Krieg der Welten

This is one of those series that I caught in second run, and had to see all of. Rather than being cliched and boring, War of the Worlds managed to be trendy and dark, attempting to deal with mature themes and violence in an intelligent fashion all too rare today.

Perhaps the best season was the second, when the war becomes a drawn-out war of attrition, culminating in one of the most thought-provoking finales I have seen this side of Babylon 5. It is currently airing on Space in Canada, and is definitely worth seeing if you can.

You know, the first season of this show wasn't that bad. You had strong plots, good acting, and a good overall storyline.

Then the second season started.

What the hell was Frank Mancuso Jr. thinking when he made this series? It sucked! Here are some of the reasons why it sucked:

1) You killed off half the cast, including the strong military commander and the computer expert. They were actually the most interesting characters on the show!

2) What year is it? For one thing, it's never explained how much time has passed between the first and second seasons, and there's also the matter of where the woman who owned the house where lived in the manor went? She just disappeared.

3) The main characters now live in an underground pipe.

4) Even when the main character (Harrison) said he never used a gun, he just broke his own moral code and shot some guys in the second season premiere.

5) The plots just sucked. Period.

Bottom Line: Stick to the first season, and forget this season ever happened. You'll be better off.

The best thing about this series was that, in the first half of the first season, you never knew who was going to win the battles. An example plot would have the aliens trying to acquire a list of the locations of their canned (literally) comrades. The humans try to stop them but fail.

That's what I loved about the series: EVERYTHING was unexpected. Then late in the first season, you started having plots that were too obvious. (On TV in the 80s, there was no way aliens were going to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of the USA--especially with our heroes in the same city!) From that point on, the show settled for standard science fiction. It was still interesting, but it had lost its spark and never got it back.

Before the X-Files, before Millenium, Space Above and Beyond, before Nowhere Man and all of the other strange and paranoid filled shows on television, there was War of the Worlds. Set in modern times, this series employed so many disturbing images and stories, it genuinely gave me creeps at night. While the show bombed on many levels with viewers, I only remember it for being something different, out of the ordinary. While young kids were watching cartoons, I tried watching this show as often as possible, considering my parents cared little for it. Then, when it went into syndication, I watched it as often as I could. If you could ever find tapes for this series, and you like odd and unusual programming, then you will like this series.

War of the Worlds season one was my favorite television series. I was only nine when it came out, but I was amazed from the first episode. The characters were complex and very different from each other. The storyline kept me hooked wondering just who would win in the next episode. I was, however, very disappointed with season two. I couldn't really follow what had happened to make the series so different from the first and it was very dark. As for the first season, I haven't found a series on television since that has topped it. I remember it so well after 16 years and really want to see it again. I truly hope that it will be released on DVD someday. If you ever get the chance to see it, I know you'll really enjoy it.