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Right around the time we were starting up Zombie Ranch, Dawn and I became aware of a reality television show purporting to show how people might survive and thrive in the face of apocalypse. Not a zombie apocalypse, per se, but still presented as a global-scale disaster which would leave small groups of survivors isolated from outside contact, with minimal resources.
Despite being interested, we never got around to watching The Colony at that time. For one thing, our own scenario was one where the disaster happened years beforehand, instead of focusing on immediate aftermaths, but the main reason is that Dawn and I are just horrible at keeping track of television shows as they air, and as I recall at the time only a couple of the full episodes were available on the Discovery Channel website, with the rest being just partial clips. Tantalizing, perhaps, but ultimately just frustrating. I also wondered how feasible they could really pull off the idea of apocalyptic isolation while using a warehouse area near Downtown Los Angeles. Would sending “biker gangs” and other twists of fate at the survivors be compelling? Or just cheesy?
Three years later and the show has finally hit Netflix. We just finished watching the entirety of Season 1, and… yes, in my opinion, it was plenty compelling. The ‘volunteers’ (I guess maybe you can’t call them survivors for fear of comparison to that Other Reality Show) really seemed to buy into the reality of their situation, especially as the days wore on.
I underestimated just how isolating those all but abandoned areas between Downtown and the L.A. river can be… having a passing familiarity with them, I probably shouldn’t have. They’re industrial ghost towns smack in the midst of one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the world, which is a fascinating and sobering topic all in itself. I don’t know how much editing had to be done, but from a viewing perspective the illusions were maintained, with not even one single homeless person wandering through that wasn’t scripted by the producers to do so.
What really makes the show as well is the lack of competition in the concept. Yes, there is internal strife, especially as supplies dwindle and frustrations and tempers ebb and flow, but there is no motive for any of the volunteers to act against or undermine each other. There is no reward prize dangling at the end except the idea of survival and self-discovery. At the beginning there doesn’t even seem to be a set goal, with the producers eventually adapting to the colonists’ efforts to allow for a satisfying closure.
For that matter, the “challenges” are a far cry from those in most reality shows. There’s no host explaining what to do next; instead, it’s a mix of naturally occurring and scripted stimuli for the colonists to react to as they will. The first season starts with the group confined to an abandoned warehouse and scrapyard, with a few beginning supplies which quickly need to be supplemented. One of the early problems is one of water, and the desperation really hits home when they have to gather it from the L.A. River. I don’t even want to set *foot* in the L.A. River, especially at the portion they’re at, and these folks have to use it for sustenance? But they manage to quickly rig up a system to purify it to potability, and the ingenuity just keeps building from there. You will boggle at some of the ideas these people come up with, and you will boggle even more when they actually make those crazy ideas work. Well, at least I did.
And even with all that ingenuity, there’s always a sense of being one or two steps from disaster. If the curveballs don’t come from the environment, outside elements are introduced to keep the colonists on their toes. Two starving travelers come by to ask for food and water… do you turn them away? The route you got used to for scavenging is suddenly closed off… now what? Marauders threaten your supplies… how will you defend them?
I really shouldn’t go into much more for fear of spoilers. I know, I know, I’m the guy who contended that spoilers aren’t the end-all be-all of entertainment enjoyment, but I’ll admit, there’s a lot of events here that are probably best experienced in the same way the colonists must have experienced them.
It is a really good show, and not only that, I feel like I learned things from it, both on a technological and simply human standpoint. The Colony’s narrator often refers to it as “the experiment”. An experiment which, at the end of it all, shows just how resilient we can be.
9 thoughts on “Colonial times”
Constance
I watched it from the viewpoint of a LARPer and survival genre enthusiast. It got points for being more ‘real’ than Survivor ever was, but detracted for the sheer stupidity of some of the refugees, especially the ones you can tell are acting for the camera. Some things they did wrong boggled me.
Second season turns up the stupid. I won’t spoiler it, as per your commentary, but they are JUST SO STUPID. I was facepalming through every episode wondering why they hadn’t died yet.
Dawn
And I was watching it as a DM with people who never played a LARP or D&D. Being the person on the side who has to tell the Marauders to attack at this time or giving the players a location to scavenge and see what they take.
I love being a DM because I love seeing how the players react to things, even if it’s “You guys are dumb” – which the model in the second season was full of it. But because I watched it from this mindset, I really enjoyed both seasons.
Constance
Hee! I’m going to go pick berries ALL ALONE and UNARMED! Tee-hee. I’m the pretty one…
Clint
She was not the brightest bulb. But one thing I always kept in mind was that fatigue, thirst, and hunger were going to always be taking their toll on the people involved, even at the beginning — they were kept awake for what, three days, before being introduced to the warehouse area? And it just went mostly downhill from there.
Dawn can vouch for my mental and emotional faculties when I’ve missed a couple of meals or haven’t gotten enough sleep… it ain’t pretty. Now draw that out over a period of several weeks, and I’m amazed they made it at all, much less were able to fashion complicated machinery while keeping from strangling each other.
The only way I’d ever really find out if I could do better would be to sign up for a go, but… no thanks on that. I’ll just cut them some slack for any mistakes, seeing as I’m watching from a comfy couch in a climate-controlled room while stuffing my face with a TV dinner. 😀
SteelRaven
I hated that show with a passion! I really digged how they Macguyvered a water filter, battery and other gear but the rest of the show was total BS for the cameras if not out right stupidity.
I’ll take Man vs Wilde, Survivor Man or Duel Survival over that show any day.
Mandirigma
I watched bits & pieces of the LA Colony, but really got into watching the New Orleans Colony. From a military OPSEC point of view, I kept screaming at the TV.
Constance>> I agree – facepalming abound. You’re going to go pick berries with no one as a lookout? WTF? You’re going to defend your “base” how? WTF? etc, etc.
Never really thought about it from a DM p.o.v., but it would be a pretty interesting encounter/campaign.
Sharon Kerr-Bullian
I watched a few episodes when it was brand new. It took me all of two episodes to figure out I wasn’t learning anything from that show. After that, it was train-wreck territory, for me, until I got bored of it. If any on of them had read the SAS Survival Guide, they wouldn’t have been one tenth as stupid as they were. I’ll acknowledge that fatigue and hunger can affect your judgment (and motor skills), but if you’ve got any survival and security knowledge at all, you won’t be quite that stupid.
The concept for the show was good, but I would have liked to see that show in the same format, except with survival experts and military veterans as the colony. It would have been a lot more informative.
Clint
Now, see, a colony full of survival experts and military veterans would actually have been much less interesting to me. I was much more interested in watching people I might meet every day wrestle with the idea of apocalypse. After all, one of the base ideas behind the experiment was that disasters can happen at any time, anywhere, to anyone.
And while the true Everyman scenario might have involved a bunch of office clerks rather than machinists and scientists and building contractors, it’s a lot more relatable and interesting to me to see the people they chose dealing with adversity rather than some well-oiled special forces team. For me, the latter is a given. The former is a fascinating “What if?”
Sharon Kerr-Bullian
I love what-ifs, just not on television. For me, what-ifs belong in books and other printed media, where they can be explored fully, and aren’t stuck to a formula born of the necessity of fitting a fixed time slot.
For TV, I’m more of a “teach me how” kind of person than a “let me watch the common man” kind of person. Shows like Survivorman (no more, he got replaced by Bear Grylls), Man Vs Wild and Mantracker are my TV bread and butter. Mantracker makes the cut because I’m interested in what Mantracker can teach.
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