So I’m a late convert to the Apple TV series Silo. There are so many post-apocalyptic movies/shows that they’re a bit overwhelming and, let’s face it, somewhat cliché. Yet the series is streaming Season 3 so I gave it a try. Now I’m hooked. Silo portrays a neo-Medieval world in which survivors of some yet-to-be identified apocalypse live in a gargantuan “silo” that has over a hundred levels, scavenging and recycling lost technologies and materials, ruled by a bureaucratic overlord known as Judicial. It has a great sense of mystery about the creation of the silo—or silos, plural, because apparently there are 51 of them, each housing some 10,000 people, although by start of Season 3 we know of only two of them, Silos 17 and 18.
Rebecca Ferguson (of Mission Impossible fame) stars as Juliette Nichols, an engineer of sorts, who is determined to reveal the lies of the Silo overlords. But one reason the series is so watchable is its atmosphere of stubborn decline. The Silo world has very little color. Almost all the visuals are of muted tones, grays and browns and hybrid earth colors. It recreates a Medieval world vibe. Everything seems a bit run-down and moth-eaten.
One thing to note about Medieval cultures/eras: They usually follow periods of progress and learning that culminate in some destructive war, usually a fight over territory: the Bronze Age collapse followed the warfare of the Trojan War era, and the Fall of the Roman Empire ushered in the European Medieval era. There’s often a religious element, a sense of blindly following some belief system. In the Middle Ages the Catholic church in Europe followed such a pattern, including devolving into corrupt forms of “worship” or religious behavior, such as the infamous “indulgences” of the Medieval Catholic church (which paved the way for the Reformation).
In Silo their “bible” is The Pact, supposedly written/created by the Founders, four centuries before the start of the series action. But in Season 3 there’s a new wrinkle: an A.I. Superintelligence that controls the silo and appears to be both protecting and threatening what’s left of mankind. It’s also become quite relevant/timely: While the plotlines involving the present-day Silo people are taking place roughly four centuries in the future, there’s now a plotline that appears to be set in roughly present-day contemporary times: In the series we are at war with Iran, as we are now—though the way TV series are made this was written and filmed much before the present war started. To make matters worse, Iran has detonated a “dirty bomb” in Washington D.C. We then retaliated and encountered strange technology or bio-warfare. This is probably the opening salvos in some WWIII imagined scenario that ends in nuclear destruction. Lord help us!