535 – Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds

In the wake of the recent disastrous BBC adaptation of War of the Worlds, we’ve decided to cleanse our pallet with a good version of War of the Worlds.  This is a special audio review episode as we look at Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds. Album Synopsis: Strange green jets of gas are seen erupting from the surface of Mars, but experts conclude that there is little chance that it could have any interaction with Earth. Days later, the first of the cylinders arrives on Earth at Horsell Common.  They prove to be capsules containing Martians.  Unfriendly Martians who, from their crater, unleash a deadly Heat Ray, but life in England continues relatively unphased. While the military tries to cordon off the cylinder, soon the Martians have build gigantic war machines which come forth and begin destroying wantonly.  The British military is no match for them. Our narrator flees his home near Horsell Common and heads towards London to find his beloved.  He meets with a dispirited artilleryman whose unit has been wiped out in an instant.  They travel together and, along the way witness a battery of canon destroy a war machine.  The victory is all too brief as the Martians give a devastating Heat Ray response.  Our two travelers are separated and the narrator narrowly escapes in a scalding river. Arriving at his beloved’s father’s home, they are gone and he is despondent.  He continues to the coast hoping to find passage out of England.  Civilization is being routed and there is a mass migration of six million people fleeing the cities hoping to escape.  At the coast, a steamer is just leaving and he catches a glimpse of his beloved on the steamer. War Machines wade out into the water to intercept the craft, but they encounters the Royal Navy’s ironclad, the Thunder Child.  To the delight of the crowd, the Thunder Child scores a victory against a War Machine, but it’s comrades turn the Heat Ray on the Thunder Child, sending it to Davy Jones’ Locker.  The steamer has used the opportunity to escape to sea. Red Martian vegetation is now overrunning the land and clogging the waterways and the landscape of the Earth is being changed. Spying what he believes to be a dead Parson, the narrator stops to do the decent thing and bury him.  The Parson is not dead, and his wife soon joins them.  The Parson is descending into madness.  He sees the events as the biblical prophesies of Satan rising and he has given up.  His wife maintains her optimism, but she’s soon killed when another cylinder lands on the cottage they have taken refuge in.   Here they witness another terrible Martian weapon, the black dust, which they spray from their war machines.  They also witness what the Martians are doing on Earth.  They are collecting and using humans as food. The Parson’s madness turns to Messiahnistic zeal as he decides only his prayers can defeat the Martians.  His shouting attracts the attention of the Martians and the narrator knocks him unconscious; however, a Martian claw finds the unconscious body of the Parson and drags him away to be eaten.  After a time, the Martians leave and the narrator can continue his way. He encounters once more the artilleryman, who is now a man with a plan.  In order for mankind to survive, they must build a new, better world, hidden from the Martians underground. His vision is grand and sweeping, full of hope of retaking the planet… for those who are willing to see and implement his vision.  It soon become apparent to the narrator that he is long on vision, short on implementation, and is living in a dream world of his own imagination.  The narrator departs company and continues on his way back to London. London lies in state, shrouded in the black dust, an abandoned, wrecked city, silent save for the plaintive wails of the Martians.  War Machines stand sentinel over the city. When the wailing stops and the city falls silent, madness overcomes the narrator.  He decides to surrender himself to the Martians and get it over with, but when he approaches one of the War Machines, he realizes that the Martians are all dead – a victim of Earth’s bacteria. Things return to normal, our narrator is reunited with his beloved as he ponders what, if anything, the Martians will do next. Nearly a hunter years later, an American Mars probe awakens a new assault by the Martians. The End