Revolution

[Tale]

World-without-electricity NBC TV sci-fi series from Iron Man director Jon Favreau, backed by JJ Abrams.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwfCRAtkYEI

"After 15 years of darkness, an unlikely group sets out to save the world."

The hair is ridiculous. Could be redeemed by writing.

[HaemishM]

That looks interesting.

[Rendakor]

I'm a sucker for apocalypses so I'll at least watch an episode or two of this.

[Hawkbit]

Same, though 150 years of growth and decay is a bit much for a 15 year span.  I'm sure they'll drag the "finding the brother" plot for entirely too long.  But again, I'll check it out at least.

[angry.bob]

That looked like some of the stupidest shit ever. Fucking Jeremiah with Book of Eli. The premise is complete shit that would require god/science/aliens to make electrons stop moving. Other than cool CG of citiscapes that have apparently been fertilized daily with Miracle Grow you will curse NBC for burgling minutes of your life. Dwnload some episodes of World After Man, it's a pretty decent show and doesn't insult people's understanding post 19th century technology. Seriously, my five year old just shot the show's premise full of holes.

[Threash]

It has the potential to be interesting but i expect we will get another shitty family drama in a scifi setting.

[Lucas]

Yeah, I love that sort of post-apocalyptic stuff, but at first glance this looks so generic and rehearsed :/ . And ok, it's "fiction" and whatnot, but it takes only 15 years (without a cataclysmic event like asteroid, pole shifting etc.) in order for vegetation to conquer back New York? :P

[HaemishM]

It's not really science-fiction - more like SYFY, and it's on NBC. I'm willing to give it a pass on the scientific aspects if the writing is at least logically consistent. And if it's shit, I just won't watch past the first episode.

[shiznitz]

I think that vegetative overgrowth is probably understated for 15 years.  It is just covering, not tearing down yet.

As far as the trailer, looks very average.

[Nevermore]

When I first saw the trailer I thought "Oh, that looks kind of interesting.  Better than Terra Nova at least."

I mean, I could go with the whole all electricity stops working premise.  But then when you stop to think about what society would be like with no electricity, the correct answer isn't "post-apocalypse with cities being retaken by nature", it's "United States circa 1850, which had cities not being overtaken by nature and was successfully able to govern territory roughly the size it is now".

I get with the big population difference there'd be widespread panic and starvation but with chemical reactions still working (gunpowder being one) and steam power, after 15 years there should be a more stable and advanced society than the one being shown.  Actually, it would have been the perfect excuse to see a big steampunk cityscape but instead we got the bizarre love child of Walking Dead and Hunger Games.

[HaemishM]

Steampunk is more expensive to film than the set of Little House on the Prairie.

[schild]

I expect this to be absolutely dreadful because the premise is just horrendous.

I like the idea in theory, but batteries not working? Yea, we're done here.

[Merusk]

Yeah, I love that sort of post-apocalyptic stuff, but at first glance this looks so generic and rehearsed :/ . And ok, it's "fiction" and whatnot, but it takes only 15 years (without a cataclysmic event like asteroid, pole shifting etc.) in order for vegetation to conquer back New York? :P

Depends on how wholesale that vegetation actually took over.  As Angry.Bob mentioned, watch Life After People (the actual show name) sometime. There's plenty of actual cases of habitations wholesale abandoned by people in the past 20-30 years to work as good case studies about how fast and how well the plant life moves in afterward.  (It's a lot faster than you think.) Chernobyl and the former manufacturing island off of Japan are two of the best examples.  I'll grant you that they do trend towards the dramatic but it's generally a well-done series.

They actually cover NYC in one episode.   Here's the clip about Grand Central Station.
http://www.history.com/shows/life-after-people/videos/grand-central-station#grand-central-station

[Mrbloodworth]

Heh, V.A.S.T in the soundtrack.

[Lucas]

Yeah, I love that sort of post-apocalyptic stuff, but at first glance this looks so generic and rehearsed :/ . And ok, it's "fiction" and whatnot, but it takes only 15 years (without a cataclysmic event like asteroid, pole shifting etc.) in order for vegetation to conquer back New York? :P

Depends on how wholesale that vegetation actually took over.  As Angry.Bob mentioned, watch Life After People (the actual show name) sometime. There's plenty of actual cases of habitations wholesale abandoned by people in the past 20-30 years to work as good case studies about how fast and how well the plant life moves in afterward.  (It's a lot faster than you think.) Chernobyl and the former manufacturing island off of Japan are two of the best examples.  I'll grant you that they do trend towards the dramatic but it's generally a well-done series.

They actually cover NYC in one episode.   Here's the clip about Grand Central Station.
http://www.history.com/shows/life-after-people/videos/grand-central-station#grand-central-station

Thanks! Will check it out :)

[Lakov_Sanite]

Can't see the trailer atm but it's science fiction/fantasy, how "electricity not working" a bigger macguffin than "animated human corpses" when it comes to apocalypse settings? They are both equally bullshit on almost every level and really my biggest issue with it would be as stated above, steampunk/alternate means of power would be more explored in 15 years.

[Evildrider]

This is basically stripped straight from the Emberverse books by S.M. Stirling. 

[shiznitz]

Can't see the trailer atm but it's science fiction/fantasy, how "electricity not working" a bigger macguffin than "animated human corpses" when it comes to apocalypse settings? They are both equally bullshit on almost every level and really my biggest issue with it would be as stated above, steampunk/alternate means of power would be more explored in 15 years.

Maybe but I find zombie-ism more believable than a general failing of electrons.

[Fabricated]

Ahahah, what a fucking stupid premise.

Whoops sorry guys I turned off thermodynamics my bad.

It's not like having SOME form of energy ruins the idea...just make up some near-future horseshit about the US/China having some nuke-EMP satellites out of Escape from New York and have some asshole set them all off. Boom, nearly all electronics fried and the world's power infrastructure destroyed. Tada.

[Ratman_tf]

Can't see the trailer atm but it's science fiction/fantasy, how "electricity not working" a bigger macguffin than "animated human corpses" when it comes to apocalypse settings? They are both equally bullshit on almost every level and really my biggest issue with it would be as stated above, steampunk/alternate means of power would be more explored in 15 years.

Maybe the magic curse makes steam power stop working too! 

[Furiously]

It's been proposed that we have gone through "wet" regions of space and "dusty" regions of space. Perhaps we could go through one that has lots of free electrons.. Ok no...well maybe if it was really strong. We could see some awesome auroras.  uhmm... Ohh  know.. Earth's iron core does something wonky and becomes de-magnetized, and somehow we don't all get lethal doses of radiation. 

I'm trying to think how a faraday cage wouldn't solve all the problems these people are having regardless of the source...

[Merusk]

Finally watched the trailer.  Yeah.. way too overgrown for 15 years. This won't last half a season.

[kaid]

Yeah, I love that sort of post-apocalyptic stuff, but at first glance this looks so generic and rehearsed :/ . And ok, it's "fiction" and whatnot, but it takes only 15 years (without a cataclysmic event like asteroid, pole shifting etc.) in order for vegetation to conquer back New York? :P

Just look at chernobyl to see how fast nature takes back areas when people are no longer willing/able to maintain it.

[angry.bob]

I just watched the first episode and had to fight to keep watching past the opening scene. I had a stronger urge to keep watching past the second scene introducing the post electricity "villiage". It's  suburban cul de sac with half a dozen houses and literally nothing around it for miles. But there's like 20 families living there ad they're growing gardens inside the engine compartments of cars. Instead of growing them in the dirt, which is literally every place else. Except for where the asphalt road was, which for whatever reason has been replaced by dirt in less than 15 years. Also, everything is half ass patched with random bullshit, especially if whatever was fixed requires absolutely no electricity at any point to make. I stuck it out anyway and was not let down. I thought this show could not have been a worse piece of crap if they tried. I was wrong. It was a much worse piece of crap than I could have imagined, and it seems to have been done with little effort on their part.

Everything about this show was horrible. Fucking horrible. Don't even get me started on every single random person in the show being an undercover, super-science using master martial artist assassin. Or one of the main characters having somehow made it from infancy to adulthood without air conditioning or medicine while having asthma so bad it almost kills him twice in the first 30 minutes of the show. Or that some ex-google employee with 80 million dollars happened to be living in a 2000 square foot house in BFE.

[Teleku]

Yeah, I saw the pilot at comic con back in July.  Meant to write up a similar review here to warn people away from it, but forgot.  While several of the 'realism' issues Bob points out suck, that's not the worst part of the show.  The setting is kind of cool and I could suspend belief if it was fun to watch.  But its not.  The biggest problem is that all of the actors suck shit.  Bad Bad Bad wooden acting.  The whole pilot was also one long string of ancient cliches.  Cliche scene after cliche scene.  Also, its painfully obvious this show is on a lower budget based on film quality and set design (and if its not, then somebody at NBC is snorting away half this shows budget).

Bleh, the setting has some potential, but I don't see anything good being done with it based on this cast and crew.  On the bright side, after they showed the pilot for this at comic con, they immediately showed the pilot for Cult.  Which I actually enjoyed quite a bit.  Not sure if they'll be able to stretch out the premise into a full series successfully, but I enjoyed what they did with that a hell of a lot better than Revolution.

[Numtini]

Beyond terrible. Classic network tv SKY FIE meant for people who hate SF.

My favorite part is the scene when the lights go out and they're having their daughter have ice cream for the last time EVAH because there's not going to be electricity. Would everyone here who's made ice cream in a hand crank like to raise our hands? I use Thomas Jefferson's recipe. I suspect he used a hand crank too.

[Ubvman]

Britain conquered half the world without electricity with the US and the Spanish taking care of the rest. Even if China fell to total warlordism (doubt it), I have a hard time thinking that Chinese war junks haven't appeared in California by now. Ditto Rule Brittania in NY and New England areas. Civilization and empires did not start with electricity nor will it end without.

[Tebonas]

What turned me off most is the sketchy grasp on science and how things work.

Why do guns work but combustion engines don't? We are talking rural America here, there must be tons of pre-electronics cars around that still ought to work. And don't let me get started on Steam Power. After so many years, this should be a Steampunk setting, not the Stone Age with firearms.

[Numtini]

It's not an EM pulse, so it's electricity, not electronics. But don't diesel engines work without electricity? At least once you've cranked them enough to get started?

[angry.bob]

It's not an EM pulse, so it's electricity, not electronics. But don't diesel engines work without electricity? At least once you've cranked them enough to get started?

Yes and no. the diesel fuel will ignite when it reaches an adequate ammount of compression + heat. As far as I know some heat is required and that is what the glow plugs are for. Once the diesel engine reaches operating temperature they're not needed anymore and will usually turn off. Without them though you can crank aa cold diesel all day and it wouldn't fire up.

Gasoline engines on the other hand do require electricity for pretty much the entire ignition system. That part has gotten a lot more complicated but even the old timey stuff had electricity making the gas ignite.

[Tebonas]

Ok, since they established its some mystical mumbo jumbo and they said nobody knows what happened they can do what they like. Some scientific cabal found out how to disable electricity on a global scale. But Guns still work. Guns and Combustion engines are not that far off by how they work. Maybe they needed some time to retrofit existing technology. But they had 15 years.

[sickrubik]

Yeah, this show is terrible.

I get annoyed with settings like this where the people all seem to have plenty of makeup and trendy clothing... I understand WHY they do it, but it annoys me endlessly.

On a very silly note.. the whole necklace thing just bugs the shit out of me. I HOPE this is a mystical thing, because everything about these little necklace things drive my crazy. If it's a technology thing, there's no reason why anyone would build a housing that looks like that.

Beyond that, shitty set design and SyFy level acting. Terrible.

I do wonder if it's not just electricity that failed... the Google Dude says to the class that "physics stopped working". In addition, planes apparently dropped right out of the sky straight down. Of course, if it IS beyond just electricity, it's even more fucking dumb that at first blush. Also, the title flashes "Evolution" before the R pops up to complete the title. So that could hint at even more shittiness.

Did I mention that this show is shitty?

[HaemishM]

I managed to make it through the whole show, but yeah, it's pretty fucking bad. It's filmed terribly. The actors are all equally bad. Seeing the "I'm not the werewolf from Twilight but I really want to look like him" show up and be all "I'm a bad guy but you're really hot and I'm really hot we should be hot together" was all sorts of  The acting wasn't SyFy bad because then you are putting it alongside good performances like BSG before the writing started to suck, and that's not fair to people like Edward James Olmos. This was just bad. I could overlook the really obvious scientific/logic fallacies, but the human bits have to be good enough to carry it. They don't. I may try to watch a second episode just to see if they improved from the pilot.

[sickrubik]

The acting wasn't SyFy bad because then you are putting it alongside good performances like BSG before the writing started to suck, and that's not fair to people like Edward James Olmos.

Touché.

[Rasix]

You guys are braver than I am.  I couldn't get past the terrible TV promos and the weird reverse crossbow (googling says this thing exists, still looks dumb).