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Has the new War of the Worlds series been discussed here yet? Yesterday I watched the first episode. Here I have to come over all DracoM and ask why it wasn't possible (for once!) to steer a little closer to Wells's original, which made a deep impact on me at an early age and which still springs immediately to mind whenever I see or hear placenames in Surrey. Updating it to the Edwardian era, inserting the forbidden-love story as a way of bringing in "contemporary relevance", making the tripods (am I right about this? I haven't looked at the book for ages) much larger than they were originally described... all of this seemed unnecessary. I guess I'll get over it. What interests me most about the story is the way it depicts an alien invasion at a time when such a thing had never really been imagined. Is that aspect stressed sufficiently? Maybe. Interesting how the myopic politicians immediately blame "the Russians" when in the Edwardian period it would surely have been "the Germans" who'd be accused of mounting a deadly attack (as indeed they eventually did). Luckily they stopped short of mentioning Putin by name.
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Richard Tarleton
Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostHas the new War of the Worlds series been discussed here yet? Yesterday I watched the first episode. Here I have to come over all DracoM and ask why it wasn't possible (for once!) to steer a little closer to Wells's original, which made a deep impact on me at an early age and which still springs immediately to mind whenever I see or hear placenames in Surrey. Updating it to the Edwardian era, inserting the forbidden-love story as a way of bringing in "contemporary relevance", making the tripods (am I right about this? I haven't looked at the book for ages) much larger than they were originally described... all of this seemed unnecessary. I guess I'll get over it. What interests me most about the story is the way it depicts an alien invasion at a time when such a thing had never really been imagined. Is that aspect stressed sufficiently? Maybe. Interesting how the myopic politicians immediately blame "the Russians" when in the Edwardian period it would surely have been "the Germans" who'd be accused of mounting a deadly attack (as indeed they eventually did). Luckily they stopped short of mentioning Putin by name.
Quite why the Russian would have thought there might be Japanese patrol boats in the North Sea has never been satisfactorily explained, to the best of my knowledge - stupidity, perhaps.
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Richard Tarleton
Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostNever mind all that! I want to know how the Astronomer Royal had access to a recording of the Cockaigne Overture, 19 years before it was first recorded!
There's a lot of it about - in the first episode of The Crown, Brenda and Philip were seen watching breakfast TV 11 years or so before it was invented....
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Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostNever mind all that! I want to know how the Astronomer Royal had access to a recording of the Cockaigne Overture, 19 years before it was first recorded!
I was about to say I quite enjoyed the first episode but that the scene with the gramophone was ridiculous. You’ve just placed a nice juicy cherry on that trifle
Interesting points from RB and RT. I hadn’t twigged the updating point - only by 10 or 20 years from when the book was written surely? Either way, the idea of extraterrestrial invasion was a pretty radical one for the time, I agree, and this still comes across I thought.
Talking of updating, there’s an interesting juxtaposition with the re-run of this documentary about the Welles Wells - some fascinating detail: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f86lh
Last edited by Nick Armstrong; 20-11-19, 13:29."...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostHas the new War of the Worlds series been discussed here yet? / ... / What interests me most about the story is the way it depicts an alien invasion at a time when such a thing had never really been imagined. Is that aspect stressed sufficiently? Maybe...
The War of the Worlds remains one of our best-loved science fiction narratives. At the time of its publication in 1898, it reflected the pre-war anxieties of Victorian England in a gripping novel o…
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H. G. Wells's famous science fiction novel imagines what would happen if Martians did to Great Britain what Europeans did to Tasmania.
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Originally posted by vinteuil View Post... but HG Well’s novel was based on an alien invasion that had actually occurred - the invasion of Tasmania by Europeans, with disastrous consequences for the indigenous populations -
The War of the Worlds remains one of our best-loved science fiction narratives. At the time of its publication in 1898, it reflected the pre-war anxieties of Victorian England in a gripping novel o…
.
H. G. Wells's famous science fiction novel imagines what would happen if Martians did to Great Britain what Europeans did to Tasmania.
.
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Originally posted by vinteuil View Post... but HG Well's novel was based on an alien invasion that had actually occurred - the invasion of Tasmania by Europeans, with disastrous consequences for the indigenous populations -
The War of the Worlds remains one of our best-loved science fiction narratives. At the time of its publication in 1898, it reflected the pre-war anxieties of Victorian England in a gripping novel o…
.
H. G. Wells's famous science fiction novel imagines what would happen if Martians did to Great Britain what Europeans did to Tasmania.
.
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Originally posted by Caliban View PostEither way, the idea of extraterrestrial invasion was a pretty radical one for the time, I agree, and this still comes across I thought.
I wasn't aware of the Dogger Bank episode. I guess I was placing the adaptation closer to 1914 than to 1904. (Nor did I recognise the Elgar but that won't surprise anyone!)
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Some confusing time-shifts and plot-stopping Sunday-evening-TV family matters apart (he's my baby brother! I'm carrying his child! etc...), I enjoyed this War of the Worlds rather more than the dreadful, worthy predictability of World on Fire or the endless explanatory/expository dialogue of Dark Materials (how I longed for someone to crack a joke; and as for the female characters, O-M-G....can't get on with those talking cuddly toy daemons either....qua TV drama, they seem oddly superfluous...as for human-urged animal-on-animal cruelty, well I'm outta there...)
I just hope WotW gets deeper into the bleakest, red-tinged apocalypse, before everyone gets a cold....
But it is up against that near insurmountable challenge of the Haskin and Spielberg films, both pretty compelling...Last edited by jayne lee wilson; 20-11-19, 15:17.
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Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View PostSome confusing time-shifts and plot-stopping Sunday-evening-TV family matters apart (he's my baby brother! I'm carrying his child! etc...), I enjoyed this War of the Worlds rather more than the dreadful, worthy predictability of World on Fire or the endless explanatory/expository dialogue of Dark Materials (how I longed for someone to crack a joke; and as for the female characters, O-M-G....can't get on with those talking cuddly toy daemons either....qua TV drama, they seem oddly superfluous...as for human-urged animal-on-animal cruelty, well I'm outta there...)
I just hope WotW gets deeper into the bleakest, red-tinged apocalypse, before everyone gets a cold....
But it is up against that near insurmountable challenge of the Haskin and Spielberg films, both pretty compelling...
World on Fire - watched episode 1. OK. Recorded the rest but may not prioritise watching it all.
Dark M - may be a premature judgement but decided it was not for me.
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