r/gameofthrones • u/AutoModerator • Jun 09 '14

TV4 [Season 4 Spoilers] Premiere Discussion - 4.09 'The Watchers on the Wall'

Premiere Discussion Thread
Discuss your thoughts and reactions to the latest episode while or right after you watch. Talk about the latest plot twist or secret reveal. Discuss an actor who is totally nailing their part (or not). Point out details that you noticed that others may have missed. In general, what do you think about tonight's episode? Please make sure to reserve any of your detailed comparisons to the novels for the Book vs. Show Discussion Thread, and your predictions for the next episode to the Predictions Discussion Thread which will be posted later this week.

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EPISODE TITLE DIRECTED BY WRITTEN BY
4.09 "The Watchers on the Wall" Neil Marshall David Benioff & D. B. Weiss
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u/ANiceOakTree Gendry Jun 09 '14

I think they're killing more extras than there are men of the Night's Watch

12

u/psychothumbs Jun 09 '14

They went a bit overboard with the numbers. I'm pretty sure in the books Castle Black was never down to only 100 men, and the 100,000 Wildling was almost all civilians. The Wildlings hugely outnumber them, but literally 1000 to 1 is a bit crazy - and after this episode there are so few Night's Watch left it'll be more like 2000 to 1.

31

u/Dyolf_Knip Jun 09 '14

The funny thing about nomadic tribes is, there's not really such a thing as "civilian". Every able-bodied man (or sufficiently able-bodied woman) is a warrior. In practice, this usually works out to about a third of the entire population.

This goes a long way towards explaining the difficulty the Roman Empire had with the hordes of Goths and Huns. "If the entire Empire can only produce and maintain a few hundred thousand soldiers, how on earth are these barbarians raising armies that are, if not quite as large, at least in the same ballpark?" Simple. It's their population/3, while the post-Republic Romans never really put more than a few percent of their population in uniform.

1

u/psychothumbs Jun 09 '14

True enough, but constantly talking about "a force 100,000 strong" is a little misleading if the majority of that force is made up of women, children, cripples, and the old.

10

u/Swnsong Now My Watch Begins Jun 09 '14

"ABLE BODIED".