Today's Captcha: "fire + brim stone"
NBC's new show Revolution is already being hailed as J.J. Abrams' new Lost. It is a fresh spin on post-apoc settings, essentially a "Life After People" --- but with people. The basic premise is that electricity, in all of our technology, has just, um... stopped. Doesn't work anymore, not even batteries. What would happen?
Over 10,000,000 people watched the pilot, a record for any NBC show premiere to date.
But why?
...
...
...
SPOILER TERRITORY FROM THIS POINT FORWARD
Still here? Okay, welcome to the Crazy Train.
Because between the show's trailers and its pilot, there's enough stupid here to choke the premise into a stillborn pile of unstructured mush. Abrams' work often has this problem: really high-concept material, executed with good cinematography and direction, but riddled with plot holes you could drive the U.S.S. Enterprise through (starship, space shuttle or aircraft carrier, take your pick).
However, it usually takes a while for an Abrams vehicle to break down, and when it does it's usually due to an over-complex web of unresolved and/or nonsensical plot threads.
Not this time. This time, it's right out of the gate.
In the first few minutes of the pilot, we're presented with the show's Maguffin: a USB storage drive which has been used to download incriminating files just before "The Blackout" kicks in. This data supposedly presents some sort of threat to whoever is behind it all... the instigators of this post-technological Revolution.
Then we get to see and hear about everything which uses electricity --- everything --- just plain shutting down. Power grid goes dark, aircraft drop from the skies, cars shut down. We see the entire night side of Planet Earth go dark, including the western edge of Europe, so we know it's not just happening in the Americas.
Fast-forward fifteen years -
WAIT WAIT WAIT, STOP.
BACK THE F*** UP.
WHY DOESN'T IT WORK?
How the hell is this even supposed to happen? At this point, Abrams' core point to the entire show comes under fire. It's not that "well, it's not explained", it's that it's literally unexplainable.
Electricity just stops working, period, for no understandable reason? Congratulations, you just flopped over dead. No electricity, at all, means no functioning nervous system or brain activity. Since there are still people in this show, we know electricity itself still works.
Electromagnetic pulse (EMP)? Fries existing circuitry by overloading it --- but this wouldn't affect anything without circuitry, or anything sufficiently far underground to be shielded. Not to mention that many systems can be hardened against EMP (and many have been), while others are not complex enough to be burned out in the first place. In any case, we never see any of the hundreds of sub-orbital nukes necessary to shut down the ENTIRE GLOBE at once, despite the long-view shot of the planet's dark side.
A computer virus? Won't cut it. If this were the actual explanation, I would have to demand that Mr. Abrams please stop insulting those of us who understand how computers work. Or how anything that DOESN'T use a computer would STILL work. For God's sake, you can rig a bicycle to act as a human-powered electricity generator, unless copper and magnets have stopped working too.
Reversing the magnetic polarity? Most reversals take 1,000 - 10,000 years, during which we would simply adapt to slowly-changing conditions, hence no crisis. Assuming that this is one of the "spontaneous flips" theorized by many scientists as possible, all that would happen is that magnetic north would become magnetic south and vice versa. TVTropes sums it up excellently:
Of course, you can "reverse the polarity" in real life ? just put the battery in the other way round. Doesn't quite have the same effect, though. Most simple powered toy vehicles, electric toothbrushes and other devices that rely on a spinning electric motor will simply run backwards while more complex electronics with a DC power supply may even break or fry the device in question. This is why most "complex" devices nowadays are equipped with diodes, which keep the current from flowing backwards if the polarity is reversed, preventing damage to the main circuitry.
In event of a global magnetic-pole swap, even the stuff that would be affected can be repaired relatively easily. However, all your data would still be hosed if it were stored magnetically --- LIKE THE USB-DRIVE MAGUFFIN. That thing had better be a solid-state device...
OH WAIT, IT WORKS WHEN THE PLOT SAYS SO
Don't let me EVEN get started on how this official trailer from NBC liberally rips off the epic soundtrack music from Mass Effect 3. My brain is inserting Shepard's lines over the middle of this thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwfCRAtkYEI
But if you hang on until the end of that little vidya, you'll see what really torqued me off.
A computer. A networked computer, being used for long-distance communication.
So, at a minimum, electricity IS being generated, not only to run the two computers but also to power the connections and relays between them. The show itself had not even aired when this trailer came out, effectively blowing out Abrams' vision with a plot hole that I just don't see as repairable.
OTHER STUPIDITY
MUSKETRY AND CROSSBOWS: Fifteen years after the world goes to hell, a warlord's troops are using muskets and crossbows to terrorize the local population. Now, both are just fine for subsistence hunting and such. You can make your own powder, bullets and bolts, and they're very durable because they're relatively simple. Good for an individual survivalist... but NOT for a warlord whose relatively small number of goons need to be able to fire more than one shot before reloading, if the objective is to keep the local population in line by threat of force.
And in fact, it's shown how bad an idea this is when one of the aforementioned goons opens fire, and the villagers counter-attack, seeming to give about as well as they get. THEN the goon captain ends it --- with a modern semi-auto handgun. So it's not like those don't work for some weird unexplained reason...
COLD STORAGE: "Oh, we can't preserve anything because refrigerators don't work." Dig a hole, stupid. In the pre-industrial era, ice production and delivery were a major industry --- and they did NOT just travel up to some glacier and drag back chunks before they melted. Even George Washington enjoyed ice cream, and so do the Amish today, so no, it doesn't take a fridge.
ASTHMA ATTACK: I have asthma. You know what you DON'T do during an asthma attack? Run for help. No, you get to clear air and you work on regulating your breathing, while someone else runs to get help. If you run for it, you are most likely going to lock up your lungs entirely, and you'll be dead from asphyxiation in a matter of minutes after that. And if you have asthma to begin with, why are you one of your community's hunters?
"TURN IT BACK ON": This is the point of the Maguffin. It supposedly has info on how to get electricity running again. Well, as noted above, there's no reason it can't be running now. Not for, at minimum, small communities like the one the show opens on. Can you make bricks? Then you can make a smokestack, start shoveling wood from all those trees nearby into it, heat a boiler full of water and drive a turbine with the steam. There is no good reason why small-scale electrical production should be impossible here.
Seriously, we haven't even gotten past the opening credits yet. Everything above this line is in the trailer, or the pilot's first few minutes.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like Abrams' style. I plan to give this show a few more episodes' worth of consideration. But it's going to take one helluva ass-pull to recover from an opening that manages to shoot itself in the gonads from Day Zero (because Jesus Christ, that trailer).
EDIT: As it turns out, this is Thread #9001 for User Reviews. You may commence screaming in your best Vegeta impression now.
NBC's new show Revolution is already being hailed as J.J. Abrams' new Lost. It is a fresh spin on post-apoc settings, essentially a "Life After People" --- but with people. The basic premise is that electricity, in all of our technology, has just, um... stopped. Doesn't work anymore, not even batteries. What would happen?
Over 10,000,000 people watched the pilot, a record for any NBC show premiere to date.
But why?
...
...
...
SPOILER TERRITORY FROM THIS POINT FORWARD
Still here? Okay, welcome to the Crazy Train.
Because between the show's trailers and its pilot, there's enough stupid here to choke the premise into a stillborn pile of unstructured mush. Abrams' work often has this problem: really high-concept material, executed with good cinematography and direction, but riddled with plot holes you could drive the U.S.S. Enterprise through (starship, space shuttle or aircraft carrier, take your pick).
However, it usually takes a while for an Abrams vehicle to break down, and when it does it's usually due to an over-complex web of unresolved and/or nonsensical plot threads.
Not this time. This time, it's right out of the gate.
In the first few minutes of the pilot, we're presented with the show's Maguffin: a USB storage drive which has been used to download incriminating files just before "The Blackout" kicks in. This data supposedly presents some sort of threat to whoever is behind it all... the instigators of this post-technological Revolution.
Then we get to see and hear about everything which uses electricity --- everything --- just plain shutting down. Power grid goes dark, aircraft drop from the skies, cars shut down. We see the entire night side of Planet Earth go dark, including the western edge of Europe, so we know it's not just happening in the Americas.
Fast-forward fifteen years -
WAIT WAIT WAIT, STOP.
BACK THE F*** UP.
WHY DOESN'T IT WORK?
How the hell is this even supposed to happen? At this point, Abrams' core point to the entire show comes under fire. It's not that "well, it's not explained", it's that it's literally unexplainable.
Electricity just stops working, period, for no understandable reason? Congratulations, you just flopped over dead. No electricity, at all, means no functioning nervous system or brain activity. Since there are still people in this show, we know electricity itself still works.
Electromagnetic pulse (EMP)? Fries existing circuitry by overloading it --- but this wouldn't affect anything without circuitry, or anything sufficiently far underground to be shielded. Not to mention that many systems can be hardened against EMP (and many have been), while others are not complex enough to be burned out in the first place. In any case, we never see any of the hundreds of sub-orbital nukes necessary to shut down the ENTIRE GLOBE at once, despite the long-view shot of the planet's dark side.
A computer virus? Won't cut it. If this were the actual explanation, I would have to demand that Mr. Abrams please stop insulting those of us who understand how computers work. Or how anything that DOESN'T use a computer would STILL work. For God's sake, you can rig a bicycle to act as a human-powered electricity generator, unless copper and magnets have stopped working too.
Reversing the magnetic polarity? Most reversals take 1,000 - 10,000 years, during which we would simply adapt to slowly-changing conditions, hence no crisis. Assuming that this is one of the "spontaneous flips" theorized by many scientists as possible, all that would happen is that magnetic north would become magnetic south and vice versa. TVTropes sums it up excellently:
Of course, you can "reverse the polarity" in real life ? just put the battery in the other way round. Doesn't quite have the same effect, though. Most simple powered toy vehicles, electric toothbrushes and other devices that rely on a spinning electric motor will simply run backwards while more complex electronics with a DC power supply may even break or fry the device in question. This is why most "complex" devices nowadays are equipped with diodes, which keep the current from flowing backwards if the polarity is reversed, preventing damage to the main circuitry.
In event of a global magnetic-pole swap, even the stuff that would be affected can be repaired relatively easily. However, all your data would still be hosed if it were stored magnetically --- LIKE THE USB-DRIVE MAGUFFIN. That thing had better be a solid-state device...
OH WAIT, IT WORKS WHEN THE PLOT SAYS SO
Don't let me EVEN get started on how this official trailer from NBC liberally rips off the epic soundtrack music from Mass Effect 3. My brain is inserting Shepard's lines over the middle of this thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwfCRAtkYEI
But if you hang on until the end of that little vidya, you'll see what really torqued me off.
A computer. A networked computer, being used for long-distance communication.
So, at a minimum, electricity IS being generated, not only to run the two computers but also to power the connections and relays between them. The show itself had not even aired when this trailer came out, effectively blowing out Abrams' vision with a plot hole that I just don't see as repairable.
OTHER STUPIDITY
MUSKETRY AND CROSSBOWS: Fifteen years after the world goes to hell, a warlord's troops are using muskets and crossbows to terrorize the local population. Now, both are just fine for subsistence hunting and such. You can make your own powder, bullets and bolts, and they're very durable because they're relatively simple. Good for an individual survivalist... but NOT for a warlord whose relatively small number of goons need to be able to fire more than one shot before reloading, if the objective is to keep the local population in line by threat of force.
And in fact, it's shown how bad an idea this is when one of the aforementioned goons opens fire, and the villagers counter-attack, seeming to give about as well as they get. THEN the goon captain ends it --- with a modern semi-auto handgun. So it's not like those don't work for some weird unexplained reason...
COLD STORAGE: "Oh, we can't preserve anything because refrigerators don't work." Dig a hole, stupid. In the pre-industrial era, ice production and delivery were a major industry --- and they did NOT just travel up to some glacier and drag back chunks before they melted. Even George Washington enjoyed ice cream, and so do the Amish today, so no, it doesn't take a fridge.
ASTHMA ATTACK: I have asthma. You know what you DON'T do during an asthma attack? Run for help. No, you get to clear air and you work on regulating your breathing, while someone else runs to get help. If you run for it, you are most likely going to lock up your lungs entirely, and you'll be dead from asphyxiation in a matter of minutes after that. And if you have asthma to begin with, why are you one of your community's hunters?
"TURN IT BACK ON": This is the point of the Maguffin. It supposedly has info on how to get electricity running again. Well, as noted above, there's no reason it can't be running now. Not for, at minimum, small communities like the one the show opens on. Can you make bricks? Then you can make a smokestack, start shoveling wood from all those trees nearby into it, heat a boiler full of water and drive a turbine with the steam. There is no good reason why small-scale electrical production should be impossible here.
Seriously, we haven't even gotten past the opening credits yet. Everything above this line is in the trailer, or the pilot's first few minutes.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like Abrams' style. I plan to give this show a few more episodes' worth of consideration. But it's going to take one helluva ass-pull to recover from an opening that manages to shoot itself in the gonads from Day Zero (because Jesus Christ, that trailer).
EDIT: As it turns out, this is Thread #9001 for User Reviews. You may commence screaming in your best Vegeta impression now.
