Fallout

Science Fiction 3 Minutes

Fallout, like many recent TV shows, demonstrates the old rule, of video game adaptations always being awful, is obsolete.

At first Fallout seems similar to a lot of other post-apocalyptic shows. There’s been a nuclear war and the world is a wasteland. Life on the surface is a brutal battle for survival, even two hundred years after the war. There are people living in small groups, and apparently some abortive attempts at civilization. There are also lots of mutated beasts and monsters roaming around, including humans, although it eventually turns out that it’s not all caused by radiation.

In particular, a lot of humans have been turned into “ghouls”, who can apparently rapidly recover from any wound, or go on with very damaged bodies, and who don’t seem to age. The catch is that they need a drug to avoid “turning”. If they do turn, they seem to behave very similar to the walking dead of other franchises. The drug keeps them lucid and intelligent.

And there are the descendants of elites living in underground bunkers. They live a civilized and fairly comfortable existence, waiting for the day that the surface radiation will have subsided enough for their descendants to emerge, and “bring civilization” back to the surface dwellers.

Lucy is the daughter of her bunker’s leader, who has trained her in shooting and a number of survival skills. When raiders from the surface are able to enter the bunker, they kill many of her friends and kidnap her father. Against the wishes of the bunker’s remaining leadership, Lucy decides to leave the bunker and find her father. At first, she seems naive, but it quickly becomes apparent she is very smart and resourceful.

One surface dweller, Maximus, is training to be in the “Brotherhood of Steel”, a group of warriors whose mission appears to be confiscating “old world” technology. Maximus ends up as a squire to a knight who fights in mechanized battle armor. When the knight is killed, Maximus takes over the armor to continue the mission, despite knowing that the unforgiving Brotherhood is likely to kill him for allowing his knight to die and taking his armor.

But maybe the most interesting character is Cooper Howard. Cooper is a ghoul who was a movie star in the old world. A substantial portion of the series is flashbacks of events in his life prior to the war.

There’s a 1940/1950s feel to America just before the war, and Cooper in his pre-war period seems like a sort of John Wayne analogue. At first I took it to be an alternate history thing, where the nuclear war happens a few years after World War II. But it becomes evident the war happens in the latter part of the 21st century. So it might still be alt history, but in the way society and technology developed in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

Cooper in his post war ghoulish period ends up fulfilling a trend that John Scalzi recently labeled “protagonization”. Scalzi was talking about movie monsters like Godzilla and King Kong evolving over time into heroes. But it’s a special case of a trend we’ve seen over the decades where vampires, pirates, criminals, and many other traditional villains evolve into heroes, or at least into sympathetic protagonists.

A few years ago, I had a conversation wondering if we’d ever see that happen with zombies. At the time, it seemed hard to imagine. But Cooper sort of delivers on it. Although it’s probably more accurate to describe him as a semi-zombie, since he remains lucid and intelligent, although in constant danger of slipping into full zombiehood.

Anyway, he’s largely introduced as a villain, but as we see his backstory, he gradually starts to become more sympathetic, although it’s clear the centuries have changed more than just his appearance.

It’s obvious early on in this show that everything is not as it seems. And we get plenty of reveals throughout the first season. That and the plights and ordeals of Lucy, Maximus, and eventually Cooper are strongly compelling. It’s a seriously good show. If you don’t mind some gore and violence, I recommend checking it out.

My only nits with it is that the societies portrayed seem strangely undeveloped after 200 years of recovery. It’s a pretty pessimistic take on what humans would be capable of doing centuries after a civilization’s fall. And that the McGuffin of the show turns out to be something that’s in danger of giving oxygen to a contemporary pseudoscientific conspiracy theory. But these nits weren’t enough to stop me from enjoying the overall show.

Have you watched it? If so, what did you think?

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20 thoughts on “Fallout”

  1. Maybe I’ll check it out. They recently added Fallout to Magic: The Gathering, so I’ve been playing against Fallout themed decks lately. It’s enough to make me curious, but not curious enough to go play the game. So the show might be enough for me.

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    1. As usual, I have no experience with the game. I’ve seen some people online comment that the show does manage to cover many of the game scenarios. For me it’s just a well done story. 

      I do wonder how it’s doing. The trailer didn’t really draw me in. It was only after I saw people online raving about it that I checked it out. It doesn’t seem like Amazon is very good at marketing their shows. 

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  2. Enjoying it, too.

    The timeline thing is mystifying. I took it as there was an original war, ~1950’s, Vault-Tec folk went below. V33 people survived for generations. 220+ years elapsed and now we’re current.

    During those 220 years, the surface dwellers recovered, and a second war destroyed them, “Sandy Shores” being one target. Refugees from that town took over V4 (no idea what happened to the survivors there.)

    During this second war, the iron-clad knights arose. Although Lucy references those suites, albeit much earlier versions.

    The concept that the military-industrial complex needed a war is a worn but poignant trope.

    I’ve never played the game, never even seen it, really, so maybe much of the style and ambiance is due to that.

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    1. There are actually a lot of timelines online. According to them, the global nuclear war happens in 2077. The games start c. 2100. All of them happen before the show, which is a sequel to the whole thing, taking place in 2296. (Apparently there are a bunch of Easter eggs in the show for die hard fans.)

      (This also explains why the show is 200 years after the big war. It’s really the series of several games that establish that time span.)

      One timeline I saw goes back before human civilization. So apparently their timeline forks from ours much earlier than the war. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline

      A shorter, easier to parse one: https://www.thewrap.com/fallout-show-timeline-explained/

      Hope they don’t take too long for the next season.

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  5. I’m actually enjoying the show and it’s actually making me want to play around with Fallout4 again. But I do enjoy the rise of video games in general, making it to the big screen.

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    1. Adaptations of video games used to be universally awful. I’m not sure what changed, but in recent years they’ve gotten much better. Some of it might be that the game stories themselves have gotten much richer.

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  6. I watched and liked it quite a bit. I’ve played some of the games, and enjoyed how faithful it was to that setting while also being entertaining in its own right.

    I never realised the bombs dropped in 2077. I always assumed they had dropped in 2050 or thereabouts. I was actually annoyed that some of the music seemed to be a little too late — most of the games only feature music from the 30s or 40s. I had assumed that the music industry basically came to a stop when the bombs dropped, which would explain it.

    One bit of fan service I missed a little bit was the absence of Ron Perlman, who introduces every Fallout game with the line “War, war never changes”. That line did make it in near the end, but I’d have liked to see a cameo with Ron himself.

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    1. Not being familiar with the game, I spent a good part of the series trying to figure out the timeline. Initially I thought the bombs dropped shortly after WWII, or maybe in the 1950s. It wasn’t until they made clear they hadn’t fallen until the late 21st century that it clicked that the timeline had branched well before the apocalypse.

      A lot of people have praised all the Easter eggs left for game fans. I agree a cameo from Ron Perlman would have been cool, although the significance would have been lost on me, aside from it just being him.

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  7. As a huge fan of the games, I loved the Fallout series immensely. Lucy is absolutely a Fallout protagonist, she starts out naive and has to adapt quickly to the wasteland. The recovery of society is slow because ‘war never changes’ and people keep killing each other over who gets to be in charge. That’s the core theme of Fallout, and many societies that grow and develop end up destroyed.

    So the underdeveloped society is kind of the point, if that makes sense. The show basically confirms the end of the New California Republic, which had developed as a large nation-state taking over much of California and extending into Nevada. They had their own currency, a president, an army, a political system and everything. Shady Sands was the capital, so clearly NCR has not done well.

    I think it does well not to info-dump but I can see how people who aren’t familiar with the games might struggle to get the timeline. The timeline diverges from ours after WWII, with technology following a different path, focusing on harnessing atomic energy. The aesthetic and music are a kind of 50’s World of Tomorrow vibe, a stylistic choice. The bombs fell at around 10am on the 23rd of October 2077. The show takes place in 2296.

    I like that they told a new story, instead of rehashing one of the games storylines. Especially because all the games have alternative endings and huge variations in outcomes dependent on player decisions, so it’s good that they don’t seem to have forced a set canon on these things. I’m intrigued as to what they will bring in for season 2, with the hints about New Vegas in the very ending.

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    1. Thanks for the timeline info! That fits with what I was able to find from various fan sites. It was a seriously good show. And I’m with you on being happy that they made it a sequel, rather than just an adaptation of the game. It saves people like me, who never played the game, from stumbling over spoilers. (Not that spoilers bother me that much.)

      Definitely looking forward to the next season!

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