![]() Shutting down the generator too long will cause a devastating explosion, and turning it back on before the job is finished will shred the workers inside and likely shake the engine apart anyway. In order to fix the ancient steam-powered turbine, working class grease monkeys from the silo’s “downdeep” levels must turn off the engine and crawl inside the engine in order to bang its pieces back into shape. This episode sees brilliant engineer Juliet Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) and her team tasked with repairing the silo’s malfunctioning generator. The tragedy here is that Silo ’s third episode, “Machines,” demonstrates how much better the premise could work at an episodic pace rather than a serialized one. ![]() Most of the smaller mysteries or character conflicts peppered throughout the season are relatively slight, which makes the pace of the season-long mystery plot feel interminably slow. ![]() But, on the grander scale, Silo tips its hand far too early, letting the audience in on the nature of its central mystery hours before the protagonists are even on the trail. The Silo’s government forbids certain technological advancements for reasons that seem arbitrary to civilians, but which have sinister implications to the audience. For example, the people of the Silo seem to be unaware of the very concept of swimming, which heightens the danger in a water-related crisis. Sometimes this results in devilish dramatic irony. Silo ’s most troublesome storytelling hurdle is built into its premise: The audience begins the show with more information than most of its characters, which means that we spend almost the entire show two steps ahead of the mystery they’re trying to solve. It’s not outright dull, but it’s not as clever of a mystery as the setup deserves, nor is it a compelling enough character drama to make up the difference. ![]() Like The Matrix, Silo is a high-concept sci-fi spin on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, but where that 1999 bulletproof classic employs this device to tee up grander meditations on the nature of reality, power, and free will, Silo uses it as the backdrop for run-of-the-mill puzzle box thriller. Immediately, the audience is clued into the likelihood that the people in charge of this closed system are hiding the truth about their world from the populace, and it’s up to a few daring rebels to sniff out the truth. Their only view to the world outside shows them a barren wasteland, littered with the bodies of each person who’s ever dared to venture to the surface. Generations have lived and died there for at least two centuries, but no one knows for sure how long they’ve been there or why they were forced underground to begin with. Silo takes place in a totally isolated society, a 150-story-deep underground bunker that is the only world its 10,000 residents have ever known. ![]()
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