The Tripods
Tripods is a television series based on John Christopher's The Tripods series of books. It was co-produced by the BBC in the UK and the Seven Network in Australia.. Ken Freeman composed the score. Originally broadcast in1984, the first series of The Tripods covered the first book in the series, The White Mountains, with 13 half-hour episodes written by Alick Rowe, a well-known radio drama author. The second series, The City of Gold and Lead, contained 12 episodes. Even though a television screenplay was produced for the third series, it was never aired. A VHS and DVD release of the first season was made possible. Complete series 1 and 2 were available on DVD from the BBC in March 2009. Several minor differences from the book were made in the TV series, including the shape of the Masters and Tripods, which had tentacles in the book, the artificially increased gravity within the Golden City, the introduction of "cognoscs," spiritual life forms vastly superior to the Masters themselves, and more other main characters, including love interests for both Will and Beanpole. Few female characters are featured in the original works. At the time of creating the series, it was understood that girls would read books with male protagonists, but not vice versa. John Christopher explained this in an interview on Wordcandy. It was also claimed that the insertion of an entire family of female characters to the show was slightly "over the top" on his part. Another unique aspect of the show is the inclusion of non-humanoid alien races.