Skip to main content

story identification - Miniseries in post-rapture US with good/evil conflict


I remember seeing this dramatic mini-series in the late '90s-'00s, but it may have been created in the '80s. I believe it was an adaptation from a book by a well-known author.



The setting was in the US after some rapture-like event. I don't remember the cause, I just remember that there were a very small number of people left, and almost all of them were critical characters. The portions I remember involved traveling through the desert towards a big city (Las Vegas?), and I believe the final conflict was there in the city. The main story was about this final conflict/showdown between these people who were representing the forces of good and evil. There were definitely some religious themes as well.


There are only two characters I remember. The main character was your generic conflicted Everyman with good morals, so not much detail there. The other was a gentle-giant type who was big and strong but had the mind of a child. I think he ended up being very important towards the end.


Unfortunately that's all I remember right now, but I'm hoping it was popular enough to be obvious to someone. The one series I know it's not is Left Behind. The one I saw was not nearly as directly Biblical.



Answer



It is definitely a The Stand based on Steven's King novel with the same title.


There was no rapture - instead, a deadly biological weapon has been released which has killed 99% of the population (the virus is deliberately introduced to USSR and China to assure mutual destruction).


With time, two groups of survivors emerge: one group is made of people who were dreaming about an elderly woman called "Mother Abigaile", whom later go to create a "Free Zone" - a democratic society in the Boulder, Colorado. The second group follows Randall Flagg, an evil being with supernatural powers, who starts to rebuild an army.


Randall Flagg with/without makeup. enter image description here


With time, both groups became aware of each other and the Free Zoners decide to send infiltrators to Las Vegas - all of them are quickly dispatched by Flagg, with an exception of Tom Cullen - a mentally challenged big man, who has been hypnotised (himself?) to believe that he has been cast out of the Free Zone.


You can see Tom Cullen in the background here: enter image description here



With the conflict becoming inevitable, dying Mother Abigaile sends the remaining council members from the Free Zone to negotiate with Flagg, but one of them breaks a leg on the journey. The rest are captured by Randall's army and are about to be executed when one of Flagg's crazy followers brings a nuclear warhead. Flagg attempts to stop him using a ball of energy, but it is transformed into "a hand of God", which grabs and detonates the warhead, destroying Las Vegas.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...