New 'War of the Worlds' TV miniseries

[arch101]

Hate comes mainly from people who love Wells' original book - and that hate is very well deserved.

YMMV.

I don't really hate any filmed versions (I just hate Tom Cruise and the guys who made year 2 of the series SO radically different and depressing). I think us fans of the book would just love for ONE filmed version to be true to the book. It's really a great story.
PS- At least Speilberg got the machines right- they were EXACTLY as I had always envisioned them. Every other version should just copy them.

 

[Redfern]

I have read that H.G. Wells was disappointed with the illustrations Warwick Goble provided for the original serialized version of the story published in Pierson's Magazine. So much so that when it came time for the narrative to be printed as a hardcover book, he added some new text, having his protagonist (in story) lament the assumptions made by journalists who apparently never actually saw one of the tripods for themselves.

However, Goble's concept, (or rather a resin model kit released by "Lunar Models" which had a short column article printed in StarLog magazine along with a photo of said kit) was probably the first depiction of a war machine I saw other than Al Nozaki's famous copper hued "manta ray" shaped machines from the 1953 film. The kit was based more upon Frank R. Paul's interpretation of Goble's design which was presented on the cover of "Amazing Stories", and the model itself veered a bit from Paul's concept. So, like a game of "telephone", each design got altered from the previous. But generally, all had a "pill" shaped main casing. Atop that was a "hood" or "cowl" shaped canopy where the Martian piloted the machine. Beneath the "pill" was an array of mechanisms that anchored the three legs, each of which were rigid but with several "joints".

I've always liked this general layout, even if the details and proportions might differ.

Here is a "kit bash" of two different commercially available digital models by a merchant named Petipet at DAZ3D.com along with elements (like the cowl assembly) that I modeled myself. It captures a LOT of what I prefer in a Martian tripod, which I freely admit is personal preference.

While the tripods we saw in the 2005 movie are arguably closer to Wells' intent than any other production, the fully flexible, tentacle type legs tend to "throw" me. I always inferred from the text that the legs were more arthropod type, rigid segments separated by flexible joints that don't show any clear evidence of a wheel type "pivot" (which I confess the digital model here "betrays"). If only the '05 tripods had possesses "bug-like" legs, I'd say they were the near perfect design.

 

[arch101]

I have read that H.G. Wells was disappointed with the illustrations Warwick Goble provided for the original serialized version of the story published in Pierson's Magazine. So much so that when it came time for the narrative to be printed as a hardcover book, he added some new text, having his protagonist (in story) lament the assumptions made by journalists who apparently never actually saw one of the tripods for themselves.

However, Goble's concept, (or rather a resin model kit released by "Lunar Models" which had a short column article printed in StarLog magazine along with a photo of said kit) was probably the first depiction of a war machine I saw other than Al Nozaki's famous copper hued "manta ray" shaped machines from the 1953 film. The kit was based more upon Frank R. Paul's interpretation of Goble's design which was presented on the cover of "Amazing Stories", and the model itself veered a bit from Paul's concept. So, like a game of "telephone", each design got altered from the previous. But generally, all had a "pill" shaped main casing. Atop that was a "hood" or "cowl" shaped canopy where the Martian piloted the machine. Beneath the "pill" was an array of mechanisms that anchored the three legs, each of which were rigid but with several "joints".

I've always liked this general layout, even if the details and proportions might differ.

Here is a "kit bash" of two different commercially available digital models by a merchant named Petipet at DAZ3D.com along with elements (like the cowl assembly) that I modeled myself. It captures a LOT of what I prefer in a Martian tripod, which I freely admit is personal preference.

While the tripods we saw in the 2005 movie are arguably closer to Wells' intent than any other production, the fully flexible, tentacle type legs tend to "throw" me. I always inferred from the text that the legs were more arthropod type, rigid segments separated by flexible joints that don't show any clear evidence of a wheel type "pivot" (which I confess the digital model here "betrays"). If only the '05 tripods had possesses "bug-like" legs, I'd say they were the near perfect design.

Been a few years since I read the book, but doesn’t Welles describe the machines motion as a “fluid - like stride”, which amazes the author considering the machines’ bulk and height? The ‘05 machines certainly achieve that.

 

[Redfern]

It's been a few years for me as well, so I can't make any statements with authority. (I freely admit my memory is crap and prone to the "mandala effect".) It's quite possible such is the case. It would be nice if some intrepid soul has compiled every sentence and phrase describing the tripods to make for easy reference.

 

[Christopher]

Been a few years since I read the book, but doesn’t Welles describe the machines motion as a “fluid - like stride”, which amazes the author considering the machines’ bulk and height? The ‘05 machines certainly achieve that.

I don't find any such reference in the text here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36/36-h/36-h.htm

What we have is this:

And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.

Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared, rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet it! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went altogether. Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse’s head hard round to the right and in another moment the dog cart had heeled over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I was flung sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of water.
...
Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman’s basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.

And later:

I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them here simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have created. They were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the pamphlet would have been much better without them.

The "milking stool tilted and bowled" description makes it sound like it had a spinning motion, or at least its legs did underneath the "body of machinery." The impression I get is of fast, agile movement more like a living being than a clunky 19th-century mechanism.

 

[Redfern]

That's the impression I got as well, but I'm willing to concede I probably forgot a significant passage. What did stand out to me was Wells' protagonist making special mention about the lack of obvious pivot/wheel type centers of rotation at the joints. Instead, he described a series of layered, sliding "plates" extending upon the outer edge of knee type joints. I visualize it as a kind of a telescoping "clam-shell" effect, rather like the hangar doors on the Enterprise.

 

[Christopher]

That's the impression I got as well, but I'm willing to concede I probably forgot a significant passage. What did stand out to me was Wells' protagonist making special mention about the lack of obvious pivot/wheel type centers of rotation at the joints. Instead, he described a series of layered, sliding "plates" extending upon the outer edge of knee type joints. I visualize it as a kind of a telescoping "clam-shell" effect, rather like the hangar doors on the Enterprise.

You must mean this part:

And of their appliances, perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all human devices in mechanism is absent—the wheel is absent; among all the things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of their use of wheels. One would have at least expected it in locomotion. And in this connection it is curious to remark that even on this earth Nature has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred other expedients to its development. And not only did the Martians either not know of (which is incredible), or abstain from, the wheel, but in their apparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot or relatively fixed pivot, with circular motions thereabout confined to one plane. Almost all the joints of the machinery present a complicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And while upon this matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of electricity. In this way the curious parallelism to animal motions, which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was attained. Such quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling-machine which, on my first peeping out of the slit, I watched unpacking the cylinder. It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, and moving feebly after their vast journey across space.

Sounds like it's meant to be sort of a biomechanical design, mimicking organic musculature. Pretty prophetic, really, since some current robotics research is along similar lines.

 

[Redfern]

Yes! That's the passage. at some point I want to update the model in my render, apply some sheath-like elements to help disguise the conventional pivot design of the joints.

 

[N-121973]

I wonder why H.G. Wells never wrote the Martian machines as flying machines. And why didn't they just try and trip the tripods up. I saw it in this really obscure film once. They had these big robot camels walking across this snow planet and the heroes had to bring them down by wrapping their legs in tow cables. What was it called again, Revenge of the Empire, The Empire Awakens, something like that.

 

[Redfern]

As for the first notion, flying machines, that point WAS addressed in the book. Apparently the Martians intended to handle their invasion in stages. They landed; they secured the site; they built walkers; then trod the countryside literally blazing the way. Now, I forget if it's the artillery soldier who warns the protagonist of the following, or if he saw the hardware for himself, but shortly before earthly bacteria and viruses killed the, the Martians were constructing flying machines. It was just sheer luck they croaked before they got airborne.

As for "tripping" the tripods, I guess nobody had ample opportunity to entwine cable around the legs. It's something they'd have to do quickly, particularly if the tripods were moving rapidly (and the text implied they could). In "Empire", they needed a snowspeeder to do it quick enough. And the fastest thing the army probably had were horses. I doubt they could have transported enough cable and I doubt it had the tensile strength required to restrain the legs.

On the other hand, a cannon was able to destroy one of the tripods and the Thunderchild gained enough speed to ram and bring down another (before the ship itself was cleaved in two by the heat ray of another war machine). So the Martian technology was not totally impervious, merely superior.

 

[Christopher]

I wonder why H.G. Wells never wrote the Martian machines as flying machines.

Not to suggest that Wells had this in mind, but it makes sense that they didn't use flying machines. After all, Mars's atmosphere is extremely thin, so it's very hard to achieve sustainable flight. It's reasonable that their technology didn't develop in that direction. At least, it makes sense that they waited until securing their position on Earth before beginning construction on machines that took advantage of our planet's far more buoyant atmosphere.

And I'm with Redfern on the tripping thing. The book described the tripods as whirling like a three-legged stool bowled across the ground, which suggests a terrifyingly fast motion, like a mechanical tornado. At the very least, it suggests that the legs raise high enough on each step to clear any kind of tripwire.

 

[JD]

^You mentioned a point I was about to bring up, that you'd probably have to go fairly high up to get to a point where the tripod couldn't just step over it. If all you have are people and horses, it probably wouldn't be possible to get that high up.
In The Empire Strikes Back they were fairly high up on the walkers' legs when they wrapped them.