The War of the Worlds: Part 2

"This isn't our planet any more."

Oh dear. The first episode was flawed but had promise, and Peter Harness is a writer with a good track record. Yet this second episode is a load of turgid dross that bodes I’ll for a final episode which I will only be watching because of this blog. What went wrong?

There were issues with the first episode, certainly. Rafe Spall has no charisma. And the original novel is perhaps more justly famous for the barriers it become than for its quality. But there’s nothing in this first episode to suppose a mess like this may follow. Essentially we have two narratives- a main one in 1905 after the initial invasion as chaos ensues but, eventually, the Martians die for reasons which aren’t entirely clear unless you happen to have read the novel or, indeed, seen any of the numerous screen versions. The framing narrative is set a few years later, on a much redder Earth, with the Martians long gone but their terraforming has seeming to have turned Earth into a red planet which is slowly becoming less capable of supporting humans- and, one assumes, more hospitable for those of Martian extraction.

This is an attempt to insert the current climate crisis into the story, essentially wrapping up the invasion early on after a number of set pieces so that we can focus on a theme which obviously resonates for our age. But this is ill-conceived; we still don’t care about the characters, particularly not George, and the constant striving in both narratives for the couple to reunite just simply fails to be interesting. Instead we are left with the ideals and while, yes, the obvious subtext is laudable, it feels very much crowbarred in. And what exactly is this saying? The climate crisis here isn’t man made, as ours is. The parallel is crude.

So yes- the tripods look good. So does the reddened world a few years on. Eleanor Tomlinson and Robert Carlyle are good. But the whole thing just fails as a drama and that is down, I’m afraid, to the script.