I had been too young to watch this TV series when it was first out, and I was hoping the BBC would repeat it. It's been a long wait, but I wasn't disappointed now that I've finally got to see it. Clearly it's a bit dated, and this was never big budget Hollywood science fiction, but it still has a powerful frightening atmosphere, and it stays with you.
The novel was perhaps the first post-apocalyptic science fiction book I read, back when I was about 13, several years after the series was broadcast. I was gripped by it then, but this TV adaptation seemed different from my memories of the book.
First up, I was struck by how strong the Cold War themes were. There's the Soviet origin of the plants, but there's also an explicit guess that the lights and plague were accidentally deployed weapons of mass destruction. Bill paraphrased the quote about humanity walking a tightrope, too. I can't find it's origin, but I'm sure I've heard it before - that mutually assured destruction as a deterrent against war was like asking a someone to walk a tightrope for ever. They can do it for a bit, but they will eventually fall off - and that still sounds like a very good argument for subscribing to CND. I wonder if I hadn't notice this theme so strongly in the book because we were embedded in the Cold War at the time. We'd grown used to the threat and the idea that nuclear missiles with hideous overkill were targeted at major cities and military targets in the UK right in the present moment.
I also noticed that the ethical dilemmas were being played up far more than the survival and reconstruction themes I remember - emphasised by the drama dwelling on the immediate aftermath in London. It felt like the struggle between those with good intentions and nastier individuals was being made clear. It therefore reflected the intrinsic uncertainty as to whether humans are basically altruistic, charitable and cooperative or selfish and greedy, only thinking of their short term gratification of desires. There was also the unanswerable challenge of who should you help when there's so many in need and you're effort is clearly valuable but so insignificant. This seems just as valid for an individual supporting a charity in our present cruel and unjust world as for Wyndham's well constructed artificial thought experiment. The BBC drama was also surprisingly realistic in how, despite clearly being one of the well intentioned ones, Bill was often fighting his own frustration, despair and anger at the situation - perhaps again like any of us trying to follow our conscience.
I think I saw echoes of post-WWII Nazi-survivors' anxiety too, with ideas of eugenics through planned human breeding and military controlled societies popping up. I'd imagine these would be been very much in the consciousness of Wyndham as he was writing, and in the developers and audience of the TV series too. Luckily it's perhaps harder for us living in the West now to imagine living in under martial law or to think of state controlled population management as a realistic possibility. But I do wonder if we've lost a healthy suspicion of people in uniforms that this series helps to re-enforce.
I wondered if, in contrast to the major theme of nuclear-age post-apocalyptic nightmare, there's was also a minor theme of survivalist wish-fulfilment. There seemed to be a happy promise in a dream of starting over with human culture and civilisation. We would be happy and proud to think of ourselves laying down a new, simpler social order where only the best bits of our learning were carried forward into the re-population of an empty land. As well as all those who retreat into the wilderness to practice their bushcraft skills or hoard essential provisions as an insurance against civilisation's collapse, the pleasure in this dream seems part of the charm of arriving in a new Minecraft world too...
Finally, also on a lighter note, I thought this drama provides a kind of grim nostalgia for a lost Britain too. As well as all the smoking and the drab streets and pubs, there were old fashioned attitudes that seemed to slip past unremarked (but would hopefully be challenged today). I noticed especially the casual sexist gender stereotyping and a naturally assumed intellectualism or class arrogance. These may have been even stronger in Wyndam's 1951 than the progressive BBC of 1981, but perhaps it's a small sign we've been travelling in the right direction.
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