My Writing Week: Issue 13, Year 5

I am currently watching the second series of the fabulously dramatic and horrific The Walking Dead.  The cable television show is based on a series of graphic novels. Like Battlestar Galactica, it is played dead straight, there is a dearth of humour.  Unlike most  Zombie movies, the cast is not full of gung-ho heroes, cowering cowards and moronic zombie bait.  I think the writers of this series decided that all such stereotypes would have died during the initial stages of the zombie plague.
  

The cast is full of real people, reacting like real people would to a zombie apocalypse. Each in their own way is tough minded and determined to survive. The group is lead by two police officers and a survivalist. One policeman, Rick Grimes quietly sticks to his morals. His wife and boy are among the group. The second policeman, Shane Walsh was Grimes partner before his coma.  Walsh will do anything to survive, especially if there are no witnesses. The survivalist is not the stereotypical southern redneck that he presents as in the first episode. 

Grime’s wife, Lori, hooked up with Walsh when they thought Rick was dead.  She has so far kept this secret from Rick. The two children in the series do what they are told. There are no surly/spoilt teenagers who run off into the night to party, because they would all have been killed by the zombies. The writers of Terra Nova (dinosaurs) and Falling Skies (aliens) might want to think about that.

The Walking Dead has similarities to other zombie and apocalyptic shows. It starts like the movie 28 Days Later with Rick waking up from a coma and unaware that an infection has turned  nearly all the world’s population into zombies. This is an excellent device  to introduce the zombiefied world. We find out what happened while Grimes  explores the hospital and then Atlanta.  A similar approach was also used in Resident Evil.  The Walking Dead is similar to the excellent BBC series Survivors.

The Walking Dead’s plot revolves around the group’s attempts to survive.  The threat of a zombie attack is ever present, but the plot is not just there to fill the space between zombie attacks. That time is used to explore tensions within the group. The series looks very real.  The zombie attacks are extremely gory and lifelike. It’s not the type of series to watch before going to a Bob Katter town hall meeting.  

I really want to claim The Walking Dead as apocalyptic science fiction. It does have science fiction elements: the zombies were caused by a virus or infection and episode six revolves around a CDC scientist trying to find a cure. Once claimed, I would place it on a pedestal far above any other current science fiction shows.