Eve Of The War
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Day of the Triffids (TV Serial)
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Author:  Loz [ Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Day of the Triffids (TV Serial)
This was a very good adaptation of the book unlike the film. Anyone out there remember it or seen it since it was aired back in the early 80's?
Author:  Klaatu [ Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:57 pm ]
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I remember this...it was pretty good.
I actually saw a couple of the prop "Triffids" at an exhibition in the 80's
They were impressive.
Author:  oever532 [ Mon Aug 01, 2005 6:19 pm ]
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Jeff Wayne read the book too, he said it himself on the DVD Documentary...
Author:  morrisvan [ Mon Nov 20, 2006 10:58 pm ]
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Yes I saw "The Day of the Triffids" and have never forgotten it. It was repeated in 1984 and there were plans to release it on video in the 1990s bu they fell through. So I'm really glad it's on DVD now. The triffids were very impessive. Some people felt they were too beautiful but that was the whole point. The idea being that any sighted person would be attrcted to them whereupon they would be stung. Also the effects designer, Steve Drewett, had worked in the Natural History Museum so he based it on the pitcher plant.

What I liked most was the atmosphere that the whole world had ended, and its things such as a dead body in Parliament Square beneath Churchill's statue, a frightened woman clutching foodstuffs to her and Piccadilly Circus deserted and tendrils hanging from Eros that I remember. It was from a time when British TV confidently did Telefantasy and which they seem tohave re-discovered recently.
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:33 pm ]
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:D John Wyndham, another great British author, most of his books are about civilisation on it's knees waiting for the final blow, That's what I like about British Sci/Fi, It's down to Earth, the every-day folk, usually seen through the eyes of an individual (you could say the same of H. G Wells) American Sci/Fi tends to be big, on a Galactic scale, such as Star Wars, StarTrek, Stargate SG-1 or Battlestar Galactica :-k God how those Americans love to stick 'STAR' in their titles. :lol: Don't get me wrong I enjoy all these shows, it's just that the Brits deal with the individual more, so it's easier to empathize with an individual character.

If you can get BBC4 on Freeview, they are showing The Day Of The Triffids at 8.30pm on Mondays, :a009: Sadly you've missed the first two episodes.
Author:  Alland [ Fri Dec 22, 2006 12:30 am ]
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Since we're talking about Wyndham, has anyone ever read the novel variously titled "The Kraken Wakes" or "Out of the Deeps"? In it, aliens (who are never seen or described) migrate to Earth, living only in the deepest parts of the oceans. The narrator, part of a husband-and-wife team belonging to the mythical EBC (English Broadcasting System, NOT the BBC, as the protagonists constantly have to remind people), cover the migration and subsequent war virtually from the start, with ships being sunk wholesale, nukes being let off in the ocean depths, flimsy "sea tanks" attacking human coastal communities, and the ice caps being melted. It's nowhere near as famous as "Trifflids" or "The Midwich Cuckoos", but it's still a great book.
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Fri Dec 22, 2006 1:49 am ]
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I think "The Kraken Wakes" is a better book than 'The Day of the Triffids' I like the way the lights in the sky and the tanks from the sea are never proven to be linked, you are always wondering whether Wyndham has something else up his sleeve that he's going to spring upon you at the last moment, although he seldom does you never can be sure and that's what keeps you turning pages.
I was never overly impressed with "The Midwich Cuckoos" but thought "The Chrysalids" one of his best.

His full name was 'John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris' poor sod [-(
Author:  morrisvan [ Sat Dec 23, 2006 4:48 pm ]
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On the subject of "The Kraken Wakes" it was dramatised on BBC Radio in 1998 with Jonathan Cake (best known for playing Oswald Mosley in a 1998 Channel 4 drama on the notorious British fascist) and Saira Todd from the nineties TV drama "Playing the Field". Nigel Kneale was also asked to adapt the book for television around 1960 but turned it down.

In the same year "Chocky" was also dramatised. Owen Teale (who played the cannibal leader in the "Countrycide" episode of "Torchwood") and Kathy Tyson (from the 1986 film: "Mona Lisa")were Mr and Mrs Gore, Sasha Dhawan was Matthew Gore and Chocky was played by Kathryn Hunt. It was a very good and at times moving production with a haunting soundscape. Both plays were issued on cassette but have since been deleted. However with the recent sci-fi releases on BBC audiobooks, they coud be re-issued on CD.
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Sat Dec 23, 2006 7:59 pm ]
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BBC Radio 7 did an unabridged reading of the "The Kraken Wakes" in half hour episodes back in 2004 and repeated in 2005 it was narrated by Stephen Moore, best known for his role as Marvin the paranoid android from 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' I recorded them and burnt them to CD :D
Author:  morrisvan [ Sun Dec 24, 2006 7:04 pm ]
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John Wyndham along with Arthur C. Clarke, , Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Iain Banks and Stephen Baxter is one of the pioneering British sci-fi writers, though he's sometimes been accused of creating "cozy catastrophes" by critics. There isnt anything cozy about Wyndham though. Friends and family recall that he suffered periods of unemployment before and after the war, and that he had some horrific experiences during his wartime service; some of it turning up in his fiction. The idea of worldwide blindness in "Day of the Triffids" is quite chilling and it was well depicted in the TV version, and to an extent, the 1962 film. "The Kraken Wakes" has gained a new relevance with concerns over flooding and the melting ice caps, while in the book's last third there are references to a civil war breaking out.
One book of Wyndham's that is rarely mentioned is "Web" which he completed before his death in 1969 but was not published until ten years later. In it a millionaire plans to develop a remote Pacfic island only to find it inhabitated by an intelligent species of spider. Obviously it was an attempt by Wydham to do something different, and it could be a possible feature film. It might be difficult though with it's subject matter and also it might be technically difficult as the book has scenes of spiders flying through the air and surging en-masse.
My personal favourite is of Wyndham's work is "Pawley's Peepholes". One of his short stories it features an English town invaded by tourists from the far future who make a nusiance of themselves. Eventually the townsfolk turn the tables by advertising that visitors can come and see time travellers from the future. Recently BBC4 dramatised another of his stories: "Random Quest" in which a scientist is propelled into a parallel universe where he finds he is a sci-fi writer with a wife angry over an affair he's had. It starred Samuel West and Kate Ashfield and was adapted by Richard Fell who also scripted the remakes of "The Quatermass Experiment" and "A for Andromeda". BBC4 also did a drama-documentary of Wyndham with Chris Langham, but because of his recent personal difficulties it's unlikely to be repeated.
While we're on the subject, has anyone heard the 1968 radio version of "Day of the Triffids" which was released by BBC Audiobooks in July?
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Sun Dec 24, 2006 9:05 pm ]
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I saw the BBC4 evening on Wyndham a few weeks ago.
Wyndham asked Brian Aldiss if he would like to co. write the 'Web' with him, but Aldiss declined.
I saw 'Random Quest' and wasn't impressed, it may have been a better short story than a play, some author's work just don't work on the screen.
Yes I have heard of the 1968 radio version of 'Day of the Triffids' I believe it's a dramatization, I didn't bother getting it as BBC7 did an unabridged broadcast of 'Day of the Triffids' a couple of years ago, which I recorded and saved on CD. :D
Author:  Loz [ Tue Dec 26, 2006 1:31 pm ]
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I caught a copule of Triffids Episodes on BBC 4. Amazing what I had remembered almost exactly the same.
Great stuff.
Chrysalids was my favourite. I read an adaptation for young peoples theatre recently and it was awful. the writer had cut so much out.
Author:  craigr [ Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:51 am ]
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Resurrecting another old thread...
I saw this version in the 1980's when I was a teen, and was very impressed with it. Way better than the classic old movie, and I felt that it portrayed things as they might actually occur if it were real; civilisation collapses, individuals struggle to survive (and revamp their concepts of society in the process). Thought-provoking stuff. After all these years, I still don't have a copy of my own. Must find one...
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Mon Nov 17, 2008 10:57 pm ]
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'The Day of the Triffids' is very similar to 'The war of the worlds' both books are more about people and how they cope with a world falling apart around them, than they are about Martians or Walking vegetable.
Both books have large portions of story without any Martians or Triffids in it and both stories are written from a personal account viewpoint.

I like them both very much.
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