The Tripods (1984) Episode 1

As part of my recent trawl through the Eighties I decided to have some friends round and check out the classic BBC serial 'the Tripods' which first aired in 1984 and was never repeated. If you haven't heard of the Tripods, I don't care. If you have, I don't care much either. We wondered if the show lived up to its reputation. Whatever that was. There was fun anyway. I say get down, I say get down.

Episode One

The time is July, 2089. The place is a small country village in England, where the people enjoy a simple pastoral existence of peace, devoid of technology in the style of their ancestors in the Middle Ages. There are no modern conveniences such as electricity or cars, and no complicated mechanical devices. On the surface it is very idyllic. On this day the villagers gather for a special occasion, the capping of Jack.

 

JL - Miserable girls in white blousons - must be the pre-industrial age. It all seems very Northern, like a Catherine Cookson. 

IB - I'm reminded of the location for Doctor Who's Mark of the Rani the year after. I wonder if it was filmed nearby? 

JL - Jack is scary enough before he's capped. With his iccle brown boots, daft little hat, shaven head and crazed toothy grin. Perhaps the Tripods did everyone a favour and prevented Jack from becoming the village paedophile. 

IB - We're told how much he's changed after he's capped but we see nothing of this beforehand: there's no cheeky chappie dialogue or horseplay with his friends.

JL - Does the clock motif mean anything? 

IB - I think it's just letting you know the time. 

JL - Wow.

 

 

Once in the central square they await the arrival of one of their masters: a Tripod, a huge three-legged silver machine that can walk. One hundred years earlier the Tripods had arrived on Earth and subjugated humanity. Society is kept in check by the process of capping, which is the attachment of a triangular metal circuit plate to the top of the head, which then conditions the brain to obedience to the Tripods and eliminates free-thinking and imagination alongside thoughts of rebellion. When young people reach  adulthood they are automatically capped to keep them docile. After this, the recipient of the cap is a permanent slave to the Tripods. Jack has been prepared for his ceremony with shaven head: it is an honour, and seen as a coming of age. The hulking Tripod arrives at the river and a snaking tube with a large metal claw at the end seizes Jack and lifts him into its belly through an open hatch through which toxic green light pulses.

IB - The war cry of the Tripod heralding its arrival should have been deeper and more resonant, but it's still adequately alien and scary. The smooth and polished metal of the Tripod contrasts nicely with the organic, rural setting to accentuate its alien nature. 

JL - Ooh, it's very bright green and smokey inside a tripod. Is that hole it's arse? If so then this ceremony is all kinds of wrong.

IB - The CSO and compositing is very good, it stands up even now, and the lighting on the model Tripod blends in well with the real setting. It helps that the big Tripod feet are realised life size and are actually there. The reflection of them in the water and then the full length distance reveal of the machine segues into the awesome, memorable opening titles.

 

 IB - Jack is flexing his hands as he's lowered back down - presumably to show his nervous system is being reprogrammed - and the incidental music sting gives you a jump when he whips off his hat and we see the glowing cap screwed right into the rather sore looking scalp. Jack moves along the line of well wishers, shaking their hands and blanks his friend Will completely.

JL - Doh!

IB - Jolly rustic music compounds the eerie build-up of unease - the fact the villagers accept this with a celebratory air when no evidence is presented to show that it is a joyful occasion ramps up the discordance.

JL - I love it when you talk like that.

IB - Thank you.

 

Jack's friend, sixteen year old Will Parker has been having reservations about the whole process of capping having seen a girl at school who loved to paint no longer do so. His parents of course, being capped, do not understand such qualms. They, like the other adults insist that once they are capped they will understand. Will is also afraid of becoming what the villagers call 'vagrants' - those who have become outcast after the capping process went wrong and damaged their brains, resulting in madness.

JL - John Shackley's very first line of dialogue as Will is 'good luck'. Fitting, seeing as this was his last television role. 

IB - After a strong start, we get some badly delivered expositional dialogue starting with: 'Why should I be capped?' 

JL - Will is fucking gorgeous. Shame this is 1984 and he's fat and fifty now. I wish time travel was possible, but that's a different show. Is John Shackley related to Sarah Sutton (Nyssa in eighties Doctor Who)? They look and sound very similar. Maybe they're the same person, seeing as neither could act.

The villagers however feed the Vagrants, and Will and his cousin Henry, an orphan who lives with them, are sent to take them food . Will's mother reminds them to hurry back so as not to miss Jack's return. One of the vagrants shows a special interest in Will. He announces himself as Ozymandias 'king of kings' (referring to the great Egyptian ruler) and is not what he seems.

IB - The idea that the Vagrants are perfectly normal people left brain damaged by the capping process is really insidious when you think about it, and pushes the idea of mind rape. They're bad publicity for the Tripods which is probably why they're banished from society. 

 

JL - Sweeeet! I love brain-damaged people. But then, who doesn't? We have them now, except we call them chavs.

 

IB - These are really poor expositonal scenes again: 'Mrs Hopkins says all Vagrants are mad... stupid.' 

 

JL - That's nice. 

 

IB - I know the viewer has to be introduced to these concepts before we can set off on the jolly adventure, but wouldn't the boys have already discussed all of this stuff loads of times before? It comes off stilted, and surely could have been set up better than a he said/she said delivery of the plot. Henry has a cruel and cowardly streak in baiting the mentally deficient. 

 

JL - It's always good to have a nice fallible hero who hates the disabled.

 

IB - I like Ozymandias' choice of name and quote. 

 

JL - He's either supremely big headed or just wants to appear so to add to his aura of local nutjob. We never get his real name, do we? He's not the same guy as out of Watchmen, is he?

 

JL - Isn't it nice that poor orphan cousin Henry is allowed to work at the Mill when he's older. No signing on at the Tripod dole queue for him! It's alright for some.

 

IB - The English countryside positively glows. We had more back then.

 

JL - Which is ironic seeing as this is supposed to be the future.

 

At school, Will and Henry's group are being given a history lesson demonstrating how the Tripods arrival saved humanity from its intrinsic warlike nature - they have got rid of all disease and life is good.

IB - This school scene is the antithesis of Ozymandias' viewpoint, and goes some way to explaining why people have just accepted the Tripods wholesale. That's a very prescient comment on humans abusing nature and being greedy and warlike. Right now, the Tripods do seem attractive.

 

JL - You can live in a rural paradise and you don't even have to go on Escape To The Country.

 

IB - We now get the premise of Will's imminent capping, which is the whole initial spark for the push of the story. 

 

IB - There's John Scott Martin. He was usually inside a Dalek at this time. 

 

JL - Who knew that inside a Dalek lived a little leprechaun? You learn something new everyday.

 

IB - Yes, we praise the Tripods!

 

JL - Praise the Company!

 

IB - That's an excellent shot of the Tripod reflected in the window pane as the children peer out.

  

Will is perturbed at Jack's return from the Tripod, and how his friend's attitude has changed - he does adult work now sawing wood in the forest with the other men and has no time for childish thoughts of games. Running away through the woods, Will is apprehended by Ozimandias, who tells him of his interest in him and how it was easy to find out his name as the Parkers had been milling here for hundreds of years and he heard Will's first name being called.

 

JL - Ozymandias has been perving on Will for some time as it turns out. And with the lad's lovely flowing locks, who can blame him? 

 

JL - Oh look, obligatory 'stop working and remove hat to remind us about the whole capping thing'. Will is properly spooked. What a fanny. He's on his way to meet Ozzy, who grabs him like a gyppo gets a girlfriend. Not so rough, man! Don't ruffle these togs. 

 

JL - Ozzy likes boys. With spirit. 

 

IB - Ozzy is brilliantly acted. That line about the cap removing aggression, curiosity... and rebellion. 

 

JL - He lifts this am-dram shower of shit somewhat.  

 

IB - I don't know, Will's neutral monotone suits the character, and although he sounds a bit short tongued - I don't think it's necessarily bad acting. 

 

JL - Will was nearly going to say 'mother-fucker' there when he said 'mother and cousin'. Aw.

 

Will takes Ozimandias to a crumbling old building where he and Jack used to hang out. Ozymandias notes that Jack will have no time for such things now. He reveals himself as a 'Free Man', with a false cap taken from a dead man. Under cover of being a Vagrant he is free to move around the country unchallenged: he recruits young people who are thinking of rebelling against their capping. He shows Will things that mankind has made before the Tripods reduced them to a subsistence level of culture: a pocket watch that plays music! He convinces the boy to set off on the dangerous mission to reach the White Mountains across the sea and join the other Free Men who are gathering to revitalise technology to use against the invaders.

JL - Will has been chosen, apparently. It's not kinky unfortunately. 

 

JL - 'Men made these, Will Parker'. Not humans. Men. Sexist cunt. It's gets more sexist later on.

 

IB - Will sounds very Yorkshire. The sound from Ozzy's musical watch is horribly dubbed on. 

 

JL - How does Ozzy get that fake cap back in his hair? It must be a nightmare.

 

Will sneaks out of bed and goes to the larder to gather provisions for the journey. He is disturbed by Henry, who was awake the whole time. Henry demands to be let in on what's going on. He soon wants to come with Will because without his best friend there's nothing here for him, and he doesn't want to be capped either.

 

IB - Henry catching Will making ready to run away should be a scary moment, but it's not played with any tension whatsoever. 

 

JL - You shouldn't hide from a fat kid in a food cupboard, Will. Schoolboy error, mate. Henry was probably suffering Haribo withdrawl and felt like a midnight fridge raid. Maybe that stops when you're capped? They did say the Tripods had eliminated greed.

 

IB - Will likes thinking for himself and doing things, presumably because he's a man now. 

 

JL - Ooh. 'We like fighting.' Cool!

 

JL - It's so Frodo and Sam. That would make Beanpole Gollum later. As the boys leave behind their home forever there's the obligatory stop and look back while hopeful music plays. 

 

IB - They don't seem to be in much of a hurry, do they? Are they going to dawdle like that the whole way? Get on with it!

 

The village has sent out riders, including Jack, to bring the boys back. Ozymandias meets with them as promised and gives them maps and a compass so they can find the White Mountains. He also gives them money and a crude drawing of Captain Curtis, who he says will take them to France. The mounted search party catches up with them but Ozymandias, pretending to be an insane Vagrant, runs at them waving his arms madly to distract them. He trips one of the riders but in the melee he is knocked to the ground and appears to be dead from a head wound. 

JL - 'Captain Curtis looks like this.' What, Jonny Depp? It's not going to be Pirates of the Caribbean, surely?

 

JL - How dumb is Will, leaving a note for his parents so that they know where to apprehend him? They killed poor Ozzy.

 

JL - How are they so sure he's dead? Did they try CPR?

The two boys set off together on the long trek to the White Mountains. As they cross the field, a Tripod rises on the horizon and turns itself to watch them go.

IB - The ending of episode one picks up with a sting of incidental music as the Tripod appears over the trees in the background and bang! End title sequence. 

 

JL - I love the stalkery aspect of the Tripods, playing hide and seek behind handy clumps of treeline. 

IB - The countryside location is consummately English. It really adds to the feel of the show. Home grown.

 

JL - Maybe it's because I'm a Zionist, but I love Zion Town...

IB - You can't beat the closing theme, where we pan across the chunky green letters of the title.

TO BE CONTINUED...