S01.E01: Pilot

[Tara Ariano]

Ninety-seven years after the planet Earth was destroyed, generations of survivors are faced with dwindling resources.

[Tara Ariano]

Sarah's got your New Show Fact Sheet! 

[Lisin]

I liked it. I'm definitely willing to give it another few episodes.

I actually live about 10 miles (from looking at their map) from where they landed so that gave me a bit more interest. I drive past Mt. Weather every day on my way to work so this is kinda fun for me. I also appreciate the fact that by the end of the episode we at least knew that they had in fact landed where they thought. I was afraid that we'd have half a season dedicated to getting to Mt. Weather only to figure out they were more off course than they thought so they were in like Colorado or something because while I appreciate the setting Mt. Weather is NOT a big snowcapped mountain... it's basically a foothill.

[Tara Ariano]

I finally watched it last night and I liked it too! I felt like the balance between Ark intrigue (is the guy taking the toughest decisions for the sake of the greater good of all REALLY the bad guy???) and Earth stuff was just right. And I'm glad that the kids ranged from actual criminals to victims of circumstance and/or civil disobedients. I also loved how bossy and annoyed the main girl is.

[John Potts]

Only about a minute in I was already going "God, this is stupid!" First off (unless its purely a power play, which is cleverer than I'm giving it credit for), if getting rid of 100 telegenic teenagers is only going to buy you a couple of months of extra time, you'd be better off saying "Our technobabble generators are breaking down, we need to move everyone back to earth - the radiation has probably subsided enough for it to be liveable by now" even if they're sure it isn't (and for an irradiated planet, it sure looked pretty lush and green, creepy deer notwithstanding). Secondly, a group of teens who'd lived their entire lives (and hell, whose grandparents had probably lived their entire lives) aboard a ship they should be a lot more scared of the outdoors - while there'd certainly be a lot of "Wow, Cool!" at the new experience, there's also be a lot of "This water is freaking cold!" (hell, rain should be weird to them and pronounced acrophobia should be relatively common). I also find it hard to believe that the medical bracelet doohickeys are so poorly designed as to not be able to tell that they'd been removed rather than the wearer dying.

 

I did believe that the juvenile delinquents deposited on planet might goof around and get themselves killed by doing zero g somersaults and then hitting the ground hard when gravity came back (I'll give it a pass on the whole gravity thing - they should have been weightless on the space station, but that's crazy expensive to simulate). I also buy that they might goof off and not do anything practical once they hit dirt, but I don't buy that they wouldn't start to think about finding food and shelter once they got cold and wet (or just panic) - though obviously somebody has some survival skills because that was a pretty decent campfire they'd built. I'm also wondering how the leadership is determined (he was called President, right?) because it seems unlikely (given the otherwise fascist nature of the government) that they hold elections, but it also didn't seem likely that a dictator would have such a backstabbing snake as his second in command (it's not like he hid his ambitions terribly well), though again, that's the kind of thing I can give a pass to given that it's a pilot.

 

As for the positives - I did like the lead girl, who was the right balance of proactive and put upon without coming off as a Mary Sue (yet!) though I'd happily see most of the other kids killed off. They are pretty, though, though that's TV, I guess.

 

ETA: On rewatch, he's not described as "President" but as "Chancellor", which would still generally be an elected position. On the other hand, it is the post Hitler was elected/appointed to!

Edited July 8, 2014 by John Potts