Revolution: Will Eric Kripke and JJ Abrams Strike Gold?

[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.