Creator Backlash: John Christopher was pleased with the first season of the TV series, but felt that the second season drifted too far from his original vision by its end.
Development Hell: The supposed film adaptation was announced as being in pre-production in 2005 and was supposed to be released around 2012. Obviously that hasn't happened.
Dub Name Change: The Finnish translation changes the name and nickname of Jean-Paul/Beanpole to Guy Quellot/Kuikelo.
The Other Darrin: Charlotte Long, who played Eloise in the first series, died in a car crash shortly after the series began broadcasting. As a result, the role was recast, with Cindy Shelley portraying the character in a brief dream sequence in the second series.
Screwed by the Network: The BBC executives of the era (1980s) really hated science fiction. And along with Blake's 7, the Tripods series was one of the series' to get the axe. This was also the struggle period for Doctor Who which would be put on hiatus twice, the second time being the effective cancellation of the show in 1989. All of these shows got cancelled without closure although the end of Blake's 7 effectively serves as closure in retrospect, many, including leads Paul Darrow and Michael Keating, wanted the show to continue. Out of the three, The Tripods series really suffered the worst insult from being cancelled two installments into what everyone knew to be a trilogy- made worse by the series-original ending of the Freemen being wiped out by the Tripods while the protagonists were away ending it on a massive cliffhanger completely absent from the books.
What Could Have Been: The outline of season 3 followed the books relatively closely, but added a few elements for extra drama. Jules would have found a traitor after things kept going wrong, but continued problems would have lead to questions about a second traitor. When Will's group destroyed the domed city, he would have rescued Eloise, who was in suspended animation rather than dead as in the books, and taken her back to the chateau. However, news of the failure of the attack on the third city would have prompted him to leave to go back to the fight. It would have been interesting to see what effect the military laser armed tripods (exclusive to the series) would have had.
Other factoids:
The TV series was notable for being one of the first television series to avoid the use of Rubber-Forehead Aliens. The Masters were animatronic puppets that had roughly triangular bodies, with one limb supporting the torso/head segment and two other limbs extending from a shoulder-like area, one one limb each side of the central torso-limb. This is a change from the books, where they were more upright, with three legs, three tentacles and three eyes, plus a nasal-oral area, on a heavy body that was a roughly triangular torso and head with no real neck.
