Revolution: Will Eric Kripke and JJ Abrams Strike Gold?

[Fredrik]

"Revolution" TV show

Less than 3 weeks to the premiere now. (September 17). What do you think? Will it be it be silly but fun to watch like Flash Forward, or awful like Flash Gordon?

In this epic adventure [...], a family struggles to reunite in an American landscape where every single piece of technology - computers, planes, cars, phones, even lights - has mysteriously blacked out forever.

I would love to hear a technobabble explanation for this, but I don't think we'll get one.

The show is getting a lot of buzz because it was created by Eric Kripke (Supernatural), and because JJ Abrams has slapped his name on it too. The pilot was directed by Jon Favreau.



I'm not impressed by the trailer. I see that everyone is pretty, that they're looking for someone, and that there will be fights. But I don't see a reason to care. I hope the first few episodes will give me one.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's likely that this show will go the same way as Flash Forward, The Event, Alcatraz and Terra Nova, and not be be renewed for a second season.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Interesting premise but given the state of TV and film SF I won't hold my breath. If all our technology failed then within a few weeks 90% of us in the developed would be dead (our urbanised societies are reliant on huge transport logistics chains and mechanised farming) and the rest wouldn't be able to resort to a recent age of technology, we'd fall straight to hunter gatherer (albeit with interesting tools to gather) thanks to the loss of explicit knowledge in how less technologically advanced societies work.

Off the top of my head the only good example of this I can think of is the film The Road. Few people eeking out miserable, starving and sick existences.

Also I agree with your observations, all those people are far too attractive (as in physically fit and beauty wise) with too well kept clothes/hair/basic tools for me to take it seriously.

 

[Pythagorean]

I've been soooo disapointed by syfy shows in the last decade. I was pretty stoked in Firefly when there was no sound in space.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Interesting they use music from the Tron soundtrack in this trailer. I'll give it a shot, but if it goes the way that The Waking Dead (soap opera) went I'll be very disappointed.

 

[Pythagorean]

Interesting they use music from the Tron soundtrack in this trailer. I'll give it a shot, but if it goes the way that The Waking Dead (soap opera) went I'll be very disappointed.

So true... but I can't stop watching.

 

[I like Serena]

or awful like Flash Gordon?

I liked Flash Gordon!
And yes, I have a couple of sentimental memories about the original comic.

 

[Evo]

I love Supernatural because of it's tongue in cheek humor.

This show makes no sense. And it doesn't seem humorous. Why did combustion engines stop? I have a feeling the show will be canceled before an explanation is given. Perhaps that's the plan, there is no explanation.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

This show makes no sense. And it doesn't seem humorous. Why did combustion engines stop?

I refuse to watch this show for this exact reason. All electronics stopping working is one thing (giant space-born EMP blast, tiny engineered nano bacteria that prevent it, whatever), but gunpowder and combustion engines not working is to say the fundamental laws of chemistry have been upended, yet they're able to have camp fires...

Dumb.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I refuse to watch this show for this exact reason. All electronics stopping working is one thing (giant space-born EMP blast, tiny engineered nano bacteria that prevent it, whatever), but gunpowder and combustion engines not working is to say the fundamental laws of chemistry have been upended, yet they're able to have camp fires...

Dumb.

Screw the campfires how does any chemistry (including their biochemistry!) work? I don't mind seemingly impossible phenomenon when they are carried across well but I doubt this will be. Looks like another badass-attractive-actors-who-act-badly show.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I refuse to watch this show for this exact reason. All electronics stopping working is one thing (giant space-born EMP blast, tiny engineered nano bacteria that prevent it, whatever), but gunpowder and combustion engines not working is to say the fundamental laws of chemistry have been upended, yet they're able to have camp fires...

Dumb.

Which is strange, because the same show with them able to use cars for a few months (until they run out of gas) would be fine. It would still be a good show! Just kill the power plants.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Which is strange, because the same show with them able to use cars for a few months (until they run out of gas) would be fine. It would still be a good show! Just kill the power plants.

Yeah killing the power for a few days/weeks would result in the death of most people thanks to disruption in food distribution, civil unrest and a general lack of coordination. After that the suvivors can scavange all the technology they want but chances are it will be hard to maintain.

In the case of cars you could take petrol from other cars or petrol stations but if the roads are full of abandonned wrecks the use will be limited.

 

[Darth Frodo]

On the plus side Gustavo Fring has made it back from the dead. This is good news.

 

[Fredrik]

On the plus side Gustavo Fring has made it back from the dead. This is good news.

Yes, but we got that news almost a year ago, on a show called "Once upon a time".

I liked Flash Gordon!

There's always someone. I thought that they had the wrong actor for every part, and did everything else wrong too.

 

[Fredrik]

I love Supernatural because of it's tongue in cheek humor.

Me too. The scene I'm linking to below is my favorite scene from the entire series.

Explanation for those who don't follow Supernatural: The show is about two brothers, Sam and Dean. They hunt ghosts, demons and other supernatural things that kill people. The older guy with the beard is Bobby, a friend of theirs who helps them out from time to time, usually just by giving them information. The guy dressed in black who appears behind Sam and Dean is Crowley, a demon who's helping them prevent the end of the world. He used to be a crossroads demon. That means that his job was to buy people's souls. These people are offered a few decades of...whatever they want, in exchange for their souls. When the time is up, they're killed by hellhounds, and demons collect their souls. Each deal is sealed with a kiss. (Most of the crossroads demons are absurdly attractive women, but as you can see, Crowley is not). In this scene, Sam and Dean find out that Bobby has made a deal with Crowley to get the information they need. (Crowley had claimed that for some supernatural reason that I don't remember, he wouldn't be able to help unless they made the deal. He swore that he would only use the deal to help, not to take Bobby's soul).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doayJgz5CXc&t=1m01s

(The link is to 1:01 into the video. You should watch until 2:22 or so).

I think all the actors are delivering their lines perfectly here. Their timing is perfect. The scene is also perfectly directed and edited. It's just a brilliant scene.

It's a shame that season 7 was so bad.

Spoiler

What were they thinking when they got rid of both Bobby and Castiel? Also, the bad guys of the season, the Leviathans, were pretty boring.

 

[I_am_learning]

Reading the comments, why do I feel, a team from PF should make a similar TV show and beat the *** out of them?
Or at-least, they could hire a team from PF, or at-least hire some people who know science?

 

[Fredrik]

Reading the comments, why do I feel, a team from PF should make a similar TV show and beat the *** out of them?
Or at-least, they could hire a team from PF, or at-least hire some people who know science?

Some of them have technical consultants. For example, the Star Trek shows (TNG and later) had consultants who made sure that things at least have the right names. There's an anecdote in "The physics of Star Trek" about how one of them is asked how the inertial dampeners work. He replied "very well, thank you".

I suspect that Fringe doesn't have any technical consultants, since it's filled with new age and pseudoscience terminology. For example, the two universes "vibrate at different frequencies". Revolution will almost certainly be more like Fringe than like Star Trek: TNG.

I personally don't need shows in the sci-fi/fantasy genre to be scientifically accurate, but I wish they could at least make an effort to get the simplest stuff right. For example, characters that are super strong and almost indestructible are common in sci-fi. These abilities explain why they can catch someone falling from the top of a tall building just by holding out their arms, but it doesn't explain why the falling person doesn't die. In the case of Superman, I'm thinking that since he can also fly, it would sound somewhat plausible if they said something about how he's actually curving spacetime around him, and that because of this, the falling person is actually brought to a stop gently, even though it doesn't look that way. (The explanation doesn't even have to work in my opinion. I just need to know that the writers have seen the problems that are incredibly obvious to me). This wouldn't work with Michael Chiklis's character on No ordinary family, so I would have preferred if they had just avoided those scenes.

But I suspect that most people don't care at all about these details.

 

[Evo]

Me too. The scene I'm linking to below is my favorite scene from the entire series.

Explanation for those who don't follow Supernatural: The show is about two brothers, Sam and Dean. They hunt ghosts, demons and other supernatural things that kill people. The older guy with the beard is Bobby, a friend of theirs who helps them out from time to time, usually just by giving them information. The guy dressed in black who appears behind Sam and Dean is Crowley, a demon who's helping them prevent the end of the world. He used to be a crossroads demon. That means that his job was to buy people's souls. These people are offered a few decades of...whatever they want, in exchange for their souls. When the time is up, they're killed by hellhounds, and demons collect their souls. Each deal is sealed with a kiss. (Most of the crossroads demons are absurdly attractive women, but as you can see, Crowley is not). In this scene, Sam and Dean find out that Bobby has made a deal with Crowley to get the information they need. (Crowley had claimed that for some supernatural reason that I don't remember, he wouldn't be able to help unless they made the deal. He swore that he would only use the deal to help, not to take Bobby's soul).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doayJgz5CXc&t=1m01s

(The link is to 1:01 into the video. You should watch until 2:22 or so).

I think all the actors are delivering their lines perfectly here. Their timing is perfect. The scene is also perfectly directed and edited. It's just a brilliant scene.

It's a shame that season 7 was so bad.

Spoiler

What were they thinking when they got rid of both Bobby and Castiel? Also, the bad guys of the season, the Leviathans, were pretty boring.

Bobby is an integral part of that show. They turned Castiel bad. And ENOUGH of the Leviathans, time to end that storyline.

 

[Crake2]

I don't think this show is going to succeed tbh. It's another "Terra Nova" (which, in my opinion, was pretty nice. But well, another one who got canceled).

The pretty acting (actors) are going to ruin it for me.

 

[Fredrik]

I've seen the first episode now. People in the USA can download it legally from nbc.com. It was essentially just a longer version of the previews we've seen, so if you've seen those but not the pilot, you know almost everything that I do.

The episode confirmed that guns work. Not just those civil war rifles we saw in the previews, but modern pistols as well. So I guess it's just electricity that doesn't work. Not sure how human bodies can still work. They didn't address that.

The story is exactly what it appeared to be in the previews. The storytelling technique is not impressive. They have already used two huge coincidences to get everything going quickly. They need to find a guy in Chicago, so they go there (in what looks like at most a couple of days), and ask a guy if he knows the person they're looking for. Obviously he is that guy. (OK, they seemed to already know that they were in the right place, more or less, but still). One of the characters meets a woman who lives in the middle of nowhere. Obviously, she's one of the few who knows something about the big conspiracy.

Oh, and apparently, in the future, all men in good shape wear really tight shirts.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Anyone watch the second episode last night?

 

[Fredrik]

Anyone watch the second episode last night?

Has the second episode been released? I don't see it at http://www.nbc.com/revolution/video/ or The Pirate Bay. The premiere is September 17, so I wouldn't expect the second to be available in any form until September 24.

 

[Redbelly98]

Weird, I was just at the barber today and saw an ad for this show in a magazine -- first I'd heard of it. Then I come home and find this thread.

All I can say is, there better not be any thunderstorms, ever, in this show.

 

[Evo]

They already lost me.

 

[Fredrik]

All I can say is, there better not be any thunderstorms, ever, in this show.

The theory I came up with was that some new technology, based on physics that's unknown to us, has changed the properties of metals, so that they no longer conduct electric currents. Someone at another site came up with another idea: Power-draining nanites. If he's right, then thunderstorms may still be possible.

 

[Evo]

The theory I came up with was that some new technology, based on physics that's unknown to us, has changed the properties of metals, so that they no longer conduct electric currents. Someone at another site came up with another idea: Power-draining nanites. If he's right, then thunderstorms may still be possible.

So, why do some people have electricity?

 

[Borg]

The theory I came up with was that some new technology, based on physics that's unknown to us, has changed the properties of metals, so that they no longer conduct electric currents. Someone at another site came up with another idea: Power-draining nanites. If he's right, then thunderstorms may still be possible.

My guess: Several seasons from now the show will focus on scientists at CERN where the cause will be determined to be the accidental discovery of the OMG particle.

I haven't seen most of the shows mentioned here. My favorite was Eureka. Yes, no basis in reality but I liked the science run amok aspect.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The theory I came up with was that some new technology, based on physics that's unknown to us, has changed the properties of metals, so that they no longer conduct electric currents. Someone at another site came up with another idea: Power-draining nanites. If he's right, then thunderstorms may still be possible.

Tap-dancing past the fact that "nanites" are the modern day folk-law equivalent of spells, demons and djinn it seems a stretch that would be so restricted to draining power from human technology only and still be so successful.

As for changing the properties of metals that sounds like something that would instantly kill most life. Hard to get your metalloproteins to work when their cofactor's properties have significantly changed.

My bet is that the answer to this show (if it could be called one) is going to be:

Spoiler

WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

 

[pantaz]

I was disappointed the moment they showed the airliner going down in a flat-spin. Basic aerodynamics failed, too?

The teacher, in his mini-rant to his students stated that even batteries don't work. So it's not just electrical devices, but specific chemical reactions?

What about diesel engines?

 

[Evo]

Why does everyone walk? Bicycles, peddle cars, steam engines, etc.. don't work anymore? Even little hand cars on railroad tracks would work for getting around. What happened to the horse and carriage?

How are they getting water to their homes in the suburbs?

 

[senserd]

Hi, I'm new here. Just watched the premiere and was looking online for some discussion of the physics. After watching the show, I tried to come up with a plausible explanation. I had an idea and wanted others to poke holes in it to see if it was any good.

My hypothesis is that all the electrons and protons have become their antimatter counterparts, positrons and antiprotons. This means that current would still flow, which would allow for chemical reactions, but the charges would be reversed.

Now that I think about it some more, there are some electricity based things that should continue to work even if that were the case.

Thoughts? Any feedback is welcome.

 

[Fredrik]

So, why do some people have electricity?

They don't "have electricity". They have devices that can temporarily reverse the effect of the technology that's causing the blackout.

I was disappointed the moment they showed the airliner going down in a flat-spin. Basic aerodynamics failed, too?

This sort of thing doesn't bother me much.

The teacher, in his mini-rant to his students stated that even batteries don't work. So it's not just electrical devices, but specific chemical reactions?

He didn't say anything about chemistry. He just said that batteries don't work. Maybe it's just the metal parts that no longer conduct the current.

Tap-dancing past the fact that "nanites" are the modern day folk-law equivalent of spells, demons and djinn it seems a stretch that would be so restricted to draining power from human technology only and still be so successful.

Totally. But compared to the alternatives...

As for changing the properties of metals that sounds like something that would instantly kill most life. Hard to get your metalloproteins to work when their cofactor's properties have significantly changed.

This is something I don't even understand. My knowledge of chemistry is unfortunately negligible. But I'll take your word for it.

My bet is that the answer to this show (if it could be called one) is going to be:

Spoiler

WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

I bet that whatever the explanation is, by the time we learn it, we will already have seen at least one episode that contradicts it.

 

[Fredrik]

Hi, I'm new here. Just watched the premiere and was looking online for some discussion of the physics. After watching the show, I tried to come up with a plausible explanation. I had an idea and wanted others to poke holes in it to see if it was any good.

My hypothesis is that all the electrons and protons have become their antimatter counterparts, positrons and antiprotons. This means that current would still flow, which would allow for chemical reactions, but the charges would be reversed.

Now that I think about it some more, there are some electricity based things that should continue to work even if that were the case.

Thoughts? Any feedback is welcome.

Welcome to the forum.

If every particle in the entire universe was replaced by its antiparticle, I think things would be pretty much the same. I could be wrong, but at least I don't immediately see a problem. If only some particles are replaced this way, e.g. every particle on Earth, but not the rest of the universe, then there would be problems. For example, every meteor would cause a huge explosion. I think they would blow up as the enter the atmosphere, and the radiation from these explosions would wipe out all life on Earth, except maybe deep under ground.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Totally. But compared to the alternatives...

Lol true.

This is something I don't even understand. My knowledge of chemistry is unfortunately negligible. But I'll take your word for it.

Metalloproteins are proteins that have a metal ion cofactor, a cofactor is a chemical compound bound to a protein necessary for it to work (that is not itself a protein). So if the properties of metals changed significantly I guess metalloproteins would alter their behaviour and as the most famous metalloprotein is an oxygen transporter...not looking good for life

I bet that whatever the explanation is, by the time we learn it, we will already have seen at least one episode that contradicts it.

Yup. I'm sure it won't be internally consistent.

Hi, I'm new here. Just watched the premiere and was looking online for some discussion of the physics. After watching the show, I tried to come up with a plausible explanation. I had an idea and wanted others to poke holes in it to see if it was any good.

My hypothesis is that all the electrons and protons have become their antimatter counterparts, positrons and antiprotons. This means that current would still flow, which would allow for chemical reactions, but the charges would be reversed.

Now that I think about it some more, there are some electricity based things that should continue to work even if that were the case.

Thoughts? Any feedback is welcome.

Welcome to the forums! With the exception of an odd difference in decay I think it's still unknown how different antimatter is to matter exactly. Conventionally it's thought to be pretty much identical in the way it behaves. But even if there were a substantial difference enough to radically effect the way machines work I'm willing to bet that most other chemistry (and therefore biochem) will be affected in some way too.

 

[Janus]

Why does everyone walk? Bicycles, peddle cars, steam engines, etc.. don't work anymore? Even little hand cars on railroad tracks would work for getting around. What happened to the horse and carriage?

Or for that fact, the old fashioned steam engine? Or as mentioned in the last post, the diesel engine (which ignites combustion through compression and not a spark.)

 

[Mentalist]

I'm more concerned if electricity is out completely as in zero electricity on Earth, how does it affect the atmosphere and magnetic field? And, doesn't the gravitational ability of Earth allow for more electrical particles to move downward towards Earth from space to the surface? Is it possible to produce some sort of electricity from a wire and movement because of the magnetic field? (physics background is mediocre at best so I may be misguided in my questioning)

... In any case, this may just be a devastating black out. (I am about to watch the first episode).

 

[Fredrik]

I'm more concerned if electricity is out completely as in zero electricity on Earth,

Zero electricity on Earth would instantly end all life, since some of the processes that keep us alive involve electricity.

 

[mheslep]

...I personally don't need shows in the sci-fi/fantasy genre to be scientifically accurate, but I wish they could at least make an effort to get the simplest stuff right.

I recall one of the old and great sci-fi authors, maybe Azimov(?), said the trick to good sci-fi was to the limit the break-the-rules changes, one or two items and no more. Everything else stays the same or follows logically from the change made by the author.

Otherwise I think the reader/audience feels jerked around in a kid's game. I imagine following Azimov's guidance is hard work, essentially creating and thinking about a new reality where the author can not simply conjure a new trick (the demon did it) to cut to the chase when reality grows too complex to fathom, as it always does.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I recall one of the old and great sci-fi authors, maybe Azimov(?), said the trick to good sci-fi was to the limit the break-the-rules changes, one or two items and no more. Everything else stays the same or follows logically from the change made by the author.

Otherwise I think the reader/audience feels jerked around in a kid's game. I imagine following Azimov's guidance is hard work, essentially creating and thinking about a new reality where the author can not simply conjure a new trick (the demon did it) to cut to the chase when reality grows too complex to fathom, as it always does.

I think it's done a lot better in literature. TV and film tends to be far less experimental and go for spectacle.

 

[mheslep]

I think it's done a lot better in literature. TV and film tends to be far less experimental and go for spectacle.

Agreed, with some exceptions. The Matrix, Blade Runner, Star Trek TV come to mind. They managed to get by with inventing demons or other new tricks w/ every plot twist.

 

[lord_beavis]

I refuse to watch this show for this exact reason. All electronics stopping working is one thing (giant space-born EMP blast, tiny engineered nano bacteria that prevent it, whatever), but gunpowder and combustion engines not working is to say the fundamental laws of chemistry have been upended, yet they're able to have camp fires...

Dumb.

Now think; what do cars (that use gasoline) need to run? An electric spark. You read to much into the trailer or went off of someone else post.

 

[Katrex]

Well steam engines and guns still work but combustion and electronics doesn't. Combustion engines rely on an electrical ignition system. So cars not working does actually follow the logic.

However if even light bulbs don't work then it means one thing. Rotating magnets do not induce a current in nearby wire. But if that's the case why does the Earth still have a magnetic field? Clearly in this case we have to make Magnets unable to work while a molten core spinning still work.

Therefore it must be that Iron's dipole alignments had to be reset somehow(the Earth's magnetic field is caused by nickel I beleive)

What about batteries? Thats where the real problems comes in for me.

What i suspect the answer will be is some terrible ad hoc manipulation of the Earth's magnetic field to do whatever

 

[ImaLooser]

But I suspect that most people don't care at all about these details.

Nah. Most SF readers aren't really interested in science.

 

[Fredrik]

Nah. Most SF readers aren't really interested in science.

Is that sarcasm? I can't tell. What I said (that most viewers of sci-fi TV shows don't seem to care if the writers get the simple stuff right) is based on discussions I've had with people at other web sites. When I point out that some specific detail doesn't make any sense (for example that the superpower that we've been told that a character has wouldn't enable him to do what we just saw him do), I'm usually told that I'm a fool for thinking that anything should make sense in a sci-fi show.

 

[ImaLooser]

Is that sarcasm? I can't tell. What I said (that most viewers of sci-fi TV shows don't seem to care if the writers get the simple stuff right) is based on discussions I've had with people at other web sites. When I point out that some specific detail doesn't make any sense (for example that the superpower that we've been told that a character has wouldn't enable him to do what we just saw him do), I'm usually told that I'm a fool for thinking that anything should make sense in a sci-fi show.

Yeah. Just like I said.

 

[Avodyne]

Well, it's now been "explained". Scientists were working on a way to generate cheap electricity, but, whoops! Instead they built a device that suppresses it.

Very disappointing. In this article in the Hollywood Reporter last July, we read that

[Series creator Eric] Kripke says a physicist was brought into the writers room early in the story breaking process to verify the series' plausibility. "We did our homework, and we came up with something that actually is quite possible," said Kripke. "We pitched him the secret as to why all of the power went out, and his face just lit up. He said, 'That's absolutely possible'."

Hard to believe a real physicist bought into what's been said onscreen so far, so maybe there's more to come. But I doubt it.

 

[Fredrik]

I don't consider that an explanation, so I hope that's not what Kripke was talking about. But I very much doubt that he found a physicist that said that his explanation (whatever it is) is "absolutely possible". Kripke is probably bending the truth there. Maybe he was able to find one that said that the explanation isn't any crazier than the science of Fringe. Maybe he was even able to find one that said that it's not crazier than the science of Star Trek. But "absolutely possible"...I don't think so.

 

[Fredrik]

The explanation was included in this week's episode.

Spoiler

If you said "power-draining nanites", you win. Apparently there are quadrillions of nanites/nanobots/nanoprobes all over the place, that are programmed to replicate and to absorb electricity.

 

[DHF]

Along the lines of coincidences that hold the show together like so much glue: When the blackout first hits, all cars on the freeway slow down all gentle like and come to a smooth stop, all at the same time. this is fortunate because if Newton's first law stayed in effect then there would have been a massive pile up that would have flattened the main antagonist and protagonist in the first episode.