Far Above the Earth...

One hundred delinquent teenagers have been shipped down to a contaminated wasteland. Once up on a time the wasteland was our home planet, the Earth. But we left when it got too messy, too hard to live there. The human race has lived in spaceships above the Earth for about 100 years. Several generations have lived and died on a collection of spaceships over time. At one point the spaceships gathered together to share resources. The renamed themselves and their collection of spaceships, the Ark.

At this point the story makes me think of Starlost, a science fiction series from the 1970s where people lived on a spaceship called the Ark. That Ark was built up of a lot of biospheres, different pockets of humanity who had been on the ship so long they no longer knew about each other and some did not even know they were floating around in space. That Ark was also fleeing a dead/ destroyed planet Earth. There was only one season of Starlost, The 100 has been giving a second season due to start in October. So, the storyline will continue for The 100.

The 100 is a new science fiction series from The CW TV.

The Mysterious, Sometimes Creepy, Inhabited Uninhabited Planet...

The adults stay on the Ark and send down teenagers to test the water, literally. Not that life is a picnic on the Ark but no one knows what the situation is like on the planet. They think it is uninhabited... but it's not. There are Grounders and Mountain Men and animals with strangely divided heads (though still edible apparently).

A few don't make it to the ground. A few are killed off by the toxic mist. A few more are killed by the Grounders. But the teenagers are surviving, building their own camp and creating their own civilization. Clarke is becoming the leader with Bellamy (the self elected leader) by her side. Clarke and Bellamy could evolved into a relationship and they would make the most interesting couple - but, Bellamy appears to have been fully and completely killed off at the end of the first season. I think there is hope for him, however.

Bellamy is the only guy from the Ark who has a sister and Bellamy's sister is in love with a Grounder. A mystery man with a painted face, wearing animal skins, skilled in herbalism and illustration.

Clarke likes Finn who used to like Raven, until he thought he would never see her again and slept with Clarke.

Yes, this is a story about teenagers, created for the US market. Usually, the need to pair everyone into couples annoys me. But, the Bellamy and Clarke thing is interesting enough to be watchable. I can't say the same about Clarke, Finn and Raven (the triangle).

A lot of this show is teenage stuff, young adult fiction. But, the backstory is leaking through and getting into focus. I keep watching to find out what did happen on the planet when mostly everyone seems to have left it. People were left behind and others seem to have come back at some point.

The 100 is more than young adult fiction. The writers are pulling up a real story, with twists and turns to keep viewers guessing. I will be watching for season two in October. Here, it is shown on NetFlix so I can watch season one from the start a few times, commercial free!

The 100 Book by Kass Morgan - mentioned in the show's credits.

The 100 book (by Kass Morgan) doesn't have great reviews on Amazon. Seems it is almost a pre-quel for the series now on television. You don't need to read the book to understand the series but it might give you more of the back story for Clarke and Bellamy.