the triffids are back!

The BBC is at it again. In 1981 they did a TV seri­al­iza­tion of John Wyndham’s novel, The Day of the Trif­fids, a book fea­tur­ing mutant car­niv­o­rous plants that develop a taste for the species that invented her­bi­cides and lawn­mow­ers. [ image source ]

Accord­ing to a thought-piece on the BBC News Mag­a­zine site, the BBC is pro­duc­ing another treat­ment of this 1951 cold-war sci-fi novel. The piece muses how the first treat­ments of the novel came out of the same Cold-War hys­te­ria that pro­duced a spate of mon­ster and end-of-the-world films. But the author, Finlo Rohrer, talks about how the plot might res­onate dif­fer­ently in these days of global warm­ing, where wor­ries about destruc­tion come less through war than through our wan­ton abuse of the earth through the release of green­house gases and genetic engineering.

“The idea of malev­o­lent plant life has a cer­tain appeal now, in a time where some peo­ple are increas­ingly con­cerned about the idea of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied organ­isms,” Rohrer writes.

Sev­eral times in the piece he quotes Dr Barry Lang­ford, senior lec­turer in film and tele­vi­sion at Royal Hol­loway, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don. Lan­ford: “The trif­fids are per­haps to us a more potent threat than even in Wyndham’s time.”

All that’s well and good, but will this be a great show to watch with a bowl of pop­corn and the lights turned down low? A nice dis­as­ter pic with lots of won­der­fully cheesy BBC spe­cial effects? You might want to put your house­plants in another room. Wouldn’t want to give them any ideas…

Check out the Wikipedia entry for more infor­ma­tion on trif­fids, includ­ing the other sequels and adap­ta­tions the book has seen (includ­ing the 1963 the­atri­cal film).

December 03 2008 09:32 pm | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: • • • • • • •

4 Responses to “the triffids are back!”

  1. Helen/patientgardener on 04 Dec 2008 at 4:13 am #

    Hi — I remem­ber this vaguely from my child­hood. I think it will be good though, par­tic­u­larly when you com­pare the spe­cial effects the BBC have used in the new series of Dr Who com­pared to those series they made back in the 60s and 70s.

  2. lostlandscape on 04 Dec 2008 at 7:10 pm #

    I’d be curi­ous as to your reac­tion if you get to see the newest version–It will prob­a­bly air on your side of the Atlantic before it makes it this way. I must admit to hav­ing a fond­ness for spe­cial effects with rough edges–not just what the BBC has done in the past. With this pro­duc­tion it’ll be inter­est­ing to see what they’ll do with the Trif­fids. The lurk­ing crea­tures are always more effec­tive when they’re not shown on screen…

  3. Greg on 06 Dec 2008 at 1:48 pm #

    Oh, I do love the Trif­fids. Thought of them recently, too, when I learned how poi­son ivy is becom­ing a lit­tle more rabid thanks to global warm­ing. It’s already begun!!!! They’re com­ing for US!!!!

  4. lostlandscape on 06 Dec 2008 at 4:34 pm #

    Poi­son ivy–now that’s scary! (But pretty tho.)

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