There's been a few snide articles floating about the web - nothing can gain high acclaim without someone coming along to thumb their nose at it, certainly not in the age of the Internet.
Anyway, one article I read got sniffy about the helicopter crash atop the CNPP, wrongly claiming that the show depicted the chopper as failing from radiation - but that's not what they show, they show it clipping a cable/chain (as in real life) which then causes it to crash. The only thing that changed with that event in the show was the placement of it - a bit of time compression so as to include that important stand-out moment, but understandably to do so in the episode that heavily featured the helicopter stuff. To have to cram everything in precisely at the time it happened would lead to a screenwriting mess.
There was some complaint regarding 'nuclear contamination', particularly in regard to the firefighter's wife. Now, do any of us know specifically what lead to the death of her infant soon after its birth? Perhaps not. Perhaps the difference between when an irradiated person is and isn't capable of spreading that nuclear infection could have helped (once clothing is removed and the body has been thoroughly washed it's then a case of internal poisoning for the poor soul who has been scuppered by the atom). Perhaps some of these things fall into subjective opinion, others into scientific fact, and yet more into the mists of a lack of data thanks to the Soviets wanting to keep a lid on the whole thing.
Another bone of contention for one writer of an article in Forbes seems to be the 'Bridge of Death' and the fates of those who were on it. But then again, there seems to be so little actual documented evidence of exactly who is alive and dead and who suffered consequences (cancers, birth defects etc). I do seem to recall some charity or organisation along the lines of 'Children of Chernobyl' in which they looked after a lot of children with various birth defects across mental and physical disabilities, plus a range of cancers. In that same article they decried the 'demonisation of nuclear' (despite the fact that Mazin explicitly said that was never his intention at all), but it seemed to skew off more into other issues and opinions and misunderstandings that have existed long before this show was created. Although, the article did raise an interesting point which I agreed with/understood - quite ironically the creation of nuclear weapons had led to fewer wars (and casualties of war therefore). Naturally, this is 'mutually assured destruction', now that Pandora's Box has been opened the knowledge of how to create a nuclear weapon cannot be unlearned, but the vast irony of it all is that the weapons are so devastating that they cannot be used (by any half-sensible mind, at least!) ... but weaponry and power are indeed two very different things, but common sense and honesty about these weapons and power facilities need to be maintained. The absolute farce of the safety button's flaw and why it wasn't fixed immediately, and anything like it, cannot be allowed to happen.
One of the pissier little complaints has been the use of "Comrade", however the writer had fewer instances of that until a woman who was there in Ukraine at the time went through the script and added in more instances of "Comrade".
As for Emily Watson's character - aye, makes total sense to have a representative single character to cover dozens and dozens of different people, again for narrative purposes, but it was nice to see that they flagged that up in the closing montage.
Anyway ... hopefully there'll be a nice Blu-Ray release of this. I'll certainly be picking it up! Great to see that the show has been receiving high acclaim from critics and viewers alike, and is getting seen more and more. It's a wonderfully written piece of historical drama. Certain choices that Mazin made in the first episode quite impressed me too - such as showing the suicide straight away (in case anyone Googled it and had that event 'spoiled' for them), and to show the explosion far in the distance through a kitchen window and within the first ten minutes. Conventional writing wisdom would have had the explosion nearer the end of episode one, but to show what lead towards it in the final episode in the context of the trial was an excellent way to pace it.
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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Originally Posted by MinionZombie
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