DBWI: Your favorite episode of the Alternate History TV Series

Marco Incognito

Marco Incognito

I admit that when I heard that the first episode in 2011 would be "What if the Nazis won World War II?" I immediately thought that it was going to be another implausible Nazi Victory scenario, but low and behold it surprised me. I heard that's what it was originally going to be but then some people were fired and the show idea moved to a different studio and a new creative team was brought on. That doesn't really matter for this discussion. Anyway Episode 1's actual title "The Thousand Week Reich" says it all. I always prefer the title more than the subtitle: A World of Laughter, A World of Tears sounds better than "What if Walt Disney became President?" "What Madness is This? Sounds better than "What if the Articles of Confederation were abolished?" and so on.

What I like about the series is that they abandoned the documentary style and told a straight story for an hour, usually self contained like "A World of Laughter, A World of Tears" though the later seasons we did get sequels and that split the fanbase since we didn't get new Timelines but instead got...What Madness is this?...Part....53 or something I don't know. In a weird way I'm glad the series ended in 2019, that way it remains a staple of that decade. With the direction the show was headed I expected them to do "What if the Pandemic never happened?". Anyway I've rambled on long enough. I'd love to hear your favorite episodes and scenes.
 

Kloka

NASA’s Waterloo was a nice little story arc. And Empire of Liberty too!*

*United States of the Americas and Oceania
 
SealTheRealDeal

SealTheRealDeal

The Silver Knight episode was unusual, the cut away gag with the Mughal soldiers listening to the speech of a Unitarian agitator and then mutinying to the chant of "Superpower by 1920! Superpower by 1920!" felt more like something Family Guy would do, but otherwise the story of Lithuanians trying to find themselves after losing most of their empire was pretty neat.
 

trollolol12

The episode of dinosaurs surviving (The Old Kings). I love how they avoid the "dinosauroid" thing and show us a real dinosapiens, and why their biology will prevent them to reach the bronze age in a few decades. The Old Kings 2 was....passable.
 

TheBalkanizer

trollolol12 said:
The episode of dinosaurs surviving (The Old Kings). I love how they avoid the "dinosauroid" thing and show us a real dinosapiens, and why their biology will prevent them to reach the bronze age in a few decades. The Old Kings 2 was....passable.
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You’re the first person I know to like those episodes. Most people I know hate them (I’m ambivalent) but you bring up some good points.
 

trollolol12

TheBalkanizer said:
You’re the first person I know to like those episodes. Most people I know hate them (I’m ambivalent) but you bring up some good points.
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I think i know why: is because, unlike other episodes, the dinosaur episodes where filmed in a documentary style, but i think that was one of the greatest successes of the series. Unlike the other episodes, this episode didn't show any humans, but an species that we can call "alien", so, the documentary style was neccesary (i even loved the implication that the episode was filmed by people from another dimension). I know that, for the episode. were hired Dougal Dixon and Nemo Ramjet, with other dinosaur experts, to create a world where dinosaurs didn't go extinct, and boy, they made it: some of the species were unique, like the aquatic dinosaur.
Unfortunatelly, the second part forgets the fact that dinosapiens can't develope technology faster than humans and use the "OTL events, but with sapient dinosaurs", i can't say it was bad because the avoid OTL nations, and show us different nations for the episode. People say that Nemo Ramjet and Dougal Dixon were so angry at this changes that the former writte a ebook called "Dinosapiens: the complete history", that is online here, where we read that they, at this year, would just be coming out of the Bronze Age, and the latter cooproduced the Discovery Channel mockumentary called "Dino Earth", which premisse is that the asteroid never crashed, and dinosaurs continue evolving to present day.
I can imagine a world where the old creative team weren't fired and the show was released: "Humans evolved, alongside humanoid dinosaurs, and they live in a world were the rest of the dinosaurs barely changed".
 

trollolol12

Second favorite episode: "A Punic Empire", AKA "WI: Carthage won the punic wars". I love the implication at the end of the episode that, in a few decades, Persia would conquer that nation.
 
ramones1986

ramones1986

There are actually three episodes (actually two single episodes and a three-episode special) that I really liked:
  • Muhammad strenghtened Ebionitism as he became its first Patriarch (aka Caliph)
  • The "Paleosiberian" Wank series: Yeniseian, Yukaghir and Chukotko-Kamchatkan
  • The southward migration of Y-haplogroup N clans towards Yellow River and its impact in shaping the general identity of East Asians (genetics, linguistics, culture, etc.)
 
Whiteshore

Whiteshore

ramones1986 said:
There are actually three episodes (actually two single episodes and a three-episode special) that I really liked:
  • Muhammad strenghtened Ebionitism as he became its first Patriarch (aka Caliph)
  • The "Paleosiberian" Wank series: Yeniseian, Yukaghir and Chukotko-Kamchatkan
  • The southward migration of Y-haplogroup N clans towards Yellow River and its impact in shaping the general identity of East Asians (genetics, linguistics, culture, etc.)
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I love how they explore obscure historical topics in later episodes of the series (granted, the cliche topics had been expended in earlier episodes)
SealTheRealDeal said:
The Silver Knight episode was unusual, the cut away gag with the Mughal soldiers listening to the speech of a Unitarian agitator and then mutinying to the chant of "Superpower by 1920! Superpower by 1920!" felt more like something Family Guy would do, but otherwise the story of Lithuanians trying to find themselves after losing most of their empire was pretty neat.
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Another episode with a medieval POD I really liked was Moonlight in a Jar, especially how the Muslim Roman Empire there provides a foil to the Andalusi.
 

Don Corleone

Whiteshore said:
My favorite episode was The Tiger Awakened, with how Tatiana Antonova is portrayed as the main protagonist there.
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Hey now.

Never mention Tatiana without posting pictures!!

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Impirius

Impirius

Russia one and probably indivisible
It has a lot of great moments but my favorites are Bykov assassination that made everything worse in the long term, Kostina seceding with the entirety of Siberia and Chorney appointing Hitler as the leader of Germany at the end.

I'm a smidge sad only that they decided to start with the failure of the White interim government.

Also Green Antarctica
Exploring the continent and reflecting on the nature of civilization in a jurnal log style was the perfect lovecraftian halloween episode.
 
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xie323

I know that this episode was problematic among the left but I rather enjoyed the "Back in the USSA" episode and chuckled at some of the choices for leader, as well as the "Communism is 21st century Americanism" episode even through the latter episode was a bit of a rehash of the former, minus the Communists actually taking power and with Browderism influencing the American left over the New Left due to Browder choosing to not attempt to liquidate the Communist Party to the dems, resulting in the American left being more nationalistic, various small parties appearing from the CPUSA with their different takes on Communism, and Marxism-Leninism somehow having more appeal on the US left.
 
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wolf-gang

wolf-gang

Hey op do we count the ISOT sub-genre or are we keeping it straight alt-history shows?

If it is just Alt-history then I'd say "A dish served cold." the last episode of Timeline 191 season three. It's pretty much just the peace negotiations but I love the dichotomy between the North's jubilation and the dark undertones of the future. (Also I feel Timeline 191 is a perfect example that epic stories are better in animation than live-action)
 
Whiteshore

Whiteshore

xie323 said:
I know that this episode was problematic among the left but I rather enjoyed the "Back in the USSA" episode and chuckled at some of the choices for leader, as well as the "Communism is 21st century Americanism" episode even through the latter episode was a bit of a rehash of the first one but with Browderism influencing the American left over the New Left due to Browder choosing to not attempt to liquidate the Communist Party to the dems, resulting in the American left being more nationalistic, various small parties appearing from the CPUSA with their different takes on Communism, and Marxism-Leninism somehow having more appeal on the US left.
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Well, the Back in the USSA episode's sequel is another fun thing as post-Communist American politics there are shown as exciting as well.
 

xie323

Anyways, what's your favorite dystopian episodes? I particuarly liked the 2-part Black Sun over Europe, which was a reboot of thousand-year reich, despite the unfortunate implications(it was heavily implied someone else led USSR to defeat there).

I thought the SS civil war after the Nazi civil war was a nice twist and that Bryan Cranston was rather chilling in his portrayal as Heydrich and rather appreciated that they didn't go for the original ending where its' heavily implied Heydrich kills himself out of despair at running Germany to the ground(bascically there were storyboards and scripts that show him, heavily drunk, reaching for a pistol in his bunker with the screenplay mentioning that "all of Germany was in ruins, Heydrich has become nothing but Fuhrer of the ashes", and then cut to the WRRF victory over Germany without us knowing what happened next, but the implication is there) since that would have been a cop-out and rather untrue to Heydrich's character. The end shot of the West Russian Revolutionary Front raising the red flag over Germania following Heydrich's execution by the Red Army is a personal favorite scene of mine.

I also liked their take that towards the Draka timeline in "Separated at Birth", feels like a good "take that" to how unfairly wanked the draka was there, especially what happened when the Draka finally won.
 
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Liam Johnson of The Army

Liam Johnson of The Army

My favourite out of the series would have to be the 3 part “The Red Order” An experimental episode which explores an interesting experiment called “Double Blind What If” in which the Episode explores what would the world of “Black Sun Over Europe” think an Allied Victory would look like, and i liked the performances of the various Soviet leaders best.
 
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