"Tripods, The - Series 2 (DVD)" [1984]

The second series concerns the resistance movement and its infiltration of the Tripod city to gain information. With this information they hope to gain some kind of advantage to destroy the hated Tripods forever. Our heros travel along river to compete at the games to win entry to the city. There is an enjoyable farce in episode three and then we witness the games. There's none of the boring stops that spoiled the first series. The pace is nice and consistent throughout. Eventually we enter the city and the action begins properly. I enjoyed this series up to this point. The actual city interior model shots still look very realistic. The Masters also look very convincing indeed and are similar to how I imagined them to be from the book. They walk and talk convincingly and they never look like the rubber monsters that they are.

I began to get frustrated with this video from here on in. The series began to take massive deviations from Christopher's book and the overall feeling is extremely messy and confused. Christopher's book was based upon the psychological horror of the city with its strangeness, it's terrible unrelenting heat, heavy gravity and the sadistic evil Masters. This would have been very hard to realise on TV and may also have been too disturbing for teatime viewing. However in the TV series the city doesn't look too bad a place to be. The masters are friendly and don't seem like an evil enemy at all. There's even a pub that the slaves go to in the evenings called the Pink Parrot(!). It's hardly the horror of the book where the slaves crumple and die within a few years. In any good vs. evil storyline having the mortal enemy come across as pleasant and jolly is a big failure indeed. This storyline comes across as more like a soap opera than a serious drama.

The main character Will suddenly becomes unbelievably stupid. If he is supposed to be pretending to worship the Masters (as the capped do) then surely they would have noticed and had him executed on the first day? He picks fights with other slaves, insults the masters and is continually questioning everything and anything. He makes it unquestioningly obvious he is not capped, and it takes ages for anyone to do anything about it. How have the masters managed to conquer the whole world and most of the universe if they are so stupid? In the first series Will was a brave, if slightly hotheaded young man. Now he is suddenly a total imbecile. A completely new addition of the TV series is the Cognosc (is that spelt right?). These are a ridiculous higher alien species in the city based on pure mind and energy. How can the Masters be the figure of absolute evil if they aren't even the top dog? For at least three episodes this series makes little sense whatsoever and we are left with lots of chasing around dark corridors and lots of men in tight leather shorts. It's quite bizzare, and could be questionable... We are then left with the exciting final climax chase and the now famous cliff-hanger ending.

This is still one of the most ambitious productions that the BBC ever undertook. Seen years later it is largely a failure, although it has some very redeeming features. The majority of the faults of series one were rectified for this series two, but the new writer added a feast of new flaws and it ends up being inferiour to even the first series. The third series was never filmed and the famous cliff-hanger was never resolved. We will never know what may have been.
Series two of the Tripods is still not available on video to buy. I had to watch mine on a bootleg video. I would very much like to see it released so I could own a good quality copy. While it is far from perfect it still remains a classic BBC sci fi drama. It is still very endearing and interesting after all these years. I just wish that someone had been there to iron out some of the more obvious flaws. It could have been as great as John Christopher's fantastic novels, but it ends up being mearly above average.

The DVD itself is far from being a highlight, for a chapter selection is the only "special feature" there is. But "The Tripods" being simply cult, it'd deserve ten stars!