John Wyndham’s novel seminal post-vegetable-apocalyptic novel, The Day of the Triffids has been adapted several times, but possibly most faithfully by the BBC in 1981. Simon and Eugene look at the 6-part Day of the Triffids. Story Synopsis: Triffids are plants bioengineered by the Soviet Union to be an efficient fuel additive. They are unique in that they can move about and can sting animals to death – or at lesser intensity – blind them. Bill Masen works at one of the triffid farms, and he accidentally was blinded by a triffid sting. Now he recuperates in a hospital, waiting to see if his sight has been saved. Sadly for the bandaged Bill, on the night before he gets his bandages off, he misses the greatest light show the world will ever see. An astral phenomena bathes the earth for 24 hours with an amazing light show in the night sky. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, though. Neither are there free light shows. The next day, everyone who saw the show is blind. Bill, now one of the few sighted people left in the world, meets up with Jo and begin their adventures in a world turned on its head. Oh, and the triffids have escaped and they are hunting down the blind humans like a feast. Bill and Jo first meet up with a group planning to go to the country and setup a polygamous compound. Blind women can produce sighted babies and so they must breed up a new generation of humans to take back the world. Bill and Jo decide to join in, but then… …they are captured by Coker, a sighted man who feels that everyone should stay in the city, helping the blind get food until help arrives. Since they refused to do so on their own, they are imprisoned and chained to work gangs. Bill and Jo are separated. A disease begins to kill off everyone, and Bill manages to leave his work group when they all die. He cannot find Jo, but he finds the name of the place to where the group had been intending to go, Tysham, and, along with a repentant Coker, who also saw all his blind people die of disease, they head out. They find Tysham, but the group has already splintered into two factions. Those that remained at Tysham felt that good Christian values and morals must be maintained, and the two groups agreed to split. Coker tries to convince them that they cannot just rely on God’s grace and must start doing things to save themselves, but they refuse and the pair leave, looking for the other group. Bill hopes that Jo is with them. They cannot find the group and Coker decides to return and try to make them see sense. Bill remembers a place on the South Downs where Jo mentioned her self-sufficiency-minded fiends had a farm with a well and wind power and a generator that might make a good retreat. He travels there, and along the way recuses a young girl, Susan, from the triffids. Bill finds Jo and they are reunited. Bill goes back to check on Cocker and Tysham, but the group is dead of the disease. There is no sign of Coker. Bill and Jo spend six good years together with her 2 blind friends. In that time, Susan becomes as a daughter to them and grows up, and they have a child, as do her friends. Good years, that is, save for the fact that they are under constant siege by thousands of triffids. Coker arrives via helicopter, he survived the disease at Tysham and found the other splinter group. They’ve settled on the Isle of White and freed the island of triffids. Others are colonizing the Channel Islands. He invites them to come live with them – he especially needs Bill, a man with bioscience training on triffids to help make the fight to retake Earth. The group decides to go, but first they want to spend one more summer on their farm. Alas, the next day, a tank pulls up with representatives of the newly-established, and not-elected government. They are setting up the new order. The are apportioning land to sighted people and requiring them to take on 10 blind people for each sighted person as, effectively, slave labor. The sighted will be feudal barons under the authority of the government. Just one problem, only 2 sighted adults are allowed, Susan will have to come back to HQ with the soldiers and be assigned… suitable duties. That night, they get the soldiers drunk, sabotage their tank and escape, heading for the Isle of White.