War of the Worlds-1988 series...
- Thread starter Joel_Kirk
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Yeah, it was produced by Paramount. The local station that played it scheduled it on Saturdays right before TNG.
Actually, aside from the opening montage, there is no actual evidence in the movie proper that the aliens came from Mars. The extent of it is one guy wondering where the "meteors" were coming from and another guy saying "Mars is close right now." Pure guesswork.
And what's cool is that, in a late first-season episode, an alien played by John Colicos (which is cool enough right there) revealed that their homeworld orbited a star 40 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus. Which tells me that the writers either did their research or made a very lucky guess, because 10 Tauri fits that description and is a plausible candidate star for hosting a habitable planet.
I wouldn't have put it that way, but yes, there were a number of shows in the late '80s and early '90s that featured African-American paraplegic scientists -- Norton Drake here, Miles Hawkins in M.A.N.T.I.S., Julian Wilkes in Viper.
For that matter, the aliens aren't even necessarily from Mars in Wells' novel. There's a passage that suggests that Mars is merely a staging area for their attack on Earth.
My problem in S1 was, it seemed like the writers over-empowered the aliens. There was no weakness or flaw they could not overcome, no advantage the heroes had they could not only negate, but turn 1000% against them. Now, that sounds a lot like robust villains providing the needed conflict and challenge for our heroes, or in other words, duh.
But watching it, as far as I can recall, it seemed like there was no way in hell the heroes could ever, ever put a verifiable block to anything the aliens were doing. Yet I knew that at some point, they would almost have to, and given the edge the aliens seemed to have, I wondered how such a setback could seem anything but weak and forced. That, and the amnesia, forced me away from something I wanted to watch.
Years later, on top of its other flaws, the infamous S5 of Earth Final Conflict seemed to repeat the 'infinite-advantage-invaders' mistake (IMO) and sure enough, when they got knocked back, it looked as contrived as I always thought it would.
But watching it, as far as I can recall, it seemed like there was no way in hell the heroes could ever, ever put a verifiable block to anything the aliens were doing. Yet I knew that at some point, they would almost have to, and given the edge the aliens seemed to have, I wondered how such a setback could seem anything but weak and forced. That, and the amnesia, forced me away from something I wanted to watch.
Years later, on top of its other flaws, the infamous S5 of Earth Final Conflict seemed to repeat the 'infinite-advantage-invaders' mistake (IMO) and sure enough, when they got knocked back, it looked as contrived as I always thought it would.
^But is that really a mistake? Isn't it a hallmark of the horror genre that the monsters are ultimately unstoppable? How many times did Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, Jason Voorhees, or Freddy Kruger come back from the dead? That's kind of what makes it horror -- the hopelessness, the very real possibility that the heroes will lose. And make no mistake, WOTW: The Series was definitely defining itself as a horror series in the first season.
One could also cite Threshold. While it was on, a lot of viewers complained that the aliens were too powerful, that it would be unbelievable for the heroes to be able to hold them at bay and stop the spread of the mutating signal. But that was the whole point -- the intent was that as the series went on, the heroes would fail to stop the aliens from gaining a foothold and eventually conquering the world, and that the situation would get worse every season -- from trying to prevent an alien invasion to fighting off an invasion in progress to mounting a resistance after the invasion had succeeded.
One could also cite Threshold. While it was on, a lot of viewers complained that the aliens were too powerful, that it would be unbelievable for the heroes to be able to hold them at bay and stop the spread of the mutating signal. But that was the whole point -- the intent was that as the series went on, the heroes would fail to stop the aliens from gaining a foothold and eventually conquering the world, and that the situation would get worse every season -- from trying to prevent an alien invasion to fighting off an invasion in progress to mounting a resistance after the invasion had succeeded.
War of the Worlds was a Paramount production, yes.
Series creator Greg Strangis was hired originally by Paramount to create Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then he was a producer on the first half of the series' first season when Roddenberry came aboard.
I firmly believe that, even if the heroes blow their chances, they must first have those chances. Otherwise, you end up with a Villain Sue. Another part of horror is realizing that the bad-smelling candle you threw away in Part 1 was a bane to the baddie, now lost, or that you had been chatting with a top evil lieutenant at the donut shop, but because you missed the briefing, you didn't catch it. Hopelessness and keeping on in the face of it is fine. But past a certain level, especially for an episodic series, its harder to sustain interest in an apocalypse log.
Eh, again, maybe without the amnesia.
Eh, again, maybe without the amnesia.
Well, like I said, I watched it for the characters. I'm not a fan of horror, and I thought the stories in the first season were often weak, but I enjoyed watching the cast and characters interacting.
Have you read the comic book Scarlet Traces? The British Empire retro-engineers the technology after the War of the Worlds... The same team also did a War of the Worlds comic as a prequel to their series.
I'm curious about Scarlet Traces, but the idea of the Martian war machines being reverse-engineered goes all the way back to Garrett P. Serviss' Edison's Conquest of Mars, where Thomas Edison figures out how the Martian technology works and uses it to build a fleet of spaceships so humanity can go and conquer Mars. Which they do.
What I mainly remember about the WOTW series were the (usually unintentionally hilarious) GORE!!!!! moments. It'd be trundling along like V or Airwolf or whatever in that flatly lit, characterless 1980s action series way, then out of nowhere you'd see someone's skull be crushed under the wheel of a truck or a person have their heart ripped out of their chest in graphic detail. I think my favourite was when the Triad, or whatever they were called, tested a laser on a prisoner, then the camera moved behind him so we could see them through the steaming fist-sized hole in his head. Classy!
I guess it was the Torchwood of its day, only instead of laughable sex to prove how grown-up it was, it went for laughable violence.
I guess it was the Torchwood of its day, only instead of laughable sex to prove how grown-up it was, it went for laughable violence.
^Interesting you should mention that, because there's a second-season episode that pushed the sex/nudity envelope so far that my local station wouldn't even air it; I had to get it over the antenna from a station 50 miles away. It was one of the three, count 'em, three WOTW episodes involving the aliens sneaking subliminal messages into entertainment, this time into a perfume commercial that was basically a bunch of shots of a naked man and woman in bed together. They showed a lot more skin than you'd ever have expected to see on commercial TV in 1989. And this was a few years before NYPD Blue came along with its supposedly unprecedented-for-commercial-TV levels of nudity and sexual content.
@Gojirob and Christopher:
Those are interesting points, but I remember reading a couple of years back in (IIRC, one of those independently printed magazines that actually was well-written; which gave a listing of episodes and critiques) where it seemed like the aliens had a plan. It was stopped by Blackwood and co.; the aliens wouldn't try to perfect that fouled plan, but they would utilize another plan, which would again be stopped by Blackwood and co....
Towards the end of the 1st season, it seemed like the aliens were getting to the point where they would have been found out; Ironhorse had his Omega squad, and everyday people were coming out of the woodwork and talking about the aliens; it seemed like there would be a big war brewing...
Of course, we had John Colicos' 'Quinn' (an renegade alien who had taken over a human) with his own plan of how things should be: He would play not only the humans, but the aliens. Too, we had another race of aliens--the people from Quarto (?) who showed up, and came off as if they wanted to help the humans...but they also had their own ideas...
All that was dropped for an entirely different storyline for the second season...
I don't deny that it was compelling, and the horror effective. In fact, I'll go so far as to apologize for placing it against s5 of EFC, since I only refer to a plot structure mechanism, not show quality. I will say that its syndie status in a time when my ability to use a VCR was limited to 'Oh Is This On Now--Let Me Record What I Can' - made catching up difficult. What I was able to catch put me off, but I concede it to be an incomplete picture.
The s2 derailing is a damn shame no matter what, though.
The s2 derailing is a damn shame no matter what, though.
Nah, the thing about NYPD was that it was network TV, subject to FCC decency standards. WotW was cable, and cable was as full of nudity back then as it is now. Hell, when I was a kid I used to watched the scrambled channels we didn't pay for just to catch a glimpse of a boob!
The pilot for Stargate SG-1 had nudity too. The problem with a show like SG-1 or WotW, however, is that it often gets shown on channels during time-slots where advertisers and moms don't appreciate T&A bouncing around on screen thus presenting a problem for broadcasters and producers alike.
just wanted to chime in real quick and say that WOTW was a syndicated show. It was on channel 13 in LA when I was in high school. All I remember of the show was the neo gothic cityscape.
I am being driven mad by the references in this thread to what local channel people watched WOTW on.
Do you guys realize how relatively limited in range an American TV station is? Most of us (even those in the STATES) have never heard of the TV stations being mentioned. The references mean NOTHING to the rest of us. The show ran on countless individual local stations all over the country, at whatever day and time the local station chose.
GAH!!!!!!
Do you guys realize how relatively limited in range an American TV station is? Most of us (even those in the STATES) have never heard of the TV stations being mentioned. The references mean NOTHING to the rest of us. The show ran on countless individual local stations all over the country, at whatever day and time the local station chose.
GAH!!!!!!
What I remember of War of the Worlds is not the gratuitous violence.
Rather, it's the commercials during the first season for Roy Orbison collections. Because Orbison passed away during the first season, and someone put out a quickie compilation of all of his greatest hits. "Oh, Pretty Woman." "Oobie Doobie." Things like that.
So I will always associate War of the Worlds with the man in the black sunglasses.
Rather, it's the commercials during the first season for Roy Orbison collections. Because Orbison passed away during the first season, and someone put out a quickie compilation of all of his greatest hits. "Oh, Pretty Woman." "Oobie Doobie." Things like that.
So I will always associate War of the Worlds with the man in the black sunglasses.
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