The Tripods
The Tripods is a TV show based on John Christopher's The Tripods series of books. It was put together by the BBC in the United Kingdom and the Seven Network in Australia. The music track was written by Ken Freeman. The first series of The Tripods, which aired in 1984 and had 13 half-hour episodes written by the well-known author of many radio plays, Alick Rowe, covered the first book, The White Mountains. The second series, with 12 episodes, covered the second book, The City of Gold and Lead. Even though a script had been written for the third series, it never got made. The first season was released on both VHS and DVD. In March 2009, the BBC published Tripods: The Complete Series 1 & 2 on DVD. The TV show made a few small changes from the book. For example, the Masters and Tripods don't have tentacles in the TV show, but they do in the book. Also, in the book, the gravity inside the Golden City was boosted artificially, which isn't mentioned in the TV show. The TV show also added "cognoscs," which are spiritual life forms that are much more advanced than the Masters themselves, as well as more main characters, such as Will and Beanpole's Original texts have few female characters. In an interview for Wordcandy, John Christopher was asked about this. He said that when he wrote the series, it was generally thought that girls would read books with boy main characters but not books with girl main characters. He also said that he thought adding an entire family of girls to the TV show was a bit "over the top." The series is also known for having aliens who are not like humans, which was unusual at the time.