive spider? Who knows what would happen. We believe it because we distrust nuclear technology and fear all the ways it can affect us.
We believe the speed because there have been many speed barriors in the past that have been broken after decades of scientists saying it couldn't be done. If you ask anyone on the street if they thing that faster than light speed travel will eventually be possible, most will say yes no matter what the boys at CERN say.

The Kessel Run is a different matter. We can only assume it's along the same lines as making it it from Times Square to the Upper East side in less than 10 minutes: we all are certain it's impossible, but there's always some guy that says he's done it. Since we all know you can't go to light speed without certain calculations to avoid astroids and such, we join Luke in questioning Han's claim.
Fully agreed.

Up to that point, everything had some sort of logical explanation to the point where it was really impressive how they brought some of the stuff together. As soon as time travel came into the mix, we knew that was slipping away since time travel is usually the way you reset a plotline that can't be resolved logically in any other way.

---

The problem with a device than can kill every electronic device is that it's not usually something you can turn on and off. In most cases, the device that kills electronics usually kills itself in the process, meaning it's one and done.

However, its sounds more likem their using something along the lines of a Star Trek style dampening field, which interferes with electonic and electrical devices by affecting the way electrons flow. Such a device is ually controlled at a distance to keep it out of the way of itself and is focused to prevent it from coming back at itself. That makes it able to be turned on and off, as well as blocked.

The issue is, we are electrical as well, so one would have to assume our bodies would be affected by such a thing. Further, the idea that another device would be able to block it as opposed to a whole lot of sheet lead is a bit iffy. Not to mention, once the communications shown in the promo leave the range of the "anti-dampening field device", it would seem logical that those bits of data would fail to continue down their path since they would use low power currents to transport them to whomever they are instant messaging to. Granted, these factors are unlikely to be questioned by most viewers, so it's more forgivable.

What they'll have to do a good job of selling the audience on is a) how this was able to be a massive occurance as opposed to an isolated event due to the amount of power needed and the infrastucture needed to generate and focus such a dampening field and b) why guns seem to have been replaced by bows and arrows. If the answer is "it just seemed more anti-technology and looks cooler" then that's lame. If the device can stop guns from working, it can be assumed they don't cook anything since making a gun not fire would mean fire doesn't exist anymore. If that's not the case, then I'll take a gun, thank you.

I just fear this show will fall into the typical trap of being too over-arching withthe concept. What starts out as a premise where technology has been decimated and we have to start over gets tweeked to having every device that plugs in being gone from our world. I doubt that would ever happen. We figured out how to build these things from the raw materials in the first place. We could certainly do it again if we had to start from scratch.

When you start ticking off too many items from the list of things that work, you start having too many inconsistencies. Light bulbs don't work, but somehow someone is going to be driving a muscle car (becuase muscle cars are driven by all the cool villains) and making cappuccino in a secret lair. Resources will be limited, but the characters will waste them like they can't stop loving the eighties. Food will be scarce, but everyone's hair will be fabulous.

Like I said earlier, I hope this will be good. I just fear the writers may already be backed into a corner and will focus instead on banal relationships and annoying levels of angst. I'll be very pleased to be wrong, though.
Edited by NetworkTV - 8/4/12 at 7:03am

We should be able to make farm implements that worked via steam, or horsepower, and factories and worked on steam, i.e., all the stuff that happened before electricity was harnessed by electric motors. That will be far as it will be able to go, since the generation of electricity has been put to a stop.

Many of the old steam engines still exist, so that could be the start for building more.

But, AIUI, a premise of the show is that people will not trust mechanical things again. I find that kind of dumb, as lots of people would want to industrialize, even if only steam could be used. I'd be one of them.

I can just see it now... a steam powered fridge

Apparently, even steam power is out, which really seems suspect.

But, you don't need to use steam. You can use mechanical generators to create electricity - you just might have to have everything run of DC instead of AC since the electronics involved with converting the power might not be working or available.

Even wind power should exist if the ability to create fire was rendered usueless, which would be necessary for generating steam or beurning fuel.
If getting hacked or ripped off in a scam doesn't stop people from using technology, nothing will.

People stopped buying Ford Pintos when they were found to be explosive. They didn't stop buying cars, though.

Likewise, they might opt to forgo computers and the internet, but daily chores would merit a desire to have labor saving devices. Cooking a pig over a spit or using a washboard wouldn't sit well with most people. Crude appliances would likely be among the first things that would re-appear - followed immediately by mechanical transportation.

You don't need to go that far. The earliest refrigerators used evaporation through various chemicals to draw out heat. You only need something like ether as the catalyst. Granted, with steam power, you could employ vapor compression which is far more effective, but refrigeration without any sort of mechanical or electrical means is possible.

Electricity generated at dams uses mechanical means to do so. It would seem that the ability to generate electricity just doesn't work anymore.

Wait-a-sec. How can you not have steam? That is a simple result of boiling water.

That is indeed very troubling.

+1.One of the best books I've ever read! And I do read a lot .

Spot on. The creators became so enamored of their imaginations they ignored how they sold the series to the fanbase for 5 years. Suddenly in season 6 aside from the continued excellent characters, 80% of what the show had been about became totally irrelevant. Despite having (foolishly) purchased Seasons 1-5 on Blu-Ray I've never watched any of them as the story means nada.

I think the biggest issue is that electricity created at generating plants, like dams and other power plants, isn't simply sent along to the user through the cables. There are computer systems in place that control and regulate it along with inverting it from DC to AC.

If all hell broke loose and the infrastructure went down, I'd bet on smaller systems being put into place in rural areas while only major cities would work on getting major plants back online. As a result, I would bet on farmers having power long before the residents of Park Avenue.

If, indeed something is affecting the ability to generate electricity and send it to places where it's needed, it would be far easier to find a way around that by generating the power in your own back yard in some way.
That's not confirmed. I seem to have heard it somewhere and it doesn't seem like they're using it in any fashion from the promotional materials I've seen. I would think the steam and wind generation would be two major systems to do just about everything from provide power to moving us around.

I've seen no evidence of that thus far.

That doesn't mean we won't encounter a crazy "steam punk" style of character at some point (who undoubtedly will sport a vintage aviator cap and goggles) who is doing that very thing, though. He'll likely have his only friend be a Jack Russell Terrier and he'll derive his life from the teachings of Tom Clancy novels.

The dictionary called. They want to use this post as the illustration for the word "nit."

LOL!

Honestly, I always wonder why the lights in buildings always seem to shut off like someone flipped a bunch of swtiches in all of them. They never seem to flicker or dim first. It's always snap, snap, snap in building after building. You'd think some sort of EMP or dampening field would show a more ragged shutdown preceeded by brownouts would occur as the effect takes hold - almost as if the lights a straining to stay lit just a bit longer...

But, yeah, the way the lights go out is likely going to be least of the issues...