Silo 1.4: Truth, Not Quite

The excellent episode 1.4 of Silo up on Apple TV+ today is entitled "Truth," no doubt after the word inscribed on the back of Holston's sheriff badge, now in the possession of Juliet.  But there wasn't much truth revealed in this episode, as far as I could see, and hence no spoiler warning immediately after this paragraph.  But the episode was still a pleasure to see, and my guess is some of what we saw will be crucial in subsequent episodes.

It was good and informative to see Juliet as a teenager, and Iain Glen does a fine job of portraying her father over a decade earlier than we see him in the present.  We do confirm that the mortality rate is really high for these denizens of the silo, and not because they all go outside to clean and apparently die.

[Ok, some new developments are ahead, so here's a mild warning about Spoilers ... ]

I'd say the most interesting strategic development in this episode is the deal that Juliet and Marnes pretty much make (pretty much, because Marnes may not be 100% aboard), which is Marnes will help Juliet find out who killed George (even though Marnes is not sure George was murdered) and Juliet will help Marnes find who killed the late Mayor Jahns.   This makes Marnes an even more crucially important character than he's been so far.

Which in turn makes the final scene, and Marnes' survival or not, a really pivotal moment.  We earlier are faked out in a scene in which it looks like Marnes is preparing to take his life, when all he's doing is constructing a punch bag or whatever that contraption is called.  But the last scene clearly shows Marnes on the wrong side of a shotgun, after a valiant fight in which he almost gets the better of his presumably murderous intruder.   Again, I haven't read the books, so I honestly don't know what will happen, but I think that Marnes will survive.  On the one hand, life is cheap in the silo, as I said before.  But on the other hand, Marnes's murder would take away a really big character, and one which Juliet has talked into what would really be an essential deal.

See you back here next week with my review of the next episode.

See also Silo 1.1-1.2: A Unique Story, Inside and Out ... Silo 1.3: Like Chernobyl, Repaired

The Colony: Conradian/Keplerian Noir

Well, I just saw The Colony (original name of the movie, Tides) on Netflix.  This seems to be the season for post-apocalyptic stories, understandable given the dangerous state of our world, in areas ranging from  COVID to climate to Russia massing troops on the border of Ukraine.  I thought Station Eleven, a series on HBO Max based on Emily St. John Mandel's novel, was a masterpiece.  I wouldn't say the same about The Colony.  But I will say that, for my money, it's much better and more worth seeing than the massively popular Don't Look Up.  (Though I'll also admit to you that I paid no money for either, other than the subscription price on Netflix.)

In The Colony, Earth has been devastated by both climate and plague, and some rich people on Earth have escaped to Kepler. a planet which we've indeed in our current reality identified as being in the Goldilocks zone, i.e, likely amenable to human life.  But it turns out it's not that habitable after all because, although the Earthlings can survive there, they lose their fertility.  In a last desperate move, they send two expeditions back to Earth, to see if perhaps our planet cured itself and was once again capable of supporting our demanding species, if not in the style to which we've become accustomed, at least in a way that enabled us to live beyond a single generation.

The answer is a qualified yes.  The toxic environment is much better, but the people now living on the planet have reverted to barbarism.  This aspect of the story is the least original, but the overall narrative still works well because our astronaut from Kepler, from the second ship from that arrives here, encounters survivors from the first voyage, with all kinds of repercussions and results.

I won't say anything more about the plot.  But this  Conradian/Keplerian "Heart of Darkness" in which Earth itself is that heart serves as a good tableau for a realistic morality play in the Asimovian tradition, in which humans who have made it far from our solar system are certainly different from those they left behind but are still part of our species, with all of our strengths and flaws.  Fine work by Nora Arnezeder as Blake (the astronaut on the second voyage), Sebastian Roché as her father from the first voyage, Iain Glen, also from the first voyage, and Eden Gough as Neil, a precocious boy on Earth.

first starship to Alpha Centauri has just enough fuel to get there

Mrs. Wilson 1 and 2: Uh, Oh Mr. Wilson

If you're wondering what Ruth Wilson has been up to since she left The Affair, you'll be in for a treat with Mrs. Wilson, which debuted tonight (with two parts out of three) on PBS.  Actually, you'll be in for a treat even if you never saw The Affair (or, for that matter, Luther, in which Ruth Wilson has also distinguished herself).  And just good measure, Iain Glen from Game of Thrones is on hand in this, too.

Why, you might ask, is this mini-series called Mrs. Wilson?  Whoever heard of naming a series after its lead actress?   But the series has that name because it's indeed about a Mrs.Wilson - Ruth's grandmother.  And seeing how the theme of this story is the fine line between fact and fiction, that title and Ruth Wilson starring in it works perfectly.

The Mr. Wilson in this mostly true story - Alexander, played by Iain Glen and reminding me of that "Uh, oh, Mr. Wilson" in George Harrison and the Beatles' "Taxman" - is a piece of work who was apparently married at least three times (at, so far in the story), worked as a British spy in World War II, and was a successful spy and crime-thriller novelist to boot.   Mrs. Wilson (the real Ruth's grandmother, played by Ruth) knows about the spy stuff and the novels, but finds out about the triple marriage and Iain's other lies after he succumbs to a heart attack.   The story so far shows the pain and surprise she endures, and how she more or less copes with it.

It's a wild story, with an enhanced wallop precisely it's basically true (like all docudramas, some facts have been changed to augment the narrative, and this series may have even more fiction).   Hey, I'm a science fiction writer myself, have written some science fiction/mystery hybrids such as The Silk Code, and I found myself regretting that Alexander died before I started publishing and attending mystery writers conventions.  I would've loved to hear some of his truths and lies.

But I regret nothing about this wicked little series, and I'll be back here next week with my concluding review.