Wonder Womanland

No Spoilers Here!
In fact all I intend to talk about is the bit about No Man's Land in WW.  We see elaborate, extensive trenchlines, lots of barbed wire and revetting, plenty of mud, trees blown branchless and leafless -

Spectacular.  BUT WRONG!

     Wrong!
     We aren't given a date, although it would be early November 1918 if the Armistice is about to be signed.  Since September the German army had been expelled from their elaborate Seigfried Stellung defences, and the war across the whole Western Front had become very mobile indeed; especially so for the British army.  They were advancing so far and so fast that logistics became a distinct problem.  This period is known to military historians in the Allotment of Eden as "The Hundred Days".  Go look it up.
     One spectacularly dim bulb commented over on the 'Goofs' section of IMDB that no Native Americans served in combat in Europe - during the Second Unpleasantness.  Yes, but this film is set in the First Unpleasantness; and the Chief might have been Canadian*.
     Also, not enough Lewis guns.

"Night of the Triffids" By Simon Clark
Conrad has just finished reading this, which he first read back in 2001.  One presumes that you are familiar with the original novel, "The Day of the Triffids"?  Art?

The specimen in question

     Mr Clark takes the story up 25 years after the original, and this time it's mostly set in South Canada, which is always good for sales.  He mimics the style of the original pretty convincingly - if you're looking for explicit sex and swearing, you'll not find it here, chum. It rattles along at a fair pace, but the coincidences pile on rather too much. The ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel to this sequel, although that's not happened.  If Syfy want a treatment of that I'd be happy to oblige for £76,000 ...

"The Day of the Triffids"
There have been umpteen radio versions, which I'll ignore completely.  I can do that if I feel like it - whose blog is it, again?  I just felt that, whilst cruising around the subject, you might like a bit of moral guidance as to which visual version is best.
     First, the fillum.  From 1963.  Art?

Note traditional damsel in distress in dress under duress

     Well, it does have triffids in it, and there any resemblance with the novel ends.  Not very good, and fans of the book would do well to avoid it.
     Then there was a recent BBC adptation.  2009.

Ho.  And hum.

     Rather lacklustre, to be honest.  Even Eddie Izzard chewing the carpet couldn't save this one, and I don't know why the Beeb remade it because it had already been done definitively as a television series in 1981 -

The one you want

     Starring the redoubtable John Duttine as Bill Masen, this series followed the novel very closely, updating it to current times, and indeed just thinking about it has made me want to watch it again.
     Of course, nothing like this could ever happen in real life.  Genetically-modified crops?  Pah - get out of here!

The Trifid Nebula
There is such a thing, and the title means "three-lobed", because they used language like that in the 18th century (when it was discovered).  Art?

In all it's triple glory

     Interestingly enough, this is what astronomers delight in calling a "stellar nursery", where new stars are - er - born.  Presumably they will also then acquire planets, and presumably also some of these planets will be suitable for life, perhaps not as we recognise it.  But, still -

No, Art, that's not - oh go on then.

Do you want more of triffids?  Okay, that's enough for one sitting.

"AO"
Conrad was NOT HAPPY when sat eating his curds and whey last night, as the channel on television was promoting something called "AO".  Conrad is not sure what they were trying to flog, but they'll not get any custom from me, and do you know why?

This

     Because they were using "Hey Ho Let's Go" by the above band to peddle their gimcrack wares**.  Ladies and gentlemen, you don't sully one of the most important punk bands ever by using it for an advert.  Though since they're all dead I don't suppose they have much say in the matter.  At least they avoided becoming zombies like the Rolling Stones.



*  Or, as Conrad likes to say, British Americans.
**  I'm not quite sure what 'gimcrack' is, but it's certainly not a compliment.