In the dramatic space of this show almost anything can happen and we appear to be all set for a courtroom drama on 29 October. A daytime look at the spacious council chamber shows the festival cast reunited on the witness bench, and lawyers in French court robes chosen “for we speak English, a little”. (Goodness knows how, or why.) In fact, the trial short-circuits because Daniel finally appears again, declares our heroes to be wanted for subversion, and claims them as his prisoners. In episode 5, the Count had been able to override the Guard, but not so the mayor. And so, out in the courtyard, our heroes are locked into that most French of all prison vans, an iron-cage tumbrel. This shot could easily have been a simple bit of plot exposition, but the camera looks for nuances in it: the curious laywers, looking down from the courtroom window, for example; the self-righteous chatelaine. And when the captain talks about the necessity of Capping boys early, it doesn’t seem an accident that the camera finds the rather guarded faces of two close-to-that-age onlookers. In the next few minutes, the director also impresses by managing to shoot both from inside and outside the cage, even as it rattles along through trees at a decent speed.

Longer melodic themes in the incidental music make it much less incidental in this episode. The tumbrel runs always right to left in four consecutive shots — most dramatically, back across the viaduct seen in episode 11 — because Daniel means to haul them all the way back to Dijon. That would rewind two whole weeks of progress if it were to happen, but it won’t, because our party of travellers finally has its mojo back. Henry doesn’t want to strangle Daniel with the belt Kirsty gave to him, but is outvoted, and they make a modestly Houdini-like escape in a well-directed bit of business. Daniel doesn’t actually die, of course, but maybe we should really say that he hasn’t died yet, because they leave him gagged and locked in a cage alone in a stone quarry in the middle of nowhere. Beanpole is ruthless about this; Henry, closest in human sympathies to the Vichots, finds it hard to stomach. Will, ever the equestrian, sees to Daniel’s horse instead.

And so for the last time in the show, “things are back to normal”. The trio make further offscreen progress into the Alps, covering what ought to be about a week of hard terrain before our next shot, on about 5 November. And, also for the last time, we catch up with them huddled together in a shelter — of sorts, anyway: it’s a stone shepherd’s hut with no roof, where they’ve made a fire for warmth. These are isolated lands now, and if they can hold out against the cold and hunger then they’ll likely make it, so their thoughts have run on ahead to what they’ll find. It’s a nice character scene, about their hopes and expectations. Two days to go, Beanpole thinks.

The morning of 6 November sees them waking and setting out, shivering and largely silent. This brief sequence is really only a bridge to the final obstacles, but it’s good to see some of the quotidian grind of trail-hiking: sleeping rough, keeping watch, gathering the packs. Long views over high, wintry moorland to a distant lake combine with a more ethereal tone to the music as they push on through a much higher landscape.

Of all the mini-adventures in this first season of The Tripods, the slate mine is the most ambitious. Shot in a chaotic maze of spoil-heaps, ruined mine-buildings and natural gullies, with stone littered everywhere, the scene is also overlaid with the sounds of wind and of the clink of stone against stone. The boys walk in the lee of great walls or mountainsides, and aren’t looking up. Henry cuts himself, and is convincingly cross, but cheers up as they find chemins-de-fer — “like you wanted”, Will says inexplicably, to which Henry replies, “not exactly”: I’ll take a guess that some earlier line has been cut, in which Henry wished for a railway — and they amuse themselves riding in a rusted ore-car, throwing their packs and then themselves aboard as if it’s a bobsleigh race. Note the two point-of-view shots, and that the ore-car runs through a relatively sunken channel. When they crash to a laughing halt, it’s a moment before they realise they are right underneath a Tripod — which, we have to assume, is on watch and guarding the approach to the White Mountains. And now the soundscape turns over, because it’s all about being quiet and inconspicuous.

This scene does a much better job of showing why creeping away is not an option than back in episode 2, when Will and Henry were waiting under a farm lean-to. But if the situation is trickier, they are also more capable. This is the delayed battle-with-the-Tripod sequence which forms the climax of the book, though the television version is interestingly different. It relies more on ingenuity than luck, we see some cool daring, and above all it’s Henry’s great moment of glory, not Will’s. The climbing scenes are well shot with close-ups, giving us a sense of proximity to the rock face. It all feels vertical: the height of the ridge above the gulley, the height of the Tripod above the ridge. Beanpole pulls the pin out of the grenade with an improvised cradle of twine and rope.

Watching them execute this manoeuvre, we can’t help being a little impressed, and the fall of the Tripod is one of the series’s great moments. For the first time, we see just a little into the green electronic world within — and it isn’t dead, only damaged, the hemisphere’s main hatch opening for the first time — until Henry makes a textbook throw of the one remaining grenade. It rattles inside, then detonates, and that does complete the job. As the travellers scrabble up the steep gulley wall, Henry says he saw something move inside: Will exclaims that “they carry people”, but while the boys make a break for it, the camera stays on the fallen Tripod, and we see enough evil-looking green goop exuded from it to make us realise that whatever was inside, it wasn’t human.

“There’s no time,” Beanpole insists. They must abandon their packs once and for all, and run. Which is good stakes-raising stuff — down to nothing but the clothes they stand up in — but I don’t think anybody would voluntarily throw aside rope or food in terrain like this, and is it really wise to leave the map here? But no matter, because events are moving quickly, and as they crest the next ridge we end the episode on a spectacular double reveal. In front are the White Mountains at last, jagged and snow-capped — I think this is supposed to be the Mont Blanc massif as seen from the crest of the Aiguilles Rouges — but behind are more Tripods than we have ever seen at once, making haste to the scene of the crime. Two are of a new model never seen before, and indeed not found in the books. The red warrior Tripods, each with dual laser-beam accessories, are a splendidly crowd-pleasing invention of the television show. They were held back for twelve whole episodes just to make this cliff-hanger ending a special one, and it is.

Clearly, production resources were being spent lavishly on this episode. All the same, its success is really down to making a harmonious blend of all of the show’s best ingredients: good direction and an excellent soundtrack, a feeling for landscape and journeying, a certain spirit of resistance, and our heroes beating the odds twice over using their wits and slender resources to win through.

Next: Aside — Shelter after Shelter ● Prev: Episode 11