Why did they all of the sudden not come from Mars?
They come from Mars, but in the series they don't. I think thats a big thing in the War of the Worlds universe that they come from Mars.
shareI think we are to assume they were using Mars as a base and were actually from "Mor-tax" or whatever. The 53 movie clearly says they're Martians though.
shareAliens being from Mars is such a 1950s plot device. Its a big universe, so why not make it another planet? It also helps explain that the 1953 invasion was merely a scout party prepping earth for colonization.
shareBut if we base it from HG Well's book which the 1953 film is, they come from Mars. I think it was wrong for them to come from any where else. (but hey that's just how I feel)
Part of the reason is back when the original novel was written, life of Mars was considered a very possibility, and even in the 1950's it was still a possibilty up until recently after NASA started sending probes to Mars and it became clear to was no life there. So, when they did the TV show, to make it more "believable" they changed worlds.
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Too, since the 50s, space has become a lot bigger (as we grow in space technology), so I can personally understand the change.
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Actually, as stated in Carl Sagan's _Cosmos_, Alfred Russel Wallace (the co-discoverer evolution by natural selection) pointed out that the air on Mars was far too thin and cold to support liquid water and that only "a race of madmen" would build canals under those conditions.
What Sagan doesn't tell you is the title of the work and the date it came out: _Is Mars Habitable?_ (1907) Wallace even suggested that the polar caps were frozen carbon dioxide which on Earth freezes at -56.4 C or -69.5 F meaning under lower pressure the temperature would have to be even colder.
"Aliens being from Mars is such a 1950s plot device. Its a big universe, so why not make it another planet?" ... Let's be honest here...the original story by H.G. Wells was pretty much a pioneer effort in the realm of science-fiction. Mars was the closest planet, and this story was set in the late 19th century. There was no real concept of space flight back then, which is why a nearby planet was necessary in "launching" large projectiles to Earth that crash down, unscrew, and are built up into walking war machines. The movie stuck with Mars because it was trying to stay true to certain elements of the book, while simultaneously updating the proceedings. The series further updated the proceedings by making the aliens not be from Mars at all, simply because we now know that there is no life on Mars.
"It also helps explain that the 1953 invasion was merely a scout party prepping earth for colonization" ... How so? How do you make the leap from scouting party to full scale invasion? The first season made a logical update that made sense. The second season made a "scratch your head" retcon that was impossible to believe even in the context of the series alone. The second season was awful, and this is just one of the reasons why.
Well, I got beaten to the punch. The real life discovery of a dead red planet was pretty much the reason for shifting the aliens' homeworld. Strangis says this as much in the writer's bible, explainingg that the world just assumed they were Martians until space probes and "Carl Sagan PBS specials" debunked the popular theory. Though the show does stretch at times, taking this page from reality helps give the story an organic world to relate to.
One also has to believe it was done to aide the story. Having an entire planet of so highly advanced extraterrestrials as depicted in both the film in series just a rock away would destroy some tension for the plot. As brought up, utilising Mars in Wells's story was largely because of the nature of science. The Martians waited until the planets were as close as they were going to get and then shot the cylinders. That was fairly lo-tech, so transporting the invaders to another planet for the series makes sense given how they dressed up their technology for the 1953 version. Though not explicit onscreen, it was a nice homage in the backstory that the invasion force set up a temporary shop and sent out a scouting party from Mars.
My question is why they put the aliens where they did. Why the Pleiades star cluster?
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