With no ongoing situation beyond a long walk, the plot of The Tripods has to run on very little narrative fuel. When it comes down to it, the characters can only be in one of two possible situations: moving forwards (episodes 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 12), or not (episodes 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13). But the show does at least have that journey to hold it together. It’s to the credit of the writing that the story doesn’t simply fall to pieces as a series of unconnected events — as had happened to the, incredibly, 26-part French resistance drama Manhunt, 1970,[1] or the directionless odyssey of the Moon in Space: 1999, 1975-76.[2] In both those shows, the episodes could almost be shown in random order without really jarring the viewer. The Tripods avoids this trap by leaning in to the continuity of events. There’s some deft narrative stitching to join its scenarios together, using mini-scenes like the walk through the woods in episode 2, for example, or the hike over the mountains in episode 12, to minimise jump-cuts between entirely different situations. The show also emphasises continuity through time, from the date-like title cards to a very visible change of seasons as summer becomes high summer, then autumn, then winter.

But the quest, for all that it gives series 1 a real sweep, is also a dramatic weakness. Many people and situations are encountered, making the scenario rich. But by the same token, we cannot have the “home” set and recurring cast which most telefantasy depends on. The village of Wherton, for example, was established in episode 1 in exquisite detail, never to appear again. The most interesting people in the series cannot feasibly meet each other because they live hundreds of miles apart.

This is a challenge, because genre television gets much of its effect from what we might call recurrence: from the reassuring, semi-endless returning of places, of times, of people. What would The West Wing have been, without the set?[3] (A set which was more elaborate, in fact, than the one in the actual White House.) Could we imagine Gilmore Girls without its mutable, yet eternal small-town square?[4] Could either show work without their comforting chronological structures, in which each episode takes around a week, from early scenes introducing some fresh idea in a “what’s new on Monday morning” way, to final ones disposing of the situation with everyone tuckered out and ready to rest up before the next episode, and the next new idea?

And yet The Tripods is not without recurrence. It is not quite true, for example, that the village of Wherton is entirely left behind. The Parkers often tell stories about it even when hundreds of miles away, keeping its memory alive, and so they never seem rootless.

And episode 12 shows us a number of recurrences of a sort which might be called mementos. Most obviously, the character of Daniel, for all that he’s under-developed, represents a chaser from episode 9, 10 and (albeit fleetingly) 11. Since he’s following them, he can straddle the fence between one scenario and the next. The problems facing our heroes in episode 12 are solved with a miscellany of equipment which has, likewise, travelled along with us: Henry’s belt (gift from Kirsty, episode 10); the coil of rope (abandoned boat, episode 8); one of Will’s puttee socks (from the Vichots, episode 9); the tomahawk (the Vagrant woods, episode 11); and, of course, the two hand grenades (Paris, episode 4).

— ● — ● — ● —

Because it’s following a book, and going somewhere, The Tripods is more of a serial than a series. The episodes don’t all have the same plot, and sometimes seem to have completely different concerns and priorities from each other. That sounds like a strength, but again, it’s double-edged. Every Gilmore Girls episode basically exists to show that mother, daughter and grandmother are more like each other than they think. There are in fairness multiple episode plots in The West Wing: two, to be exact, the one where they do the right thing even though it’s hard, and the one where they don’t. Both shows are gloriously and endlessly repetitive, and somehow that’s key to what makes genre television captivating. The template for genre dramas in the British television culture which produced The Tripods is also soothingly familiar, and was well-worn by 1984. There’s a dominant character, usually a man — James Onedin, Kerr Avon, Albert Foiret, Neil Burnside, Spencer Quist, Greg Preston, John Koenig — who navigates some serious incident but ends up solidly on top again after some bravura show of mastery. Crucial to these shows is that the hero is indeed a master of whatever skill is relevant to the scenario: if he were a duffer, like Basil Fawlty or Frank Spencer, the programme would be a sitcom instead. The story of our runaways, very much a serial and not a series, just does not fit into this template. The boys have no status to regain, no safety to return to, and no mastery to exert.

And yet The Tripods does give the viewer a periodic, subtle reassurance of everything being put right again. As mentioned already, there can’t be any base of operations to return to. The boys do not have a secret laboratory built into the London Underground, or a time machine with bedrooms. And yet, that easily overlooked scene in episode 12 where the boys huddle around a fire in the sheepfold is somehow the equivalent. Their safe place is always some form of shelter against the world. That shelter has been a prison cell, a stone barn, an old traffic-control tower, the cabin of a boat, and so on — even the Tomb and the mill-room of episode 1 could be looked on as shelters. The cliffhanger of episode 4, when Will is desperately ill in the pouring rain in open country, is exactly that for once they have failed to find the next shelter. When things are going better, the rhythm of making it from one safe place to the next provides the key element of recurrence in The Tripods. The shelters are all different, but they are all one. And the shelter of all shelters, of course, is the hideout of the Free Men in the White Mountains: journey’s end.

Works cited:

  1. Manhunt (London Weekend Television, 26 × 50 minutes, 1970), produced by Rex Firkin. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  2. Space: 1999 (ITC, 48 × 50 minutes, 1970), produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  3. The West Wing (NBC, 154 × 42 minutes, 1999-2006), produced by Aaron Sorkin, John Wells, Thomas Schlamme, and others. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  4. Gilmore Girls (The WB, The CW, Netflix, 153 × 44 minutes + 4 × 100 minutes approx., 2000-07 and 2016), produced by Amy Sherman-Palladino. Wikipedia; IMDB.

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