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One of the things that fascinates me most about Silo is that it’s a postapocalyptic saga set in a planned community that isn’t entirely dystopian. Silo 18’s citizens believe they’re living in a democracy and that they have some degree of free choice available to them — even though there’s always someone sitting in some office or control room making the final decisions. Because the silo’s populace thinks they’re free, they never seemed all that cowed by authority figures. This may be the reason why the silos regularly endure rebellions. Their leaders don’t command respect.
I was thinking about this while watching last week’s episode, in which Sheriff Billings — a good-hearted, well-meaning lawman — kept getting insulted by the people he was trying to interview regarding Orla Kent’s murder. The Down Deep community (Mining, Mechanical, etc.) is often openly contemptuous of anyone in a position of authority, whom they assume only got their position due to their privilege and connections.
So what does that mean to Juliette, who was raised among the ruffians of Mechanical and then elevated by the people to the position of mayor? How does she reward the trust of a community who usually never trusts anyone with a badge or a sash?
This week’s excellent Silo episode — one of the best of the series — derives a lot of its tension from Juliette’s identity crisis. Over and over throughout this hour, she’s asked to make some hard decisions, which, even if she chooses correctly, could lead to a lot of people getting killed. Repeatedly, she flinches. After all, she never asked for this job.
It doesn’t help that the first choice she makes takes a disastrous turn. This episode jumps right into the action, with Robert Sims warning Juliette that Camille has spiked the water with vitamin D+ and Juliette responding by deciding to send Patrick Kennedy and Lukas Kyle on their mission to Silo 17 immediately. This initially seems wise, given that at the end of last week’s Silo we heard the Algorithm tell Camille that something would stop Kennedy and Lukas from making their scheduled dawn excursion. But it ends up not mattering that the pair leaves early. While tracking their progress via radio, Martha hears the buzzing of what sounds like drones. Then she hears what sounds like gunshots. Then she hears nothing — not even static.
The whole Kennedy/Lukas exclusion sequence is magnificently executed by the credited writer, Remi Aubuchon, and the director, Aric Avelino. The crew and the cast draw on what we’ve come to know about Kennedy and Lukas as these two step outside the silo for the first time. Kennedy, still hoping to see a lush green landscape, is disappointed by the devastation. Lukas, who has longed to look at the stars, is stunned and overwhelmed by the full night sky. It’s a haunting moment, cut short by the sounds — and just the sounds — of violence.
This is followed by a bristling conversation between Juliette and Camille, who talk tersely, with lies on their lips and guns behind their backs. (As I said last week, the way these two women have come to despise each other makes for some superior drama.) Only then, 15 minutes into a 55-minute episode, do the opening credits roll. Outstanding.
Juliette is understandably rattled by the apparent loss of Kennedy and Lukas, whom she had effectively ordered to go on this mission. So she shuts down when her allies quickly come up with a new plan. What if Robert could get six passes to Judicial? And what if a team walked in with the remaining gasproof spacesuits and set off a series of explosives, exposing which pipe in the Judicial walls pumps in the Safeguard poisons? Juliette hesitates to approve this scheme, because in the time it would take to find and cap that pipe, hundreds or even thousands of people in Silo 18 could die.
Part of what makes this episode especially strong is that the decisions the characters make aren’t just crucial; they’re personal. Before Kennedy goes outside, his friends remind him of his late wife and how she always wanted to see the outside of the silo before she died. While weighing whether to okay the Judicial mission, Juliette is shaken by Martha’s description of the people who’ll be asleep in their beds when the gas starts flowing. The stakes for everybody are significant.
Juliette is finally persuaded by Bernard, who draws on his own forbidden knowledge to share a story from Silo 18 history. He summons a diary from hundreds of years ago, written by a man named Mission, who recorded the effects of vitamin D+ on the populace after a rebellion. Despite reassurances from the authorities that the disorientation would pass, scores of silo citizens grew so despondent over their lost memories that they threw themselves off the staircase. In other words: Doing nothing may not save many lives.
I appreciate how Bernard sets up this lesson by wistfully recalling the days when he and Robert were in charge and would secretly track down the kind of “holy relics” that IT heads had been seeking for over 300 years. They were looking for “evidence of the before times,” by which he means not just documents of the outside world but also records of what life was like in the silo before past rebellions and memory resets. It’s another example of the Silo 18 world-building that I look for, which has become increasingly rare as the plot’s pace has quickened. It’s also a reminder of the present dangers the silo faces from their overlords.
Not that we aren’t already aware of this. Throughout this episode we’ve also been following Camille, who is alerted by the Algorithm right away when “Lukas Kyle and Patrick Kennedy have been neutralized” and determines from that information that there’s no way to avoid the Safeguard. That thought should be lingering in the viewers’ minds as Juliette’s team heads into Judicial to set their bombs, in an incredibly exciting sequence that is intercut with a scene of Camille — inside Judicial at the time! — grilling Robert.
Ultimately, the sequence resolves with a twist ending, as Martha and Juliette suddenly hear Kennedy again on the radio, alive and (we hope) well. Juliette calls off the bombing just in time. So ends an uncommonly thrilling day inside Silo 18.
The only thing keeping this episode from being a five-star classic is that all the dramatic momentum in Silo 18 keeps getting stalled by flashbacks that are decidedly more low-energy. Most of what we see in these scenes is conversations between Daniel, Helen, and the powerful people who have lately been messing with their lives. These chats take place on a private jet and a helicopter, leading to a spread of farmland outside Atlanta. As the episode ends, Daniel is stunned to see a giant drill, busily digging what will be — I assume — the complex of silos.