VIDEO SUNDAY - THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: THE MISSING LINK?

From Wikipedia:
"The War of the Worlds" (also known in promotional material as "H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds") is a 1953 American Technicolor science fiction film from Paramount Pictures, produced by George Pal, directed by Byron Haskin, that stars Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.

The film is a loose adaptation of [the] novel of the same name by H. G. Wells, the first of five film adaptations. It is a modern retelling of the 1897 novel, changing the setting from Victorian Era England to 1953 southern California, while also being a commentary on the then-ongoing Cold War and the nuclear arms race. Earth is suddenly and unexpectedly invaded by Martians and American scientist Clayton Forrester searches for any weakness that can stop them.

"The War of the Worlds" won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and went on to influence other science fiction films. In 2011, it was selected for preservation in the United States' National Film Registry in the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

"WAR OF THE WORLDS" TV SERIES PILOT

Of course, that TV show never came about but could have served as a bridge between the movie and the series which was finally presented in 1988.  Or it could have just made the premise impossible to reconcile.  As it played out, it could have found a way to keep itself and the original movie in the main Toobworld.  I'm sure I could have come up with a splainin as to why nobody remembered the events.  (More on that later.)

Instead, I think it would be better to place this proposed material into either its own TV dimension or perhaps into the dimension of Toobworld Toobworld, where all those TV movies that took place behind the scenes for many TV shows take place.

Meanwhile.....

"THE WAR OF THE WORLDS" 1988 TV SERIES
From Wikipedia:
The 1988 'War of the Worlds' TV series is a sequel to the Pal film.  'War of the Worlds' is a Canadian/American science-fiction television series that ran for two seasons, from October 7, 1988 to May 14, 1990. The series is a sequel to the 1953 film "The War of the Worlds", a loose adaptation of the novel of the same title by H. G. Wells, using the same war machine designs and often incorporating aspects from the film, radio adaptation, and the original novel into its mythology.

Though the original film's producer, George Pal, envisioned a TV series from the same film sometime in the 1970s, it was not until the late 1980s that a series was finally realized, this time by television producer Greg Strangis. The show was a part of the boom of first-run syndicated television series being produced at the time. It was later shown in reruns on the Sci Fi Channel.

According to the series, rather than being killed outright by germs at the end of the 1953 film, the aliens had all slipped into a state of suspended animation. Their bodies were stored away in toxic waste drums and shipped to various disposal sites within the United States (ten such sites are known to exist in the country), and a widespread government cover-up combined with a condition dubbed “selective amnesia” has convinced most people that the invasion had never happened.

Although the original movie narration had explicitly stated that the aliens were Martians (even featuring artwork indicating an alien city on the planet Mars), since 1953 the concept of vastly intelligent life on Mars had lost plausibility. In the series, the aliens are revealed to actually be from Mor-Tax—a garden planet 40 light-years away in the Taurus constellation orbiting a dying sun.

Thirty-five years later, in 1988 (modern day when the series began), a terrorist group calling itself the People's Liberation Party accidentally irradiates the drums containing the aliens while raiding the dumpsite near Fort Jericho. The radiation destroys the bacteria that were keeping the aliens unconscious. Once free, the aliens take possession of the bodies of the six terrorists who overran the site. From there they use a series of human bodies and crudely adapted Earth technology to find means of appropriating the planet, both in removing humanity and developing a permanent means to inoculate themselves against the planet's indigenous bacteria. Their attempt to successfully make Earth into their new homeworld is imperative for in roughly five years, three million colonists from Mor-Tax are expected to arrive.

For the greater Toobworld Dynamic, both the 1953 movie and the 1988 TV series do take place in the same world.  But I have taken the movie out of the Cineverse and placed it with the TV show in one of the Borderlands, those dimensions which blend movies and TV shows together to the point where they don't belong in either of their original universes.

Based on the description for the series, I don't see many reasons why they couldn't exist within the realm of Earth Prime-Time, from the perspective of Terra.  I like the mention of selective amnesia, which would be the same thing used to great effect several times in the modern incarnation of 'Doctor Who' (as with the near destruction of Big Ben by Clan Slitheen from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius.)  And the 1953 invasion could have been all covered up under the auspices of my invented "splain-all": UNReel, that shadow ops group created in the Victorian era which served to disguise the activities and even the existence of certain people and organizations and events as being fictional.  The general populace of Toobworld believes that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were the creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; that James Bond was created by Ian Fleming; that the men and women of U.N.C.L.E., Skynet and the Terminator androids, and the Gallifreyan Time Lord all came from movies and TV shows, thanks to the work of UNReel.

But from the perspective of the "Angry Red Planet", there is already too much which I have to incorporate into the main Toobworld with the disparate versions of Martians from 'The Twilight Zone' alone, let alone from 'Doctor Who' and even from a mystery anthology like 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'.  Even though the "Martians" eventuallly turned out to be Mor-Taxians, better to just give them their own dimension in which they could flourish unencumbered by the restrictios of Earth Prime-Time.

One last note from Wikipedia:
Ann Robinson reprises her role as Sylvia Van Buren in three episodes. Robinson also reprises her role in two other films, first as Dr. Van Buren in 1988's "Midnight Movie Massacre" and then as Dr. Sylvia Van Buren in 2005's "The Naked Monster".

Based on that information, Sylvia Van Buren may one day be inducted into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame as a Multiversal.

BCnU!