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The Tripods
1984 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by John Christopher
In the year 2089, an alien race stalks the land in towering machines known as Tripods. They have taken over the earth and enslaved mankind with a mind-controlling device, ceremoniously implanted at adolescence. Will Parker, desperate to escape this ritual, leaves the village with his cousin, Henry and attempts to link up with the human resistance movement.
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4 comments on Hacker News
Mad Max, obviously, Night of the Comet, The Quiet Earth, A boy and his dog. I think the early 80s was a good time for the genre.
Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and that other Charleton Heston movie with zombies that I can’t remember (not a huge fan of zombies)
The Road is a fairly recent movie that fits.
British TV had Space 1999, lots of early Doctor Who and an attempt at the Tripods series by John Christopher. By far my favorite was “Survivors” written by Terry Nation - who needs zombies when you’ve got actual problems to deal with!
There was a TV series back in the 80s which I really enjoyed - I actually checked out the books from the local library after having seen the show at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods_(TV_series)
Yup. Kind of amazing what you can do with decent stories. Blake's 7 and 70s Doctor Who were notorious for cheezy effects, sets, props and costumes. But the stories really were pretty decent. Blake's 7 eventually annoyed me by how slow it progressed, but if you relax and accept that it's slower than your typical trek episode, it's perfectly fine.
The same era saw Survivors, The Tripods and Children of the Stones. Cheezy effects but very decent stories and still worth watching.
They probably have the masters; I think they usually do, at least they think so. There are stories of leaks in the back of basements etc rendering 1000s of hours of series/movies useless. That's why they should take action NOW and not waste time. Even if they only keep it locally and not sell it, it needs to be preserved! Damn it!
Brendon Chase (UK, 80s) is another one.
And there was a series in the 80s I remember as being called 'Saturday' (UK I think, about children growing up in some village and (very young) puppy love, very innocent series which I liked so much I quit my swimming lessons for it as it was on the same night and we didn't have a VCR; it was aroudn the same time as the Tripods on TV me thinks) which, due to the title, I never found anything about :( I would love to find that back as well. Hmmm. Must... Go... To... TV... Forums...