Any War of the Worlds fans...

[DonIago]

I never saw the second season because I couldn't stand on my head holding a mile of tin foil to view FOX back then, but I do remember in the commercials for the season two premiere Mason was saying, "Ironhorse and Norton are dead!" I don't know if they were killed offscreen or in just the first episode, but Akin and Paul wouldn't have been in any scenes together.

Ironhorse was killed by two cloned soldiers who were under alien control (as all clones are, in the WOTW-verse). Drake, Akin's character, was killed in the final siege of the humans' original resistance headquarters.

Uh, no...IIRC Ironhorse committed suicide to kill his clone...and I believe his clone had previously killed Drake, but I'm not 100% on that.
This was the first tv show I ever saw to suffer "abrupt change of premise" syndrome. I was always annoyed that we were never given an explanation.
Watched it when I was young enough that some of the content was just...not fun. I even have the novelization of the pilot.

 

[Anthony Sabre]

Watched it when I was young enough that some of the content was just...not fun. I even have the novelization of the pilot.

The show is surprisingly dark. Watching it again is making me remember why I liked the show but didn't always want to watch when I was younger. The older grounds keeper guy, Kensington I think, got choked to death by an alien in the ep I watched tonight. I kept waiting for someone to show up and save him but no, he got choked out. The alien then threw him back in the elevator and sent him up to be found.

 

[Borjis]

Wasn't "Sylvia" from the original movie reprising here role?

 

[Anthony Sabre]

Wasn't "Sylvia" from the original movie reprising here role?

Yes. Ann Robinson plays a psychic. She's been in two episodes so far.

 

[God Magnus]

I really enjoyed S1 of WotW, but season 2's reboot was just a bit much for me. I remember watching just to see how the war would be resolved, what happened to the characters etc. but the whole time I was hoping they'd explain why the heck the world went to hell in the matter of a year. Mind you, I like the concept of an underground resistance group against an alien invasion, but when you go from the relatively "normal" world of S1 into the cyberpunk-esque/post-apocalyptic/dark/gritty world of S2 it really makes you think "WTF?!"

 

[Anthony Sabre]

Damn. This show just gets better and better. Just watched Prodigal Son. Blackwood meets his new nemesis Quinn, an alien left over from the '53 invasion in bacteria resistant human body. Quinn is played by John Colicos, who I believe played Kor in Star Trek. Anyway, they just took their info before the United Nations Security Council and warned them of the upcoming war. This is a show I'd like to see reimagined, rebooted, rewhatever as long as it came back.

 

[Gojirob]

I have to admit I gave up because I just could not see even a glimmer of hope for the heroes. I don't mind dark, but the way it was plotted (which is neccesary to make it seem like a challenge) my mind couldn't reason out why these guys even stood the slightest chance in hell. I know mine to be a minority opinion. It certainly delivered the chills.

On a lesser note (MUCH lesser) I always felt that Earth Final Conflict S5 ripped off the 'compromised humans are everywhere at once' theme from WoTW. Mind you, in this case, it wasn't scary or well told--just annoying.

BTW, I read that the basically doomed kid in the pilot was supposed to be part of a running gag til they ditched it.

 

[Aragorn]

You know what show had a premise that was doomed from the start? Threshold. How were they going to stop the alien infection/invasion when the threats were growing exponentially on a daily basis and they were a team of like six?

 

[Anthony Sabre]

You know what show had a premise that was doomed from the start? Threshold. How were they going to stop the alien infection/invasion when the threats were growing exponentially on a daily basis and they were a team of like six?

Funny you should mention that show. It's on my list to buy next. I didn't see it during its run.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Damn. This show just gets better and better. Just watched Prodigal Son. Blackwood meets his new nemesis Quinn, an alien left over from the '53 invasion in bacteria resistant human body. Quinn is played by John Colicos, who I believe played Kor in Star Trek. Anyway, they just took their info before the United Nations Security Council and warned them of the upcoming war. This is a show I'd like to see reimagined, rebooted, rewhatever as long as it came back.

i loved the first season...i thought the second had potential, but would have liked a blend..where the "new" aliens pretend that they have come to earth to stop the "old" aliens...but it's really a new kind of invasion plot.


As for it being rebooted --it might be conceivable to have it return as a Saturday night Sci-Fi channel movie (after the series marathon, of course)...but have it a sequel to season 1 in some way (which is 20 years later -- can you believe it? ). i think they can afford the old actors...maybe blend in the show as flashbacks.

They could use some elements of season 2 (the lead alien was creepy in an appropriate way), and update the show...

 

[Harvey]

You know what show had a premise that was doomed from the start? Threshold. How were they going to stop the alien infection/invasion when the threats were growing exponentially on a daily basis and they were a team of like six?

I've only seen part of one episode, so I'm hardly the authority on the subject, but didn't Braga or one of the other writers mention that the threat was going to get exponentially more serious as the series went on, and that the actual title of the series would change each year to reflect this?

 

[Kryton]

I was amused to see Norton playing Corinne's dad on an episode of "Strange Days at Blake Holsey High" 3 or 4 years back. That was ALSO a Canadian-based show, but it was shot in Kitchener and not Montreal or Vancouver, so a bit of a commute from Canada's two main entertainment centers.

Note also that the guy who played Colonel Ironhorse co-starred in the first Predator movie...he's the one who points out to Jesse Ventura he's bleeding and The Body uses the line that ended up on his autobiography: "I ain't got TIME to bleed!"

Loved WotW season 1, they totally lost me (and even the local station carrying the series) just a few episodes into season 2. One of my favorite parts of season 1 was the oddness of the triumvirate aliens, always function in sets of three and likewise gearing their tech (adapted from stolen Earth tech) to the same 3-angle motif.

 

[Jack Bauer]

You know what show had a premise that was doomed from the start? Threshold. How were they going to stop the alien infection/invasion when the threats were growing exponentially on a daily basis and they were a team of like six?

I've only seen part of one episode, so I'm hardly the authority on the subject, but didn't Braga or one of the other writers mention that the threat was going to get exponentially more serious as the series went on, and that the actual title of the series would change each year to reflect this?

That's correct.

WotW was pretty good in season 1. The second season was pretty bad. It was altered so much it seemed as if it was a totally different show,

 

[Top41]

I think I'm the only person on the planet who prefers season two to season one. I loved the darkness of it, and the two alien bad guys, Malzor and Mana. And Adrian Paul was damn hot in the show.

I haven't seen season one in ages--I remember liking it at the time, but it was season two when I really got into the show. And then it got cancelled.

I watched this every Saturday night along with Friday the 13th the series which is not about Jason Voorhees, Freddy's Nightmares, tales from the darkside.

Heh, I totally watched Friday the 13th the Series, too! I've heard it's coming out on DVD as well. I really loved that show--I can't wait to rewatch that. I think the concept was pretty cool. I used to watch both shows and TNG together on Saturdays.

 

[Aurian]

I love WoftW.. it was one of my first real sci-fi loves actually.. Both seasons had their good points.. I never quite got over the death of Ironhorse- my first crush.. since then i have learned to deal with my favorite characters always ending up dead eventually..

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

And then there was Earth: Final Conflict, which was rebooted pretty much every season. In fact, many sci-fi shows made in Canada seem to have been drastically changed at least once: Viper, MANTIS, Sliders, Airwolf, WOTW...

I quite liked the second season over the first, which IMO got pretty formulaic:

-Aliens hatch evil plan
-Scientists find clues to evil plan to conquer earth
-Aliens kill one or more of Ironhorse's military team and/or guest characters and inhabit their bodies
-Scientists discover key scientific fact about aliens and/or their plan
-Minority guy in wheelchair makes plucky remark
-Military team slaughters aliens
-Forced laughter at the end of the episode

I'm generalizing, but I was rapidly losing interest in the show through the season (while ironically my interest in Trek was exponentially growing). There were some pretty good episodes, mind you - the time travel episode was particularly good. But when things suddenly switched up and the team was up against the wall versus the aliens and a government that didn't care anymore, everything made more sense.

I think they should have stuck with the original aliens, but the Morthrai were still pretty cool. But yeah, it was the first time I also saw a Desert Eagle on TV (with spiffy futuristic sights or something) and immediately wanted to kill pale-looking aliens in pale prison uniforms too.

Mark

 

[FordSVT]

Got talking about WotW in another thread so forgive me if I resurrect this one, didn't feel like four months was too long.

So, was there any explaination given on screen or maybe even off (novel, interview) for why Earth was such a different place in season two?

And is it really at all believable that the general public could have forgotten the invasion if it was as depicted in the '53 film? It wasn't contained to some small town or even a single city, it was a worldwide event at it's climax. You'd no more forget it than you would WW2!

 

[Kryton]

Seems like it was just a whole new creative crew, brought on just before the end of S1 (to kill off Norton and Ironhorse) and the re-mold the whole thing into a different creative vision.

Which pretty much sucked, IMO.

(The whole "forgetting the '53 invasion" thing was a production conceit that you had put your "suspension of disbelief" gene into overdrive to make it work...but if you were able to, then yeah. Otherwise, it wasn't a show meant for you.)

 

[Morpheus 02]

i hated the second season premise of "post apocalyptic world out of nowhere" setting...though the time of "Almost Tomorrow" sounded cool at the time.

As for "forgetting" the '53 war. Well, in 1938 , a whole country was made to believe in a war that did NOT exist, so it's conceivable that the opposite could be true. TV was still in its infancy back then, and no internet. So it it could still be relatively well hid.

Also, the social consciouness might have been this -- whereas the Holocaust was man made, and we had total control over, people over the years have pured energy & resources to make sure that future generations, who couldn't conceive of mass death, would understand and then act to prevent future occurances. (As opposed to the Plague, which also killed many many people, but yet that barely registers in people's minds).

With the alien invasion, it was nothing we could have prevented, and really nothing that we did to actually stop it. It was the cold (and some would say, by entension, God's intervention, as implied in the '53 movie) that stopped the aliens. SO rather create a paranoia that would make every day a hopeless worry that we'd get invaded again, the leaders of the time chose to ignore it, and try to make life "normal".


Well , that would be my explanation of it.

 

[Kryton]

It wasn't the cold...it was bacteria and the Tri-aliens inability to counter-act it. The smallest of us defeated the invaders. That was the twist of the '53 film (and a not-insignificant part of the original Wells story). They did put a "God-spin" on it, but a simple case of bacteriorlogical studies would have been equally correct...for their time, it was more important to put a deity in the picture, but no deity is required for the bacteria explanation.