Year Zero TV Series

Trent Reznor has had talks with the people at HBO about making a TV series based on Year Zero, a CD NIN put out last year. The CD is a concept album that tells a story about an America 15 years from now where the government has way too much power. It's got a strong dystopic, kind of cyberpunk vibe. Maybe not the best NIN CD but it's good and a cool concept. It will make a hell of good TV show if done right.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/08/trent-reznor.html

After seeing NIN play last night in Dallas I HAD to post this.

I think Year Zero may actually be my favorite NIN record, believe it or not. "God Given", "In this Twilight", "Survivalism", "Vessel", "The Good Soldier"...so many great tracks, and I like the political sci-fi angle better than the life/relationships/religion/heroin addiction sucks angle.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the show...it could be cool, the thing is that conceptually it's kind of a pastiche of the usual Orwellian dystopianism with some PKD stuff...The Presence in particular and all the drug stuff is pure PKD.

I don't think the government will have too much power, I think the corporations will have too much power....

Sounds interesting though.

Michael Barnes wrote:

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the show...it could be cool, the thing is that conceptually it's kind of a pastiche of the usual Orwellian dystopianism with some PKD stuff...The Presence in particular and all the drug stuff is pure PKD.

You're right, the concept is nothing original to SF fans but it's never been done well on TV. Probably not too many times on a concept album either. HBO doesn't have the restrictions a regular network does and they could do a good job. I really hope the project goes through.

mikoyan wrote:

I don't think the government will have too much power, I think the corporations will have too much power....

Sounds interesting though.

Same difference

That would be awesomely original if it was like 30 years ago...

Mr Skeletor wrote:

That would be awesomely original if it was like 30 years ago...

There's been other good cyberpunk TV shows in the last 30 years?

Wild Palms. Serial Experiments: Lain and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex are anime cyberpunk series I have seen. 1984 was made into a television show in the 60s by the BBC. There have been dystopian episodes of more general SciFi TV shows like The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Blake's 7, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Futurama, etc.

...and Lain was probably the only good one. The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Blake's 7, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Futurama, aren't cyberpunk TV shows. I had no idea 1984 was a TV series I'm going to see if Netflix has it.

What about Max Headroom?

I remember MAX HEADROOM being really, really awesome- gritty, dark, satirical, and full of good SF stuff. That being said, I never want to see it again for fear of it being actually very terrible in that way that nostalgia sometimes obscures.

Max Headroom came to mind when I was thinking about this discussion yesterday. I could not get "Coke" or "New Coke" out of my head (it kind of screwed up the memories of Max headroom) so I didn't say anything. Maybe that was the one real cyberpunk show. As far as animie there has probably been a lot of stuff with cyberpunk themes but those are cartoons and outside of Cowboy Bebop, one episode of Stand Alone Complex, and Lain I don't watch cartoons.

The point is "the government control you in the future" has been done to death in pop culture at this point.
Hell, "corperations control you in the future" has been done to death as well.

Neither are relevant in this day and age as they were in the 70s & 80s.

Here is a new, much more relevant idea for a scifi show:

The "population/unwashed masses" control you in the future.
The government consist of brain dead celebrities who promise the world with no plan on how to deliver it, because that's what the masses vote for. Nothing ever gets acheived because everything is argued about ad nausem over the internet, making the government to paralized to move. The world goes to shit because the government are too poll driven to dare make unpopular, but nessasary, moves.

The government of the future is an ineffective waste of populist nonsense and ideas. Real leadership is dead. Society stagnates under its own whilms.

You could make an awesome show/book/movie/etc using that as a basis. The information age that lead mankind to collectively being dumber than ever before. And it would be a hell of a lot more relevant to today than the whole "big brother" idea.

Harkonnen13 wrote:

...and Lain was probably the only good one. The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Blake's 7, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Futurama, aren't cyberpunk TV shows. I had no idea 1984 was a TV series I'm going to see if Netflix has it.

My point with those more general SciFi series is that they have dystopian and/or cyberpunk episodes. Take Red Dwarf's "Back to Reality" for example, it's a great cyberpunk story rolled up with so great dystopian SciFi. The album Year Zero has no real cyberpunk stuff in it, a few vague references maybe. It is a decent album but as SciFi concept albums go it is extremely thin on the SciFi. Whoever writes the series is basically going to have free reign to tell what ever story they want. The concept seems to be only the vaguest brush strokes outlining a dystopian near future setting.

I liked Wild Palms with its David Lynch style craziness. I have remembered a bunch more dystopian things that have been on TV. There was a quite good one last year called Exodus which was a SciFi retelling of the biblical story of Exodus. The trouble is that Orwellian police state dystopias are pretty much the SciFi equivalent of Tolkienesque fantasy.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

The point is "the government control you in the future" has been done to death in pop culture at this point.
Hell, "corperations control you in the future" has been done to death as well.

Neither are relevant in this day and age as they were in the 70s & 80s.

Here is a new, much more relevant idea for a scifi show:

The "population/unwashed masses" control you in the future.
The government consist of brain dead celebrities who promise the world with no plan on how to deliver it, because that's what the masses vote for. Nothing ever gets acheived because everything is argued about ad nausem over the internet, making the government to paralized to move. The world goes to shit because the government are too poll driven to dare make unpopular, but nessasary, moves.

The government of the future is an ineffective waste of populist nonsense and ideas. Real leadership is dead. Society stagnates under its own whilms.

You could make an awesome show/book/movie/etc using that as a basis. The information age that lead mankind to collectively being dumber than ever before. And it would be a hell of a lot more relevant to today than the whole "big brother" idea.

So true. This is why Wall-E is such a great science fiction film. It's dystopian view of the future is so relevent to today's society.

This reminds me of a great TV series called The Trap. It was a docmentary series that was one man's view about how British politics became so meaningless with no ideological basis to it just pandering to the masses with vacuous soundbites. I loved it. Search for "Adam Curtis The Trap" on google video. The guy is an archivist by profession so his documentaries are full of great archive clips.