A brief trip through a blasted world. One with an oddly familiar mouse…

This is a hell of a close out for the first run of episodes. It’s less a story, more a tone poem, as the camera arcs across blasted but oddly peaceful ruins. There’s a hint of the evacuation fields from ‘Exodus’ and the deserts of ‘Red’ but when we see a particularly familiar set of ears we know where we are.

Here.

At Disneyland.

Or at least what’s left of it.

Set to a lovely, Fallout-esque ballad to Tomorrowland, we see the ruins of the once powerful corporation and then, we see a nuclear weapon detonate and wipe them out. The synopsis for the episode reads ‘We’re fucked’. The note from Ruari Robinson has its blood-stained tongue in its cheek and is an ode to how much they love corporations.

It’s a fantastic, gutsy episode to end this first run of six on because it refuses plot and narrative and instead faces down the corporations absorbing everything and everyone and laughs at the fact one day they’ll be gone too. It’s a desolate, dust-riddled laugh but it’s a laugh nonetheless. A bleak peal of giggles floating over the radioactive wastelands, given added postmodern spice by doing so as another colossal corporation scores a colossal hit with the adaptation of Fallout. Given added zeal by the fact this batch of six episodes look and play so well and have been produced on a shoestring. Because while there’s still capitalism in the wastes, there’s also still art. And that, at least, can’t be killed.

Verdict: The first six episodes of A Thousand Suns are out now, as is the start of a making of series. 22 episodes have been announced on the website and I can’t wait to see them. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

http://www.1ksuns.com