The Colony

If ever there was a show to prep you for some kind of shit-hits-the-fan disaster, The Colony on Discovery might be just the show.

The background is this: A massive virus has wiped out most of humanity, leaving animals and only a few scant survivors left to forage some sort of existence out of the aftermath. After being left awake for 36 hours, the first 6 survivors get 15 minutes to scramble for supplies at an abandoned grocery store, and are then left to walk for miles until they come to a place simple labeled 'Sanctuary'. It is a sprawling old factory that from all appearances looks like it was once inhabited by other survivors, but was then abandoned.

The show's cast takes normal people with the best logical skill set for survival: A nurse, machinist, marine scientist, martial arts instructor, doctor, solar energy tech, independent contractor, aerospace engineer, computer engineer, and a mechanical engineer.

Discovery presents the show as a sort of 'pitri dish' experiment, with cameras following the survivors around, and at certain points providing opportunities and challenges for the 'survivors.' The biggest threat that the colonists find is a renegade, leather-clad gang that torments them on a fairly regular basis.

It's hard to gauge the numerous factors the show throws at you: the gangs to a decent job of upsetting the colonists, yet they feel danger in a situation where logic would dictate that they would never really be in harm's way except in what they create themselves. There is no obvious or clear reward for anyone on the show to be better or more 'successful' than another person, and they all seem to do a decent job of reminding each other of the 'reality' of their situation.

There are 3 experts that interject at various times in the show to discuss the psychological, situational, or mechanical details of what is occurring. The psychologist reminds us that if you are put into a bleak enough situation you truly can begin to believe what is occurring and you take the reality around you at face value. This can breed distrust or anger at something that is otherwise relatively mundane or useless for us normally, like bartering and trading.

The situational expert will jump in and give small tidbits about other disasters and how they relate to the colonists, mostly hurricane Katrina, as it is pretty much the only thing we all remember, apparently. The mechanical expert is nice to have, and gives us insight into how the inventions the colonists make work and their often deadly consequences should they screw up.

I honestly don't know if I can believe everything inside the show's reality. They do a good job rationalizing the things they do to the colonists, but with a limited time frame to do everything they seem to create a stress level that might not be there if there was more time to do certain jobs or scenarios. For example, once the colonists 'secure' the Sanctuary, the gangs seem to drop off the radar. Now, they might certainly come back later, but we'll see, I guess.


The Colony gets a definite 'WATCH' from me, if only for the thought-provoking imagery it contains.