The 100: Book II (Season 7). Clarke 5, Human Societies 0

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INH5: Dec 17, 2012; Error: file not found.

Shrimpy posted:

The main cast of The Originals are recurring characters starting in Season 2 that eventually get their backdoor pilot in Season 4.

Right, contrast with The 100, where we get a flashback episode focused on Bella in Season 3, that ends on a sort-of-cliffhanger with her meeting the guys in radiation suits. That thread doesn't get picked up until Season 5, where we get a brief flashback from Madi of Becca being burned at the stake by Cadogan. Which is a sort of plot hook, but also means that if they do do a prequel Becca can't be the main character, at least not for long, because they've already established that she got burned at the stake before too much time passed. Then they wait 2 more seasons, until the final season, to introduce their actual main character for the prequel. So the point stands, they waited too long to set up the elements for a backdoor pilot.

And again, I suspect that a significant part of this was that for a long time they didn't want to commit to a particular origin for the Grounders. In Season 1 they were pretty clearly intended as the descendants of people who survived on the ground through random luck and turned into low-tech tribal societies due to low population and a lack of resources, a common enough trope in this genre that it didn't raise too many questions. This continued into early Season 2, with Dante Wallace's exposition in the first episode and Trigedasleng, while weird, was clearly still descended from English and could have been justified under the "random survivors gone tribal" origin. IE drop Lincoln's "only our warriors speak English" line and make it a code language that the Woods Clan uses to secretly communicate and identify friend/foe and it would pretty much make sense apart from its conspicuous absence in Season 1 at moments where you'd think that it might have been useful to the Grounder characters (thinking in particular of Anya and Tristan talking to each other after Clarke and Finn and Lincoln run off into the mines).

Then late in Season 2 Lexa brings up a belief in reincarnation, which doesn't make sense at all for a society only a few generations removed from random residents of Northern Virginia without some kind of special explanation. Then in Season 3 we get more weirdness and the backstory with Becca, which raises even more questions. But then in Season 4x01 we get that ending shot of Grounders in Egypt getting fried by the Death Wave, which isn't impossible to reconcile with the origin that they ultimately went with, but is not a great fit no matter what explanation they might have come up with if the prequel had gotten picked up. Then in the rest of Season 4 and the aforementioned Season 5 flashback, strong hints that Cadogan and the Second Dawn were tied into the Grounder origin somehow, but no firm answers until 7x08. And it's hard to set up plot hooks for a prequel if you keep things that vague.

And by the way, I found commentary by David J. Peterson, the creator of Trigedasleng, on 7x08, which I referenced earlier. An interesting read:

quote:

If you watched episode 708, the backdoor pilot to the potential prequel series for The 100, and you've been following Trigedasleng for a bit, you're undoubtedly going to have a lot of questions. I'll try to anticipate and answer as many as I can.

First, it will help to remember that I was hired in between seasons 1 and 2�I was not a part of the show from the beginning�and that what you've seen in the latter seasons, in terms of new characters and plot arcs, wasn't planned at that time. This is the scenario I was given: There are humans in America (near D.C.) who survived the nuclear apocalypse. They speak a language that is noticeably distinct from English�but also familiar enough that English-speaking viewers will recognize some of it. There's been about 100 years between the apocalypse and the time of the show, and the apocalypse was our time plus 40 odd years. Also, all of these survivors seem to speak English fluently (that was canon from season 1).

That's a difficult position to be in, but recall that based on what we saw in season 1, they didn't need to have me on the show at all. Anyway, it was a fun exercise, and the result was Trigedasleng�mostly as you know it. (In truth, the original version I developed was different�it pushed the envelope further. Trigedasleng as it exists is a compromise between me and the writers at the time.) I hypothesized a potential scenario that led to the creation of the language, but it was rather informal. The hypothetical scenario was that if humans survived, but there aren't, like, billions of people on the planet, it stands to reason that some groups were more successful than others. Perhaps one of these groups developed a code to be able to distinguish themselves from outsiders�to tell who was in the group and who wasn't (imagining a doomsday society, it seemed like this might be a useful thing). This gave me license to change the meanings of words radically, while, at the same time, allowing me to apply more or less standard sound and grammar changes to English and blend the two: the code and usual language evolution.

That backstory was the backstory, more or less, for a few seasons, but as you can see, it lacks a lot of detail. It was more of a launching point.

At some point in time, Jason got an idea for how the series was going to end, and came up with the idea for a prequel, which necessitated revisiting the origins of Trigedasleng (after all, the prequel would be going to its birth). The most important details are laid out in this episode. Among them is that Callie Cadogan is herself a conlanger, and consciously created a language.

That changes things quite a bit from where Trig. started. First off, I had always imagined that Trig. would have been associated with a group like the Second Dawn�not a splinter group from the Second Dawn. At least, that was what I imagined at first. This, though, still works. More importantly, though, if you look at Trigedasleng as a language, it really is modern English with some sound changes, some grammatical changes, and some lexical quirks. Its content doesn't approximate something a beginning conlanger would create. (That is, most conlangers, when starting out, get a bit more creative, rather than modifying their own language.)

The big question: With this origin revealed, would I have done the same thing with Trigedasleng? The answer is no. It would have been far different. It would have looked like a beginning conlang that had actually been adopted by a group of speakers and turned into a full language. It would likely be largely a priori.

Having said that, something like that wouldn't have matched the expectations and desires of the writers back in the summer between seasons 1 and 2, so I'm not sure if I could have done something like that. An origin like this one wasn't anticipated at that time, so they certainly wouldn't have asked for something like that. And as a secondary observation, would the fans have responded to that kind of thing the way they did to Trig.? Somehow I doubt it. I certainly don't regret it.

The episode itself has one surviving line of the Proto-Trig I half-created, but there were more lines (including lines by Lucy, played by Defiance veteran and friend Nicole Mu�oz!). I'm grateful that they were cut. If this moves forward as a series, I want that freedom. I think creating that linguistic situation will be an interesting project, and I think I'll be able to bring in more of Callie's original a priori conlang. (After all, just because most of her words didn't survive doesn't mean they were never there!)

In short, I like this origin story. Had I known it ahead of time, I would've done things differently, but I also don't regret what we have in Trig., and don't think it unnecessarily complicates things moving forward. We'll see if there's a next chapter!

# ? May 28, 2023 07:35

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 12:20

kdrudy: Sep 19, 2009

She did end up the single person not allowed into space heaven.

# ? May 28, 2023 07:51

Mike the TV: Jan 14, 2008; Ninety-nine ninety-nine ninety-nine; Pillbug

I'm willing to bet Bellamy was written to have died in a bad way because the actor was being accused of sexpesting at the time.

# ? May 28, 2023 12:11

INH5: Dec 17, 2012; Error: file not found.

Mike the TV posted:

I'm willing to bet Bellamy was written to have died in a bad way because the actor was being accused of sexpesting at the time.

Interviews with JRoth and others make it clear that behind-the-scenes issues had something to do with it, though they're short on specifics.

And Bellamy wouldn't be an exception. Wells' death all the way back in 1x03 reportedly happened because between the shooting of the Pilot and the series being picked up Eli Goree decided to pursue some other gig that ultimately didn't end up working out. Thomas McDonell also reportedly asked to leave the show for personal reasons, and that's why Finn was killed off in Season 2. And we all know what happened with Alycia Debnam-Carey and Ricky Whittle. So quite a large portion of this show's major character deaths happened as a result of known behind-the-scenes issues. One wonders if there might have been more in the last 2 seasons if Eligius IV's cryo tubes and the Anomaly hadn't finally introduced ways to write important characters out of the story for significant periods of time other than death.

# ? May 28, 2023 22:27

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

I�m doing a rewatch with my son and I forgot how awesome this show is.

# ? May 29, 2023 12:32

oh jay: Oct 15, 2012

Pillowpants posted:

I�m doing a rewatch with my son and I forgot how awesome this show is.

Oh no. Now you have to float him if he commits any crime, no matter how small, unless you want to be a hypocrite.

# ? May 29, 2023 15:52

Candy Darling: Nov 10, 2009

oh jay posted:

Oh no. Now you have to float him if he commits any crime, no matter how small, unless you want to be a hypocrite.

Assuming the son is under 18 they got locked up until their 18th birthday for a review.

So more of a time out than a floating situation� for now.

Or you could find a group of other kids and send them in a hopelessly dangerous situation to test the waters for the parents.

drat I love The 100.

# ? May 30, 2023 06:50

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

He thought that Clarke irradiating Mount Weather was the only logical thing to do. I�ve got a serial killer in my midst

# ? May 30, 2023 11:40

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 12:20

INH5: Dec 17, 2012; Error: file not found.

Pillowpants posted:

He thought that Clarke irradiating Mount Weather was the only logical thing to do. I�ve got a serial killer in my midst

Clearly he has to go wandering in the wilderness for the next 3 months then.

----

Thinking more about the prequel, I think that another major reason why it didn't get picked up is that the prequel likely wouldn't have what was probably the primary reason why this show lasted as long as it did: an ability to pull in new viewers on streaming (including me 7 years ago) and make them less likely to cancel their subscriptions. The opening premise is an interesting high concept sci-fi premise that was literally tailor made by a marketing team to bring in people hearing about it for the first time, and once a viewer has been pulled in it soon becomes apparent to them that every season after the first is a different high-concept sci-fi premise. If you like their implementation of even a few of the premises on offer, then that gives you an incentive to not cancel your Netflix subscription so that you can rewatch those seasons in the future, as the available alternative apart from going back to buying DVD box sets is spending $25 to buy each Season on-demand.

EDIT: A good illustration of this is how the show's schedule was moved to the Summer starting in Season 5. Which means that by the end of Season 4 ratings were low enough that CW executives didn't want the show to take up a slot in their Fall-Spring primetime lineup anymore. We almost certainly wouldn't have gotten the last 3 Seasons if Netflix hadn't been willing to pay as much for more seasons.

Whereas the premise of the prequel, presented without context to someone who hasn't seen the original series, would be a group of people trying to survive a recent apocalypse, a premise that has been done to death on TV by this point. "The Walking Dead without zombies", which is what the prequel show would look like to new viewers, seems unlikely to pull in a huge number of new viewers on Netflix.

So the prequel wouldn't have the elements that made other CW spin-offs successful, it wouldn't have the elements that made this show successful on streaming, it won't bring over fans of the characters of the original series because no recurring characters from the first 6 seasons, not even Becca, who died in the backdoor pilot, would play a large role in the prequel series (maybe Becca would have occasionally showed up as a Chip Ghost, but she already did that in the series itself, so who cares?), so it definitely wouldn't be another Better Call Saul. I can't blame CW executives for asking, "who is this for, exactly?"

INH5 fucked around with this message at 03:56 on May 31, 2023

# ? May 31, 2023 01:14

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The 100: Book II (Season 7). Clarke 5, Human Societies 0

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