The War of the Worlds Episode 3 review

“Somethings got to happen soon” says Amy mid way through a drawn out siege but I wouldn’t bank on it! I’m not sure what to make of this closing episode at all as it feels like a large chunk of storyline has somehow been removed from what should surely have been a 4 part series. Then again the pace of episode 3 is so languid it sometimes feels like there isn’t enough material to fill it. If the results stop short of the epiphany that Peter Harness might be expecting his audience to have then it’s affecting enough on an emotional level. However it is very slow indeed and some crucial moments of tension just don’t seem to work. Can hiding under a reasonably tall table really mean a whopping great Martian won’t spot you? Where is the `let’s pull someone from under the table` drama? Harness certainly goes for the profound aspects of the scenario but when it comes to the scares or the action this episode is lacking which is a shame.

HG Wells: Concerning the Origins of the Genre by Andrew Darlington

HG Wells is the Elvis Presley of Science Fiction.

As with Elvis, disconnected elements of the genre he’s most directly identified with had been around for some time. But like Elvis, Herbert George became the first creative genius to define the nature of the species. Speculative themes had already been fictionally raised and explored by Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Jules Verne and other lesser-known pioneering names such as Bulwer Lytton and Colonel George Tomkyns Chesney, but it was Wells who set out and established all the major templates that SF was to follow through the twentieth-century, and beyond. Time-travel with ‘The Time Machine’ (1895). Vivisection in ‘The Island Of Doctor Moreau’ (1896). Invisibility with ‘The Invisible Man’ (1897). Invasion from another planet with ‘War Of The Worlds’ (1898). Travel to other worlds with ‘First Men In The Moon’ (1901).  Strange inventions with “The New Accelerator” (first in ‘The Strand Magazine’ December 1901). A parallel Earth in ‘A Modern Utopia’ (1905). Future war and the rise of scientific utopia with ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’ (1933). And more. Each of which has spun off a cross-media industry of franchises in its own right. The patent on any one of these themes would guarantee him a place in literary history. The scattergun of ideas gives him even greater unique distinction.