Chris

Heh ... The Day The Tripods Came, or When the Tripods Came, or something? Talk about cashing in. I read that while I was at school. You're right, it was a bit poor. It had more holes in it than a colander.

As to why the Beeb would 'have to' have Eloise being rescued at the end of any third series, I only meant they would have to in order to be internally consistent with their own version of the story, seeing as she was seen in The City of Gold and Will's Master explicitly stated that she wasn't dead.

I can see why the BBC changed things around. The City of Gold and Lead, as written, is pretty bleak and alien and would have cost a king's ransom to film. The series was expensive as it was - it would probably have become prohibitively so if they had had to construct alien backdrops for every single scene inside the city. As it was, they were able to get away with some location filming and easily-constructed sets that could have been alien, but then could have been anywhere else as well. It would also have been pretty difficult to keep up the pace and the tension if virtually the whole thing had been performed with the actors inside helmets, which would have been necessary if they had stuck closely to the book.

As for the Black Guards, well they conveniently keep up the pressure on the heroes without the need for too many costly FX shots of the Tripods.

Mind you, some of the changes were gratuitous nonsense. The Cognosc, for example, completely shatters the whole premise. Nice one, whoever dreamed that up. Not.