The Tripods (1984)... A BBC series adapted from the first book ("The White Mountains") in John Christopher's "Tripods" trilogy...Be sure to read all three books. Eventhough Christopher targeted an older teen audience the books are written on an adult level and should be just as interesting to adults too. The 2nd book is the "The City of Gold and Lead" and the 3rd is the "The Pool of Fire." They are great reads and go beyond this first TV series. There was a 2nd BBC series made based on the 2nd book but it veered away from the story so much and was less realistic. Disney's Touchstone Pictures has now bought the rights to all 3 books and is in progress of making the first book into a movie. Expect Hollywood to alter the story(I'm sorry to say) to target an American audience(the story will most likely be set here in the future North America where was the USA). I hope they get smart and stay close to the original story with good quality and good acting instead of depending solely on CGI/special affects for the whole movie(like most new Sci-Fi movies).

In 2089, the human race lives a peaceful, agrarian existence in post-technological communities under the rule of the Tripods, vast alien machines that look like the Martians from War of the Worlds. In a small English village, teenage cousins Will (John Shackley) and Henry (Will Baker) are troubled as they near the age at which they will be "capped", fitted by the local Tripod with a metallic hairnet which will turn them into docile, uncreative, happy servants of the invaders. A wily vagrant tells the boys that far to the south, a community of uncapped freemen resists the Tripods, and they set off on a 13-episode journey that takes them to the coast, across the English Channel and down through France, with stop-offs in the impressive ruins of Paris, at a medieval-style chateau and on a vineyard in the Jura. Along the way, the lads fall in with "Bean Pole" (Ceri Seel), a gangling, bespectacled French rebel who is fascinated with the lost arts of machine-making, but at each of their stopovers there are temptations, mostly in the forms of appealing French girls, to settle down and become happy conformists.