Station Eleven in the Media

[Meredith Quill]

Your Media Topic!

[Haleth]

Dec 16.  HBO Max

 

[P2C2E]

I don't know why anyone would watch this based off that trailer. 

It's been years since I read the book and I don't remember a lot of it and this trailer didn't help at all.

I have zero sense of what it's supposed to be about, or what genre it's supposed to be. Nothing. 

[BetterButter]

 

[chocolatine]

On 11/28/2021 at 6:26 PM, P2C2E said:

I don't know why anyone would watch this based off that trailer. 

It's been years since I read the book and I don't remember a lot of it and this trailer didn't help at all.

I have zero sense of what it's supposed to be about, or what genre it's supposed to be. Nothing. 

Based on the trailer, it looks like a lot of details from the book have been changed. I'm still excited about this show and will give it a shot though. There are very few good things on TV these days.

[aghst]

Strong reviews so far.

[tljgator]

Good read ...interview with the showrunner following the finale, so spoilers, obviously: 

 

[tljgator]

And, one more: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/station-eleven-finale-interview-1279145/ 

 

[Melina22]

Sadly, I can't access either article due to not having subscriptions. Any highlights you can mention? 

[tljgator]

42 minutes ago, Melina22 said:

Sadly, I can't access either article due to not having subscriptions. Any highlights you can mention? 

I don't subscribe either and both let me in, sorry they're not working for you. In both, he talks about the ending hug between Kirsten & Jeevan being their starting point, and the thing they always used when they pitched the show, so they knew that's where they wanted to end up. In the first he talks more about the changes to Tyler from the book and why he thought that route worked better and about seeing Hamlet (and Shakespeare, broadly) as a universal notion of how people relate to each other. The second focuses on finding "joy" in the pandemic, music, etc. I'm posting a link to Sepinwall's tweet below because sometimes I can get in that way when a direct link won't work. I can try to pull some quotes if there's something you're particularly interested in...

 

 

[Haleth]

I’m sorry, but if the show runners have to explain to us what we saw, they failed. 

[Melina22]

I can imagine how frustrating it would be to put your heart and soul into making a show, only to have internet strangers gripe and complain about it, but we internet strangers feel what we feel. 

In interests of fairness there were positives about the show that I didn't mention.

1. Lots of excellent actors in big and small parts. My personal MVP was Young Kiersten, but there were many standouts. (I never saw anyone comment on the actor who was clearly a burn victim IRL. He was so good, and I wanted to Google him, but just didn't have the heart at the moment to read about what happened to him.) 

2. Unusually good aging makeup on the actors. It was so good that it wasn't a distraction from the story, but mostly felt natural. 

3. Despite my complaints, I watched the whole thing. Holding my attention nowadays isn't easy, but the show did it. 

4. Great sets. Eerie and convincing. 

[aghst]

This production had a big interruption.  Apparently they filmed two episodes, which were way out of order of what they released.

Then the pandemic.  Other shows got disrupted by the pandemic for months or over a year.

But a show involving a pandemic, suspended by a real pandemic?

I wonder if they reassessed some of the details.

More importantly, maybe the interruption contributed to a sense of disjoined narrative?  Of course they brought most of the characters together at the end, with feel-good reunions and such.  But maybe that was kind of forced?

[SunnyBeBe]

I’ve been searching for more of an explanation of Station 11.  (The book that Kirsten is obsessed with.) I’ve read it was a series of books. Is that right?  And, is it about astronauts?  Is that the character that Miranda keeps seeing? I wish that had been made clearer. This piece provided the most info that I could find, though it’s limited. Is the space station called Station 11? 

 

https://diymfa.com/writing/legacy-immortality-emily-st-john-mandels-station-eleven

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by SunnyBeBe