# The Day of The Triffids - BBC Remake (2009)



## UltraCulture (Nov 28, 2008)

BBC remaking it.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Triffids returning to television

That will be memories of childhood terror for me.


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## ktabic (Nov 28, 2008)

I saw this and thought 'oh dear. Another remaking that will almost certainly have an extreme PC bent. Why can't they come up with something original?'
Then I spotted the fact that this will be the third time the BBC has remade Triffids. 
Seriously, they need to get some new ideas.


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## j d worthington (Nov 28, 2008)

ktabic said:


> Seriously, they need to get some new ideas.


 
That means paying out more money up front; one of the major reasons why producers are so much more willing to go with an idea or treatment which already exists....


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## Robbie The Rowboat (Dec 3, 2008)

'Triffids' was quite a spooky one, back in the day. Not many smiles and plenty of tumblers of scotch being knocked back. They did a good job of portraying social collapse though, unlike that 'Survivors' travesty that's currently earning my wrath.


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## Heebie (Dec 5, 2008)

Yeah, I think any BBC remake will be dogged by political correctness (Dr Who I'm looking at you).

Has the 80s version come out on R2 DVD yet?

I once caught an episode of Sci-fi channel a few months ago and I forgot how much I enjoyed it!


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## Harry Kilmer (Dec 28, 2009)

*Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Been looking forward to this over Xmas. Am hoping its better then the recent Quatermass and A for Andromeda remakes.


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## Rodders (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I saw the adverts for this today and i have to say that it looks pretty good, i'll need to see if the wife's interested though.


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## blacknorth (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I'm looking forward to watching this tonight. Feeling a bit, erm, nervous as the Beeb's track record lately is pretty atrocious - last year's 39 Steps remake was abysmal, Paradox was monstrous, and the ongoing Doctor Who disaster sets my teeth on edge.

But Triffids is a good story - how can they go wrong? Apart from Izzard, already.


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## Harry Kilmer (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Ah, its that guy out of Trainspotting again, he was in Spooks a couple of weeks ago. Can't place the Police / Security woman yet.

Does anybody else find that filming in HD helps betray the 'fakeness' of paticular scenes?


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## High Eight (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Just watched the first 45 minutes.

Naff. Iredeemably naff.

They've turned it into _Bladerunner_ meets _Aliens_ with plants than can _sprint_ and 'always go for the eyes', a terrible 'hard-boiled' voiceover and a man who can survive a plane crash by locking himself in the loo with half a dozen plastic lifebelts.

Oh, and the triffids seem to eat things by dissolving them alive like the blob rather than tearing bits off rotting carcasses. And they scream when shot.

It's going to be almost as bad as the film version.

I'll give it another ten minutes or so.


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## Harry Kilmer (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Its a bit poo, but no doubt I'll tune in tomorrow.


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## HareBrain (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Gah. Or do I mean meh?

If the triffids were desirous of food, why didn't they eat the people they killed at the farms?

Also, for 500 farms of 20,000 triffids each to account for even 50% of the UK's fossil fuel consumption would require milking 28kg of usable oil from each triffid per day. Not remotely likely. (Yes, I did bother to work that out, but only because the programme annoyed me so much.)


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## Ursa major (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Harry Kilmer said:


> Can't place the Police / Security woman yet.


Wasn't she the rogue CIA woman in Spooks?


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## Gary Compton (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I thought Rodney and Del Boy were going to be in it!

Day of the Triffic


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## High Eight (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I made it to the end (just) but I'm not sure I'll bother with part two.

I nearly gave up when it became obvious that the Beeb was trying at all costs to avoid making the whole thing '_28 Days Later_ with plants instead of zombies' but doing it anyway.


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## Harry Kilmer (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Ursa major said:


> Wasn't she the rogue CIA woman in Spooks?



Ah, spotted her  I meant the one who was working at the Triffid plant. Just looked her up on IMDB, can't spot her in anything I'd recognize.

*slaps Gary for that pun*


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## blacknorth (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I rather enjoyed it once it got going. They are indeed treating it 28 Days Later with plants instead of zombies. Bit disappointed that Coker is an American, and that the substance of his role has been sacrificed to create a star part for Eddie Izzard.

We're only half-way through, but it looks like the '81 version will remain definitive. Rightly so.


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## Ursa major (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

While I digest the episode itself, I'd like to mention the excessive trailer for Part II. Did we really need to see all that to make us watch it? (And are there any major incidents we didn't catch a glimpse of?)


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## Harry Kilmer (Dec 28, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Its a shame it wasn't better, the BBC can turn out some top quality stuff when it wants to.


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## Mouse (Dec 29, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I was half watching and half online. Might be why I didn't think it was too bad! Ended up dreaming about triffids though.


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## Purdy Bear (Dec 29, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Its more a remake of the series, not much like the original novel (which I studied some 20 years ago at school, so please excuse it if I'm wrong).

I thought the plane bit was daft, I think an email to Mythbusters might be handy.

I enjoyed it though!


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## HareBrain (Dec 29, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Is there any way I can specify that my licence fee in future goes only on making nature programmes and Bargain Hunt?

Ep 2 was truly dreadful. I think it elicited more groans of "Oh, God ..." than any other programme I've seen.


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## Ursa major (Dec 29, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Well, HB, if you're not going to give the episode your undivided attention.... 


I can't say that I was that impressed either. The pacing was a bit strange: it seemed to slow down in odd places (although, I will admit that some of the slower moments towards the end may have been in the service of the rather contrived ending).

Among many less-than-believable things, I thought that the way Uncle Tom Cobley and All could find a place that didn't seem to be marked on even a local map - well done that pilot/navigator - stuck out; as did the triffids in the wood near the abbey, who seemed to be on a permanent diet. (All other triffids go hell for leather - as much as they can, that is - across any terrain, even when unsure that food's ahead, while that bunch waited patiently while they were fed the occasional titbit.)


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## blacknorth (Dec 29, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

WTF!

What the freak was all that mumbo-jumbo at the end? 

Why didn't they just take Wyndham's name off the credits and call it something else? 

I think I'm going to have to email a complaint to the beeb, something I rarely do, but they just can't be allowed to get away with this kind of crap.


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## Dave (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Okay, so I have recorded both parts of this to watch at some future point in time.

Reading through this thread it does not look like it is something worth wasting 3 hours of my life on. Is it really that bad? I actually watched 'The Hangover' and 'The Holiday' films instead - surely they must be worse? And why can there not be a faithful adaptation of the book? Why do they always have to mess around with it?


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## HareBrain (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Dave, was the 1981 BBC version so bad? I watched a few episodes of it last night, the first time I'd seen it since it was first shown (it's been lurking on my HD recorder since it was reshown on BBC4 a couple of years ago), and though it had its faults I liked it a lot more than last night's fiasco.


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## purple_kathryn (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Purdy Bear said:


> Its more a remake of the series, not much like the original novel (which I studied some 20 years ago at school, so please excuse it if I'm wrong).
> 
> I thought the plane bit was daft, I think an email to Mythbusters might be handy.
> 
> I enjoyed it though!


 
You got to read this in school?  I'm jealous.


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## AE35Unit (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Its alright I suppose. They've had to modernise it a bit of course and go all serious but this is TV. Stop comparing it to the book,switch off the brain and enjoy the fun. The plants do look naff tho, they're not triffid in design at all (the word triffid means divided into 3 parts-there's a nebula in space called the Trifid nebula-Wyndham just added a second f to his story to make it sounds like triff id rather than try fid I guess)


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## HareBrain (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



AE35Unit said:


> Stop comparing it to the book,switch off the brain and enjoy the fun.


 
If it was done tongue-in-cheek, this would be a fair way of approaching it. But it wants to be taken seriously. Many highly paid people put a lot of effort and a lot of (our) money into this, not so that it would be a bit of brainless entertainment, but because they thought it would be a piece of exciting and (to some degree) intelligent drama. Didn't they? Or were they really so cynical that they thought the only important things were big sets and big explosions and that they didn't lose the audience's mayfly attention for a second?

I've never read the book, so I had no axe to grind on that score. And the only other adaptation I've seen was 28 years ago (until I watched a couple of episodes late last night) and I could remember hardly anything about that. I object to this nonsense because the BBC is no longer making any speculative-fiction drama for people who quite like engaging their brains and want to leave them switched on.


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## AE35Unit (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



HareBrain said:


> I object to this nonsense because the BBC is no longer making any speculative-fiction drama for people who quite like engaging their brains and want to leave them switched on.


Did they ever? TV is a lark,entertainment, in the Beebs eyes,and yet they removed a lot of shows from their schedule because they were too low brow!


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## HareBrain (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



AE35Unit said:


> Did they ever? TV is a lark,entertainment, in the Beebs eyes


 
They try a lot harder with their costume dramas, and they import US progs such as The Wire and Band of Brothers that are clearly meant to be more than light relief. (OK, they then put them on at times when hardly anyone will see them ...)

As for "did they ever" I think the 1981 Triffids series, the Stone Tape, Quatermass (or was that ITV?) were all made with an emphasis on ideas, rather than on budget and overwrought drama accompanied by overblown background music. But that's only three examples, two of them written by one man, so that probably doesn't advance my case very much in the SFF field.

Outside of the SFF field, though, I think it's obvious that the BBC did once care about ideas in drama much more than it does now. What have they made recently that can compare with I, Claudius, or Dennis Potter?


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## blacknorth (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



HareBrain said:


> They try a lot harder with their costume dramas, and they import US progs such as The Wire and Band of Brothers that are clearly meant to be more than light relief. (OK, they then put them on at times when hardly anyone will see them ...)
> 
> As for "did they ever" I think the 1981 Triffids series, the Stone Tape, Quatermass (or was that ITV?) were all made with an emphasis on ideas, rather than on budget and overwrought drama accompanied by overblown background music. But that's only three examples, two of them written by one man, so that probably doesn't advance my case very much in the SFF field.
> 
> Outside of the SFF field, though, I think it's obvious that the BBC did once care about ideas in drama much more than it does now. What have they made recently that can compare with I, Claudius, or Dennis Potter?



Too true, HB - I collect episodes of Play For Today and the Wednesday Play - a fantastic social commentary on the UK throughout the 60's, 70's and early 80's, and wildly entertaining to boot. They wouldn't dream of attempting to provoke such thought now - much too dangerous. I defy anyone to watch Jim Allen's play For Today The Spongers and not want to man the barricades.

PS - The first three Quatermass serials were BBC. The John Mills effort was ITV. Hm. Now. I wonder how many folk here remember Stargazy on Zummerdown.


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## Moonbat (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I watched both episodes of this Triffids and was very dissappointed, I almost didn't watch to the end, but then I thought if I didn't I'd get annoyed with myself 
It was pretty awful, I realise that they had to re-write parts of the story to fit it into a 3hr TV special, but did they have to write out all the good stuff. The saving the world from fossil fuels was just silly, and the triffid farms, if I remember rightly (from the book) no-one really knew where the triffids came from, they just rained down thier seeds onto earth. But people knew they were dangerous.
And the light show, I remember people waking up blind the next day, not going blind instantly, and as for that idiot at the TV staiton 'what's going on, why is everyone screaming, what's happened to our cameras, I know I'll go and have a look' idiot!
DOTT was always more about people in an apocalyptic world and how they survive or fight amongst themselves, wasn't it? This version was true to that, but I thought it was very badly done.
I did like the fact that Eddie Izzard survived the plane crash in the loo with some life jackets, very plausible! And V Redgrave as an evil nun, nice touch. But all in all a dire re-write of a classic SF tale.


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## HareBrain (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



blacknorth said:


> Too true, HB - I collect episodes of Play For Today and the Wednesday Play


 
Please, please, please tell me you somehow have a copy of Penda's Fen.


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## blacknorth (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



HareBrain said:


> Please, please, please tell me you somehow have a copy of Penda's Fen.



Yes, I do indeed. PM me if you want it passing along.


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## tangaloomababe (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

We are probably not likely totget this aired in Australia for sometime and it dosn't sound like I am missing to much anyway. Being a fan, sorry huge fan of the book its probably best if I don't watch this, I would only be disappointed.


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## Dave (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



HareBrain said:


> Dave, was the 1981 BBC version so bad?


No, but the Howard Keel film is terrible.

I think I will watch this sometime and make up my own mind, but I was looking forward to it, and I'm not that bothered now.


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## HareBrain (Dec 30, 2009)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



HareBrain said:


> I object to this nonsense because the BBC is no longer making any speculative-fiction drama for people who quite like engaging their brains and want to leave them switched on.


 
OT, but just watched _Turn of the Screw _and it's restored my faith a little. At least they can still do a decent ghost story. _Crooked House _last year wasn't bad either. Still think it's a shame about the SF though.


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## AE35Unit (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



HareBrain said:


> OT, but just watched _Turn of the Screw _and it's restored my faith a little. At least they can still do a decent ghost story. _Crooked House _last year wasn't bad either. Still think it's a shame about the SF though.



I wanted to watch that but missed it! Henry James story isnt it? Must find and read!


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## AE35Unit (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Moonbat said:


> I watched both episodes of this Triffids and was very dissappointed, I almost didn't watch to the end, but then I thought if I didn't I'd get annoyed with myself
> It was pretty awful, I realise that they had to re-write parts of the story to fit it into a 3hr TV special, but did they have to write out all the good stuff. The saving the world from fossil fuels was just silly, and the triffid farms, if I remember rightly (from the book) no-one really knew where the triffids came from, they just rained down thier seeds onto earth. But people knew they were dangerous.
> And the light show, I remember people waking up blind the next day, not going blind instantly, and as for that idiot at the TV staiton 'what's going on, why is everyone screaming, what's happened to our cameras, I know I'll go and have a look' idiot!
> DOTT was always more about people in an apocalyptic world and how they survive or fight amongst themselves, wasn't it? This version was true to that, but I thought it was very badly done.
> I did like the fact that Eddie Izzard survived the plane crash in the loo with some life jackets, very plausible! And V Redgrave as an evil nun, nice touch. But all in all a dire re-write of a classic SF tale.


Funny, we thought it was quite good! It is only TV after all, and just an adaptation of the book rasther than a telling of the book itself. In some ways it was like a decent Doctor Who. You know, Doctor Who but actually worth watching!


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## Dave (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I watched Turn of the Screw and have now watched the first part of Triffids. I enjoyed both.


blacknorth said:


> I rather enjoyed it once it got going. They are indeed treating it 28 Days Later with plants instead of zombies. Bit disappointed that Coker is an American, and that the substance of his role has been sacrificed to create a star part for Eddie Izzard.
> 
> We're only half-way through, but it looks like the '81 version will remain definitive. Rightly so.


Agree with all that, Danny Boyle admitted that he ripped off the start of 28 Days Later from Triffids so that similarity is hardly surprising.

I liked the updating of the story. I think a solar flare is more plausible than strange meteorites for the blindness. Harebrain has a point about the amount of TriffidOil that could be produced, but making Triffids a result of man's technology rather than alien seeds has more emotional appeal. It means there is less sympathy for Bill Mason though since his family were responsible.




Moonbat said:


> I did like the fact that Eddie Izzard survived the plane crash in the loo with some life jackets, very plausible!


That was a little unlikely, but if he did then you could see why he would develop a god-complex.

Regarding the voice-over, there are many parts of Wyndham's books that are told rather than spoken. I guess it must be hard to adapt for TV. You cannot have a character speak everything they think or observe; it would be too false. I didn't have a problem with the way it was done.

I will certainly watch part two, just to understand what the comments about "mumbo jumbo" mean and to see the evil nun.


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## AE35Unit (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Its been a while since I read the book, cant remember, did Wyndham explain where the Triffids came from? It seems in this version they are already here, rather like the new War of the Worlds.


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## Dave (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



AE35Unit said:


> Its been a while since I read the book, cant remember, did Wyndham explain where the Triffids came from? It seems in this version they are already here, rather like the new War of the Worlds.


It has been a while since I read the book too. I think I have always attributed some connection between the origin of the Triffids and the blindness that was not actually there. According to Wikipedia 





> The book implies they were bioengineered in the Soviet Union and then accidentally released into the wild when a plane carrying their seeds is shot down. Triffids begin sprouting all over the world, and their extracts prove to be superior to existing vegetable oils. The result is worldwide cultivation of Triffids.


 Which is not really such a great departure from this TV version. I'm not certain that Wiki is correct though and I don't have a copy of the book to hand.


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## AE35Unit (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I dont remember any mention of Triffoil in the book at all!
Its quite ironic tho as there's a plant called Birdsfoot Trefoil (pronounced triff oil), which has leaves divided into 3 parts.


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## Dave (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



blacknorth said:


> What the freak was all that mumbo-jumbo at the end?


I've seen it all now. It seemed to me that putting the Triffid venom into the eyes made you immune to the sting. Bill had that done to him as a child and therefore didn't die from his sting at the farm. The people of the Zaire had somehow worked this out themselves and made the Masks. They all used the Mask at the end to add the venom to their eyes and were able to escape. A complete dog's breakfast, but does make some logical sense.


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## PTeppic (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Infusion through the eyes is one of the recognised (though little used) methods of administering noxious substances.


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## blacknorth (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Dave said:


> The people of the Zaire had somehow worked this out themselves and made the Masks. They all used the Mask at the end to add the venom to their eyes and were able to escape. A complete dog's breakfast, but does make some logical sense.



Makes no sense at all to me, it's just made-up mumbo-jumbo that has no relation to The Day of the Triffids as I know and understand it. If the writer is going to depart from the novel in such a substantial way it has got to be good - an convincing enhancement. Remember that this Zairean (?) revelation means that mankind has found a way of rendering the Triffids harmless to humans. That's a huge departure.


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## Harry Kilmer (Jan 1, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

Still got part 2 on my PVR - might get round to it later.


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## AE35Unit (Jan 2, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Dave said:


> I've seen it all now. It seemed to me that putting the Triffid venom into the eyes made you immune to the sting. Bill had that done to him as a child and therefore didn't die from his sting at the farm. The people of the Zaire had somehow worked this out themselves and made the Masks. They all used the Mask at the end to add the venom to their eyes and were able to escape. A complete dog's breakfast, but does make some logical sense.


No no, if you look closely you'll see the masks have slits above and below the level of the eyeball, so the venom goes on the eyelids, which burn a little, hence the pain, and it then makes you smell like a triffid so you can walk among them unmolested. Thats what my other half pointed out to me, but then afterwards, when theyre outside, you see close ups of their eyes as if the venom is going into them, which wouldnt make sense at all!


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## Ursa major (Jan 2, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I didn't record the episode, so cannot be sure, but I don't recall Masen saying: "Don't forget to keep your eyes closed; the stuff is only meant to go on your eyelids."

This suggests that the stuff was meant to go _in_ the eyes.


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## blacknorth (Jan 2, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

No, they walked through the Triffids with their eyes wide open. There was no mention of eyelids or of closing eyes.

It suddenly occurred to Masen, from visual flashbacks to his mother in Zaire, that pouring Triffid poison through a native mask into your eyes meant that you were... what? Immune? A native voice repeating 'trust me' over and over again was meant to lend some homeopathic gravitas to it, but it did nothing of the sort.

There was no basis for this. It's a complete departure from the novel - something simply made up to provide the audience with a happier ending than a bunch of people marooned on the Isle of Wight. In fact, it shows an utter contempt for the original novel.


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## PTeppic (Jan 2, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

They were obviously going for something very subtle and ingenious with how this poison in/near the eyes (in small amounts) makes the Triffids not attack. They were telegraphing it from the beginning ("why do they always go for the eyes?") but maybe we're all too stupid? Perhaps it's obvious if we were more astute...  Will have to find the iPlayer version and see if that has anything.


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## PTeppic (Jan 2, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



PTeppic said:


> Will have to find the iPlayer version and see if that has anything.



Mission performed (if not accomplished): the mask has slits for the eyes, but a hole above the slit - which is where the poison is squeezed. Where their eyes open or closed? Either way, it creates a very dark, watery smudge round the rims of the eyes AND (perhaps more telling) their eyes do that pupil diffusion thing. But, what does it mean? They're not only not attacking with poison but not trying to entangle... it's a total back-off. Who knows...


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## Dave (Jan 2, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



PTeppic said:


> ...it creates a very dark, watery smudge round the rims of the eyes AND (perhaps more telling) their eyes do that pupil diffusion thing. But, what does it mean? They're not only not attacking with poison but not trying to entangle... it's a total back-off. Who knows...


Also, when anyone was stung, their eyes turned milky grey - a little like the black oil in the x-files. I have no idea what it means.



blacknorth said:


> There was no basis for this. It's a complete departure from the novel - something simply made up to provide the audience with a happier ending than a bunch of people marooned on the Isle of Wight. In fact, it shows an utter contempt for the original novel.


I understand your point of view, and I agree with your summation, it just doesn't bother me quite as much. It did say "*Based* on a book by John Wyndham". However, as I said earlier, I wish they would, for once, stop messing about with the book and just make a version that was faithful.


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## blacknorth (Jan 3, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Dave said:


> I understand your point of view, and I agree with your summation, it just doesn't bother me quite as much. It did say "*Based* on a book by John Wyndham". However, as I said earlier, I wish they would, for once, stop messing about with the book and just make a version that was faithful.



I do feel rather strongly about it. Wyndham spent a large part of his career resisting the opportunity to write a sequel to Day of the Triffids, something which would have made him a fortune. I presume he felt he had very good reasons not to go back to the book. This is one of the reasons I disagree with Aldiss's Cosy Catastrophe theory - the fact the author didn't go back to clean up loose ends or to offer humans a victory over the Triffids. Yet the BBC appear to think they can do just that, making Wyndham's doubts about a sequel irrelevant. They gave us a fix-up - part original, part sequel.

I think there's another issue here, and it relates to the ongoing Doctor Who series. Yesterday, I was reading some comments on The End of Time at another forum and a user made the observation that the Doctor only had a couple of regenerations left. Another poster replied that that was irrelevant - because it's sf, they, the writers, can do whatever they want. Hm. I think we're seeing this attitude across the board now, especially in film and on TV. Isaac Asimov warned against the introduction of 'ad-hoc phenomenon'  in science fiction - by that he meant the introduction of fortuitous devices and events that allow writers to escape the consequences of their plotting and characterisation. But Doctor Who couldn't exist without just that, and this very loose version of Triffids wouldn't either.


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## Urien (Jan 3, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

I think part of the problem is that of author upon author. The screen writer and the director both want to bring something of their own to the party, especially when dealing with a very popular (and therefore well known) book. These changes are often jammed in under the guise of updating, reimagining, reinventing or modernising.

Often the worst abusers of these are theatre directors in their twenties; Macbeth set in a futuristic Yorkshire Dales tea shop run by cyborgs. The source material is so strong, how else do you make a name? 

Faithful reproductions of books seem to be the exception not the rule.


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## Ursa major (Jan 3, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*

_(Imagines Macbeth seeing a miner: "Is this a digger which I see before me, pick handle toward my hand?")_


In opera, one may get away with it more easily because the public believes (correctly or not) that the plots of operas are generally a load of old tosh that could do with a bit of "sense" knocked into them. (And perhaps Shakespeare is almost invulnerable to this sort of mucking about.)


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## PTeppic (Jan 3, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Urien said:


> Macbeth set in a futuristic Yorkshire Dales tea shop run by cyborgs.



"I'd buy that for a dollar"


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## PTeppic (Jan 3, 2010)

*Re: Day of the Triffids. 28th Dec 21:00 BBC1*



Ursa major said:


> And perhaps Shakespeare is almost invulnerable to this sort of mucking about.



I don't know anything about opera, but examples of Shakespeare such as Luhrman's Romeo & Juliet and the Christmas Day / DT Hamlet both seem to comfirm that any setting can be used and the words still make sense.


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