The Day Of The Triffids to return to BBC next year

Tombstone said:
One of the things that puzzled me was why was Coker suddenly an American?

As far as I remember, Coker wasnt American in the book, nor was he american in the original tv series, so why this decision to change the character to being an american for no seeming reason at all?

Admittedly its not something which has a big effect plotwise but nevertheless I find it puzzling why there is the need to alter the nationality of a character just for the sake of it. Something wrong with having him as a British guy??
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And the original much like most of the TV of that era was acted by nothing but middle class white actors. From what I remember there was only one black actor in the original, and his was a bit part.

I liked the new version :) Yes the old version is and was a classic. This version had many of the same ideas as the book, but was somewhat different. I don't think it was as good as it could have been.
 
Tefal said:
I don't think it's pointless, it's just to quickly establish the fact he had no issue nor hesitation in removing people life vests to save himself.

You occasionally need quick and plain gestures like that in film because you can't really have the characters do a monologue in their head every time you need to point something out about the other.
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OK! Rather than surviving crashing into a city at X hundred miles an hour, right onto the other two lead characters - All utterly over the top eye-rolling hokum...

Why not have the plane crash into the Thames, at least it has more of a chance of surviving that than crashing into buildings, and him then take peoples life vests for himself condemning them to drowning.

There you go, more realistic, more bleak, and the point made just as well...

And no need for him to come out of an crashed burning plane in tattered clothes looking like a comedy sketch!


What we witnessed in this new adaptation is lazy writing where little or no intelligence is expected from the audience. So what you get on screen is laboured and unbelievable.
 
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Gooner14 said:
And the original much like most of the TV of that era was acted by nothing but middle class white actors. From what I remember there was only one black actor in the original, and his was a bit part.
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Admittedly its been a while since I read the book, but I dont recall there being any major black character in the book, so makes sense that the original show didnt have one either. Not much sense in putting in a black character just for the sake of being politically correct. I despise political correctness so I'm happy with things as they were.

NeilFawcett said:
What we witnessed in this new adaptation is lazy writing where little or no intelligence is expected from the audience.
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Some would say that generally speaking, the audience today actually has little or no intelligence :)
 
wtf that's it?

The fall of London described in just 2 sentences :/

I was sort of expecting that would take at least a few episodes...
 
NeilFawcett said:
OK! Rather than surviving crashing into a city at X hundred miles an hour, right onto the other two lead characters - All utterly over the top eye-rolling hokum...

Why not have the plane crash into the Thames, at least it has more of a chance of surviving that than crashing into buildings, and him then take peoples life vests for himself condemning them to drowning.

There you go, more realistic, more bleak, and the point made just as well...

And no need for him to come out of an crashed burning plane in tattered clothes looking like a comedy sketch!


What we witnessed in this new adaptation is lazy writing where little or no intelligence is expected from the audience. So what you get on screen is laboured and unbelievable.
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oh yes defiantly it could have been done much better.

could have even of been

a blind guy being backed into/running into his house to grab an axe to fight of the triffid/save his family and disturbing Torrence while he's searching the house.

He hears the triffid and silently picks up the axe and walks out the door.
 
*spoiler*

Why didn't Torrence and his band of numpties drive out of the house in the cars? I did laugh as they all just stood at the fence being dragged off - Not one of them sensible enough to walk 20ft back away from the fence... :rolleyes:

Indeed, why didn't they come in nice big trucks or military vehicles?
 
Why did they even obey this guy, what qualifications or abilities did he possess. The always have people just following along with leaders unquestioningly and doing stupid things just because this dude told them so(or the plot demands it). I can understand if they were trained soldiers. But ordinary people no way.

They seemed to ignore the blind problem as well, the Triffids posed more of a threat to the sighted even though they were so slow moving.
 
Tombstone said:
Admittedly its been a while since I read the book, but I dont recall there being any major black character in the book,
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There wasn't - the survivors were pretty much entirely white middle class. But that was the pint of the book. Wyndham was the master of what was called "the cosy catastrophe": big bad event destroys "civilisation" (read nasty, polluting, industry) and polishes off all those terrible working class people (and all the darkies of course), leaving just some nice white middle class people to go back to a nice agrarian way of life (glossing over how much hard work such a way of life is). No bodies (that really had to wait until Stephen King's "The Stand"), very little of people being beastly to each other (deaths came almost entirely from the outside force) etc. For books about the End of the World they were all dreadfully civilised. Annoyingly he could do it if he tried: "The Chrysalids" is by far the best of his works, and features some spectacularly evil people, but evil in very ordinary ways.

Even at the time Wyndham was criticised for his work - but mostly by the rest of SFAnnoyingly, John Christopher was writing far better EotW books att he same time, with The Death of Grass being the best known (The World in Winter is probably better).


M
 
Even at my old age I can't remember how the original went, I certainly never read the book so I thought it was awesome on TV.
Triffid 2, Son Of Triffid or Triffid, The Return - I can't wait.
Let's face it, it's about plants eating people, how much crapper can it get?
To take the original as a work of art and say the remake has spoiled it makes me wonder about some people.
 
dmpoole said:
Even at my old age I can't remember how the original went, I certainly never read the book so I thought it was awesome on TV.
Triffid 2, Son Of Triffid or Triffid, The Return - I can't wait.
Let's face it, it's about plants eating people, how much crapper can it get?
To take the original as a work of art and say the remake has spoiled it makes me wonder about some people.
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So... you can't remember how the original went... You've never read the book... But it's as crap as it can get?

Quality!

Makes me wonder about some people.
 
Silent-Lucidity said:
Acting was mainly rubbish. Let's face it people eating plants just arent very scary.
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Not in themselve's they're not. But when most of the worlds population are blind and dieing, society is collapsing, all your creature comforts are disappearing, and their numbers are growing and growing, they get pretty scary then...

But this adaptation just seemed to lose all of that, so it was all abit *meh*...

The 1981 version rolled the idea around in your head quite well so the issues sank in... And people certainly did less stupid things in it. Certainly no one survived a plan crashing into a city with a bunch of inflatable life vests around them :rolleyes: Those writers would have chucked that idea out of the window without a second thought!
 
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So many 'WTF?' moments in this that I just gave up trying to come up with reasons why they would write it that way, and tried to just relax and enjoy it.

A few that spring to mind (sorry if already mentioned):

- Dougray Scott walks for miles and miles when he could have gone down any street and found a 4x4 with keys in it
- Dougray Scott goes off to find a male triffid not with a fearsom arsenal, but with a single twin-barreled shotgun, when we've already seen that two shotgun rounds to the face is often insufficient to suppress a triffid
- Dougray Scott says 'follow me' to a little girl, whilst unarmed yet allowing the little girl to retain use of the automatic weapon
- Dougray Scott walks past numerous incapacitated grunts, totally ignoring their weapons, presumably considering that it is far more important that he has Joely's hand in his hand rather than a modern-looking sub machine gun with tactical sights
- Brian Cox only starts calling for help after trying and failing to reach his shotgun, and also decides not to switch the recording off before trying to zap the triffid
- They never wore their glasses despite it being drummed into us in the first episode just how important this was
- Eddie Izzard survives a plane wreck because he surrounded himself with inflated life jackets - yep that should definitely do it
- Dougray Scott left Eddie Izzard on the floor WITH HIS WEAPON after he'd knocked him out - who'd have thought that would come back to haunt him??
- Poor, nay terrible, acting on occasions
- All the grunts standing there being got by the triffids without ever thinking to fall back / sort the fence out
- People suddenly becoming invisible to the human eye e.g. Joely Richardson escaping from that room full of soldiers without detection, and the little girl planting the MP3 track of the triffid communication without detection. Anyway how did they delay the noise until dark or was it going all day without detection?
- Hardly anyone seemed to have been left with sight, despite the number of people that would have been in the London Underground, in toilets, libraries, enclosed rooms, etc. etc.
- Major Coker flying over and dropping leaflets, of which at least five waft directly into the paths of Dougray etc. - and couldn't he possibly have just landed in a field and picked them up / asked if they wanted a lift?

Just too much crammed into too little, resulting in too little development and explanation. They should have made it a series :'( :'(. Generally speaking weak as hell despite some impressive scenes and reasonably good CGI.

PS in other news everyone has the right to criticise this junk, whether or not they paid the licence fee. However I can't see how they ruined the original since they are entirely distinct, separate, and unconnected creatively.
 
^^ And Izzard and his stupid cronnies don't try to simply escape the surrounded house by using - SHOCK HORROR - a car or truck!?


The best one was Bill and Coker being driven countless miles in the back of a truck just to be shot. Why not just off them in a room in the initial building, or out in a back alley? Oh I forget! Just so some tree climbing ninja triffids could attack them all! DAFT! DAFT! DAFT!


As for too much crammed in. It actually had a similar running time to the 1981 TV series, but seemed achieve so much less! Maybe as you suggest they were just trying to cram too much in, and in the end got next to nothing in there!
 
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