Be Excellent To Each Other

Hmm.

Not sure what to make of this so far. I'm slightly peeved that no one has followed what I think is the ideal course of action in this sort of post-plague empty-land scenario, which is to get down to the nearest Army base, get hold of an APC filled with guns, then go find a farm in the middle of nowhere and be a tooled-up Apocolypse Farmer Giles.

Still, some not entirely hateful characters, and an interesting enough start.

Nice Audi R8, too.

Oh god. Annoying "man bonding with boy" bit.

As it were.

Damn, I was going to watch this as I quite enjoy apocalyptic fiction (I've watched Threads about four times in the past year), suppose I'll catch it on I-player.

Thinking about it, enjoying Threads isn't really right, is it?

Oooh - twisty end to episode 1. But then I imagine it's following the novel and the original series relatively closely, plot-wise.

Not really, no. It gave me the terrors when I first saw it. Never wanted to go to Sheffield again.

However, it is a compelling, exciting-if-sickening first half that film. The slow decay is a lot more unpleasant, but the up-to-attack stuff is genuinely thrilling. The attack itself is still a showcase on how to brilliant evoke something unimaginably big on a small budget.

Shin! Don't watch Threads!

I still haven't watched Threads despite being told I should on quite a few occasions.

I wonder if all the "hype" surrounding it will allow it to stand up.

Yes.

I challenge you to watch it without skipping ahead to relieve the tension. The build up is astonishingly brutal. However, I suspect BETEO types may be distracted by, "Ooh! I had that handheld LED gaming device when I was a kid!"

Also Sheepeh, you owe it to yourself as a Defcon commander.

What's Survivors?

A fantastic 1970's series written by Terry Nation that the BBC are ruining remaking with the premiere being shown tonight. Not seen it myself yet. The original series was terrifying, bleak and utterly amazing. Yes it was slow moving in places but it let you absorb what was going on. I expect the new series moves at 3 billion mph.

oh pooh, forgot it was on....

watch MIB, then top gear and fringe.... damn and blast... is it repeated?

I never saw the original but was glued to it the very first time they showed it all on UKGold (must have been about 15 years ago now) , gripping and so unusual to have a series where doom and gloom happens and thats it - there are some really bleek moments in the show and its not 'glossed' or hollywooded over - it happens there are consequences and life sorta goes on but not quite the same.

There are one or two eps that dont quite fit because they suddenly got an idea and tried to fit it in (i remember one about them going to london and finding lots of people alive and living in a different society but that was just because they wanted to show that) , i also remember it had one of the most unusual endings for a series (not giving spoilers)

I'm sure there were comments years ago about doing a one off to continue the story and that some of the regulars would have came back for it but i guess they have decided that everything that Terry has done is worth remaking now .....

I'm not sure about watching this because the original had such a strong effect and wonder if this would ruin things for me (although i have not now watched the original in a very long time there are things that i remember about it even now)

I'm worried about watching it as well. I don't believe anything they could do in a modern series could touch the horror of Greg stumbling across his family in Season 3 and threatening to shoot them (he has a very good reason for not wanting them near him but I won't spoil it). Likewise the murder that occurs in series 1 which again I won't spoil as I expect they will reuse that.

Done entirely on location as well, little if no studio. Very very unusual for an entire series to be shot on location in those days, and on videotape for the vast majority as well (the first 6 or so episodes have some location work on film due to them not being able to book the OB unit).. A huge technical achievement that cannot be underestimated. If you look at series like Tales Of The Unexpected, shot 8-10 years later, also on tape, and see blurry dark pictures and green skies, then you look at Survivors (apart from the early film episodes) and it's vivid, clear and the whole videotape look makes it seem more real.

And for Kovacs, yes it is repeated and it is on IPlayer. Details on the BBC site.

Like NervousPete said, yes. It is chilling.

One thing to take into account is that it was broadcast in 1984 and as it was produced with the intention that people of the time would relate to it and find it familiar, it looks like 1984. As a result, when you watch it now you're one step removed from how it would have been to watch it back in 1984. However, it's less a case of "How less disturbing is it now?" and more a case of "Just how much MORE disturbing would it have been to watch it back then?"

There are many stand out moments, but one that few people mention is where one of the main characters is talking about their future and she says "It'll be wonderful, I just know it will" (wording not guaranteed 100% accurate). I didn't pick up on this particularly until the second time I saw it, at which point I thought "No, it won't" and sort of felt angry that it wouldn't.

And that's enough from me about Threads, especially as this is off-topic.

Reasonably slow moving first episode, actually. I haven't seen the original, and so wasn't viewing this remake with my Rose Tinted Retrospectoscope, but this wasn't half bad. The atmosphere came across pretty well.

Your damn straight I won't be watching that!!

I might iPlayer this over lunch. I watched bits of BadBoys2

I liked it, thought it was jolly good and all that. But then I haven't seen the original either.

Of course, the first thing I would do if I survived something as apocalyptic as this is drive to the Aston Martin dealership in Bovingdon, drive my car straight through the window, grab the keys to a DB9 and fuck off.

I quite liked it, but it went on a bit.

Yip - you can do that - what happens when you run out of petrol .... and all the garages round you run out as well ........ then what do you do ?

I admit the original took the 'depletion of resources' thing a bit too far - i'm sure that there are enough tinned and processed goods around for the actual survivors to live a very comfortable life , it would be there decendents who would struggle (in the original within quite a short period of time nature took back a lot of the roads and towns and they had to move to subsistance farming)

Learn how to syphon petrol and take it out of the other cars' tanks. Which you'd have to learn to do anyway as the pumps won't work as there's no electricity.

If there are only less than 10% of the population left living, I think there would be enough petrol knocking around to do them for a fair few years.

Precisely! There'd be loads of petrol knocking about in abandoned cars to last the few survivors a long, long time.

There's a Lamborghini garage in High Wycombe too. That'd be next on the list of my 'places to loot in the event of surviving the apocalypse'. I'd be the fucking Jay Kay of Post-Apocalyptia!

In the original series they had a little hand pump for a few episodes



Agreed , however then what do you do ? (i know i know its taken to extremes) , I wouldnt be suprised if theres suppose to be some other disaster which will stop them getting access to those resources , i vaugely remember from the original that there were fires and other things that happened to prevent them from just using up the resources which were sitting around but sooner or later (if you follow the same actions as the original series) there will be a point where there is no more stuff and people dont know how to make it

Grow rape and then make bio-diesel. Easy.


Of course that means you'd have to spend the rest of the apocolypse driving a diesel. Urgh.

So where do you get the seeds from , how do you prepare the land , harvest the crop, after you've grown it what do you need to do to get the stuff to a usable stuff for your car - how do you keep your car going when bits of it break down , etc etc

They do things like that in the original series (a motorbike converted to run on methane) and there is a small amount of re-using of resouces but the idea is how you could go to being almost totally self sufficient

And of course what happens when someone see's you with your nice shiney bio diesel car and decides - i'd like that - give it to me.

Yeah, that'd really suck.

Go to a library, or the offices of a bio-diesel company, and find out!



It's an interesting point - you'd have to actually learn how to do certain things at some point, because eventually the spare parts for your tractor would run out, even with the vast number of tractors in the country.

You'd have to learn how to extract iron ore and make iron, for one. And then learn metalworking.



This is why my first port of call would be an army base and a Warrior APC.

You just couldn't learn how to do everything. You could carry on for a few decades just scavenging but eventually you'd either have to go back to a very simple, subsistence way of life or else try to group together as many people and skills as possible and rebuild some kind of society.

I'd rather be one of the ones that died please. An easy release... bliss.

It's 10% slower than the original petrol version, and has less torque in the mid range.



You could, as a small group, learn to do enough to comfortably survive. Not enough to rebuild mobile phone networks, but enough to survive with a post industrial sort of set of equipment. Sort of an updated Victorian period.

And if you've got 10% of the population still knocking around, that's enough to repopulate and get back to normal. Assuming we don't all regress into Brummies and eat each other.

Running on biodiesel in a world were petrol has run out, it's infinity faster than a Challenger 1 with no fuel.

I bet the Enclave have fuel.

It would depend how large your group is and what skills you have. You might be woefully underestimating the difficulty and plethora of skills required for some of the sorts of engineering tasks you mentioned. Just being vaguely practical, having common sense and some books won't cut it.

The British Can Do Spirit of Jollying Along And Overcoming All Obstacles has died, I see. Brunel would be turning in his grave.

It's still more likely you'd have died. Stop thinking positive and embrace the grave.

I'm merely pointing out the immense skills required to maintain even a fraction of what we see around us and take for granted. Without the skills of countless others at his disposal Brunel would not have been able to achieve much at all. The more technology your post apocalyptic society wants to use then the bigger it needs to be.

I can see you heading for a lifetime in my Iron Mines, Mr G.

Hmmm.It's not the sweet release of the grave Dimrill craves. It's brains!

Won't you keep him in a cage as your RC plane building sex slave? In military clothing, natch.

Another option would be to find a tractor repair man survivor and allow him to penetrate your orifices in return for keeping the tractor working. Of course, there'd be no clothing experts still alive (they are the most susceptible to death, after all) so you';d have to fashion clothes out of machinery. A loincloth made out of a carburettor, for instance. All greased up and ready to be violated.

Chris wouldn't be keeping anyone for anything, no place for lawyers in a post-apocalyptic utopia.

A lawyer with a Chemistry A Level, man. I could build a mini blast furnace. My Iron Making Ability would make me king of the wasteland.

Yeah, probably in the oven before people are hungry.

I want to be in Dimrills gang in the death future.

Remember: I'm the tractor repair man.

I'm the man who's good with rusty locks.

For the last time, I'm not ginger!

Whatever.

Dick.

Right! I'm telling Lord Humongous!

Can I haz Thunderdome plz?

Anyway, what sort of disaster are we talking about here? Nuclear bomb wiping out cities, viral outbreak killing people but leaving infrastructure intact, or weird "they're not there" sudden disappearance? In the case of the bomb, surely that 10% would include some hideously maimed individuals. Plus the chances of you and your loved ones surviving is remote, so despair and suicide would be an easier release from this post-apocalyptic warzone.