When Neighbors Drop In: a review of War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds, BBC 2019

Based on The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Written by Peter Harness

Directed by Craig Viveiros

Starring

Eleanor Tomlinson

Rafe Spall

Rupert Graves

Nicholas Le Prevost

Harry Melling

Jonathan Aris

Robert Carlyle

Composer Russ Davies

The production values for the BBC’s 2019 SF endeavor, War of the Worlds, are as high as one might reasonably expect from the Beeb. Acting is solid, sets and set dressing almost unbelievably good, and it adhered pretty closely to the source material, H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.” Most people only know of the turn-of-the century novel from the Orson Welles radio broadcast in 1938, presented as an ongoing breaking news story, that sparked a general panic on the east coast. That was an era when Mars was just a dim red disk with some markings that some people interpreted as canals. The idea that Mars might have a civilization and might want to invade Earth, if not scientifically solid, was fixed in the popular notions about Mars. Science fiction of the day had Barsoom, and even Venus was portrayed straight into the early 60s as a steamy jungle under a perpetual overcast.

Here in America, the usual suspects are upset about the latest adaptation. Part of it was because one of the female characters in the story was elevated to an assertive and involved protagonist, and indeed proposed the microbiological exploration that eventually led to the downfall of the invaders. Feminism wasn’t a thing in late Victorian and Edwardian England, let alone a woman who found herself in a family way without benefit of clergy. (Yes, that was the term used to describe out-of-wedlock pregnancies). The toxic masculinity crowd wanted women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, just as God, Lord Baden-Powell, and H. G. Wells intended. Characters in novels of that era were stuffy, stilted and self-important in a very Empire sort of way. Even H. G. Wells couldn’t write to appeal to the sensitivities of a 21^st century audience, aside from the ones deliberately still in the 14^th century.

Then there was the leftist tone in the production. One of the main characters wonders if England really didn’t have the devastation and deprivation from the Martian invasion coming, since that was how England had treated a full third of the world with the vast string of involuntary colonies upon which the sun never set. On this, the production is accurate. H. G. Wells had no use at all for Lord Baden-Powell or the bloody Empire, and probably would have cheerfully written of the death of the King were it legal to write such a thing in England in his era. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Wells was a socialist, and was appalled by English society of his era.

It’s not too much of a stretch to envision Wells embracing the notion of a staunchly independent feminist, were such a thing visible. (The suffragettes were just beginning to appear in his time. Wells probably approved of them.)

I’ve seen some truly stupid variations on the “Mars attacks” theme. (The movie of that name was silly, but very funny.) One variant is that the Martians are defeated by water, which is a deadly poison to them. These would, erm, be the same Martians who supposedly built world-spanning canals to move water around so they wouldn’t die of drought, and who invaded a world which is two-thirds water on the surface and gets water precipitation on at least a semi-regular basis nearly everywhere else. I see. Do go on.

The only real “Oh come ON!” moment in this is the detailed views of Mars people get (and take equally detailed images of with a box camera) using a 2” refractive scope. Even Palomar couldn’t manage those type of images.

We know Mars about as well as we know our own planet (and we are constantly surprised by new discoveries here), and so we know that in addition to the lack of atmosphere, the cold, and the scarcity of water, Mars has several other features deadly to human life: the constant bombardment of radiation, the regolith (essentially glass dust, deadly to lungs and gets into everything) and the perchlorates on the surface. It’s unlikely that Martian life could live on the vastly different surface of Earth for reasons similar to why Mars will be a challenge for us to invade.

So right off the bat, reality has caught up to War of the Worlds. But it’s still a damned good story, and somewhere in this immense universe there are, in my mind, intelligences “vast, cool and unsympathetic.” The Mars of H.G. Wells probably does exist, orbiting a distant star. With luck, when we encounter them, we’ll be past the stage where we probably deserve what is coming to us.