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War of the Worlds (unsold 1975 series)

 
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Pow
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 11:31 am    Post subject: War of the Worlds (unsold 1975 series) Reply with quote

There is quite an interesting 3-part video on Youtube about director George Pal's proposal for a WOTW TV show.

This has nothing to do with the syndicated WOTW TV series that ran for several seasons years ago.

One of the aspects I found fascinating was that George wanted to do the show by building model sets & then placing live actors in to the model sets.
You can see from test footage how this would have worked.

Looks like it had great potential.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 1:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Holy mackerel, what a great find, Pow! Thanks. Very Happy

I think we had a post about the Youtube video of part 3 on the old All Sci-Fi, but I don't remember seeing parts 1 and 2 before.

The "pictch" being made for the show is very well done, and I certainly wish it had become a series. The talented people who were going to create the series, along the the plans they had for it, are definitely impressive.

As for the premise, however, I'm concerned about the way it starts out as a concept based on the George Pal movie and then wanders way off tract in several ways.

For example, the invading aliens aren't from Mars, they're from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri (which is certainly not a deal killer by itself), but then the plot gets increasingly complex until it seems like the series is working so hard to introduce new plot elements it never sticks to one and explores it thoroughly!

We've seen this mistake made in many sci-fi series over the years. The producers' strong desire to keep the show "fresh, exciting, and new" ends up making it hard to watch, because it's like trying to eat a six course dinner while the waiter keeps replacing each course with a new one before you're finished with the last one! Shocked

Maybe the overview of War of the Worlds only seemed unnecessarily complex to me because it tried to pack too much into a short video, but one objection I have is the way the series starts out with a story taken directly from the Pal movie and then turns it into a Star Trek wannabe that has no relation at all to the Wells novel or the Pal film.

Watch the videos and tell us what you think, folks. Cool



____________War of the Worlds TV pilot, part 1


__________



____________War of the Worlds TV pilot, part 2


__________



____________War of the Worlds TV pilot, part 3


__________

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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Thu Aug 26, 2021 9:46 am; edited 2 times in total
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Krel
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 9:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The third video is not intended to be an example of the story. It is used to show how the effects would work in the show.

David.
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 04, 2017 1:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That sure is a familiar-looking spaceship.



Last edited by scotpens on Sun Mar 18, 2018 2:47 am; edited 1 time in total
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Krel
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 04, 2017 9:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
That sure is a familiar-looking spaceship.


Matt Jefferies liked recycling. If you look at the shuttles he designed for this show, he recycled the design for the Enterprise's shuttles in the ill-fated "Star Trek: Phase II".

David.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My apologies. I did not realize that the pilot was from 1975 & posted this intriguing George Pal project under Sci-Fi Television from 1950 to 1969.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 1:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
My apologies. I did not realize that the pilot was from 1975 & posted this intriguing George Pal project under Sci-Fi Television from 1950 to 1969.

Oops, I didn't notice it either. But I relocated it easily, Pow. Very Happy
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Thu Aug 26, 2021 9:39 am; edited 1 time in total
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Maurice
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 6:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
scotpens wrote:
That sure is a familiar-looking spaceship.


Matt Jefferies liked recycling. If you look at the shuttles he designed for this show, he recycled the design for the Enterprise's shuttles in the ill-fated "Star Trek: Phase II".

David.

Yep.

The show was actually called Star Trek II, the "Phase" thing was dropped pretty early on, but it's a handy way to differentiate it from the ST2 film..

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Pow
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 25, 2021 9:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Re-watching the three-part documentary for George Pal's proposed television series/sequel to his fantastic War of the Worlds film.

The premise of his TV show was to center around the hyper-space cruiser the Pegasus, commanded by Col. James Anderson. The crew compliment was to be 50 men and women.

There are 5 other such ships in the fleet.

Pegasus is pursuing the retreating Martian space ships when they disappear. An ionized belt prevents communications back to Earth.

Fearing they cannot risk anymore space cruisers, the International Federation of Earth recalls the 5 remaining cruisers in case Earth needs to be defended from another alien attack.

Meanwhile, the Pegasus receives a distress call from the planet called Mega. When they investigate, the Pegasus crew discover the remnants of a previous Earth expedition from 15-years earlier.

They find alien beings underground just like the ones that invaded Earth but they seem to be under some greater evil influence.

They also find a race of primates and human colonists under mind control.

All appear to be servants to a greater unseen power.

The Pegasus would later find the planet Endor. A world with dimmed suns and oceans that are stagnant bogs. A dying planet that would also be the Seat of Darkness.

Bud is correct when he writes that the premise for this sci-fi show has a lot going on in it. Perhaps too much.

It clearly would be an ambitious show by George Pal and require a lavish budget to pull it off well. Similar to the budget that Lew Grade gave Gary & Sylvia Anderson for Space: 1999.

So even though this would have been a 1975 sci-fi series being done pre-CGI (the very first sci-fi TV shows to utilize CGI effects on a weekly basis would be Babylon 5 & Seaquest DSV, both began in 1993), it still might have worked for Mr. Pal.

My concern would be that Star Trek: TOS might influence too heavily the artistic look of Pal's TV show.

Matt Jefferies was a genius with his creation of the Enterprise and other aspects on the original Star Trek.

George hired him as artistic designer for his WOTW.

My concern would be whether the talented Jeffries would be able to conceive of unique and original concepts for George's show and not repeat his Star Trek work.

Certainly the configuration for the Pegasus looks nothing like the star ship Enterprise.

I don't dislike it but I'm wondering why it follows the space ships of old from earlier movies and television by being rocket shaped? Assuming the Pegasus is not intended to land upon the surface of a planet, why can't its shape be original looking, since it would not be restricted in the vacuum of space?

That was Gene Roddenberry's idea for the Enterprise.

Up to that point movies and TV sci-fi shows adhered to either rocket ship shaped vessels or saucer shaped craft.

Creating original uniforms, sets, props, ETs, and planets (along with weekly special effects) is an enormous challenge for producers & creators . . . even today.

George had a lot of experience in those areas from the wonderful sci-fi movies he produced. TV can be a different animal though, because you don't have the budget of a film and you sure don't have months to shoot as you do with a movie.

You have to churn out a brand new & impressive episode every week. Such a schedule has caused strong individuals to have a nervous breakdown.

Critical to George's TV show would have been what is always critical to every series: the writing.

I hope George planned on hiring the ingenious writers who scripted for The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek among others.

If the writing is weak, as it was in all the Irwin Allen shows, Battlestar Galactica (original), and Space: 1999, then your shows will fail. Oh, they may run for several seasons and their production values might be awesome, but with substandard writing these series will never be considered truly outstanding by fans. All sizzle and no steak.

Still and all, I wish George Pal had been able to get his project off the ground. I would have been very curious to see it come to fruition, and I'd have been rooting for George.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 26, 2021 12:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Thanks for reviving this thread, Pow. It deserves it. Very Happy


Bud Brewster wrote:
As for the premise, however, I'm concerned about the way it starts out as a concept based on the George Pal movie and then wanders way off tract in several ways.[

I'm at a loss to explain how a skilled movie producer like George Pal could take a fertile concept like a sequel to War of the Words and promptly ignore all the potential that a true sequel had! Confused

Here's what the foundation for the premise should be.

Element #1: In the 1950s, mankind is nearly destroyed by alien invaders from Mars, a planet we had erroneously assumed was devoid of intelligent life.






Element #2: But the invaders were destroyed by Earth's prolific microorganisms, which mankind was (by comparison) immune to because we'd been exposed to them for eons.





Element #3: The demise of the Martians left behind an abundance of their awesome technology, and mankind would frantically study it so we could (a) use some of it against a second Martian invasion, and (b) discover ways to counteract it — something we failed completely to do during the invasion! Sad





Element #4: The fact that Earth's common microorganisms would be a totally effective form of "germ warfare" if used on the Martians means that we already have a powerful weapon we could use to wipe out the Martians . . . on their own planet!

How? Easy! Cool

We build long-range, interplanetary missiles which can travel to Mars and make soft landings. Then these missiles pop open and start spewing out their payload of virulent germs into the Martian atmosphere.






Shortly after the missiles land, we send the Martians a nice friendly radio message.

"Gott schütze dich!" ("God bless you" . . . because they'll all be sneezing. Laughing)

But of course it probably won't be that easy for a variety of reasons — such as the very real possibility that the Martian civilization has been largely underground for centuries on their dying world. So, our microbe-carrying missiles which are sitting on the surface wouldn't be as effective as we'd hoped.






And for that reason, the story becomes more interesting, because we'd need to build hundreds of manned spacecraft to go to Mars and attack the aliens directly.





Germ warfare could still be used, but we'd have to find a way to introduce the viruses into their subterranean life support systems.

I can easily imagine a TV series that mixes scenes which take place on Earth and scenes which show members of our 1950s Space Force on Mars.

Perhaps the best way to prevent this from becoming too costly for a weekly series would be to have it involve an initial reconnaissance mission which gathers intelligence about the Martian civilization and how we could attack it.

At first our recon team would have to wear spacesuits on the surface.






But after they've managed to sneak into a Martian underground complex they could hide their suits when they discover that the Martians maintain an Earth-like atmosphere below the surface.

The personnel on this mission become stranded on Mars because they can't get back to their spacecraf. However, they can still communicate with Earth using radios which relay the signals to Earth through their ship. And while they're skulking around to spy on the Martians, they send back reports which help Earth get ready for the full-scale assault we'll eventually make!

In Wells' novel, he indicates that humans would eventually be captured and used as both pets on Mars and slaves here on Earth!






But perhaps the Martians have already genetically engineered humanoids who serve them on Mars and can work on the surface.





A group of these strange humanoid slaves could befriend the recon team and help them remain hidden from the Martians, as well as providing valuable information that would be sent back to Earth.

The genetically engineered humanoid could look less alien than the ones in the image above, making it cheaper for the series to present them in the episodes. And they could somehow disguise the recon team members as fellow slaves so they could move around in Martian society!

Anyway, guys, I think the concepts described above would make a plausible "sequel" to the 1953 classic.

By the way, the Classics Illustrated page above is from the wonderful Archive.org, and I had a great time restoring page 41 to it's original beauty! Here's the before and after versions. Very Happy




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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 26, 2021 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great ideas, Bud.

The Martian fleet remaining in orbit of the Earth is now aware of the fact that they can die due to deadly microorganisims from our planet.

They also now know that they cannot land upon our world without exposing themselves and dying from something that they have no cure for.

The Earth is useless to them now, so they retreat back to Mars, a planet that they lived on while planning their invasion of Earth in order to insure their continued survival.

Mars, however, was never their homeworld but only a staging area for them.

With the majority of their invasion fleet disabled on the surface of the Earth, they see only one other course left open to them: since they are going to die off, so are the inhabitants of the planet that defeated them.

They will wage a war from outer space by firing their remaining ships' weapons into all the cities of Earth. They will create havoc with our weather systems which will cause even more destruction.

They may not wipe out all of humanity but they will at the very least plunge them back into the stone ages and this time humankind might not rise up to create any new civilizations.

Frantically back on Earth humans all across the globe re-engineer the fantastic Martian war machines/space ships. Some nations cooperate with one another on what their scientists are learning about the highly advanced alien technology. Other nations do not.

The United Nations is finally able to assemble international crews to operate the alien space ships and defend the Earth.

The aliens are stunned that the humans are able to operate their vessels as well as they do. Unrealized by the aliens is that while the majority of their species died after being infected on Earth, miraculously a very few survived due to some rare natural immunity. Others lived but are quite ill.

Humans negotiate with the survivors that they will welcome them as new inhabitants of Earth. Humans will also study exactly what the causes are of the aliens' demise and attempt to cure their sick friends. The aliens must instruct the humans about the aliens sophisticated technology in order to combat the continuing attack from outer space.

A few of the aliens agree; others refuse.

Now mankind & womankind take the fight to the stars.
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