Season 1

Season 1
Distributor	AMC
Showrunner	Dave Erickson
Based On	Image Comics' The Walking Dead
Channels	AMC (United States) AMC Global (International) BTTV (United Kingdom) Where Can I Watch Fear The Walking Dead? (Everywhere Else)
Episodes	Pilot

Season 1 of Fear the Walking Dead premiered in August of 2015 and consisted of six episodes.

Documenting the Fall

Not much is known, from a National or International point of view, of the events that led to the fall of civilisation. What information does exist, is partial. In particular there doesn't seem to be any information available on the source or cause of the virus (or other cause).

We can see that much more was known about the crisis than was revealed to the public at the time.

More details in the Main Article.

For example the report in an unknown LA newspaper by the reporter Jason Gibson reporting an unusual incident of domestic violence where a man (Patrick Sutherland) had died and then turned, attacked his family, left the house and had killed and was eating a pet cat when he was shot - many times - by the LAPD.

There's a fascinating single page of a 6 page World Health Organization memo on the "Management of the Deceased Operations Protocol" which describes a protocol clearly designed to reduce the risk to health professionals from the reanimated dead by severely limiting the time that resuscitation can be attempted for. No trace as yet of the other five pages nor any hint of the names which have been redacted from the single page that's emerged.

You can see the protocol in action in Nick's hospital room in the first episode of Season 1, "Pilot"; this example is slightly inconsistent with the protocol described in the memo, in that CPR is continued as the patient is removed from the room on his bed.

None of the medical staff remark on the "new" protocol, despite it being very different to the usual guidelines covering resuscitation and patient DNR statements, so it's probable that the protocol had been in place for some time, certainly days and possibly weeks.

California Executive Order (undated, many details redacted)

FAA Air Traffic Control Directive (undated)

It's becoming clear that, as the emergency progressed, various State and Federal agencies took increasingly wide-ranging actions.

A still from the video watched by Alicia and her friends in "Pilot"

In addition to the information known to police, health care professionals, and presumably governments and armed forces, it's known from eyewitness testimony (Tobias in Ep 2, "So Close, Yet So Far") that information, images of The Infected and possibly video footage was available online for some time before the events shown in "Pilot".

Season 1

Dates

No exact date information is given but there are clues that could be said to indicate a date in the second half of 2010.

• TWD was first aired in 2010
• In the second Fear episode, "So Close, Yet So Far"", the Manawa family run under a sign advertising an event in late 2010.
• In an interview Rubén Blades refers to "November 11th" in a way that suggests it is a date just before the events of Season 1.

It's not all consistent though:

• The extensive use of social media, smart phones and tablets is more consistent with 2015 (the year Fear Season 1 was released) than with 2010.
• Electronic devices, phones and tablets etc. appear to be generic models rather than well known brands and so very difficult to place at a particular date though are all more consistent with 2015 than 2010

Episodes

#	Image	Title	Airdate	Viewers/Rating
01		"Pilot"	23 Aug 2015	13.3 million
		Madison's drug-addict teenage son Nick is hit by a car after running into traffic, she tries to understand what happened to him with the help of her daughter Alicia and her fiancé Travis. They eventually discover it might be linked to the mysterious illness that is spreading quickly through Los Angeles”
02		"So Close, Yet So Far"	30 Aug 2015	11.7m
		While Madison struggles to help Nick through crippling withdrawal symptoms, Travis ventures out to find his son before Los Angeles falls. Alicia desperately want to help her boyfriend Matt.
03	File:The Dog.png	"The Dog"	13 Sep 2015	TBA
		After they escape the riot, Travis, Liza and Chris have found refuge with the Salazars; Madison defends her home
04		"Not Fade Away"	20 Sep 2015	TBA
		Madison and Travis see different sides of the National Guard's occupation in their neighbourhood; the family tries to adapt to the new world.
05		"Cobalt"	27 Sep 2015	TBA
		The National Guard's plan for the neighbourhood is revealed; Travis and Madison make a difficult decision.
06		"The Good Man"	04 Oct 2015	TBA
		As civil unrest grows, and the dead take over, Travis and Madison try to devise ways to protect their families.

Cast

Starring

• Cliff Curtis as Travis Manawa
• Lorenzo Henrie as Chris Manawa
• Kim Dickens as Madison Clark
• Frank Dillane as Nick Clark
• Alycia Debnam Carey as Alicia Clark
• Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza Ortiz
• Mercedes Mason as Ofelia Salazar
• Rubén Blades as Daniel Salazar

Guest Starring

• Patricia Reyes Spíndola as Griselda Salazar

CoStarring

• Keith Powers as Calvin
• Lincoln A. Castellanos as Tobias
• Maestro Harrell as Matt Sale

Background to the Production

Some details came out via quotes from the producers in the trade press even before the series aired.

There is also a series of interviews with the main cast, each talking about the character they play.

Dave Erickson, speaking in July 2015, about a month before the pilot is due to air, told Entertainment Weekly

“	“Ultimately, it’s a family drama. One of the things that Robert Kirkman and I discussed from the very beginning was, we’re starting a little earlier in the apocalypse. And what that allowed us to do in the Pilot and Season 1 is establish our core family, establish the problems and the conflicts that they have, and really let that be the initial world that we live in. And we layer in the onset of the apocalypse, we layer in our first walkers, but it’s really an effort to exacerbate the problems that already exist with Kim Dickens' and Cliff Curtis’ characters and their sort of dysfunctional blended family. It’s really filtering the apocalypse through that.”	”
	— Dave Erickson, E.W.

Perhaps coming at that point from a different direction, Kirkman characterizes them as being "a team" and "in love"

“

"At its core this is a story of Travis and Madison, who are these two schoolteachers that both have kids from previous marriages and are very much in love. One of the things that really excites me about this show is the fact that this is a show about two people who are a team, and they do back each other up. They do love and respect each other. They’re a happy couple, which is something that you don’t see a lot of on cable television these days...So having this interesting couple at the core of this show, fighting against the backdrop of civilization crumbling and the zombie apocalypse, really is the core of things. They’ve got two sets of kids. It’s an interesting situation."

”

Trivia

• “We [in season 1] are loosely covering the period of time that ‘The Walking Dead’s’ Rick was in his coma [in the first few minutes of the first episode]. We’re able to watch and experience the things that he missed,” series creator Robert Kirkman told the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s more of a parallel story than a prequel: Imagine the opening where Rick gets shot and goes in his coma -- that day was probably very close to our day one.”
• FEAR is being shot on digital, rather than film as TWD is, to give it different feel from TWD
• The walkers will be fresher, less decayed and rottted than TWD walkers, they may also be stronger
• "Zero Woods"... “Yeah, we’ll definitely be spending a lot less time in the woods,” says Kirkman “I can say I think we’re not in the woods at all. Yeah, I am pretty sure we are in zero woods this season.”