As I am reading through Mike Avila’s The Man in the High Castle, Creating the Alt World, I am reminded why I was drawn to the show in the first place: It’s all in the details. I’m going to focus on Season 4 and the things that stood out the most (if I were to write about every little background prop, this would be a door stopper that I’d never finish!).
Battle of Denver
 | Accurate street names – when they mentioned Colfax ave., I was ecstatic at the attention to detail and taking the extra time to get it right. On the left is a map from my trip to Denver back in February. Colfax Ave. is circled in red. |
Winter Solstice
I was amazed at how much thought and research went into creating the alt worlds of High Castle, especially when they had to figure out how societies would evolve and what kind of holidays would they celebrate.
Himmler (the real Himmler) was big into paganism and incorporated it into the SS [1][2]. I wondered what a Reich Christmas would look like, and the creative team at High Castle did their homework. Circled on the lower left is a cutout of Odin, a prominent deity in Norse Mythology [3]. It appears as though he is a replacement for Santa Claus.
Circled in the upper left is a banner that reads, “Winter Solstice,” commonly referred to as Yule. For brevity’s sake, I’m going to quote Wikipedia on this:
Yule or Yuletide (“Yule time” or “Yule season”) is a festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht.
The Twilight Zone
Whoever came up with this alternate spin on one of my favorite childhood TV shows deserves a fucking medal. It was pure genius, and I loved every second of it. The writers have stated time and time again that there are parallels between worlds, and this was one of them. Everything was true to the original show in our universe, right down to the music and narrator. It was such a creative twist using Abendsen as the host as a way to turn it into propaganda.
Realistic Technology
During the scene pictured below, the children are being eavesdropped on. When the camera pans to the device on the right, we can hear crackling and static. My immediate thought was there are at least two different factions listening in on them. When you have two different groups using radio to transmit or receive at the same time within close proximity to each other, there will be static and interference on both sides.
I was delighted when we later saw that the children were, in fact, being watched by the Resistance and Hoover and that the static wasn’t just there as a LOOK THEY ARE BEING SPIED ON attention grabber.
And can we just appreciate the alt world maps for a second?
If anyone from @HighCastleTV is reading this, please reproduce this map and sell it! I would love to own one! I still want one of those promo radio sets they sent to random people a few years back…
What was your favorite little detail?
Resources
[1] Ideology of the SS: Attitude Toward Religion
[2] Further reading: Heinrich Himmler
[3] Further reading: Odin
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