S01.E06: Choices

[janie jones]

Why in the world would they crack and lose it mentally? The people who built the town in the first place worked for Pilcher. They knew ALL along what was going to happen, what to expect. They VOLUNTEERED their lives for this project, like Pilcher said. No lies, no mystery for them. It took him awhile to construct everything based from the flashbacks, and he steadily gained willing volunteer workers.

That's what's stupid.  If he could get volunteers to build the wall and make khakis in a windowless room for the rest of their lives, why couldn't he get volunteers to live in the goddamn town?  And if the volunteers in the behind-the-scene facility were kidnapees who weren't told what was going on until after they were unfrozen, why didn't all of them kill themselves and burn the warehouse to the ground?

 

 

 

Some of the post-defrost math isn't really adding up -- if Kate has been in WP for 12 years, and people have only been defrosted since 14 years ago, that means that the Group A meltdown occurred after only 2 years when they just finished rebuilding the town.

 

So? What's wrong with that timeline? Pilcher tells the first group the truth, they start freaking out, run or kill themselves over months to a year. Destruction occurs so then Pilcher and his team start over.

I'm pretty sure you can't dig Wayward Pines out of 2000-years worth of forest growth and sediment buildup (even what passes for 2000-years worth on this show), rebuild it with a state-of-the-art wall around it, have its citizens finally lose their shit, and then rebuild it after apparent mass arsons all in two years.

 

 

 

Ben doesn't appear to be dealing with the whole 2000 year time jump information very well -- whereas Ethan seemed to have taken it all in stride.  Theresa also doesn't seem too concerned about where Ethan has got to.

It seems like Ethan should be Generation 1 and Ben should be left in the dark.

 

I'm glad to know that Pam wasn't the only medical health professional they brought along but I hope that doctor who killed himself wasn't the only one.

 

Why doesn't the toy store have recording devices in the back room?

 

Also, Pilcher said he hopes to have Wayward Pines be self-sustaining eventually, but how?  Where are they going to put the farmland?  What are they going to be using to make clothes?

Edited June 26, 2015 by janie jones

[thuganomics85]

Well, a lot more keeps happening, but I'm still trying to make head or tails about a lot of it.

 

So, according to Pilcher, apparently he knew about the human extinction possibility for a while, but no one would listen to him, except a select few like Pam (who is his sister!) and Hope Davis.  So, basically, he selected people he thought their civilization would need, who were vulnerable (like this doctor who apparently got disbarred or whatever), and then send Pope (who was a security dude who had it rough and was willing to help), to take them out, and bring him to Pilcher.

 

When they get into the future, the first group that is unfrozen manages to be competent enough to build the town in only two years, but they still.... go insane or something?  I mean, I certainly believe that a decent amount of people would freak out, go nuts, and even suicidal.  But the flashbacks made it sound like complete anarchy went down, and I'm wondering how they even got the town built in the first place, if they only tear it back down in the end.

 

OK, so anyway, after that fiasco, Pilcher decides that the next batch would be better off not being in the know, so that's why Wayward Pines is the way it is now, complete with the wall, surveillance, and executions.  Not sure why he doesn't just have Wayward Pines form an actual judicatory system, instead of having offenders get their throats slit in public places, but, fine.  Put the fear in them and everything.

 

Ethan now seems to be with him (that was quick!), but of course, when this happens, it is revealed that Kate and Harodl/Reed Diamond are actually part of a rebellion group, who are planning to blow up the wall.  So, this will no doubt put them at odds and everything.

 

So, yeah: this is a lot to take in.  Not sure how I feel about it quite yet. 

[kalamac]

When I first heard that everyone in Wayward Pines had been cryo frozen for over 2000 years, I was all "And the power never went out? Even as civilization falls apart....do they have generations of Aberrations running power plants nearby, and somehow never having any blackouts...what the fuck?" I love sci-fi/fantasy, and I'm really good at suspending my disbelief, but that was when I noped out of the show.

Also if the mutant people of the future are the product of 2000 years of evolution, doesn't that make the residents of Wayward Pines the Aberrations?

Oh, and that main kid is whiny twit, so if he's the hope of the future, I'd rather be a forest dwelling mutant.

[Fractaleyes-]

I disagree. Yeah, there would be more than a handful of people that wouldn't be able to cope. But there would be also be many who would be able to deal with it. I don't believe that everyone would just go nuts.  I can think of a lot more stressful positions people have been placed in throughout history.

 

Wait, what? Please, inform me of a real, more stressful situation than being frozen for 2000 years only to wake up in an isolated town, be told you are the only humans left and that there are crazy mutants who will kill you running all over the planet.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Fractaleyes-

[Ms Lark]

As someone who loved the documentary series Life After People, I find the whole premise of Wayward Pines neigh unto impossible to accept, much less believe, even as Sci-Fi. Since there's only 4 more eps to go, I'll watch, but I expect nothing. JtS, indeed! The only remote twist I can accept is that it's all a madman's (Pilcher) psychological experiment and it's still 2015.

[Lebanna]

One thing many sci-fi authors say, is that the more outlandish your central plot, the more realistic everything surrounding it needs to be. You actually have to play everything else completely straight (more so even that you'd expect in real life - no unexplained coincidences, for example, nobody acting unrealistically without any eventual explanation) - in order to keep the audience on side.

And of course, that way anything that the audience can't easily explain will be interpreted as significant.

(This is different in comedy or satire, of course. As the MST3K song goes 'It's just a show, I should really just relax'. But try that on a serious show, even something generally lighter like Star Trek, and watch people rant and spit nails. In a serious show, even if the ship runs on handwavium crystals, there needs to be some explanation of why and how that is, how their society functions, and the crew need to act in a way people understand and expect someone with their background to behave). Wayward Pines, of course, is not a comedy.

So actually I think many people here, rather than ignorant of how fiction works, are extremely aware of typical fictional conventions, and that's actually what's causing the issues. In a good, well thought out sci-fi novel, something like the helicopter still running after two thousand years is going to be a clue to a greater mystery. We will have to see if this show's writers are good, or just lazy.

[plurie]

 my biggest peeve is that the psychological trauma of people waking up from suspended animation to be told that they are thousands of years in the future and that most of the world that they know is gone and that most humans have devolved is beyond predictable. As a scientist, Pilcher should have brought in psychologists/psychiatrists to help they adjust and accept their new reality.

Exactly. They have a hypnotherapist and Pilcher is apparently a psychologist (among other things). They don't have to wake everyone all at once. They wake up one person, explain everything carefully, with appropriate psychological support. Maybe give them a tour of the complex. And see if they're able to cope. If not, back into the freezer. Eventually, they'd have enough people to run the place.

 

And they could take some of the "headquarters" staff and temporarily reassign them to the town to keep things running.

[KellyAnn3]

I'm 100% convinced that Pilcher and crazy Pam are lying to everyone and that there's still plenty of a world outside, and they jump through complicated, expensive hoops to maintain the illusion because they're insane, power-hungry, megalomaniacs who view people as Sims or dolls.

[Chicago Redshirt]

Wait, what? Please, inform me of a real, more stressful situation than being frozen for 2000 years only to wake up in an isolated town, be told you are the only humans left and that there are crazy mutants who will kill you running all over the planet.

Being woken up in a town you know is a lie, being given an arbitrary set of rules, knowing your movements are under constant surveillance, being forced to pretend that everything is hunky dory and knowing that you and your friends and family can be murdered at some unseen power's whim if you do anything that displeases them would be in the mix.

 

In terms of real-world scenarios, honestly, I would say a lot of them. Wayward Pines appears to have enough resources that no one has to deal with hunger, war, poverty, and so forth. After the initial shock, there don't seem to be any repercussions to the fact that abbies now rule the planet.

[SoothingDave]

If you mean the adults and the kids in Wayward Pines?  That is why we have Group B currently planning anarchy on the dl and the Yankee Candle Kult.  While there may very well have been a family killed in their garage after Group A was told the honest truth? I still believe that the scare story about Why We Don't Tell Grown-Ups was made up. How better to lie than to wrap it up in a bit of truth?  A nice lie burrito with some truth sprinkled inside and as garnish.  I do have to echo the poster upthread who asked: so the trio of WP residents running off and seemingly ignoring Doc Pilcher? Were they killed by abbies or by WP security? 

 

The scenes of Dr Pilcher walking through a post-apocolyptic WP looked pretty real to me.  It isn't necessary for everyone to get suicidal or want to break out and

flee.  Those who do flee breach the wall and the abbies overrun the town and we end up with even those who may have adjusted well end up being killed.

I don't doubt for a second that a town of non-volunteer people given the whole truth might have ended badly.  Very badly.

 

When they get into the future, the first group that is unfrozen manages to be competent enough to build the town in only two years, but they still.... go insane or something?  I mean, I certainly believe that a decent amount of people would freak out, go nuts, and even suicidal.  But the flashbacks made it sound like complete anarchy went down, and I'm wondering how they even got the town built in the first place, if they only tear it back down in the end.

 

OK, so anyway, after that fiasco, Pilcher decides that the next batch would be better off not being in the know, so that's why Wayward Pines is the way it is now, complete with the wall, surveillance, and executions.  

There are two kinds of people who were frozen.  Volunteers and non-volunteers.  The volunteers are the ones who were woken up first and they built WP.

Some people wanted to join Pilcher's mission.  Others were chosen by Pilcher because he needed their skills or whatever for his new society.  There may not have been a plumber or dentist who wanted to volunteer, but society needs them

 

The inhabitants of WP are non-volunteers, hence the car crash stories and the "being kept in ignorance" (due to the fate of Group A).  

[jenrising]

As someone who loved the documentary series Life After People, I find the whole premise of Wayward Pines neigh unto impossible to accept, much less believe, even as Sci-Fi. Since there's only 4 more eps to go, I'll watch, but I expect nothing. JtS, indeed! The only remote twist I can accept is that it's all a madman's (Pilcher) psychological experiment and it's still 2015.

Oh man, I really hope that happens. That would be a hilarious and awesome twist. 

[Laurie4H]

I don't know what it is about this show. I'm not usually into SciFi which this has become, but I'm really enjoying this one. Maybe it's the cast. Good acting and chemistry. Or maybe it's the fact that Matt Dillon is extremely sexy and has just gotten better with age?

Edited June 26, 2015 by Laurie4H

[Neurochick]

Pilcher clearly stated that he told the first group of citizens the truth and they then proceeded to slit their wrists till they bled to death, suffocate themselves and their children, kill each other, and run off to be eaten by the Abbies. We saw this in a flashback tonight...it's not as simple as "don't be a douche" ....some people are emotionally/psychologically fragile as hell and cannot handle the truth.

 

They could not handle knowing that everyone they ever met, loved, worked with, talked to from home is now dead and has been dead for thousands of years. It's a mindblowing revelation and while SOME people could handle it, alot could not.

 

Yes, I saw that, but what he's doing now with group B, NOT telling them is making it worse.  He's having neighbors kill neighbors.  I mean that's prime for mass revolution, everybody will run and the same thing will happen.  There has to be a happy medium.  Shame such an intelligent man can't figure it out.  

 

Did everybody in Group A go nutso?  See, that's unbelievable to me, especially if they were volunteers in the first place.  There will be some who'll lose it, but not all and maybe not the majority.  Maybe what he should have done was had therapists there to deal with the emotionally fragile, ease them into the transition.  

 

BTW, what happened anyway, global warming?

Edited June 26, 2015 by Neurochick

[ottoDbusdriver]

Did everybody in Group A go nutso?  See, that's unbelievable to me, especially if they were volunteers in the first place.  There will be some who'll lose it, but not all and maybe not the majority.

 

The volunteers were the group that were defrosted first and helped build the town and are still living in the mountain.  I think Group A was the first bunch of non-volunteers that were defrosted, allowed to live life in WP for a while and then told the truth -- whereupon they lost their shit, trashed the town and either killed themselves or went for a stroll in the woods and basically killed themselves (with the help of the Abbies).

[legaleagle53]

As someone who loved the documentary series Life After People, I find the whole premise of Wayward Pines neigh unto impossible to accept, much less believe, even as Sci-Fi. Since there's only 4 more eps to go, I'll watch, but I expect nothing. JtS, indeed! The only remote twist I can accept is that it's all a madman's (Pilcher) psychological experiment and it's still 2015.

 

As I pointed out in the Theories thread, there's one very simple way to verify whether it's really 4028:  Look at the night sky.  As I explained it there:

 

Because of the Precession of the Equinoxes (or Axial Precession, as it is technically known), the constellations gradually shift position due to the wobble of the earth's axis.  What this means is that the March and September equinoxes and the June and December solstices change the constellations that they occur in once every 2,600 years or so (give or take a century), so by 4028, instead of occurring in Pisces, Gemini, Virgo, and Sagittarius, respectively (as they do now), they will occur in Aquarius, Taurus, Leo, and Scorpio, and Polaris will no longer be the North Pole Star.  By then, the North Celestial Pole will have shifted to Gamma Cephei in a completely different consellation.

So unless someone has been able to fake the night sky to keep it looking the same as it does in 2014, a simple check of the positions of the constellations will easily confirm that it really is 4028.

 

 

And there you are.  Simple astronomy and Occam's Razor are your friends.

[theatremouse]

This episode was very disappointing to me, not even necessarily because of the plot, but because it was basically all exposition (save the stuff with Kate/Mr. Delivery). The show, before, had been doing a fair amount of "show" and imply and insinuate what was going on, with some degree of ambiguity. But basically, everything they said in this episode was pretty much what they seemed to be suggesting already. Plus or minus a couple of details (specifically the what happened when he told group A). So, for me, this was sort of a waste of an episode. If you're going to a full-on exposition hour, I expect a twist of some sort, not because I'm all "there must always be a twist!" but because if you're going to have a major character sit down on a fancy sofa and tell us what went down, and it's exactly what you've already been implying went down, that's not interesting.

I'm still sort of holding out there's more to it that hasn't been revealed yet and some of what's been explicitly said are lies or something more interesting, but to have a whole episode revolving around telling us what we could've already concluded is boring.

That said, outside of that: I don't remember what about the flashbackey scenes made me think this, but I was under the impression they took two years to build the town after initial unfreezing, but he'd built the WALL probably before? Not that he'd necessarily know it'd stand or last long enough, but he had no way of knowing any of them would, blah blah, power supplies everything everyone already said.

[SimoneS]

As I pointed out in the Theories thread, there's one very simple way to verify whether it's really 4028:  Look at the night sky.  As I explained it there:

 

 

And there you are.  Simple astronomy and Occam's Razor are your friends.

 

So all Pilcher had to was kidnap Neil deGrasse Tyson and there would be no problem. Ha.

 

But really, we give ourselves as human beings more credit for being able to cope with the unknown. We are psychologically fragile, especially when afraid, so I totally believe that chaos unfolded after Pilcher told Group A the truth. Even people who eventually accepted the truth would struggle to function in their new world.

Edited June 26, 2015 by SimoneS

[Fractaleyes-]

Well my big post on this thread got deleted apparently..but my smaller one is there. Any idea why that might have happened?

[Free]

 

I'm still sort of holding out there's more to it that hasn't been revealed yet and some of what's been explicitly said are lies or something more interesting, but to have a whole episode revolving around telling us what we could've already concluded is boring.

 

I figured it would be exposition heavy after that twist, but yeah, it doesn't make it any less disappointing.

[Uncle Benzene]

So all Pilcher had to was kidnap Neil deGrasse Tyson and there would be no problem. Ha.

 

Except that Tyson would insist that the entire show, and the entire town, be All. About. Neil. and nobody else would be able to get a word in edgewise. Ever.

 

Heh.

[FishyJoe]

Wait, what? Please, inform me of a real, more stressful situation than being frozen for 2000 years only to wake up in an isolated town, be told you are the only humans left and that there are crazy mutants who will kill you running all over the planet.

 

How about being rounded up by Nazis to concentration camps. Slowly starving to death on the plains of Africa. Living in a Khmer Rouge labor camp. And all this in just the past century. There are probably much worse things that happened earlier in history. For example, being captured by slavers in Africa. Or the conquest of Central America. 

 

Comparatively, these people have good homes, good food and don't have to work very hard. Now if they were starving and fighting off mutants every night, then I could see the panic. 

[shrewd.buddha]

So, besides the behind-the-scenes volunteers, the entire town is populated with kidnap victims who are told stories that don't add up, are isolated from the outside world, have no entertainment, and are forced to kill their neighbors in public executions? Does that sound like a plan created by a genius?

 

And how did Dr.God (Pilcher) determine when was the best time to give up on society and turn on the freezer? 2020? 2099? 2999? 

...Because if you put yourself in a frozen time capsule and wait long enough , you can be guaranteed that today's human species will be long gone - or completely unrecognizable. 

In fact, if you wait long enough, the entire planet Earth will be a lifeless rock - burnt to a crisp by the sun going super nova. 

Humans, like dinosaurs and dodo birds, are supposed to have an expiration date -- that's how the universe works. 

Edited June 26, 2015 by shrewd.buddha

[Julie23]

I can accept that there are things that in our reality don't make sense, but this is fiction and sci-fi fiction at that, so I am less concerned about them explaining how the power stayed on for 2000 years and more with the story, which is good so far. I mean, does anyone really believe there is a Time Lord that flies around space and time in a time machine disguised as a phone box?

[meep.meep]

Being woken up in a town you know is a lie, being given an arbitrary set of rules, knowing your movements are under constant surveillance, being forced to pretend that everything is hunky dory and knowing that you and your friends and family can be murdered at some unseen power's whim if you do anything that displeases them would be in the mix.

Even worse, you've been kidnapped, taken away from your family and friends, and forced to live like this with no explanation.  The lack of choice may have been a factor in non-acceptance of Dr. Pilcher's pretty great future.

[blueiris]

Did you pick up on the quick conversation between Pilcher and his sister in 2014 or so time where he was sneering about her having been a drug addict?  There's a story there - hope it goes somewhere.

[Fable]

I'm not bothered by the huge plot holes as much as I am by where the story is going.  I can hand-wave a lot of things, like how the power was maintained for 2000 years, etcetera.  I agree that stuff is annoying, but it's not really a deal breaker for me if the story is interesting and the characters are likable.  At first I was very intrigued, and now I'm pretty much very bored! 

 

I'll watch until the end because I'm obsessive-compulsive like that, and I don't necessarily dislike it, but I'm not as interested as I was.

[Free]

I'm not bothered by the huge plot holes as much as I am by where the story is going.  I can hand-wave a lot of things, like how the power was maintained for 2000 years, etcetera.  I agree that stuff is annoying, but it's not really a deal breaker for me if the story is interesting and the characters are likable.  At first I was very intrigued, and now I'm pretty much very bored! 

 

I'll watch until the end because I'm obsessive-compulsive like that, and I don't necessarily dislike it, but I'm not as interested as I was.

 

Agreed, I sort of was interested in the twist and mysteries, but since then it feels like all the air has been let out.  I haven't exactly cared about any of the characters or anything else for that matter.

[marcee]

I know the story is about Wayward Pines - but I want more story about the world outside of WP. I wonder how far or long he's traveled to see what's become of the planet... he's so sure humans are extinct, but I feel like there's a pretty good chance that some small clusters of resilient humans made it through and continued to procreate. Or someone else out of the billions of humans between 1999 and 2095 figured out cryostasis too...

 

Or maybe the abbies are just what humankind evolved into and why did he feel the need to travel to the future when he could have just been a tick in the line of evolution? Why does he even have to "fix" anything? We evolve, that's what we do. Why is he trying to overcome that?

 

Eh. I'm still watching. I'll see it through 'til the end. But is kind of eye-rollingly silly.

[jhlipton]

Exposition dumps are always fairly boring, and that's what this episode was (except that Kate, not-hubby and Ted the not-suspicious-at-all delivery guy are making a Ballerina Bomb)..  Pretty dull.

 

So...  Pilcher froze 200+ volunteers (who may or may not have the "Abby gene"), and 500+ Group B non-volunteers who don't have the gene.  The volunteers are not only perfectly fine with being taken from everything and everyone they've ever known, they're also fine with being support for a town they'll never get to visit, much less live in.  What happens if Joe doesn't want to make school blazers any more?  Does he get Reckoned, too?

 

(BTW, 200 people to make everything the town needs,except food.  Nowhere near enough.  What happens if one gets sick or dies?  What if there's a outbreak of the flu (in an environment like that, as soon as one person gets a disease like the flu, everybody will get the flu) and half your staff is sick in bed?  Not like you can go back and get more!

 

 

Did you pick up on the quick conversation between Pilcher and his sister in 2014 or so time where he was sneering about her having been a drug addict?  There's a story there - hope it goes somewhere.

 

I saw that.  maybe her drugs caused Ethan's hallucinations!

 

=============================================================

 

There's a show on Netflix called Sense8, which has an even more ridiculous premise: That 8 people, all born at the exact same minute, can share thoughts and abilities.  It works because the characters are interesting and complex -- the plot is there to drive the characters rather than the other way around.  

[iMonrey]

Why did Ethan wake up by the side of a road? If these people are being defrosted in the complex, then moved to the hospital and told they were in an accident, how did Ethan get outside near the forest??

 

And if Pilcher woke him so he could be the new "leader" of this town, why didn't they just tell him what was going on from the start? What was the point of purposely antagonizing him by letting him roam around this strange town and seeing for himself how screwy it all was? Were they really going to operate on his brain? Why? If not, why make him think that?

 

I think there's still a good chance this is all some sort of fever dream Ethan is having.

 

 

But it also brings to question the need to even freeze these people to supposedly save the human race if they still carry that gene which makes turning into abbies inevitable.

 

I asked that question last episode, but Pilcher explained it. It was our destruction of the environment that was causing the mutation. So now (2000 years later) the environment is safe, because there is no more mankind depleting the resources and polluting the planet. So these people won't mutate.

 

 

When they get into the future, the first group that is unfrozen manages to be competent enough to build the town in only two years,

 

When the volunteers woke up they looked out the window (?) and down on the town below; so Wayward Pines was already "built" to some extent. How it survived 2000 years I have no idea. I'm fan-wanking that this particular spot was chosen because it is so isolated, surrounded my mountains on all sides. I don't know what they would have done to prevent its decay, but since it was such a long-shot aerial view we couldn't really see what kind of shape it was in, other than the fact that streets and structures seemed to be laid out on a grid.

 

 

I'm 100% convinced that Pilcher and crazy Pam are lying to everyone and that there's still plenty of a world outside, and they jump through complicated, expensive hoops to maintain the illusion because they're insane, power-hungry, megalomaniacs who view people as Sims or dolls.

 

I'm not convinced of that, but I'm thinking along the same lines regarding Pilcher and Pam. While they may have managed to create something truly astounding, I think they are both basically out of their minds. And that certainly goes a long way towards explaining why they chose to run this new "society" in such a brutal and crazy way.

[SimoneS]

Ethan now seems to be with him (that was quick!), but of course, when this happens, it is revealed that Kate and Harodl/Reed Diamond are actually part of a rebellion group, who are planning to blow up the wall.  So, this will no doubt put them at odds and everything.

 

Ethan isn't with Pilcher though. He said that he would protect everyone from each other and from Pilcher beause he did not want anyone to get killed. I think that Ethan will have to find his own allies to him keep order. However, it will be difficult as from the preview, it does not seem like anyone believes him.

[Centaur]

When Pam sewed up Ethan's arm and she left the aid room, he checked that she was gone then took a blue bottle from a trolley and put it in his back pocket. Just opportunist or does he already have a plan?

[jhlipton]

And if Pilcher woke him so he could be the new "leader" of this town, why didn't they just tell him what was going on from the start? What was the point of purposely antagonizing him by letting him roam around this strange town and seeing for himself how screwy it all was? Were they really going to operate on his brain? Why? If not, why make him think that?

 

Yeah, why not wake him up in the factory, in a sealed-off room, and break the news to him slowly, letting him know that his wife and son are there with him.

 

When Pam sewed up Ethan's arm and she left the aid room, he checked that she was gone then took a blue bottle from a trolley and put it in his back pocket. Just opportunist or does he already have a plan?

Both his wife and his mistress are in town, and he doesn't known when another Pam might throw herself at him -- the boy needs his Viagra!

I saw "blue bottle" as "blue pills' but I'm sticking to my comment!

Edited June 26, 2015 by jhlipton

[ottoDbusdriver]

Why did Ethan wake up by the side of a road? If these people are being defrosted in the complex, then moved to the hospital and told they were in an accident, how did Ethan get outside near the forest??

 

So much this !!!  He should have woke up in the hospital like every other non-volunteer that was in a "car crash".  The car crash is just such a commonality in the stories of most of the defrostees and their stories that I'm thinking the car crash is a memory implant.  And if that is true, what else has been implanted in their memories ?

Edited June 26, 2015 by ottoDbusdriver

[Iguana]

So, being an sf/fantasy geek from way back, I can handwave the technological flaws with Dr. Pilcher's plan, and accept that he has perfected suspended animation for both people, supplies and equipment, and that he foresaw a crises for humanity, and that not many people believed him or acted on his warnings, and that he had to kidnap people to fill in the ranks, as the volunteers were too few.  It's shaky, and you kind of have to squint at it, but okay.  What I can't understand is anything about his selection process for the unwilling people, and his method of dealing with Group B.

 

Unless these were random kidnappings, which does not appear to be the case and would  make no sense if so, Pilcher was picking people that he felt would be useful in re-establishing civilization 2000 years later.  Useful people would include educators, health care professionals, engineers, tradespeople/builders such as carpenters and plumbers, farmers, miners, and mechanics, all of whom should ideally be healthy and fertile.  Useful people in this scenario do not include realtors, particularly sexist ones in their 60's, toymakers, particularly ones who used to be FBI agents, or people who have some kind of computer expertise but are instead working as a waitress/bartender.  While I acknowledge that we haven't seen all the inhabitants of Wayward Pines, the majority of the ones we have been introduced to are decidedly not useful.  We know the guy who Ethan refused to reckon who ran into the wall was specifically recruited by Plicher's sister, but his only job was being a realtor.  So, why pick him and what the hell was Pilcher's criteria?  Why take any adults without children? 

 

As far as treatment of Group B is concerned, I get that Pilcher is unwilling to tell them the truth because of how Group A lost their shit when they found out they were 2000 years in the future and the last surviving humans.  I can set aside my deep skepticism that the majority would become suicidal, especially the ones with kids, if only because the biological imperative to survive is very strong in humans.  But his decision to keep the adults in Group B completely in the dark about their brave new world, dump them into town with no preparation or explanations, expect them to accept the clear weirdness that is Wayward Pines without question, and to require them to follow rules that are contrary to human nature makes no sense and is doomed to failure, one way or another.   No parent is forget about a child just because they are told to.  No one is going to forget about their past just because they are told not to talk about it.  Curiosity cannot be eliminated from people by decree.  Not everyone will be scared into compliance by public executions without trials; some will be defiant.  Any prisoner can dream of escape or sabotage; some will attempt it, some will succeed.

 

Pilcher should be preparing them as they are thawed out, even if it is a partial truth, so that they are willing to buy into his project and work for it to succeed, rather than the opposite.  Notwithstanding the reaction of Group A, some of the kidnap victims will be able to adjust to the new reality.  Mix up the volunteers with the townsfolk, to keep an eye on the newbies and help them adjust.  Show the recently thawed the abbies, so they know this isn't faked, but give them hope for the future so they become willing participants.  I'm reasonably certain the Group A suicides and riots didn't happen all at once or come out of nowhere, so have Group B regularly meeting with the psychologist or whoever Plicher kidnapped to see to the mental health needs of his new humanity.

 

Or if the kids really are the future, and are the only ones able to handle the truth, stop thawing adults, and only thaw out the kids.  Get the volunteers busy reproducing, instead of working behind the scenes to keep the secret from the adults and supporting their useless, non-contributing asses.

[Clanstarling]

So actually I think many people here, rather than ignorant of how fiction works, are extremely aware of typical fictional conventions, and that's actually what's causing the issues. In a good, well thought out sci-fi novel, something like the helicopter still running after two thousand years is going to be a clue to a greater mystery. We will have to see if this show's writers are good, or just lazy.

I'm still in a wait and see mode myself. I kind of like the idea of it all being a mental experiment, myself. Given the interaction Pilcher had with the FBI in the earlier episodes. There just seemed more to that. But I haven't read the books, and I'm trying not to read any hints.

 

So, on a less intellectual level - the thing that really bugged me was when Theresa searched to find the plans for Plot 33 after gross realtor left. Unless she left the office in the interim, she would have seen where he put it. And even if she didn't, the thick leather bound binders was pretty easy to see, even with a few pieces of paper on top of it. Still, she's lifting small stacks of paper as if she's having trouble finding it. Then, despite the her furtiveness, she just rips out the page and drops the binder on top of everything - so it is obvious that it's been moved. This is a woman who supposedly trained to be an FBI agent? Heck, as a 12 year old sneak reading my Dad's Playboys - I was WAY better - I memorized each magazine's position before I picked it up and never got caught.

Edited June 26, 2015 by clanstarling

[Fable]

Exposition dumps are always fairly boring, and that's what this episode was (except that Kate, not-hubby and Ted the not-suspicious-at-all delivery guy are making a Ballerina Bomb)..  Pretty dull.

 

I don't think exposition dumps are always particularly boring.  Sometimes I find them helpful in clarifying things we want to make sense of.  However, in this particular case, the idea of a mad scientist with a huge ego who wants to preserve humanity on his terms is not that enjoyable, and seems a little ridiculous (at least the way it is being told).  There are still 4 episodes to go, so I'm sure there is more to be discovered, but once the reveal about what Wayward Pines is and how it came into existence was shown, the concept of this show has lost of a lot of appeal for me. 

 

I'm still holding out on the hope that what has been presented so far is not really "The Truth," and that something else is really going on, but I'm not holding my breath.

Edited June 27, 2015 by Fable

[izabella]

The PIlcher siblings have shown themselves to be lying liars who lie.  So I question everything they say, and am convinced they are still lying. 

 

My theory is that WP is their sandbox, their proof-of-concept, a test-run for the real thing.   I think they simulated the "future" for their project, and have indeed been experimenting with Groups A and B on how to best introduce the thawed people to the changed world.  Maybe if the resistance bombs the hell out of the town, they'll try again with Group C. 

 

The volunteers in the mountain were too cheerful.  They are stuck in a mountain with no fresh air doing work all the time, with no outside world or life.  They should be getting on each others nerves by now.

[Centaur]

I'm not sure the sandbox scenario works. There are scenes, albeit brief, from the POV of basically every character. If it is a sandbox then almost all of what Ethan sees must be 'real'. The ruins of Boise for example.

[alias1]

I mean, does anyone really believe there is a Time Lord that flies around space and time in a time machine disguised as a phone box?

Wait.  The Time Lord stuff isn't real?

[roomtorome]

This is such lazy schlock - nothing makes a bit of sense.  Sure, everything is running just fine after 2000 years - we all know how well stuff breaks down as soon as the 3 year warranty expires….silly stuff.

 

For me it is mindless fluff to distract me - I literally pretty much forget the previous episode by the time I'm watching the current one it is so absurd - I'm not taking one second of my time to try to make sense of it.  It's one of those immediate distractions that fade quickly and I don't think about again until I see my DVR recorded it again - 

 

It's summer - this kind of nonsense proliferates -

[Actionmage]

The scenes of Dr Pilcher walking through a post-apocolyptic WP looked pretty real to me.

 

The lie I was referencing was the teacher/Orientation presenter/ hypnotist's about a boy who told his family about The Truth and the father killed the entire family in their car, by carbon monoxide poisoning.  While that actually may have happened to someone's family in Group A, I think it is an exaggeration and that the named folks are pretend characters who never lived in  WP.  Because that is how some persons treat folks now, in the current society we live in and for reasons not dissimilar to the ones given by our Orienter.

 

As for the coins?  They are metal.  They can be melted down and re-cast.  We could even make coins that say they were minted in 209_ and age them so they look legit antiqued. Just because a coin (that had to be minted/molded/whatever) says it was made in a specific year, that doesn't mean it actually was. Not in this context. But no one is questioning anything, outside of the Gang of Three and the Burkes?   Or are the other dissenters just better at keeping things secret?

 

I ask the last because I can't tell whether the adults are all wanting to rebel or if some are there just to eff with the Burkes.  The gal that got passed over for Teresa's "job": either don't talk about Fight Club/ Lot 33 or do. This half-assed cryptic stuff has got to stop! I might get myself to Idaho just so I can go on a slap-a-thon and start with skeezy realtor "boss."  It's the, ahem, execution of the supposed clues that irritates. If someone told me that looking into something got another person killed, I actually would be curious, but roll my eyes at the 80's miniseries way that person spoke of "having said to much."  I sure wouldn't do anything as stupid as ripping out a page from a book.  Not only does that hurt my book-lovin' heart, but it's hard to make a story to CYA on that.

[KaveDweller]

As I pointed out in the Theories thread, there's one very simple way to verify whether it's really 4028:  Look at the night sky.  As I explained it there:

 

 

And there you are.  Simple astronomy and Occam's Razor are your friends.

 

Would the average person be able to look at the sky and know all that was different though?

 

And how did Dr.God (Pilcher) determine when was the best time to give up on society and turn on the freezer? 2020? 2099? 2999? 

...Because if you put yourself in a frozen time capsule and wait long enough , you can be guaranteed that today's human species will be long gone - or completely unrecognizable. 

 

 

He said he had an "algorithm" for when the earth would reset itself.  Which doesn't make a lot of sense, but if he was somehow possible to predict the abbies developing, I guess he could somehow do that.  I was hoping for a better explanation for the timeline though.

 

You didn't read what I said at all. Obviously the people Pope specifically sought out and chloroformed were intentionally brought there, that is apparent. SOME people who are now in town weren't intentionally brought there by Pilcher or his cronies. Some people simply got too close to town and had to be frozen too otherwise Pilcher's plan would have fallen apart. Even Theresa and Ben weren't part of the original kidnapping plan. If they hadn't come looking for Ethan and stayed at home, they would have died thousands of years ago. If the Secret Service hadn't sent Kate Hewson and Bill Evans to figure out what Pilcher was all about, they wouldn't have been taken. That IS a random series of occurrences. Pilcher did not intentionally seek out Kate and Bill Evans for the town, it was random.

 

..Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and the people in the future (4028) are really & truly in the future. Not everything is a lie or a form of deception. 

 

I believe they are in the future, but it wasn't clear to me that people were taken at random.  I got the sense that they were all targeted....maybe Kate and Bill were taken to lure Ethan out there because he was the one Pilcher really wanted to lead.  I also got the sense that the plan was always to take Theresa and Ben as well, they just waited until after Ethan was taken because it was easier.  I don't see why they would have randomly abducted those two if they didn't want them coming with Ethan.  If they didn't find him in 2014, they eventually would have gone home and assumed he left them.  If I was supposed to think Pilcher was randomly freezing people who showed up near his facility that didn't come across to me.  He came across as someone who planned who he was taking very carefully.

[legaleagle53]

Would the average person be able to look at the sky and know all that was different though?

 

Anyone who was ever a Boy Scout or Girl Scout or who had ever done any stargazing would know.  I learned how to find the North Pole Star and to recognize most of the common constellations (and when and where to find them) at the ripe old age of eight, when I was a mere Cub Scout .

[KaveDweller]

Anyone who was ever a Boy Scout or Girl Scout or who had ever done any stargazing would know.  I learned how to find the North Pole Star and to recognize most of the common constellations (and when and where to find them) at the ripe old age of eight, when I was a mere Cub Scout .

 

Well, I was a girl scout for years and we never learned much about stars or recognizing constellations.  I took astronomy in college too and we didn't learn about recognizing them.  I know the names, but I couldn't point them out in the sky, I just know about finding the North Star by looking for the big dipper. But that was 20+ years ago and if I couldn't see it now, I would just think I was misremembering or was having trouble seeing that night.  And if I wasn't from Idaho, I would just think the sky looks different because I'm in a different location in the mountains and in the middle of nowhere, as opposed to near the city.  And we know not everyone in Wayward Pines lived there before they were frozen.

 

I am sure they would be some people who could do this, but I don't think it would be most people.  Unless you're saying it would be massively different, like on Terra Nova when the moon appeared about 100 times bigger than it is now.

Edited June 27, 2015 by KaveDweller

[Tabasco Cat]

Regarding the North star, you couldn't tell by looking for a short time that it wasn't The North Star anymore. You'd need a time lapse exposure or a dedicated viewing session over some number of hours before you would notice (maybe) that Polaris didn't appear stationary. You'd still be able to see Polaris, of course, since there's a fairly large group of stars that are always visible from the northern hemisphere that never set no matter what season it is. So yes, it wouldn't be all that difficult to detect, but you wouldn't be able to detect it without some extended observation.

 

Pilcher tells Ethan, "We left the old world behind in 2014 and went to sleep for 2,000 years". Back then Pilcher had his long-ish unkempt hippie hair. When we see him and Pam and HypnoTeach come out of their cryo pods in 4014, Pilcher's hair is still long. You can see it when he's bending over trying to catch his breath, and you see it again through the blinds when they crack open the window for their first view of 41st Century Wayward Pines.

 

Still waiting for an explanation for why Pilcher's hair is short and he's wearing his 41st Century eyeglasses when he meets Adam, Ethan's supervisor at the Seattle Secret Service office, carrying an umbrella in the rain.... in 2014. That's more than just an oversight. I sincerely hope they didn't put that scene in there to deceive the audience on purpose. I'm starting to think that's exactly why they put it in.

[sportsgirl]

I think I'm at 80% with the Pilcher mind-fuck/really it's 2015 theory, and 15% with it's all unfolding in Ethan's post-accident brain as a way to explain to himself his coma.

 

I can't for a second figure out why a full-survelliance, chip in arm, you're trapped and have to pretend-marry a stranger while not talking about anything prior to the damn town, and oh, if you do anything even slightly suspicious, we'll slit your throat and then leave your body in a shack in the middle of the perfect town, is more likely to induce people NOT to kill themselves than "it's 4028 and you're alive, safe, and you have everything to be comfortable and relaxed as we begin society over again."

 

I also don't buy Teresa and Ben were the only family to come looking for their lost loved one during the 20 years of kidnappings and come so close to the truth that it was just easier to put Pope in his freakin' sherriff suit 2000 years early and pull the whole car accident ruse. (Did they come close to the truth? It didn't look like it at all.) Taking too many people without their immediate families -- especially kids without parents and parents without their kids -- seems like a recipe for Group A style disaster. 

 

I do find it hilarious that Ethan at the end of the episode is swearing to find and stop the bomb builders -- exactly who he spent the entire series trying to join. It takes so little to convince him! Ethan totally should have been in Group A.

[legaleagle53]

I am sure they would be some people who could do this, but I don't think it would be most people.  Unless you're saying it would be massively different, like on Terra Nova when the moon appeared about 100 times bigger than it is now.

 

It would be.  Polaris is located at the end of the Little Dipper (the last star in the Dipper's handle), and the two stars that form the end of the bowl of the Big Dipper (the end away from the handle) point directly to it.  That's why it's so easy to locate both it and North; Polaris is only about one degree away from the celestial North Pole, and it is therefore always in the same position throughout the night.

 

But by 4028,  Polaris will no longer be anywhere near the celestial North Pole.  That will have shifted 30-45 degrees away from Polaris to Gamma Cephei, in an entirely different constellation that is currently easiest to see only in Fall and Winter.  The constellations themselves won't have changed much; that's a different process that takes hundreds of thousands of years.  However, their positions in the sky will have shifted just enough that anyone who knows where the Big and Little Dipper were in 2014 will immediately notice that they're not where they were then.  To me, that would be a dead giveaway (and proof positive) that I'm not in 2014 anymore.

 

As for needing to observe it for an extended period of time, you'd only need an hour or two at the most.  The earth still rotates in 4028, which means that any star that isn't the North Star would be moving.  You'd definitely notice that Polaris had moved after an hour or two.

 

Finally, you'd notice that the constellations in the Zodiac were in the "wrong" positions because the moon and the planets would not be in the constellations you'd expect them to be in based upon the time of year.  It's why, for example, Astrology speaks of Venus and Jupiter currently being in Leo although the constellation Leo has shifted at least 30 degrees to the southeast of where it was when Astrology was invented, so looking at the night sky now (June 2015), you'd actually see Venus and Jupiter in the eastern part of Cancer, not the eastern part of Leo.  But by June 4028, Cancer will have shifted another 30 degrees eastward, so Venus, at least, will be in Gemini at that time of the year.  Again, that would be a dead giveaway that the year really is 4028.

Edited June 27, 2015 by legaleagle53

[Tabasco Cat]

I also don't buy Teresa and Ben were the only family to come looking for their lost loved one during the 20 years of kidnappings and come so close to the truth that it was just easier to put Pope in his freakin' sherriff suit 2000 years early and pull the whole car accident ruse. (Did they come close to the truth? It didn't look like it at all.)

 

It really didn't look like they came close to finding anything out. The biggest problem I have with ol' Sheriff Pope cutting the brake line in 2014 is there was no way to guarantee that Theresa and Ben wouldn't have been killed in the resulting wreck. Would they have then been written off as collateral damage? "Oops! Sorry, Ethan, we tried to make it a survivable accident, really we did!"

[crowswork]

Ms Lark, on 26 Jun 2015 - 06:29 AM, said:

 

As someone who loved the documentary series Life After People, I find the whole premise of Wayward Pines neigh unto impossible to accept, much less believe, even as Sci-Fi. Since there's only 4 more eps to go, I'll watch, but I expect nothing. JtS, indeed! The only remote twist I can accept is that it's all a madman's (Pilcher) psychological experiment and it's still 2015.

Oh man, I really hope that happens. That would be a hilarious and awesome

 

wasn't that the premise of the Syfy mini about the giant generation starship launched in the 60's and it just turned out to be an underground super shelter to guarantee the survival of America in any war or extinction event. Everyone on the ship believed it was real. Cool but as soon as you saw the twist it was kinda enh.

Edited June 27, 2015 by crowswork