S02E14 — Silo: Season 1

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Silo Season 1.

Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Audible • Amazon Music • iHeart • Pandora

Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

What do you get when you mix post-apocalyptic drama, endless stairs, and a strict “no questions asked” policy? A book we couldn’t put down and a show that made us yell “just read the manual!” at the screen. We’re talking secrets, sabotage, and whether we’d survive five minutes in a silo (spoiler: probably not).

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The book Wool takes its sweet time revealing what’s really going on in the silo—and we were totally hooked on the slow, spiraling mystery. The show (Silo) looks amazing and moves fast, but we couldn’t help wondering if it traded too much nuance for mood lighting and dramatic stairs.

Tim: The book was better.
– Book Score: 8.5/10
– Television Series Score: 8/10

Donna: The television series was better.
– Book Score: 8.5/10
– Television Series: 7.5/10

Rebekah: The book was better.
– Book Score: 9.5/10
– Television Series: 7.5/10

Josiah: The television series was better.
– Book Score: 8/10
– Television Series: 8/10

Other Episodes You’ll Love

Full Episode Transcript

Hello friends. Welcome to the book is 

[00:01:14] Rebekah: Better podcast. We are four members of a lovely little family of a silo of individuals, you might say. Wow. And we like to review. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. I get it. We like to review book to film adaptations. We like to do lots of other things, but this specifically this podcast.

Cast, you know, is about books and film adaptations. It is. So today it’s, I need to give you our spoiler alert about something I’m very excited about everyone. We are covering the first season of Silo the TV series, which corresponds with around the first half of the book, wool by Hugh Howie, which is the first in a trilogy called The Silo Series.

And just to clarify, technically I believe the television show and our reading ended at the end of chapter 34, which is into part four of the book, just a couple of chapters. So if you’re really, really nerdy and wanted to know, know exactly where to stop reading, if you’re going along with us, that is where to do it.

We will spoil the first half of the book. We will spoil season one. However, none of us have finished season two of the TV show, and I, of the four of us am the only one who’s read into much more. Um, I’ve read the entire series, uh, the Silo series. I think one of us may be a little further along in book one, and then the others stayed perfectly on task and stopped at chapter 34.

So I will not be spoiling the second half of the book wool, and I will do my best not to spoil anything from the later books as well, because I ran all of them and I’m gonna do my best. I’m gonna try really hard. All right. That was the longest spoiler alert in history. So let’s get to our fun fact as we introduce one another well ourselves, sorry.

As we introduce ourselves, I would like you to tell me what is your favorite dystopian book and your favorite dystopian Phil. I’ll start. My name is Rebecca. I am the daughter. Slash sister of the pod. And I’m gonna be honest, my favorite dystopian book is this book. Um, I read it last year and it edged out Hunger Games for me.

I just really found myself like there’s a little thing on the back of, uh, the book that says like, this generation’s Hunger Games or something along that line. And I genuinely, this is a like top five, five star rating for me and it has become my favorite dystopian book. My favorite dystopian film is probably Minority Report.

Uh, it’s not quite as dystopian as some of the other options. I really love hunger games and things like that, and I loved how they did the movies. Shout out to our original three episodes of the show. You should totally go listen to them. But, uh, yeah, I think Minority Report for the, for the movie. 

[00:03:48] Donna: So I’m Donna.

I am the wife and mother of our little grain elevator crew. I read places they keep grain. Other than silos. And one of them is a grain elevator. The fun fact answer for me. So I’m, see you got me messed up with these books. You had me read and so Hunger Games is definitely my favorite dystopian book series and I’m currently at your recommendation.

Mm-hmm. Daughter reading Harvest, harvest of the Wait. No, it’s uh, it’s the next Hunger Games book. It’s the sunrise on the reaping. There you go. And good job. Uh, I’ve already fallen in love with it. I’m about halfway through and spoiler. Next year we’re probably gonna do that when it comes out. Mm-hmm. ’cause it’s coming out.

Yes. There’s a movie. So that would be my book. My favorite dystopian movie would probably be The Matrix. 

Ooh. If I’m 

[00:04:51] Donna: going for, I dig it. One things I love, but also things. I’ve seen a lot and I’m really ashamed to tell you that a lot of hours in my life have been taken up by watching that, the movies and um, yeah.

[00:05:04] Rebekah: Mommy, we would never judge you. 

[00:05:06] Donna: I’m really glad. 

[00:05:08] TJ: Yeah. I have to have some honorable mentions, but, uh, you know, I think 1984 is a particularly iconic dystopian book, and I think we might cover that some someday. This it’s on, next year’s on the list. 

Yeah. 

[00:05:24] TJ: I’m excited to see what the movie’s like, ’cause uh, a lot of the plot really happens in his head in the book.

Mm-hmm. So I’m interested how they do that. But 1984 is a great book. Hunger Games and its prequels are great dystopian books. Silo, the silo books are pretty darn good. Uh, as far as movies go, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of great movies. I think. You know, a weird one, Wally Wally’s, a really good dystopian movie.

The one movie that’s a little mm-hmm. The robot. Well, 

[00:05:55] Rebekah: in fact, I have never seen that movie. 

[00:05:57] TJ: Oh, you might like it. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s dystopian, but it’s one of the rare happy, dystopian, I don’t know, feel good dystopian. I, I guess I know it’s kind of a, 

[00:06:08] Rebekah: it is somehow feel good despite all of the rest of it, from what I hear.

So, yeah. 

[00:06:12] TJ: And I, I think it’s darkly feel good and I, you know, I think it knows what it is, but, uh, yeah, there’s a, there’s a lot of cool stuff. Like Mad Max Fury Road was a really fun one Book of Eli is is a pretty good dystopian film, but probably my favorite dystopian film. Just, you know, it’s a film, it’s influential, even if there’s problems I have with it are Blade Runner and it’s sequel Blade Runner 2049.

Such a iconic visual sound aura. Very, very, very unique and cool. And I am Josiah, the brother of this department slash the son of judicial. 

[00:06:50] Tim: Hmm. Well, my name is Tim. I am the husband and father in this chromosomal unity. Hmm. Uh, wow. 

[00:07:01] Rebekah: Yes you are. Oh my 

[00:07:02] Tim: gosh.

And. There, uh, a number of the ones that all of you mentioned. Uh, I like, you know, 1984, blade Runner, hunger Games, those kinds of things. And I really, I’ve, like, I’ve enjoyed this series. I was a little concerned about it to start with because I’m claustrophobic. So thinking about the claustrophobic atmosphere, uh, fortunately it’s not a big thing in the book.

They’re not trying to constantly tell you. Yeah. They don’t, it’s not about that the walls are closing in. Um, I, I said in the last, uh, in one of the earlier podcasts that one of my favorites is Fahrenheit 4 51. Technically, that is also a dystopian book and movie. I knew there’d be some overlap. Yeah. But the one that kind of fits this category best that I would say is the Maze Runner.

I, I really enjoyed the, the book. I thought the movie was, uh, pretty good. I like the actor that played the, the main role played the, the title. And, um, that for me was, uh, was a good book that I, that I enjoyed. 

[00:08:07] Rebekah: So I wanted to clarify today we’ll be talking about the differences in first setting, then some characters, and then plot and timeline.

Um, again, we’re just sticking to the first season of Silo, the TV show. Um, I will say one of the things kind of very broadly that is really wild about this is a lot of what we struggle with sometimes and the reason why a lot of the time I even and some others of us say the book is better, is that when you make a book into a film in a lot of ways, you have to lose.

A lot. So this goes the other direction. And so I think it’s really interesting that because they took a book and made it into like 10 episodes of television and it’s only half the book, not only do you get a lot of what happens in the book, you get a lot of other stuff too. 

[00:08:52] Tim: Yeah. That’s a little different than The Hobbit, which took one book and made it to three movies.

[00:08:59] Rebekah: I blacked out during that episode. 

[00:09:03] Tim: I have. I’ve listened to that episode. I’m afraid that some of us did black out at times, so 

[00:09:09] Donna: Oh no. So we discover. The silos, dimensions, and layout from the book are significantly different from the TV show sets. Most notably, the silo in all of its areas and rooms are far more open and expansive than the book describes, which is great for my claustrophobic husband and I.

Instead of tiny cramped rooms, the residents with a silo enjoy large apartments and offices. The central staircase of the book wasn’t wide enough for even three people to walk shoulder to shoulder, and it was closed to the external area of the structure. Whereas the show uses an open spiral staircase where many levels of residents can see each other at once.

I did like this. I like the possibilities of what they could do with the big open space. I felt like if you’re gonna make this world for these people, why? And they can’t ever go outside suppose and live. Why would they keep it small and cramped as I also think it makes for a mental picture of just how deep into the ground, the silos in my head, like, to see it large like that and realize there’s all these levels helps me visualize this incredibly deep underground world that they’ve built.

So 

[00:10:27] Tim: it is a little different to me, and I don’t think we covered this, um, but it’s, it’s a little different to me that, um, the television show. It’s concrete, lots of concrete. However, in the novel, uh, the staircase for instance is metal. It’s just metal. They, they make a big deal about that in one, one particular part.

So they’ve, they’ve chosen to make it out of, out of concrete instead, which I think gives it a solid feeling that maybe it wouldn’t have had if it went exactly by the book. Rebecca, mom, 

[00:10:57] TJ: dad, guess what? What? I have two questions that are paired together. What is the diameter of the earth? How far down would you have to go to get to the core of the earth?

[00:11:08] Donna: It’s pretty deep. 

[00:11:09] TJ: Oh, Rebecca, how many miles is it? 

[00:11:10] Donna: Oh, I 

[00:11:11] Tim: have no idea. It’s hundreds. The, the crust is hundreds of miles thick. 

[00:11:16] TJ: Yeah. So down to the core, you gotta go almost 8,000 miles down to the core. How deep do you think humans have dug below the surface? Oh, no, not nearly 

[00:11:29] Donna: 8,000 miles. 

[00:11:30] TJ: Not nearly 8,000.

That is true. I don’t wanna 

[00:11:32] Rebekah: know the answer. 

[00:11:35] Tim: Yeah, you probably do 

[00:11:37] TJ: a thousand miles less than eight miles. I was gonna say less than 10. I asked that question recently. How, and it was in 1989. So we haven’t tried to go deeper since then. Here’s, I think it’s, it’s basically, here’s question. Economically feasible.

[00:11:52] Tim: Here’s my question. We are, we are so certain about things and about how the earth works and all of exactly what it’s made of and all that stuff. If it’s 8,000 miles. Plus to the core, then we don’t know anything and we’ve gone less than 10. Do we really know? 

[00:12:08] Rebekah: Okay, well I hate all of this and I don’t wanna think about it ever again.

So, um, thank you for that. I’m deeply uncomfortable. Oh, 

[00:12:17] Tim: oh, journey to the Center of the Earth. That’s a book that you would like to read in a movie you’d like to watch. 

[00:12:23] Rebekah: Yeah. Well, it’s all fake. I mean, I guess everything we read is pretty much fake, so it is. Sorry, that was probably a bad part for not 

[00:12:29] Donna: reading it.

It’s fake unless it’s a biography, which you have some trivia about the 

[00:12:34] Rebekah: I do 

[00:12:34] Donna: sa. 

[00:12:35] Rebekah: I do. So let’s talk about the book’s, silo dimensions, because they are intentional in a lot of ways and they very much are different than the shows. So, uh, we talked about how the staircase is only wide enough for a little over two people, not three people side to side, right?

And it’s all enclosed, right? There’s doors that go to each floor. Okay. In an interview, Hugh Howie confirmed that between the 144 floors is 40 feet between every single floor. Hmm. So this impacts quite a bit in the plot because in the book it takes several days to travel down even. Mm-hmm. Into the silo and several days up.

So I was reading a little bit of like what this means. And so roughly that would make the silo about two and a half times as deep as the Burge cauli fa in, um, the United Arab Emirates is tall, which is the tallest building in the world. So if you think about it, it basically means that if you think about like floors in a building, we would travel in every time they travel down a floor or up a floor, it’s like going up or down four floors, which is why you take four to five days to travel, like from bottom to top.

So I, I think one of the most interesting things about the show for me is that none of that was used. And there are so many occasions, like especially near the end when Shirley visits Juliet, when she’s up back in the first floor, she was like just in the bottom level and just like followed them up.

Mm-hmm. And there’s like no passage of time like that. 

[00:14:05] TJ: Jet packs, but also, well that 

[00:14:07] Rebekah: doesn’t work because they’re all split up. The silos are all split up, like all the floors are completely separated. There’s no through line like in the show at all. 

[00:14:14] TJ: Very interesting. Well, you know, if there’s 40 feet of room, I mean, why are any of these people getting antsy about claustrophobia?

You have, you have more room than you have in, you know, surface people’s apartments. 

[00:14:29] Rebekah: True. Although they don’t know yourself anything about the idea of surface people, but Yes. 

[00:14:34] Tim: Well, I’m a surface person. They know that, know about me. They didn’t start in the silo, don’t they? They know that 

[00:14:39] Rebekah: there was a time before that is as much as you would think that they know.

[00:14:42] Tim: I remember there’s, there’s something about some, some religious expression that God created. The silo. 

[00:14:49] Rebekah: Yes. Their religion. Yeah. The religious people there that have priests and things is that like God created the silo for their safety to protect them from the time before, like, and that this is where they’re supposed to be because it is safe.

So another thing that is changed in the setting from book two TV show is that in the book there are, there are only two viewing screens, maybe a third or fourth that is not like overtly mentioned. However, the viewing screens where they can see. Outside and see the wasteland and ruin landscape. The only one in the book that everybody can see is on the top floor in the cafeteria.

The other one is in the holding cell where the quote unquote, cleaner waits for their final journey in the TV show. I thought it was really interesting that they add a additional screens in more cafeterias, like one in the mids and at least one in the down deep. And it’s interesting to see how they use that to differentiate the class structure of the silo.

Mm-hmm. Because like the screen in the down deep was like half the smallest destroyed. Well, no, it was big. It was the same size, but it was half destroyed. It was like a bunch of the pixels were out. It was like a mess, which I think is really interesting. 

[00:15:56] Donna: Uh, so is there only one cafeteria in the book? 

[00:15:59] Rebekah: No.

There are cafeterias throughout the silo, but the only screen is in the top floor cafeteria. Okay. So coming to see the screen is actually like rare. It’s also those people, like if you live in the down deep, you may never haverim seen it. M it’s also yeah, pilgrimage 

[00:16:12] Tim: or a vacation. Uh, take your family and it’s a big, big deal.

It’s made clear in the book that when a cleaner goes out, people avoid the cafeteria until the next morning, not wanting to see or view the cleaning. But the next day many families make their way to the up top for a sort of vacation, wanting to see the first clear sunset after the camera lens has been cleaned.

In the TV show, the three cleanings we see all occur with silo inhabitants, watching the screens with bated breath. So that is different that it’s an event and people want to see it, uh, in the film or in the show, but in the book, it’s something that people seem to want to avoid 

[00:16:51] TJ: a similar feel, father, to more people populating these public places.

In the show, it seems like there’s a nearly unlimited number of police officers or judicial enforcement officers they serve. Yeah, pretty large in that sort of position, but in the book, it’s a very limited number of law enforcement officers, maybe like fewer than a dozen in the entire silo. So they kept the peace.

There’s offices. I thought it was an interesting idea in the novel that increased the tension for me that there were only sheriff’s offices and deputy offices on the top floor, one in the mids and one in the lower levels. So it mm-hmm. Would take a long time to get different places. I thought that that was an interesting addition that they did take out in the show.

[00:17:40] Rebekah: I think it’s just weird to me. This was one of the things that took me out of it a little bit when there were so many of them, because do you guys remember how many people are in the silo? 

[00:17:48] Tim: 3000. 

[00:17:49] Rebekah: 10,000. 10,000. 

[00:17:49] Tim: 10,000. 

[00:17:50] Rebekah: If you think of a city of 10,000 people, that’s not a huge police department. So okay, maybe six to nine, 12, whatever.

Maybe that’s still pretty low. But at the same time, it took me out of it a little bit to be like, wait a minute, wait minute, hold on. But how many people work in it? How many people are in law enforcement? Like that feels like overkill to me in the show to have this 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, a hundred. It’s in the show.

Literally unlimited in the show. Yeah. 

[00:18:13] Tim: Well, but see, one of the things that you have to deal with in the silo that you don’t have to deal with in real life, in real life, we have cars that get us farther than we could simply walk. In a short, just short amount of time. Mm-hmm. Um, and so that’s the technology that they don’t use.

So it’s just walking. So it’s kind of like if we, we should compare it to times when people had to walk everywhere they were going, uh, and figure out, you know, how does that compare? And maybe they did that for the show, uh, and decided that the book just didn’t have enough. ’cause it wouldn’t have been realistic.

[00:18:47] TJ: In the US of a, we have between two and a half and three law enforcement officers per thousand people. 

[00:18:55] Tim: So if we’ve got 10, then 40 makes sense. Three 30 to 40 makes sense. 

[00:19:00] Donna: So there’s a through line in the book about how expensive it is to communicate with the si within the silo via electronic means.

Whereas paper communications, which are far slower, they spend actual physical resources well, they affordable to most everybody. This teases the dystopian nature of the story and describes ways members of the silo are kept literally siloed from one another. So it’s hard to communicate quickly on a large scale or over massive distances.

[00:19:36] Tim: And that would’ve been even more true in the book because you know, if it’s closed off, there’s no, you can’t see from floor to floor. Yeah. 

[00:19:45] Donna: It’s interesting ’cause Dad and I watch, well all of you seen it, we, uh, watch the chosen and. In a flash forward scene in season four, uh, Mary and Matthew communicate later in life.

They, they visit Matthew, visits Mary, and, uh, she has begun to wr write down some thoughts and try to capture some of her dreams and, and them some things like that. And for them, paper is so precious. It’s like just, and that’s not dystopian future, but it’s interesting because with the resources, with the way they treat resources in the silo, it almost seems like it would be the opposite, like the paper you 

[00:20:27] Rebekah: think pilot.

Well, it should be, because even Juliette. Says in the book, this is like in her head cannon. She basically says, wait, it’s so weird. What does it cost? So many chits, which is their currency. Wow. Why does it cost so many chits to send a digital message? Wouldn’t that be easier? ’cause she thinks man paper’s so expensive.

You know? And in the show she mentions it to George. No, sorry, is it Allison mentions it to George ’cause he prints out like some large like set of paperwork. She’s like, wow, that must have cost a fortune. And it’s like not a very thick stack. So this is just like a pop little quiz. ’cause they, this is like a question kind of answered later, but it’s just a question that you should have in the first book.

What is a form of transportation that is obviously missing? Teleporters. Isn’t that interesting? Elevator, elevator, escalator. Elevator has no elevator or escalator, but it was built with stairs. 

[00:21:21] Tim: What we understand from, from what we get in the television show, I, I don’t know if they mention it specifically in the book, but in the television show, they say something about the fact that that technologies are banned.

Um, some of what they do down in the, down deep in the mechanics is really against the law. It’s against the pact because they’re not supposed to do things. Like, not, not exactly a pulley system, but anything that moves toward an elevator like thing to get things from one level to another, that’s bad. I don’t remember that in the show, 

[00:21:55] Rebekah: but that would make sense.

[00:21:56] TJ: Interesting. You know, I, I thought it was interesting the technology that they did allow, even for people beyond the, the shadowy folks in charge, even for just normal people. Like when Juliet was sheriff, there was some technology, like we got computers in our world, well after we got the elevator, for instance.

Yeah. So I thought it was interesting the out of order technology that they allowed. 

[00:22:24] Donna: What about their day-to-day stuff, like their clothes? What about that? 

[00:22:27] TJ: Oh, yeah, yeah. They’re made with It’s much more, yeah, because their clothes are basically more boring, basically. LED screens, it’s much more, I dunno, it’s 

[00:22:34] Tim: much more boring in the book because they all wear.

Overalls, but each department or job that they, they have their station, their identity is, uh, according to the color of the overalls in the show, the costuming is fairly dystopian and very Hunger games is, they’ve been wearing it for a hundred years and they just keep passing it down and scrubbing it and patching it.

[00:22:58] TJ: Yeah. I was impressed by the color scheme of the cost of the costuming in the show being so grimy without, without feeling boring. Mm-hmm. They kept the visual interest while still maintaining a cohesive G grimness. Mm-hmm. But I was also, what you, what you just said dad, about the overalls in the book made me think of Game of Thrones.

How the maers who are like the wise college academics who go to each castle and are they They do, they can read and write for people. They heal people. So they’re like doctors and communications people and stuff like that. In order to indicate how many subjects they, uh, mastered in the Citadel, which is their big university, they, they have chains, a link of chains, and they keep adding one link per subject that they learn.

And what I, what where my brain went with what you were talking about, ’cause I didn’t catch the overall thing in the book ’cause I’m not a very good reader, but I was imagining that for every like promotion you got or something you had to put on an extra layer of overalls. 

[00:24:02] Tim: Oh boy. That’d be fun, dude. 

[00:24:04] Rebekah: Yeah.

And then walk up 40 flights of stairs, 

[00:24:09] Tim: also, probably at least 10 to go to your apartment. 

[00:24:12] Donna: Yeah. I also appreciated how they found a way to make Rebecca Ferguson grimy and dirty and completely beautiful in a, and still the most beautiful 

[00:24:23] Tim: actress. Yeah. Yeah. Goodness. I do have, I did one other thing to say about, about the uniforms and stuff like that.

Um, in, there’s another, uh, another version of the silo of, of wool, uh, from another country. And, and in like the bat, well, no, it’s a, it’s a show. It’s show or a movie, I’m not sure which. Um, I was looking at a little piece of it and maybe, maybe it’s just, you know, maybe it’s a small project and it wasn’t very much, but the silo was all white and the staircase was on the outside, was, was on the outside walls of the center column.

And it was a narrow staircase like we’ve been talking about, two, two and a half people maybe could walk abreast, but there were no, there was no railing and. But that whole center was white, bright white. Wow. And so the costuming, they, they did the overalls in that and they, they were stark against the white as opposed to the grimy.

You know, what we’ve come to understand as dystopian is a little bit more like sterile. Mm-hmm. Yeah. When you look at dystopian as dirty and grimy. 

[00:25:33] Rebekah: So the reason I wanted to do setting first was because as I was getting into the television show, I think it, again, I’d read the book. So in my brain, the book is Canon.

I know that’s not like technically fair. And so I was trying to come up with like, it just took me out of it a little. So I had to like, refocus, rewind a couple of times. The thing, this is the setting change that bothered me so much and I was really, I hated it so much. Okay. In the show, they added hidden cameras.

Everywhere. Yeah. Mm-hmm. They’re behind mirrors. They’re hidden, like people don’t even know what cameras are, which that is true in the book, and they just add hidden cameras. Mm-hmm. And so like in the book, you know, Juliet has private conversations, other people have private conversations and they don’t all lead to like arrests and all these things.

You’re not led to believe that like every single inch of the silos videoed, although I’m sure that that is probably the case in some ways. However, it drove me up a wall that it was just like, oh. Okay, so you’re just gonna do this thing. That means nothing anyone ever says can be private. Nothing anyone ever does is unknown.

I don’t know, it just really like, it bugs me. ’cause it felt like it was so, it was creepy. 

[00:26:44] Donna: And it was creepy. 

[00:26:44] Rebekah: Well, it’s creepy, but it’s like plot wise, it just feels so easy. Like you don’t have to investigate anything. It’s just everybody’s under constant surveillance they don’t know about. 

[00:26:51] Donna: Oh, okay. And as soon as you recognize there’s a camera and you cover it or break it, they immediately send one of their zillion policemen to your right apartment.

[00:27:01] TJ: I just think that they’re, they could have done more for Juliet and the, you know, Allison and the more paranoid characters to suspect they were all being watched and listened to. Mm-hmm. Because I think, you know, maybe something that bothered you, Rebecca, is that it’s part of the show. But it’s never important.

Yeah. Like yeah. For not, well, IT and judicial never really use the cameras effectively. And Juliet even. Yeah. I think the only exception 

[00:27:26] Rebekah: is when she’s trying to release that one image, like the one video image thing. Mm-hmm. 

[00:27:31] TJ: And they don’t use it effectively. ’cause they don’t find her with the video. They don’t find her with video cameras.

Yeah. Which. Yeah, they should be able to do. Yeah. But also when Juliet finds out that cameras are everywhere, she doesn’t do anything to, like, I think she might talk to the judge one time and the judge turns on the radio or the water or something to make it hard to hear mm-hmm. Through the camera.

Juliette does nothing, uh, like that when she thinks that she’s being watched and listened to. So does feel like it’s a little bit that it was half butted. 

[00:28:01] Rebekah: Well, let’s get into the characters. I didn’t have. Like a list here of every single character with their changes. I just tried to pick out the few that seemed to have the most difference.

Yeah. From book to show. 

[00:28:13] TJ: You wanna talk about Juliet? I mean, she’s the primary protagonist. I’d love to Your woman, apparently of the book. The show. Yeah. I mean, Rebecca Ferguson. I don’t, she’s beautiful. No. Who else I would say is more beautiful than her right now? Mm-hmm. She’s stunning. I like that she has a little bit of a Scandinavian accent.

I don’t know. I like that for some reason. 

Yeah, 

[00:28:34] TJ: because she was also the mom in Dune. She’s the best character in Dune, uh, part one and part two. She’s one of Tom 

[00:28:41] Donna: Cruise’s love, interest in Mission Possible. I she does an amazing, she was in show. She’s an amazing action and adventure actress. She, she is so, so compelling in the movies she’s in with him.

[00:28:53] Rebekah: The first time that I saw this show, I had just watched Dune two, and so I was like, wait, hold on. What? Like, I had to completely, it was hard ’cause she’s so beautiful, but she’s very, she looks very similar in both works. They don’t, you know, it’s not like she’s got a ton of makeup on, make her completely different there.

A lot of dirt and sand. Yeah. And so I was like, oh wait, hold on. I gotta, I gotta get outta that head space. 

[00:29:15] TJ: Well, in the book, Juliet tends to be determined, private, stubborn. I would describe her as a little girlier than in the show. Like in her inner monologue. Mm-hmm. I was a little taken aback, especially when she was talking to Lucas.

I was like, oh, Rebecca Ferguson’s character would not talk to Lucas like this or that. Right. In the, in the show she is some might call her a little more unhinged. I enjoyed her being a little more hinged. Yeah. Uh, she’s like willing to go on an alcohol bender, frequently breaks rules on purpose. She’s actively rebelling against it and judicial, et cetera.

So it, she is, she basically does the same things for the most part. Mm-hmm. But she is a different, the character feels different. 

[00:30:03] Rebekah: I think for me, the biggest difference in that like change is that the book version of her felt very much like Kane to me. Kind of the, I didn’t really wanna be anything. Like I, I know Kane becomes a hero and all this stuff.

I’m, I know we’re not kind of, even we’re that point, we don’t know what, what she’s gonna be. But I think in the book she feels more like that, where it’s like an unlikely, uh, protagonist. Mm-hmm. And an unlikely, not a, she’s not a hero, I don’t know what the word is, but in the show, it was like, she was like, no, I’m, I’m a rebel.

I do a lot of re like rebel, like, look my muscles, 

[00:30:38] Tim: I can beat up anybody. Look at me. 

[00:30:39] Rebekah: Well, yeah. And you know, all the other places she goes, we’ll talk about the room with the big machine in it. And like, she’s like, I don’t know. She just feels like so much more of a, a willing rebel. And in the book that was very different.

So I thought it was, I think you’re right. She did the same things. It felt very different. 

[00:30:56] Donna: So I found it interesting that. In the, around the time that we are recording this, uh, about like in the last month, snow White was out in theaters and it got a huge mess of publicity and bad publicity. Not good publicity for the way they changed the traditional Snow White character and a lot of things about Rachel Ziegler and stuff that she said.

And they were like proud that it wasn’t gonna be the 1937 Snow White. That’s weird. Weird. And she said that. I heard that So 

[00:31:27] TJ: problematic 

[00:31:28] Donna: so many times in this, however, you have a strong female character. She is a lead character. She’s brave, but she also loves and is very passionate. 

[00:31:40] TJ: I loved the tender moments she had.

Yes, yes. 

[00:31:44] Donna: And I thought it was so different. It didn’t make me feel like. You’re shoving woman power at me. She was believable. She was, you know, uh, it, it’s just a 

[00:31:56] TJ: very different, and then you see her backstory and, you know, her mother died at a young age. Yes. I think we might talk about that later. Mm-hmm.

Might give some credence to, she, she grew up not around her parents, around a very tough environment. Mm-hmm. It’s like, okay. Yeah. That’s the sort of person that would come outta that environment. 

[00:32:16] Donna: Another interesting characterization change from book to film is the character of Peter Billings, as he’s named in the book and renamed Paul Billings in the TV show.

Where’s Mary Billings? He’s also given, Hmm? 

[00:32:31] Tim: Peter, Paul, and Mary. Yeah. Yes. Him. Him. Dad gets it. Yeah. And 

[00:32:36] Donna: he’s a bro. Peter and Paul and John and Barnabas. Mm-hmm. And Silas. Uh, he’s also given screen time with his wife and a side plot about the syndrome, a perplexing disease invented for the show that should preclude him from serving in law enforcement.

Well until he is given that exception by Bernard. And I just have a question about the disease and it is the syndrome. Since it’s the syndrome, since it’s show only, I’ll be very interested to see if we ever see that go anywhere because they got, I wonder if 

[00:33:11] Rebekah: there’s payoff. There’s what I hope’s like hope we do.

Do they? Unless 

[00:33:15] Tim: it’s what Josiah likes to, to term the. Plot cul-de-sac. Yeah, because, yeah, I definitely came up with that. I 

[00:33:22] Donna: like, because it’s very, it’s like he has it and they talk about it and it’s this taboo. We don’t ever see anybody else that has it. There are no mentions of a certain section of the silo where there are some other people with it or anything about it.

But 

[00:33:38] Tim: don’t forget it is that very thing that allows Juliet to make a break for it. Oh no. At some point. 

[00:33:45] TJ: That’s the main, that’s the payoff so 

[00:33:47] Tim: far. Yeah, it, it is that very thing. Well, Bernard of the book is described as being a small man with large teeth, though the show version is a tall. Well put together individual who is far more put together than any anybody else that we see on screen.

And it is not, it is not the overall he’s wearing the suit stuff. Much of his personality remains unchanged, although in the book he’s more openly hostile toward Deputy Mars and Mayor Johns. You think the show more? Yeah, the show portrays him much more subtly manipulative. And the actor who, who plays this character is a large man.

He’s a tall, broad man. He, when he say maybe like six five, he’s very tall. So, so when I was reading the book description, I’m like, wait a minute, you know, we’ve got Dawn Knott’s creepy, Dawn Knotz in the book, and we’ve got, you know, this big fellow in the television show. So I, I felt like that was a lot different.

[00:34:50] Rebekah: So the, another character change was in the character of Walker Walker, who is Juliet’s reclusive mentor, never leaves. Uh, the apartment, whatever is male in the book, but female in the TV show. She’s also given a brief romantic subplot in the show, which is not at all part of the book. I did not hate the gender bend because I felt like, first of all, she fit into the kind of slightly different variations of people in the show than we saw in the book.

I don’t know how to exactly say that. It’s like, I feel like a lot of people in mechanical, in the book do feel a little bit, I’m gonna call them flat. They’re not like bad. They just, a lot of them seem kind of similar, I guess maybe that’s a better way to describe it. She felt pretty unique in the show to me.

And also, I don’t, maybe correct me if I’m wrong, ’cause. Obviously we’ve all read up to this point in the book. I feel like Walker in the book is actually not like Wise, like Walker in the book is smart, can fix anything, helps out with the whole heat tape issue, whatever. But I feel like he’s just kind of a, a nice older man.

Whereas Walker in the show is like, like a wise sage. Like she’s got all the advice and she’s the person people go to and mentors like, and so I think that they did make her character a little bit more interesting mm-hmm. Than the person in the book. 

[00:36:06] Tim: Which, which is an interesting twist to be the mentor, the wise sage when you can’t, when you haven’t walked out of your room in 20 years.

Uh, yeah. Yeah. 

[00:36:15] Rebekah: That gives her an interesting flaw. 

[00:36:17] Tim: Quite interesting. I can tell other people how to live their lives, but I can’t do it myself. 

[00:36:21] TJ: And I think it works, uh, because Juliet needs a mother figure. Yeah. That’s what, yeah. When she was mechanical. When she goes to mechanical first time, that’s what she would naturally be looking for.

Even if she doesn’t know it. I enjoyed Walker having to go out of her apartment in the show. To get the heat. That was a big challenge. Yeah. Yeah. Because in the book, Walker accomplishes that final heat tape switcheroo by just calling in favors instead of not only walking out of her apartment, but having to confront her ex uncomfortably and ask for the heat tape.

And so it was just more so you work more supply. Can you help me? Yeah. It’s more of a sacrifice for her in the show. I mean, there are a lot of characters who are unique to the TV show. They had more time to explore. Like, uh, judge Meadows is just in the TV show. She’s the head of judicial. We eventually learned, she’s just a puppet of Bernard.

Juliet’s love interest has an ex-girlfriend in the show. That’s part of her investigation. There’s Gloria. There’s this eccentric older woman, especially at the kind of beginning and later part of the season. Who first warns Allison Becker in the first episode about the truth of getting pregnant in the silo?

And then isn’t she the one who later is drugged up by the judicial? Yes. Mm-hmm. It’s a little bit of a payoff when Juliet finds her, undr her with the help of her father. Mm-hmm. And then gets some more information. 

[00:37:46] Rebekah: Like there is a point introducing her specifically for sure. 

[00:37:49] TJ: Juliet’s father is expanded upon.

I loved the stuff they did with Juliet’s father, doctor, barely in the books as a background character is Agent Sims. He’s just like mentioned, but in the show he is, he’s gets second billing and he’s one of the red herrings for who is the ultimate evil person in charge. So Agent Sims is an enforcer who has an in with Bernard.

Okay. Remind me where he is. The book. 

[00:38:14] Rebekah: I have read this twice. How did I miss that? 

[00:38:17] TJ: I don’t 

[00:38:17] Tim: recall him at 

[00:38:17] TJ: all. Okay. The book, I, I thought I recognized his name and then I also watched a video that mentioned he was mentioned but wasn’t a main character. I felt like he cut up was a complete 

[00:38:29] Tim: edition. Uh, it, it could have been that there was a mention of his name, but I didn’t remember it.

[00:38:34] TJ: Uh, agent Sims played by comment is eventually the it head’s shadow and then he’s not. So he’s got, and his, and he has a wife who’s not in the book, and he, she has kind of a character arc in one episode. She has a lot to work with. Mm-hmm. In that one episode. Mm-hmm. We also meet additional characters as Juliet works showing, uncover the truth.

You know, the, the strange hard drive that George discovered, uh, leads her to a few, it’s two 

[00:39:00] Rebekah: guys. The, the one teenage kid. Yeah. The older guy who’s like the older guy who knew earlier 

[00:39:06] TJ: and comes back later. But the younger guy, I feel like was only in the later part of the season. 

[00:39:10] Rebekah: Yeah, it was, he was just like a hacker that showed up.

I think he took the place of Scotty. Yeah. Who we do talk about a friend of Juliet’s that hit was from Mechanical that ended up so Scott, so Scott is replaced in the book, but I think, but they replaced him from the guy they replaced him with isn’t really the same like role though. He’s just kind of a hacker who helps her find some stuff.

Mm-hmm. I did think it was definitely interesting that they added a lot of characters 

[00:39:33] TJ: and there’s the secretary in the sheriff’s office too. She could have maybe had more, I think she mistrusted Juliet in episode three, and then she trusted Juliette in episode four and then she wasn’t in the rest of the show.

[00:39:46] Rebekah: I, I think that was probably okay. The secretary felt like a throwaway for me. You’re just expanding the number of people in the show at this point. I don’t really get it. Yeah. Sims. I, okay. I’m like very much on the fence about how I feel about this whole judicial thing. Mm-hmm. But Sims felt like I kind of understood why they put him in, because I think he took some of Lucas’s role that in the book felt a little, like a stretch, like that Bernard was so close to Lucas, but Lucas had like Juliette, I felt like that in the book was a little stretch for me.

So I kind of like the addition of Sims. Judge, what’s her head? Meadows? Mathis, I don’t know. Mm-hmm. Mathis, Joe Brown, judge Joe Brown, 

[00:40:26] TJ: judge Judy Meadows. 

[00:40:27] Rebekah: Judge Meadows to me, and this is, I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s a hot take or not. I literally was like, okay, you just made this an eight episode season.

Like I felt like she was literally in it. So it might have been eight episode, so there’d be somebody that they can add. It was 10 episodes. Oh, okay. So that’s what I’m saying. I felt like it was just let, let us add something to make the show longer like she did not, to me, she felt like an amalgamation of like other characters that are already in the show and I didn’t feel like the payoff of her character was worth the amount of screen time that she got and like how much they tried to build her in.

It just did not work for me at all. 

[00:41:03] Tim: I felt that the addition of the judge was a another layer to be another. It still seemed like a red herring. It’s like, oh no, the judge is the one that’s a hundred percent. Important. She’s the final word. Oh, no. Wait, no, she’s not really, um, yeah. The 

[00:41:20] TJ: main cool thing about Judge Meadows is when she, when Juliette is confronting her, and she realizes, oh, judge Meadows is not the shadowy figure behind the curtain.

Right? But then there’s nothing else besides, oh, okay, she’s a red herring and nothing else. 

[00:41:35] Tim: Well, here is the wizard. And 

[00:41:36] Rebekah: it’s like, Sims is already a red herring. Like, why do we need another one? So let’s get into talking about the differences to the plot and timeline based on all of these additional changes we’ve already talked about.

[00:41:47] Tim: Well, the first episode or so of the show is devoted to the story, uh, on Sheriff Holston Becker’s wife Allison. Whereas her story in the book was far less detailed and it almost seemed like just a remembrance of Sheriff Holston. Mm-hmm. Uh, the book describes Allison as having gone to clean after an outburst in the cafeteria and Holston and later Juliet discovers files that Allison left behind.

These files among other offenses, eventually land Juliet in a lot of trouble. Though she was far from the original owner in the TV show, Allison gets a lot of initial screen time and befriends, uh, nerdy fix it. Guy George who we learn is the same man Juliet fell in love with before believing he that he was murdered.

Rashida Jones gets 

[00:42:33] TJ: top 

[00:42:34] Tim: billing in the first 

[00:42:34] TJ: episode. 

[00:42:35] Rebekah: Um, Rashida Jones. Is genuinely, I like, I liked the show and I liked a lot of things in it and a lot of characters. I think as much as it was confusing to me the first time I watched it, she’s probably my favorite character from the show. Her. It was hard portrayal of Alison.

[00:42:51] Donna: It was heartbreaking when I realized, oh, my God’s not gonna be in it. They’re just in a couple of episodes. Yeah. And I keep thinking, and I know, I know that, you know, we know what, how, how this season ends and I was like, don’t let there really be a body out there. Don’t, yeah. I, I rash 

[00:43:12] TJ: believed, I believe. Oh gosh.

Rashida, gosh. Tell me 

[00:43:15] Rebekah: what that, I need you to tell me what that experience was like because I went in knowing what’s going on. I didn’t watch the show until after I finished the whole trilogy. Oh my 

[00:43:23] TJ: goodness. I, I believed, I was like, okay, the, the end of season one is gonna be Rebecca Ferguson, finding Rashida Jones.

She’s going to, and her husband to meet her. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like alive. Oh, 

[00:43:37] Donna: but I agree with you, Allison and Holston. I thought they had a great chemistry. Yeah, I know. Who did that? They had, they were so likable. Just so you were drawn to them. You, you were just cheering her on like, oh, and then I’m like, oh, 

[00:43:53] Tim: but I, 

[00:43:53] Donna: she’s not the star of this thing.

I’ll, 

[00:43:56] Tim: I will say one of the things that I mentioned to your mom at the time after we got through like the third episode, maybe the fourth episode, I said, okay, wait a minute. Is this one of those shows like Game of Thrones that TJ tells us about where every character you like dies? 

[00:44:11] TJ: They just saw that, um, kind of, oh, am I good to the kidney?

Because you have, I guess we’re in the spoiler territory. You have Allison episode one. You have Holston episode two. I’m pretty sure the sheriff dies in episode three and I’m pretty sure Mars dies in episode four and I was, was getting a little tired of it. I was like, is that what it is exactly? I was getting a little tired because like.

Honestly, I don’t wanna sound dumb, but I might be dumb. Why was the mayor killed? For what reason? It makes more 

[00:44:39] Rebekah: sense in the book. It does make more sense in the book. I think it makes more sense in the book. Bernard is so angry with her and with Mars and it’s unclear. I don’t think they ever clarify in the book if it was that it was an intentionally her to be poisoned or if that was him trying to kill Mars.

No, they, they do make it clear by accident. 

[00:44:56] Tim: They do make it clear because they, they had, they were sharing can the canteens and because it was easier to drink from the canteen on the other person she drank from his canteen. But 

[00:45:08] Rebekah: you’re saying you think they intentionally were trying to poison him. 

[00:45:11] Tim: They poisoned his canteen, but.

[00:45:13] Rebekah: But I’ve read this twice. When I went back and read it this time, I noticed that on their way down when they ran into, uh, it, he was there and they make it, the author makes a point to literally say that, uh, Bernard notices her grabbing his canteen and then him grabbing hers as they stop to take a drink of water and he like makes a face or makes a comment.

Mm-hmm. They make that point on their way down. That’s what I’m saying. I think it might have actually been on purpose. He. No, they poison That was poisoned it on the way back up. Yeah. After she officially poised or uh, appointed Juliet as sheriff, I think that it was intentionally her. Yeah. And then there’s like a thing later where Juliet’s talking about manslaughter charges because of the whole thing with Scotty.

And she says something about how the injustice of that is that the worst thing you can actually be convicted of is accidentally not actually killing someone when the person who actually died should get the justice. You know what I mean? And it looked like they make this whole thing about how it looks like Mars was supposed to be poisoned and Oh, how sad that the mayor actually drank it when the whole time it was the mayor.

Like, and he was just angry with her because she went against him when he said that they couldn’t appoint Julietta sheriff and she pulled rank. So in the book, I think that makes sense. In the show. I don’t get why they killed her in the show. 

[00:46:31] Donna: First of all, she was sick for several episodes, so all you heard she was pinned into her apartment sick or whatever was wrong with her.

And then the scene where he goes in and they have this meal and

[00:46:43] TJ: oh yeah, they weren’t romantic until the, her death scene. It was so 

[00:46:46] Donna: creepy. Like I, 

[00:46:48] TJ: unlike the book where I, I don’t know that I liked Mars and, and John’s in the book very much, but they were consistently a little more than friends. 

[00:46:56] Rebekah: I really liked them in the book.

I thought it was a very sweet, innocent romance. Um, yeah, I loved that. The only thing that ever happened between them was that they like laid down on a couch together and just, they literally slept, cuddled together. Yes. Yeah. 

[00:47:11] Donna: What else about George though? Like, I love talking about this character. He was an interesting character 

[00:47:16] TJ: show, George.

I mean, he had a different reveal entire, like his payoff was completely different. He doesn’t really get a payoff in the book. He’s just piece of the backstory, I think. Mm-hmm. But like in the show, he is the reason for the plot happening. He finds these files showing videos of a beautiful, vibrant outside green grass, blue sky flying birds.

And he like puts it all on a, yeah, he has the hard drive and, but you know, in the book, the mysterious files revealed a mysterious design for a very. Pixel dense screen, not the actual images. And the book revelation kind of adds to the confusion of the reader. ’cause the, the twist, if you haven’t gotten that yet, is at the end what the camera in the cafeteria is showing is truth.

And what the people who go out to clean see before they die is a fake, beautiful utopia. And you don’t realize that until the season finale. But it is a really cool thing. But is 

[00:48:26] Tim: the one in the cafeteria truth? I, I know it’s different. 

[00:48:30] Rebekah: Yeah. It’s truth. I think that’s the whole point of the, the revelation of the screen.

What was it? Okay, wait, so now I know what that means. You see over the hill? Yeah. You can never see over the hill. It’s like, it’s still hiding the, like the sky screen reality. But that is the actual feed from what is outside you guys. Did all of you see the show or at least this part of the show before reading it?

[00:48:51] Tim: Yeah, I read, I kind of read the book after the show. 

[00:48:53] Rebekah: Okay. Were you surprised? Like did you, did they have you fool that like the outside? 

[00:49:00] Tim: Yes. 

[00:49:00] Rebekah: Did you think that the outside view was lying in the cafeteria? Yes. Or did you put the whole screen thing together? Okay. I thought that the 

[00:49:08] Tim: cafeteria view was a lie.

[00:49:10] Donna: Nice. I, uh, I figured she’d go out and it would be. Incredible landscape, and it’s this beautiful lush, verdant land and all that. Well, 

[00:49:20] Tim: we’d already seen Allison, right when she went out, she saw the birds flying. And isn’t that part of the first two episodes? The first episode, I guess? Mm-hmm. She does see that.

I think so. That’s, that’s what you see. And so it’s a little different. I was, I think she sees 

[00:49:34] TJ: the reflections, the audience sees the reflection of what she sees, but the audience in episode two sees what Holston sees. 

[00:49:42] Tim: Gotcha. Yeah. I, the pixels and all that, I, I had more difficulty with the book Pixel thing.

I, okay. I thought the, I thought the screen and, you know, the video, the beautiful, vibrant colors outside and all that stuff. I thought that was, um, I thought that was easier to follow the Pixel stuff in the book, though I can understand it. It didn’t seem to to fit quite easily. I also like the fact that, that they had George there.

Um, it added some depth and literally added some depth to, very literally, to the story. Um, we don’t get any picture of the really down, deep in the book in, unless I missed it in those, in the last couple of chapters. 

[00:50:26] Rebekah: You didn’t. I think the only things you learn in, at least as far as you guys got in the book about the down, down deep is basically that there are mines down there and that people mine for minerals that they need.

Another thing about the expansion of like Allison Becker and her whole plot line that I really thought was interesting and I thought it was really well done, there’s a big reveal about Allison and the reality of procreation within the silo. So I believe that it works similarly in the show, in the book, although in the book, some of it is kind of given to you later, but there is some sort of a lottery where parents are told that they’re allowed to have children and usually it coincides with A, a, cleaning, or B, a lot of other deaths happening in other places.

You don’t really know the details of how it all works until like book two or three and how that system actually functions. Uh, but in the show they add this whole thing that’s completely in the show only about how they like ga. So when they get the permission, they have a year to have a baby. That part’s the same as book.

But every, every woman, they go to the doctor. 

[00:51:33] Tim: Well, before, yeah, before you woman has an, every woman has an implant, 

[00:51:37] Rebekah: right? They all have implants that prevent them from getting pregnant. I believe they say they, they put them in at birth, right? 

[00:51:43] Tim: I think so. Are 

[00:51:44] Rebekah: so big on a baby. Ugh, gross. Um, anyway, they all have implants to stop them from being able to get pregnant.

And they go through this whole thing where she and Holston go to the doctor, Juliet’s dad, and he quote unquote, takes out the implant, puts the bloody thing, and she has a scar like it’s actually in there. Yeah. Puts the bloody thing in like a little container off to the side kidney 

dish 

[00:52:07] Rebekah: and shows it, and says, okay, mm-hmm.

You can, you can get pregnant now, you know, you’re, it’ll take a few days for your hormones to reset or whatever. And then find out later she actually cuts open her own leg and discovers there’s still an implant there. And the whole thing was staged. And that man, it was like, that was 

[00:52:25] TJ: the moment. When I was like, oh, I like this show a lot.

I want to know, I need to know what happens. 

[00:52:29] Rebekah: Yeah. It got me so in like, mm-hmm. I, I think that’s part of why I ended up loving her. She just did such a good job with that character. So in the first book, partly, I, my guess is because Juliet’s, the protagonist for the most part, and in the book, like she’s not really thinking about procreating and she, you know, that’s just not a big part of it, I think because that’s not a part of the book.

It’s not really mentioned. And so you find out later about this whole, like, you hear about the lottery, but you find out later about the control part of it. So they pull that from later books. 

[00:52:58] TJ: So also, to be fair, Juliet is not the main character until part three of five. It’s Holston and then it’s Mayor Johns and Mars.

True, true. And Mayor Johns and Deputy Mars go to Juliette and meet her in part two, not even like at the beginning of part two. It’s maybe halfway through. And then Juliette becomes. I think the main point of view character in part three, and by the end of part three she’s going out to clean. So yeah, I think the book kind of has this illusion because Juliet is the first main character to survive a second part as the point of view character.

So they kind of, so there’s a little bit of an illusion that she’s the main character, but they, she’s the third main character, 

[00:53:42] Donna: but they build the show around Juliet. 

[00:53:46] TJ: She’s not even in episode one, but yes. Then, yeah, I was surprised when she got top billing in episode two over Holston. 

[00:53:53] Rebekah: There is definitely a trend, I think, in the writing where Hugh Howie does like to switch that because.

Josiah, you’re a little further into the book, right? Like Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. In general, and I’m not, this isn’t, I don’t think this is a spoiler in general throughout the whole series, while there’s definitely through lines and characters and, and things like that, I would say Juliet is still gonna, in my head, I’m gonna say she’s the main protagonist.

There’s definitely a lot of POV switching. 

[00:54:21] Tim: The TV show adds a new and oppressive department of the silo in the form of judicial. So we’ve got mechanical where Juliet is, we’ve got, you know it where Bernard is. We’ve also got judicial. Uh, while there are court proceedings mentioned in the book, the existence of this FBI like enforcement arm, judge Meadows and Agent Sims are all show only features and I’m not sure that that doesn’t just distract from the plot.

Yeah, 

[00:54:56] Donna: I don’t like Tim Robbins, so it’s hard and common. Common does nothing for me. So 

[00:55:01] Rebekah: it’s like, oh well. Like I said before, I kind of preferred Sims as character to like the Judge Meadows character, but at the same time I think the addition of judicial just watered down the it like real IT role that’s in the book.

I think that it just kind of confused it. Also, I will say part of what’s really interesting about the book is that there’s like literally one bad guy. Like there’s really not a lot of, there’s no, it’s not like a conspiracy as far as the people in the silo are concerned. Bernard is kind of like pulling some puppet strings and he’s the bad guy.

There aren’t like a bunch of bad guys and so this was very weird. 

[00:55:39] Tim: Is it not the whole IT department? 

[00:55:40] TJ: No. ’cause they’re clueless like Lucas is.

[00:55:42] Tim: Yeah, I guess that’s well in the, and isn’t the book Allison? 

[00:55:45] Rebekah: It Allison’s it in the show, but not in the book officially. Okay. 

[00:55:48] Tim: SIM’s, SIM’s wife is it, and in the book, former Judicial maybe, maybe.

Um, but in the book, ju the former mechanical, the young guy, Juliet’s friend is in it. So yeah, it, it all seems to be in it and even the people that work there are like, yeah, I found this thing that’s really weird. Um, thing that I can’t really explain. 

[00:56:12] Rebekah: Okay. I think it is time for a rant. I have not gone on a rant.

I’m going to go on a rant. Oh dear. So early in season one, silo shows flashbacks of Juliet meeting her boyfriend and later Sheriff Holston in a massive underground area beneath the bottom of the silo. It’s filled with water, an inexplicable machinery. And did I mention it’s fricking huge? This has not happened in the book, although the machinery found in this area actually does come up as part of Book Three Dust in the original trilogy.

And y’all, this annoyed me. I have notes from when I first watched the show. This was before any of you had watched it, and I was making a bunch of like rapid fire notes to make sure I didn’t forget anything. And I’m going through this and I think my notes like go into all caps and it’s like, what is all this water?

What has happened? Why did she jump in the water? 

[00:57:05] Tim: In the, my, in the book, is it Juliet or Mars who says they’ve never, they’ve never been in a, in water that could have been over their head. They, they’ve never think that maybe Juliet, ’cause she, they’ve never seen that much water that could Yes. Do that. So this seems, she comments really strange 

[00:57:22] Rebekah: on how much that Yeah, I think she’s the one that makes that comment.

The funny thing is. I’m not done with season two either, and I don’t think, I think it comes up based on like what we’re trying not to spoil. I think they did actually try to use it for something that I was like, oh, this happens later in the first book. This one Make sense. Then when it comes back up and they do it in the show, I’m like, they like, they, they made it less interesting in the show than it was in the book.

And this was the way that you could have used this whole water fear thing. What is going on? So I just think the whole thing so far to me, and I won’t spoil what that is from season two, just ’cause we’re gonna talk about that in our next episode. But like, yeah, this to me was like, what is happening? Why is this thing here?

W what is the water? What is all this space like it is. So it just is like, it, it made it so hard to suspend my disbelief in a lot of ways. So anyway, that, ugh, this was like my least favorite thing that they did. 

[00:58:19] Donna: Well as part of this show add-on that you’re talking of, uh, that you speak of George of the past has a subplot about finding relics from the before times.

Ooh, before the rebellion 140 years ago. 

[00:58:36] TJ: Mom, I really hope that one of those relics is a PE dispenser 

[00:58:41] Donna: as it turns out. One of the relics George finds is a as dispenser ta, which is so interesting and kinda weird too. He, uh, the, there’s also a door, but not like the door, but not like the room. This is a door to a room.

[00:59:01] Tim: All of, all of this stuff with the relics and what they can’t have and what’s, what’s crazy, you know, restricted is so different in the book and the, and the TV show. Mm-hmm. It’s like in the TV show almost anything. You know, they, they can’t have the books, the children’s books, the story in the book.

Mentions, you know, we, these are books we looked at as children. We all remember those. Yeah. We love to check them 

[00:59:29] Rebekah: out if they were available. Right. And we 

[00:59:31] Tim: saw all the, the things in them, the blue sky and the different kinds of things. Mm-hmm. You know, so still thinking that they’re fantasy, but those were just common things.

So it’s like once they make all those things restricted in the show, it’s like, that just feels weird. 

[00:59:46] Donna: There’s, I agree that the relics, I kind of thought when we first heard mention of them in the show, it would be like, oh, this is gonna be this weird weaving, blah, blah, blah. But while. Nobody can have them.

A lot of people have them. And so it’s like, okay, I, okay, that’s fine, I guess. But then I kinda got lost in them. But as far as this, the door that George finds, it’s at the very bottom of this. Mm-hmm. Weird. Silo room. And, and remember none of this forgotten this, this in the book, right? Because it was so random.

But you go in and it’s like this warehouse size cavern thing. And, and he’s in there and they have, you know, places you could walk across and he and Juliette sit on them together and talk and blah, whatever. Um, well, he 

[01:00:40] Tim: says that. He says that these are the machines that create that created it. They didn’t know what to do with the machine, so they just had them dig down deep and that’s why they’re down there.

Yeah. Um, and now they’re covered in water. I wanna point 

[01:00:52] Rebekah: out, if I remember this correctly, and tell me if I’m wrong, the door is at the bottom of that big room, like the one that they go to that has all the water in it. Mm-hmm. There’s also like a weird door off to the side that George discovers. And I don’t think we get the payoff of that in season one.

I don’t even think they show you what it is. Deep confusion. Yeah. It’s strange 

[01:01:10] Tim: now in the book. They’re constantly having to pump the water out of the down deep so that the machines will, their machinery will still work. They, Juliette mentioned something about they have, they have pumps that keep pumping the water out from down, down, but it’s not the big room of water.

I mean, maybe 

[01:01:30] Rebekah: they took that in the book and just kind of like expanded it to be that. I don’t know. That’s possible, but 

[01:01:36] Tim: Yeah. But in the, in the book, it sounds. More appropriate. It’s like, okay, you dig a hole that deep, it is going to continue to get water in it. You know, underground springs and things like that.

Eventually we will, we’ll get in it and you’ll have to keep it, keep it taken care of. But in the show it’s mysterious and strange and that’s all it is. And bizarre so far. Yeah. 

[01:01:58] TJ: Well, one thing we haven’t mentioned yet is how in the book, Mars recommends Juliet as sheriff and in the TV show, Holston recommends Juliet as sheriff before he goes out to clean.

I liked that after he died, one of my favorite things is for characters who die to still have an impact on the plot after they’re gone. Mm-hmm. And so this was very satisfying for me. Yeah. And very. I read the book, this part of the book after the TV show, and it was very lackluster in the book and the show honored Holston as a main character even after his death.

Oh, there was a, this other thing around the time Juliet was offered the job of mayor the show kind of intensified something that was in the book. In the book, Juliet agrees to be the sheriff on the condition that the silo can take a power holiday because some stuff in the generator needs to be fixed.

Fix it before it breaks. Yeah. And in the book, I remember, ’cause I liked this in the show and I saw it first, and in the book Juliet specifically says, oh yeah, it could break tomorrow, but it could break in like 80 years, but it’ll break eventually. I was like, wow, that is a lot less urgent than in the show where Juliet says, we’re starting to wop hold now we’re all gonna die.

Yeah. If you don’t turn the power off so we can fix this generator. I think some of it was a little melodramatic, but it was really cool and a great spectacle to see before Juliette goes up it, it was kind of her, her swan song and mechanical. It made me think, oh, we’re not just meeting her in mechanical and then bringing her upstairs.

We’re seeing who she is in mechanical and what she’s willing to sacrifice in this department. Making us excited for what she is willing to sacrifice upstairs. 

[01:03:47] Tim: I was grateful that it did not go where I thought it was gonna go. I thought they were gonna lose her assistant before it was done. Oh. So 

[01:03:56] TJ: yes.

Cooper, I think 

[01:03:58] Rebekah: this reminds me of. Something I was thinking about earlier when we first talked about Juliet’s characterization. I think in the book she reminds me a little more of Kane than she reminds me in the TV show. Just a little bit of unhinged kind of, I think I said like reluctancy, I think in the book.

It came across, but also, maybe this was one of the parts of the show that, that was evidenced by, because to her, similar to how we’ve seen like Kaus be in the different Hunger Games, it was like she thought, okay, no, I don’t want that job. I’m rejecting that job. And then when it became clear that she could potentially save her friends and her family by sacrificing what she wanted for a job that she wasn’t all that interested in, like, okay, you know what?

Of course I’ll do that. And then it’s like, oh, this is somebody that I could see like being a, I would say a heroine figure. She’s not, again, it’s like not exactly the same kind of hero. But, um, I thought this had very much cat a vibes, although again, in the show it kind of confused me. ’cause her motivation wasn’t like, I really care that the people of the silo are safe.

I really care that my family is safe. Her motivation in the show was a guy, oh my gosh, I could find out what happened to George and if he really killed himself. And so I think, yeah, like that I, that watered down a bit, a little 

[01:05:11] Tim: noble, 

[01:05:12] Rebekah: but I liked, don’t know. I think it was both said. Hmm. I do like the thing in the show where it was like that super intense, like, oh my gosh, is her assistant gonna die?

What’s gonna happen? I thought that was really good on screen. True. Well after. I think 

[01:05:25] TJ: the fact that she sacrificed herself for that shows that she’s willing to sacrifice herself for the good of the silo, and she’s in love with the ghost of George. So I don’t know it. I think it automatically from the get go adds.

Layers to her character. 

[01:05:42] Tim: Well, good. After traveling down to meet Juliet and convince her to serve the silo as Sheriff Deputy Mars and Mayor Johns, share a brief romantic moment before Johns and Mars not long after both die. Um, however, in the book Mars commit suicide after ensuring Juliette would keep her word, whereas in the show he’s murdered in his apartment and his suicide is staged.

There’s, you know, mayor Johns dies, Mars dies and Allison’s dead and the Sheriff Holston is dead. And we’re just dropping like flies. 

[01:06:19] Rebekah: I think I like, it’s so interesting ’cause you guys know me and it, depending on what I’m reading, I can feel very differently. It didn’t bother me in the book that all of these people kept dying, but I think maybe it was because, you know, Allison felt like a memory.

The book starts off with Holston saying he’s gonna go out and die. Right. That’s where 

[01:06:38] Tim: it begins. Yeah. I think and he remembers her. 

[01:06:40] Rebekah: I think those two felt less like, oh no, they died. And it felt like, oh, you’re setting this up. The pro log. This felt like you’re pro prolonging The actual story Jaw Barn in the show 

[01:06:50] TJ: was for me, where it.

Was too much in the bookend show. 

[01:06:54] Rebekah: Yeah. That that hurt. And then it was just like, yeah, the him killing himself and like just the, it was very sad. It just didn’t feel 

[01:07:01] TJ: important to me. Like Allison and Holston are important for the rest of the show. I honestly don’t know if they mentioned John’s or Mars in the second half of season one.

[01:07:11] Rebekah: Interesting. Maybe you’re right. Just make death the mean 

[01:07:15] TJ: something 

[01:07:16] Rebekah: so meaningful. Okay, let’s talk about Gloria again. Gloria’s one of the TV show only characters. She was introduced, uh, with her own little separate plot line. Kind of a rebellious woman. She is kind of like the first time you meet her when she meets Allison.

She’s very eccentric and seems like the witch doctor, right? Like she seems like the crunchy lady, but the one who would say like, you can’t go to the hospital and you need to like sniff cilantro and that’s how you’ll be healed of every disease. Like it’s that kind of ridiculous like endpoint to crunchy people.

And she’s like, oh I do, you know, fertility counseling or something like that. And then this character like gets his, her whole own plot thing going on here. She ends up in a psych ward and she has like visions, visions of the before times. Now the weird part about this is the visions of the before times do not fit the timeline of the book.

They don’t fit the timeline of the series ’cause she wouldn’t have had these visions. I can think of one thing from future books that they could use to be like, this is how she had these visions. So I’m like trying to like, put that in my perspective from reading more of it. But, um, basically when Juliet helps her get off the medication so that she like can see the visions or whatever, that’s like she just, Gloria gets this whole plot and I’m just very interested to see if Gloria comes back up.

’cause they didn’t, I don’t think she died. Right. She’s just in a psych ward and Gloria was the one of the people, they like the kind of person they don’t want having children. And she believed that she was one of the people prevented. And that’s kind of how Allison starts to be curious about this at the beginning.

I am, I just wanna say in advance, I’m very curious before watching the end of season two, if like they changed some things that I’m like wondering about. Like I wonder if they’re setting it up for something. So it 

[01:09:06] Tim: is interesting. I liked the Gloria character. I thought it added attention that there are some people that they just want to kind of keep, they don’t send them out to clean, but they keep them un unavailable.

Yeah. ’cause 

[01:09:20] TJ: they have a rebellious nature to them. Well, you know who else has a rebellious nature? Juliet’s mother. What? Tanner.

[01:09:28] Tim: Oh my goodness. Someone else. Banana That’s 

[01:09:31] TJ: right here. Hannah. The Nana Nichols. It’s Juliet Nichols, right? It’s Yes. And there’s a show, only plot line about Juliet’s mother, Hannah.

Yeah. In the book, Juliet’s mother dies of suicide shortly after giving birth to her baby brother who quickly passed away, and Juliet held her father responsible. Although there are some suggestions that this may have had to do with the subterfuge on behalf of whoever’s really in charge of the silo. In the show, Hannah creates an unsanctioned magnifier, like a magnifying glass device to try to save a rabbit that Juliette and sheer caring for.

In turn, she and in turn, she plans to learn how to do proper surgery on her dying son, much older than the book infant, but Hannah’s magnifier is destroyed. When judicial finds it, her son dies and she later takes her own life. I have a question. Yeah. Is 

[01:10:27] Tim: the sun in the book? The Death of the Sun? 

[01:10:30] Rebekah: He’s just a baby.

It right after he dies, like a couple of days after he, he’s born, I just, so he never grows 

[01:10:35] Tim: up. I completely missed that plot line in the book. I was thinking in the book. It was just she and her dad and there’s like no mention of mom. 

[01:10:42] Rebekah: So what actually happens in the book with uh, Nichols’s son, Juliet’s brother, is the way that he’s described, which is very interesting.

’cause I think it tells you a little bit about their, like, medical stuff. But he makes a comment to say, I had a son as well, and then Mayor Johns is like, wait, what? And the dad says, you couldn’t have known he didn’t survive. Technically he wasn’t born. The lottery moved on and then says that the baby was born prematurely, one pound eight ounces.

They intubated, moved into an incubator, but there were complications and basically the incubator failed. Mm-hmm. And Juliette blamed her dad because he was the doctor. And then his wife committed suicide. And Nichols admits to Mayor Johns and Deputy Mars that he marked it as another kind of death, um, that the death certificate said something other than her committing suicide.

That’s, it. Says that she died from pregnancy complications. So that’s what actually happened in the book. But the baby was born very prematurely and didn’t survive. 

[01:11:47] Donna: Do you think that was a little darker than the show wanted to go with that topic? Maybe they, so they, you know, they created a little different, the show still, there’s still death, there’s still the suicide.

But I wonder if they didn’t wanna, I don’t know why, but you know, I just, I 

[01:12:01] TJ: think the show’s pretty dark. I wonder if the show wanted to connect Juliette to her mother with like the mother tinkering. True. It’s true. That kind of inherits. And also the rabbit is, seems very heavily symbolic in the later episode.

Yeah. With her in the cornfield. It’s, so maybe that has to do with her mom. 

[01:12:22] Rebekah: I also, in a couple of other ways, like I think it’s really, I do agree with the connection to her mom in the, in the show, it felt more like she was mad at her dad because her mom died, like her brother died and then he was responsible for her mom’s death.

But really in the book, like the thing he talks about is she was so excited to have a baby brother. Like, and that was the thing. And so it seems like in the book it was like less that she was upset about her mom and more that she was upset at her dad for losing her brother. So that I feel like is harder.

Like I think it’s more concrete to see her connect with her mom on screen. Also, I think the idea that like the incubator like had a failure and then a baby died. Like I think that that’s. L, stakes maybe is the right word. I think it feels a little bit lower stakes in some ways than like her mom kind of free Juliet being a rebel and like getting her into that.

So kind of to Josiah’s point, her mom did something in unintentionally rebellious. 

[01:13:19] TJ: Yeah. Not just the tinkering, but the rebelliousness 

[01:13:22] Rebekah: and it kind of like, and then they got caught and then Juliet had more of a reason to be like suspicious and things like that, versus like if an incubator fails, like I, I don’t hate it in the book, but it felt a little bit like a throwaway.

And so I think that the way that the show did it was definitely a more interesting way to discuss it at the very least. 

[01:13:39] Donna: So a little more complexity about Juliette’s character. We’ve mentioned George, that we see in in Backstory early on when they introduce her. Then that’s all before the show starts.

George is already gone, so now she finds another love interest Lucas. Uh, he is similar but to TV show. Uh, but at the end of the TV show we see Bernard threatening him with the minds for helping Julie for 10 years. Since 10. For 10 years, rather than offering him the position of being his IT shadow, um, which is in 

[01:14:19] TJ: the book.

[01:14:20] Donna: Yeah. So Sims, that is the book. So Sims, end ends. Uh, I was I very shocked when 

[01:14:23] TJ: that happened in the novel. Yeah. So Sims ends up Lucas 

[01:14:26] Donna: being asked to shadow Bernard instead. So that’s kind of where that. Where that goes. 

[01:14:32] TJ: Um, does, do we end with SIM’s shadowing Bernard? Or does Bernard? I think that he leaves it on, first of all, yes, you’re shadowing second of all, no, you’re not because of what you protected your family before the silo.

And third, and finally we will talk about you shadowing me after Juliet’s sha uh, cleaning and then they never talk about it again. 

[01:14:52] Rebekah: Remember? But I, I just watched the final episode yesterday and that’s, I’m like 99% sure that he offers the shadow job to him. So I’m wondering if it’s in early season two where he kind of maybe pulls it back or something.

Or maybe if I’m just misremembering, 

[01:15:09] TJ: maybe he said, we’ll talk about it as in you’ve got it. We’ll talk through the details. Mm-hmm. I kind of interpreted that. Mm-hmm. Maybe that, maybe that’s it. We’ll talk about the possibility, but, and 

[01:15:19] Donna: yeah, you’ve also got, uh, SIM’s wife who’s who they’re making into. Uh, I’m letting you appear to be the strong guy, but I’m really running the show.

And telling you what you’re doing and that kind of thing, which is like, eh, I don’t get her yet. So it’ll be interesting to see if they actually develop her any, because right now it just seems like she’s kind of puppet mastering sims a little bit. And you know, the strange 

[01:15:47] Tim: thing, one strange thing for me was Sims for me when he was introduced, was kind of another red herring.

Oh, Bernard is not actually the one pulling the strings. It’s this guy, he’s in this, he’s in security, and then it’s like, oh no. No, it’s not, has him under his thumb. And so it’s, it’s, I I know it’s got to be intentional. I mean that’s, you know, keep you guessing, uh, constantly. So, well, the timeline of the actual drama of the show is much expanded from the book.

In the book. Well, 

[01:16:18] Rebekah: rereading the book, I was like, Ooh. Yeah. In 

[01:16:20] Tim: the book, Juliet agrees to be sheriff, arrives in the up top, around a week later, is sheriff for about three days, and then sent out to clean, or week, to be fair, she does 

[01:16:29] Rebekah: go back down and then come back up. So that takes another, almost a week or more.

[01:16:35] Tim: The way that, the way that one part starts is she says, you know, I’m going out to clean, and it’s only been a week since I became sheriff. Mm-hmm. Um, so it, yeah. Yeah, it is part 

[01:16:46] Rebekah: three. I didn’t realize that said three or four. Yeah. In the three, I think it’s the beginning of part three. She says that. Yeah.

And you have this like, little thing and then, then she remembers the, then three days earlier. Yeah. And you’re like, three days. Yeah. Whatcha talking about 

[01:16:57] Tim: in the television show? She seems to be sheriff for at least a few weeks, and there are several added subplots that extend all that’s happening. Um, there’s one with, you know, the guy that, um, that steals things, steals things, acquires things, and sells them.

Um, you know, he, he’s in trouble with. The sheriff. And you know, there, there are several things that go on that are just kind of extra things happening, which makes sense in the kind of story that it is. You’ve got, how many people is it did, did we say 10,000? 10,000 people in the silo? 10,000 people in the silo all cooped up all the time.

They’re, they grew up that way. 

[01:17:36] Rebekah: They don’t know that they’re cooped up. They think that this is just the normal way to live. Yeah. But yeah. But 

[01:17:40] Tim: they’re still, I mean, they’re still in tight quarters and they’re highly restricted, um, lots of things they can’t talk about, things they can’t say. Yeah. It, it makes sense that you’ve got all these other sub things going on.

Yeah. You’ve got, you’ve got a, a black market going on. You’ve got people that are, you know, doing a job and then they’ve got some sideline kind of thing. So I understand it, it, it makes, it makes the world a little more believable, although it’s a little distracting. 

[01:18:09] TJ: Mm-hmm. Well, you know what’s not distracting mm-hmm.

In the book, help me, Juliet’s. Crime that makes her deserving of cleaning was visiting her friend Scotty, a young man from the down deep who ended up in it for being too smart for his own good. 

After 

[01:18:30] TJ: Scotty communicates the meaning of the hidden code discovered by Allison and Holston, Juliet finds herself yanked back up to the up top and sent out to clean.

In the show, Juliet is falsely accused of having said she wanted to go outside by Bernard. Bernard does this because. She has the hard drive that includes a lot of information, uh, primarily the information that George knows that what the cleaners see in their visor is fake, which, which is world shattering to a silo.

[01:19:05] Tim: In the show, I found, I found the part where, where they, they falsely hear her say she wants to go outside, which is, you know, the one thing you say you wanna go outside, you know you have to go outside you, there’s no. Turning back. No, changing your mind. I found that scene, her running and, and all of that through the apple orchards and the, the corn fields and, and all of that part, I found it, um, exciting.

Uh, but it, it’s strange because though it was the expanse of the farm lands that they were doing that in. It’s the only time that I felt claustrophobic when I was watching it. And, and I guess it was because it was the, she’s, she’s running, she’s trying to stay away from them. She’s trying to get away from them or whatever, and she can’t, you know, they’re, they’re at every turn.

There’s just not enough room to get away. So that, that was for me, one of those moments that I was reminded of how tight the, you know, the atmosphere was. Mm-hmm. And au Bernard is. You know, Tim Robbins is, is plays creepy really well. Um, show Bernard approaches Juliet just before she goes outside to communicate with her as if he’s actually a good guy, which is almost like, maybe Sims is more powerful than we realize, uh, but he seems to be attempting to prevent another rebellion, or at least that’s what he says he is wanting to do.

Uh, that’s not in the book. Um, in the book, he’s just, he doesn’t even, he doesn’t even go and see her. He doesn’t talk to her right before she goes out to clean. 

[01:20:33] Rebekah: Um, I don’t think he c uh, 

[01:20:36] Tim: I think he’s absent. I think, I think, I don’t think he comes that’s See her at Absent. 

[01:20:39] Donna: Yeah. Yeah. Do you think, I almost get this, and maybe this is a, a more common trope and I just haven’t strung it together, but I almost felt like they were trying to do a President’s snow.

Look where his hair’s very white and, and. You know, although some 

[01:20:56] Tim: of us have that going, whether we want it or not. 

[01:20:59] Donna: Yeah. And he probably, Tim Robbins probably is white-headed, but it’s just like, uh, I got, I don’t, I like us. Well, I’ve already said, uh, don’t wanna beat a dead horse here, but I just don’t, he doesn’t, he and common both don’t really get it for me.

And I know that, that he’s, I know that he is a major part of what goes on, so it’s like, okay, I need to, need to come up with a way to deal with you. And so now as we get to the end of the, of the television series and, and we’re just, uh, at like the, basically the end of part three of the book, essentially they closed with Juliette walking outside.

I did love the tension of this. On the screen and, and you kinda don’t know what’s gonna happen. I did love that. However, in the book, the big cliffhanger or twist at this point is Bernard talking to silo one. That was great. That was great. 

[01:22:01] TJ: I got to that part in the book before. Yeah, the show. And the show didn’t actually do that, uh, scene technically.

Which 

[01:22:07] Tim: chapter was that? 

[01:22:08] Rebekah: Three after You are Yeah. The one we didn’t read because I told you, I texted you guys a chapter number because I said it doesn’t actually end right at the end of part three. I texted a number. It is not my fault. It is, it’s my fault. 

[01:22:20] Donna: I 

[01:22:20] Tim: legitimately stopped listening to it at that point.

So I said, okay, this is as far as I’m, I’m sorry, sorry. 

[01:22:26] TJ: Memory. Go listen to it real quick and understand. But mostly see, the one 

[01:22:30] Rebekah: thing they do in the show that is kind of a a point to it is the key. The key, the key chain says 18, and so that’s where you’re like, wait, what? What does 18, what does 18 mean? So it does kind give you that I saw the key chain.

[01:22:43] Tim: I, I noticed the key chain thing. Mm-hmm. With 18 on it. Um, what, what’s the key chain about Dad? Is that in those chapters I missed? 

[01:22:49] Donna: Well, well, tell me, does it have to do They’re in silo number? It has to do with, I assumed that of Silo 31. Oh, that’s the twist. Well, you assumed it. Oh, okay. Of what is it has to do with Deputy Joe of Silo 31.

Oh, I think that’s just specific to this podcast actually. Oh, 

[01:23:06] TJ: I’m 31 years old. Yeah. I thought that was pretty 

[01:23:09] Donna: cool. Um, but in the show, it’s, it’s Juliette seeing many silos after she makes her way past the hill that she should never have been able to climb. And so again, like that visual in 

[01:23:22] TJ: for visual medium, 

[01:23:24] Donna: yeah.

Again, the visual of that was just, 

[01:23:28] Rebekah: it was really good. Oh yeah. Something that I wanna just refer back to as well. I thought it was interesting that in the show they didn’t really make as big of a deal about the heat tape until like right at the end of episode 10. Yeah. Or like halfway through when Walker has to go and like get it from supply and then they do the note, which is similar.

And you 

[01:23:47] TJ: mentioned once at the beginning Yeah. Being share. But in the book, she thinks about it two or three more times 

[01:23:54] Rebekah: because, well, you progressively learn in basically that the suits are, are engineered to fail and then they keep talking about how they’re engineered to help them go further and then they never really do and so Oh, they 

[01:24:06] Tim: continued to make improvements in them.

Yeah. Right. I like so they fail faster 

[01:24:11] Rebekah: in the book. It was just a lot more solid for me. Like they did a better job at building that. And in the movie it just, or in the TV show, it just felt a little bit like, oh right, the heat tape in the book. I like that it’s described better where it’s like, I think she describes.

Does she see it from like on where Holston died? It’s literally their suits and the heat tape are eaten away from whatever’s in the air disintegrate in the book. 

[01:24:35] Tim: She saw it down, down in mechanical. She said they got that tape. ’cause they couldn’t Exactly. They couldn’t get tape. She had seen it tape disintegrate.

She said it couldn’t have disintegrated any faster if it had been Yeah. Designed to, which is what? Yes. Her friend Scotty says, your joke is actually true. 

[01:24:54] Donna: Duh. Yeah. And that’s not in the show. 

[01:24:56] Rebekah: That’s in the book. I liked it. I think I liked it a little better in the book. I thought the buildup to this was me too.

Good. And I like the way that they described the suit and the heat tape. Literally like, like wasting away and stuff like I think, I think it’s a lot more effective, especially as they kind of like develop that. Longer into the story. Mm-hmm. So I’ve, I think that was a book thing for me that I preferred.

Yeah. 

[01:25:17] Donna: Well, at this point in the podcast, normally I give you statistics and money and box office, but guess what? There was no box office. There were apple boxes sitting on people’s mantles, uh, but you didn’t buy a ticket from it. So, um, the Trivia’s a little different, but there’s still stuff out there about the show that we can learn.

Um, the book release, the first wool story, which is the short story, it was released as a standalone in July of 2011, and then a full set of shorts to go along with it was released in January of 2012. The show released on Apple TV on May 5th, 2023. That’s a season one. Um, on Good Reads, the book gets a 4.2 out of five.

Uh, the Rotten Tomatoes. Critics rating is an 88%, and IMDB gave the series 8.1 out of 10. So I mean, they gave us, I think those are all a little low to me. I think it’s a little low, uh, you know, for season one eight outta 10, I mean, 80 eight’s good maybe, I guess 

[01:26:26] TJ: for an average. 

[01:26:27] Donna: Yeah. And then, um, it is, uh, an ma a mature audience rating on Apple tv.

Um, I will say at this point, I’m glad there hasn’t been a lot of, um, gratuitous sex or nudity in it, that it is heavy language, but I really, uh, but all the sexual 

[01:26:45] Rebekah: contents basically like off screen, it’s, and there is honestly the thing that I, this is something that does set it apart for me. One of the things I like most about the book, and the reason I recommend it, is like, I would feel safe as much as it has dark themes, I would feel safe recommending it to like 14-year-old.

It doesn’t have sexual content. It doesn’t have excessive language. There’s like a few times. Yeah, the book is, but it’s not super significant. But I love recommending this book because it is clean in a lot of ways. And there’s like, again, the most gratuitous like thing is yeah. Two adults sleeping next to each other.

Yeah. And that’s it. And so I really, I’m glad that the show didn’t take, I mean, they could have taken it further than they did. They definitely added some stuff, but it wasn’t excessive, I would say. Yeah. It’s definitely an adult television show. I wouldn’t recommend it to teenagers that young. Maybe a couple years older, but 

[01:27:34] Donna: yeah.

And, um, it was, uh, also filmed in the uk. I’m sure it’s made money. I just can’t find it. I’m sure it has. Yeah. I just can’t find it in the normal places I look. 

[01:27:47] Rebekah: Well, why don’t we cover a little bit of this interesting trivia before we give our final verdict. 

[01:27:53] TJ: Yeah. Well, in 2011, Hugh Howie initially self-published the, uh, the first part of the first book as a short story through Amazon’s Kindle direct publishing system.

And as that popularity grew, that that first works, popularity grew. He published it with the four novella sequels, so in five parts. Uh, this first book was called Wool as part of the Silo Series, and so that was only within a year. A calendar year is when he published them as a single book with five parts.

And the following year, 2013, Howie, the author finally signed with Simon and Schuster for print only publishing. So this is another one of those successful self-published sci-fi type books. 

[01:28:40] Tim: You don’t lose any rights. Do you, when you publish through Amazon through that stuff, or do you Oh, no, not self published.

I mean, 

[01:28:48] TJ: you, you give Amazon some rights, but you maintain most of your, your copyright. I’m just, you retain the copyright 

[01:28:55] Rebekah: to your work. Like, and you can pull it off of Amazon at any time, but you’re giving them rights. But they have certain rights because if you’re print, they get some of the revenue from the book sales and you don’t still pull intellectual 

[01:29:04] Donna: property.

And he’s, uh, Huey said that, um, Huey Huey Howe. Hmm. Wow. Uh, Howie said that he did turn down a bunch of publishers once they saw how big the work was, grow, how quickly the work was growing, he turned them down and then finally went with Simon and Schuster for, you know. Little bit, probably a profit for him.

Um, in 2012. So remember this, he just had the, the first short story out in 11 and then got the five pieces together and put them to, into a book in 2012. Same year as that 20th century Fox bought the rights to develop wool into a feature film, uh, slating Ridley Scott and Steve Zaen to produce. 

[01:30:00] TJ: I thought that was crazy.

[01:30:01] Donna: Yeah. But then when Disney bought 20th Century Fox, the plans for the movie diversion were no longer discussed. I don’t know. 

[01:30:10] TJ: Although, to be fair, didn’t Disney start buying Fox in like 2018? I mean, they 

[01:30:16] Donna: were definitely, there’s a lot of time that passed, so yeah, 

[01:30:21] TJ: I feel like in 2012 when they bought the rights.

2012 was Hunger Games in the height of Hunger Games, popularity. Why not go with it? Why wouldn’t you produce it? Yeah. By like 20 15, 20 16, while we’re still on the dystopian trend. Mm-hmm. I’m glad they didn’t. ’cause I like the TV show. 

[01:30:38] Tim: That’s one of those interesting things about who lost their job because they said, eh, let’s not do that thing.

I’m not sure it’ll be very popular. That’s funny. Or who got promoted to the next level. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:30:52] Rebekah: Uh, speaking though of getting more silo in our lives. In December, 2024, an article on TV line, uh, released that Seasons three and four have been confirmed with Apple TV plus season four of which will be the final thrilling chapter to the tale.

Hmm. And let me tell you, when I realized, is it four books? It’s five. But their five books, three went together and then three books. Gotcha. 

[01:31:17] Donna: Yeah. The Fab Short Stories, novel Villas became the first book, part five. And then, yeah, two other books. 

[01:31:22] Rebekah: So there are two other books and it is confusing ’cause I was like, well book one is seasons one and two, and then I read book two and now I understand and I think it’ll make sense that it would

[01:31:34] Tim: easily be a single season.

[01:31:36] Rebekah: Uh, sure. Say it like that. 

[01:31:41] Tim: Well we can also say, uh, in some of the trivia that the title wool refers to the kind of cloth given to those who go outside to clean the view screen. That’s clear in the book. However, there, it’s also stated, spoiler alert, that it is an acronym for world order Operation 50, the project in which the silos were first built.

[01:32:07] Donna: Are you telling me this is gonna come up at some point? It 

[01:32:10] Tim: may come up in the trilogy. 

[01:32:14] Donna: Who knows? 

[01:32:15] Tim: It would. I don’t even know what that means. It would make sense though that it was some special 

[01:32:21] Donna: project and I could see where you have to come up with, well, I guess I don’t see it’s part of the book. He could have called it anything.

He could have called it Cotton. 

[01:32:33] Tim: He could have, although that’s a lot more words, you have to, or work with 

[01:32:36] Donna: Polyester Air 

[01:32:39] Tim: even more. 

[01:32:40] Donna: The series also was made into a graphic novel that was released. In August of 2014. Again, back to Josiah’s point, uh, that you released the graphic novel. Why, why are you not setting this up and pushing this out?

Um, I’m not sorry. It’s a series. I love the fact that Yeah. I’m so glad they waited. I made 

[01:33:00] TJ: it into this cool series that’s not, yeah. Hunger Games, but in a silo. Mm-hmm. I’m glad that it’s its own thing, but I’m surprised that studio directors didn’t push it. Yeah. 

[01:33:09] Tim: I think that Rebecca Ferguson, uh, left Mission Impossible to do this project.

Mm-hmm. I, I was always curious why she left the Mission Impossible world, but this would make sense. Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna work on a series. That’s because she’s producer too, right? A little long. Yeah. It’s a little more than a single project. Yeah. So that would make sense. 

[01:33:30] Rebekah: Well, let’s give our final verdicts.

Um, I’m easy and I feel like I’ve already given the plot away for me, so I’ll go first. I, ratings wise. This book is like a nine and a half outta 10 for me. When I rate it in stars, it’s five out five, so I’m gonna say nine and a half outta 10. There were a couple of elements that I was like, ah, I could have done, I could have been slightly different, but it’s definitely a reread.

This quickly became one of the books that I enjoy the most of what I’ve been reading, and I’ve read, I counted the number of books I’ve read in the first part of 2025, and it’s mid-April when we’re recording this. I’ve read 32 books this year, not including the four that I’m currently reading, including this book, and if you only 

[01:34:14] Tim: could read fast.

[01:34:17] Rebekah: Ugh. I wish I could read a lot more. I don’t have, I don’t have nearly enough time, but, uh, the TV show for me, I’m gonna give like, I’m gonna say seven and a half outta 10. I can definitely put it on. It’s not, there’s parts of it that aren’t grabbing my attention like the book did. I don’t think it’s just because I’ve read the book though, ’cause it’s like there’s a lot of other things going on.

There’s a few things that I’ve felt were like weird changes that I didn’t really love the way that they did it. But on the whole, I enjoyed it a lot. So I definitely am gonna say the book is better, but I think part of it is because this book has actually become one of my absolute favorites. Um, and it would have been almost impossible to top it with any sort of film or TV show or whatever.

So that is my verdict. Love both of them. I definitely think it’s worth, uh, watching, even if you’re never gonna read it. 

[01:35:06] Donna: Well, Hmm, that’s an interesting perspective. Um, I think that though they are the same basic root of a of story, they’re kind of, I almost see ’em like two different takes on a story in a way.

Um, the book keeps things a little more, uh, simple as far as the, the, what’s going on the series is taking time to flesh out stuff. It’s adding people, it’s got, you know, the, the space is larger visually and, and, um, so I kind of see them almost as two separate maybe, maybe two, maybe two ways that two people would share a story, two perspectives on the same story, where two perspectives on the same story.

Mm-hmm. Um, I like the book. Um, I would probably listen to the book again. Uh, I’ll say an eight and a half. Eight, eight and a half the series. Just a few things. Like, I don’t like Tim Robbins and I don’t like Tim Robbins character, nor do I like Coleman’s character. They don’t really hit with me. So I’ll say the series is, I’m gonna back it up to like a seven, seven and a half.

I still like it. I, I haven’t been engaged in it. I feel differently about the second series so far. I don’t dislike it and I’m not trying to get into it, but, uh, I feel different about it than I did from series one, so it’s, it’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out along, along the way. And we haven’t done something quite like this before, so I’m kind of, I’m, I’m excited to continue talking about it and, uh, seeing where it goes.

So I’m gonna pick series, every book only because, um, visual. Mm-hmm. And that’s hard because. With two main characters that are kind of for me. Um, but I do, but I do like Rebecca Ferguson. Uh, and I do, I do think that she’s been super compelling. So I’ll, uh, I’ll go that way. 

[01:37:16] TJ: Very cool. I think that as far as book to show adaptation, it’s interesting.

I. Having a show only adaptation instead of a movie or a movie and a show option. Uh, you know, I think we’ve done a couple miniseries, but it was a, it was a pretty, pretty lengthy show. It’s 10 50 minute episodes basically. I think that there were a lot of improvements that the show made, and there were a few things that the show did worse, I think of Holston and his wife.

I think their role in the show improved upon the book made, made it more vital and significant. I think that I didn’t really like Mars and Johns that much in the TV show. They were pretty good. Um, I only liked them a little more in the book. You, you get a little more background with them, but, uh, you know, I liked some of the things.

They added with Juliet’s dad. I thought that Juliet’s dad was an exceptional actor and gave a really strong performance that added an extra layer to the latter half of season one. I think that the book did a better job with the heat tape twist, which is the crux of the climax of season one and of the first half of the book.

So it’s just like you’re giving, you’re taking, I think I, I didn’t mind Tim Robbins character and Common had one good element with his, mainly through his wife. But, you know, I, I don’t think they were strong characters, but, you know, I don’t know how strong Bernard really is in the book either. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Um, 

[01:38:59] TJ: so I think that both show and book are around an eight, a strong eight for me. They, the plot really keeps it interesting. Oh, I do love the book’s structure of how his chapters are short. He has really short chapters and there is a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, whether it’s a major one or a smaller one.

[01:39:25] Rebekah: Definitely does the page turner thing. 

[01:39:27] TJ: Yeah. The pacing of the book is so fast. And the show, every episode ended and I said, oh my gosh, I have to see what happens next. But there were only 10 episodes, there were 34 chapters that we read, so mm-hmm. You know, the book’s pacing probably a little better in, in a lot of ways, but, um, I’m going to, with all of that going back and forth, I’m gonna give it to the show.

I really adore Rebecca Ferguson. I think she’s very underrated. I mean, we all love her, but I think that she’s very underrated in this day and age. I think she’s one of the. Finest actors working these days. And she’s gotten some cool roles, but I still think that the nor the average person in America would say, oh yeah, I’ve seen her in something.

Instead of, oh yeah, that amazing. Like, oh, Meryl Streep. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Tom Hanks, I know him instead of, oh yeah, Rebecca Ferguson. I think I saw her in this movie. I think she’s very underrated. So basically a little bit for Allison and Holston’s expanded role, but mostly for Rebecca Ferguson being such a great performer and entertaining.

I’m gonna give it to the show over the book. 

[01:40:38] Tim: Well, I think that leaves me, I am going to give, um, 8.5 to the book and eight to the show. I think the book is a little bit better. I, I liked the book. I agree with, uh, Josiah that the pacing of the book feels comfortable. There’s, there’s something compelling about, oh, that’s, that’s the end of the chapter or there’s, there’s something I want to get to in the next chapter.

Um. And I like books like that. I’m actually, I, I actually just finished reading Jurassic Park, which we’re gonna be doing in several more episodes forward, but I had started it already and I, and one of the things I liked about Michael Crichton’s work is that it, it moves pretty quickly. It felt like it moved very well.

And so I liked that about this. I am a visual person, so, um, I really like this series. I wouldn’t have watched it unless Rebecca had, uh, recommended it and there was nothing about the book that would’ve caused me to pick it up. Um, except it’s not like in your typical Yeah. Read it. It doesn’t just. Pop up and say, wow, that, that looks like something that I would want to read.

[01:41:47] TJ: But I don’t love Wool as a title. 

[01:41:49] Tim: Yeah. I that I think that’s actually an awkward title. It’s bizarre. Yeah. I, I think Silo makes a better, a better title. That’s, that’s funny. We didn’t talk about the fact that one of the major changes is they changed the name of it completely. 

[01:42:03] Rebekah: Yeah. The series is called The Silo Series, but none of the books are called Silo.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. I will say Wool Shift and Dust all actually do have very specific, specific meanings. Um, yeah. Like they represent what’s in the book, but at the same time, I think I got these because of what I saw that it said that it was like the Hunger Games. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it was literally the fir like, I’m not kidding.

The first thing that I decided to buy when I got back into this like reading kick, like. A little over a year ago. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. And so I just, I liked the covers. 

[01:42:39] Tim: I enjoy, I enjoyed it. Um, wouldn’t, wouldn’t necessarily have gravitated toward it. Uh, but, but they’ve, they’ve been good. We’ve, we’ve started watching a new, a new series Yeah.

On TV as well, the pit. And, and that’s another, it’s not a book kind of thing, but the show is, is one of those you want to see the next one, you’ve got to see the next one. You’ve gotta see it’s that kind of thing. And I enjoy that because it’s, it’s a, a good bit different than reading something that we feel like we have to get through.

Um, or watching something that’s like, ah, I’ve gotta finish this. Whoa, you know what the 

[01:43:14] TJ: Game of Thrones books are called? What a song of Ice and fire. Oh, that’s right. I, 

[01:43:20] Tim: I heard somebody say that. Say it that way. Probably me. No, it was somebody else I, I heard say, say 

[01:43:25] TJ: that. But the first, this is the opposite of silo.

The first book is called A Game of Thrones. Ah. Because you pointed out whole show. So they thematically the, 

[01:43:35] Rebekah: if you see something that’s a Game of Thrones, it’s based on the book. If you see something that’s labeled Game of Thrones, it’s based on the show, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s interesting. Funny little tidbit.

Well, if you enjoyed this episode, we’d love a five star rate review. It helps us a ton. Um, we’re also live on Patreon, so if you are so inclined, feel free to go. You can subscribe for free just to get updates on when we release new episodes. But you can also, uh, go on Patreon and check out some of the cool up, you know, paid subscriber tier, fun stuff interact can do with us.

Yeah, you can also interact with us on our Discord. There is a link to our Discord, uh, in the show notes and it is free to join. You can also find us on social media X Instagram, and Facebook at book is Better Pod. And uh, until next time, uh, I wanna go 

[01:44:28] TJ: outside. We love you baby listeners. Definitely want to go outside.

[01:44:32] Donna: I’m not good at cleaning my house. Why would I go out and clean somebody’s window? Yeah, it looked really 

[01:44:37] TJ: hard to wipe the Brillo pad across the screen of the camera. 

[01:44:41] Donna: And wool, by the way, is not a great cleaning material. Just heads up, they didn’t 

[01:44:48] TJ: wanna clean the camera. I don’t know anything. Who cares? We love you.

Bye.