'Survivors' Vs 'The Day of the Triffids'

Here we have two classics of the 1970's BBC drama department. Both rich in Cold War paranoia, both dealing with an England devastated after the fall and both adapted from books by heavy weights of popular British science fiction. In both books a man made curse (not nuclear weapons) has wiped out 99% of the human race and the survivors are struggling to do just that; survive. The only difference between the two is that in 'The Day of the Triffids', the puny humans must also contend with giant walking vegetables roaming the landscape slaying every one they meet...

The plot in 'Survivors' is super simple. A manufactured virus gets loose in the general population and via the global air transport system quickly spreads across the globe. The disease has just the right incubation period to be lethal and is horribly contagious. Within a few weeks the human race is on the verge of extinction. Of 50 million people only 10,00 remain in the UK. The TV series (of which I have only seen the first season) deals with the same set of characters as in the book, but deviates quite a lot with characters who die in the novel surviving in the TV series and vice versa.

There are some pretty lousy plot holes in the TV version of 'Survivors' with the characters settling in an abandoned stately home despite such buildings being described as death traps in the book due to their heating needs. On the whole the TV series doesn't really convey the sense of dejection and abject misery which pervades the book. The TV characters work out their differences where as in the book, the survivors mutter and grumble as circumstances beyond their control having thrown them all together threaten to snuff them out as bleak winters and scavengers constantly threaten their meager existence. On the whole the book by Terry Nation really gets into how hard a long term survival in a post apocolypse world would actually be. The pages are crammed with mud, stinking unwashed bodies and raw chapped fingers. By comparison the TV series features several well fed adults and two children sitting about agonising over moral dilemma's in an endlessly long summer. Sure they lose their crops and a fox eats their chickens, but these events are merely plot devices for yet more agonising on moral issues and never seem to really trouble the actors much. The leading actress even wears a mass of impractical rings on her fingers through out the entire series!

The plot in 'The Day of the Triffids' is a bit more complex. First, a new type of walking plant is discovered and no one knows where it comes from. Things get even more complicated as this new, proliferating form of life is found to be not only carnivorous, but also armed with a poisoned barb on a whip like tendril. No problem for the humans who find that these triffids produce an oil which may solve many of the worlds oil needs and so begin to farm them in specially built enclosures.

Then one night, planet Earth is witness to a startling display of unusual lights in the sky. Every one turns out to gaze up in amazement at this weird sight which is described as 'probably being a meteor shower'. The next day however, every one who saw the lights is blinded by having had their optical nerves burned out. The few who have survived with their eye sight intact find themselves in a mad world surrounded by millions of blind people and then the Triffids start breaking out...

On the face of it, 'The Day of the Triffids' is a bit of a soft touch. The set up requiring two major man made catastrophe's to happen within a few years of each other for the social order to tumble leaving the Triffids at the top of the food chain. One might be forgiven for thinking the whole story was a bit silly, Wyndham doesn't really get into how people would really have to survive at all, he just unleashes his beasties and gets on with it. There is little in this story about how hard survival would really be and yet some how it comes across as being more believable. Perhaps because Wyndham was a better story teller, or perhaps because the BBC screwed up 'Survivors' by having so many writers working on it?


Both books strive for an ambient end-of-the-world feeling and both suceed to some extent. 'Survivors' is some what bleaker, especially the ending (which was scrapped for the TV series) and seen with any sense of realism, 'Survivors' ought to come out trumps. 'The Day of the Triffids' is blatently absurd in its premise and yet this is what saves it. 'Survivors' sets itself up to be a serious tale about modern people surviving without the benefits of their modern society and as such it really goes no where (the TV series squanders even that). Its the absurdity of the Triffids which makes them more appealling. Despite their comical appearance, they have a menace which gives Wyndhams tale something more than just the moral dilemma's faced by Nations band of survivors. In short, a post apocolypse tale really needs to have something more than just a bunch pf people trying to survive. It needs an ongoing sense of drama. 'The Day of the Triffids' has that, so does 'Survivors' the book, just about.
'Survivors' the TV series (season 1) doesn't.

Survivors (TV series one)
By Terry Nation, Pennant Roberts, Gerald Blake, Terrence Williams, Jack Ronder, and MK Jeeves.

2/5

Survivors (Book)
By Terry Nation
3/5

Day of the Triffids (TV mini series)
By Ken Hannam & Douglas Livingstone.
3/5

Day of the Triffids (Book)
By John Wyndham.
4/5