Under The Dome (tv series)

I worded that badly- should have said why put a town under glass. I sometimes can overlook illogical premisses, but this just seems so egregious that it cannot be ignored for me. But id others can enjoy it- more power to ya!

Does it get shaken in the winter to create snow?

 

Didn't get a chance to watch last night, hopefully this will be available through my On Demand so I can catch up.

The city of Winooski, VT proposed putting a dome over it back in the early 1980's I'm going to say. Winooski is approx. 1.5 square miles. I wonder if King ever heard about that and based this story on this in any way.

 

When do they run out of air under that dome?

They have a sheriff with a real bad heart problem? No pension in this little town?

All the fire engines are outside the dome. Hope the town doesn't have a fire bug.

At least the town has an intrepid redhead reporter to get to the bottom of things. Brenda Starr?

And apparently Brenda Starr's husband was hooking up with some other hottie and now he's dead, by the hands of the mysterious handsome stranger who now is in her house. Drama!

 

I thought it was fairly dreadful, but what else is there to do a 9:00 PM on a Monday night? If nothing else it can fill in for the ridiculousness of "Revolution", even the same time slot.

 

My wife and I asked this question last night while watching too, and came to the conclusion that (by show logic anyway) the trees and vegetation are what will provide oxygen for everyone. Presumably enough anyway so that they don't all eventually suffocate.

 

Wait...Is there any reason to think the dome isn't somewhat porous? I expect that it must be, and that oxygen either gets in that way--or else there are holes at the top of the dome thousands of feet beyond where humans can reach, where oxygen gets in.

It's science fiction...you go with it...

In terms of so-far interesting mysteries, there are enough to keep things going:

1) Who is mysterious stranger who just buried the reporter's husband?
2) What was the husband up to?
3) What's with all the shipments of fuel?
4) What's with the talk of the dome that the radio station woman was able to find?
5) Why do certain people have seizures and start talking about lines of stars when they get near the dome?
6) Who's behind the dome and why?

Somewhat interesting story lines:
7) The evil son and the ex-girlfriend now held hostage in the bomb shelter
8) The evil council chairman (father of evil son) and whatever he's up to


Seems like enough for a single hour...

 

Only the not-so-good ones. But I have to admit, I did enjoy the first episode of Under the Dome... to a point. I still kind of bristle at the major story changes they've done so far. No cow getting cut in half in the book; and Barbie didn't just bury a man in the woods, either. In the book, Barbie is just a transient, an ex-Iraq war veteran working as a cook in a diner, who has occasionally run into fights with some of the local toughs. He's on his way out of town -- to avoid trouble -- when the dome slams the door shut. So I'm not sure why making him a man with a questionable past, who looks like an amoral murderer. will be an improvement over the hero in the book.

Huge plot issue that will come up. But yes: you cut off all ties to the outside, it will affect the oxygen... especially if (say) a large fire were to break out. Did anyone notice that all the fire trucks have left town for a parade, right?

You will get what you ask for. There is an explanation for the dome, but I hated it.

 

I wonder if they'll try for something more "sensible", as was done with Ozymandias' nefarious plot in the Watchmen adaptation.

 

From EW:

 

It was a gopher in the book. I HATE the character changes. They've managed to remove the motivation for almost every single one of them compared to the book. I kept talking to my TV - "he can't do that because then something down the road will make no sense" "No, that's not how she would react" "No, she's fifteen years older and not married to that guy" etc. I'm guessing the series will soon be nothing like the book.

I just finished the book in anticipation of the series and I thought it suffered (as well as from the obligatory crappy King ending) from J.K. Rowling disease - way too many characters that were often created just to facilitate a plot point that any number of existing characters could have easily done. I'll watch a little longer but I think that the book - lousy ending aside and a horribly violent scene that could not be shown on TV - as it is would have made a great mini-series. I'm not sure that what what they're serving up will.

 

Yeah, I'm in total agreement. I was also miffed by lots of little changes: my memory is that the newspaper reporter/editor was an older woman in her 50s, which made her friendship with Barbie (the hero) a little unusual, since he was about 20 years younger. It figures than in the TV version, suddenly they're almost exactly the same age, and much more sexually compatible.

I had forgotten the "Breaking Bad" connection with Under the Dome. I will say no more.

 

Your are correct. I thought that was a nice departure for the book - young stud falls for older woman. She also didn't have a husband that he killed. And what the hell is up with the DJ? He was a white trash meth-head insane DJ for a Christian music radio station in the book and now he's a sober black DJ playing hard rock and working with a woman who does not exist in the book. (I can hear the TV exec saying "if he plays rock music we can sell the soundtrack album - oh, and make him black, it'll help the ratings").

 

Yeah, I had forgotten that it was a Christian station, which I think also ties in with one of the nutcases at the end.

The creepiest character in the whole thing is the teenage college dropout kid who has his (former) girlfriend imprisoned in the fallout shelter. Who would have a fallout shelter in 2013? 1963, sure. There's an interesting story arc that happens with that kid -- very unpleasant. This was all part of the Lord of the Flies thing: a bad situation just brings out the worst in some people.

He's yankin' our chain. It's a 54-line poem that reveals nothing:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15831

 

Possibly the dome in this case is a pleasure dome, er, good thing...

 

So Frankie Goes To Hollywood are responsible?

 

Just caught in via On Demand. Not bad, liked it. I will be watching.

Have not read the book yet, every year I get further and further behind on my reading list. So I come in with no preconceived notions about how this story is supposed to go.

The biggest head scratcher I had when watching the second half of the pilot is...Why not just dig under to get out? They clearly pretty much figured out that the dome goes all around the town at ground level, and they can assume it extends upwards to a level that they can't get past (based on the plane). How come nobody got out their tractor and started digging? Maybe that comes up later?

 

The dome is a sphere that also goes underneath the town, cutting off outside water, sewer lines, gas lines, electricity, telephones, radio waves, everything. We'll see that in an upcoming show; it was detailed in the book as well. The Army Corps of Engineers on the outside tries to dig in, and nothing is effective except breaking the equipment.

 

I liked some parts of Tommyknockers, but King lost me with the whole "aliens corner the market on D-cell batteries" plot line. Real stupid. The parts that are good are mostly the ones relating to the steals from 5,000,000 Years to Earth, about the dead alien ghosts from a spaceship that crashed many years ago.

The scenes where we find out about the female lead character turning her dog into a living battery gave me the willies...

There's a thousand movies and TV shows that have bogus titles. But it's established in the book that, to news reporters all over the world, the "city imprisoned in a dome" headline spreads like wildfire.

Trust me, the title is the least of the story's problems (or of the residents inside).

 

Ooh don't get me started on Tommyknockers. Gave up on king after that one.

 

Please stop giving away plot points or things that are going to happen in the future on the show.

I don't care if you've read the book and didn't like it or whatever. I'd like to enjoy the show as it goes.

 

Cujo, Christine, and Pet Sematary were awful to me. But it seems like for every 3 or 4 books that come out, at least 1 of them is good enough that it reminds me what a really fine writer King can be. Most recently, I think 11/22/63 showed that the guy is still extraordinarily talented. But Under the Dome and The Cell just left me cold. 90% of what I disliked about Under the Dome is simply King's inability to get to the point fast enough. My fear is that the show is going to do the same thing: take 3 hours' worth of ideas, and spread them out across 13 shows.

I suspect many viewers will be disappointed at the end of the summer if the show ends and we still don't have a clue as to who put the Dome there, how it works, and why it's there. Big clue: a few people tend to have fits when they get close to the source of the Dome, like the teenage girl going into diabetic shock and muttering about "falling stars." [Not a spoiler -- in the first show.]

Well, because I know what's going to happen, I'm deliberately holding a lot back. This is no different from a movie critic who's seen a film and doesn't want to tell you the ending. This is very definitely a story that's about the journey, and I think that's the point of the novel. My problem is, I don't think it's enough to hang an entire $40 million 12-hour TV series on.

 

Rumours abound that King didn't really write Tommyknockers. It was at the height of his substance abuse problems and there has been lots of speculation that King started the book but a ghostwriter did most of the heavy lifting. King said in "On Writing" that he had cotton balls stuffed up his nose to staunch the bleeding (too much speed, iirc) while he was writing it. If he did write it all he did it while hitting bottom with his drinking and drugging.

 

I understand your point and even sympathize, but it's almost impossible to discuss something like this without referring to the source material. I try to avoid Internet discussions of anything based on source material that is unfamiliar. If it helps, nothing mentioned so far is material to future episodes. And some of what you might consider spoilery is open for further discussion. For instance, I read the book and don't remember the dome being referred to as a sphere. I remember that they simply couldn't dig under it (but I didn't exactly study it for an exam.)

I think everybody tries to avoid outright spoilers and I don't think anyone knows how they're going to resolve the plot. They've already made so many changes that familiarity with the book may be irrelevant anyway.