(TAPPING)
(HORN TOOTS)
Where have you been? I've been worried stiff.
I had to change wheels three times and take a 40-mile detour.
- Are the roads worse? - Terrible.
- I won't get through much longer. - Did you get my jeans?
- Did you get Susan's jeans? - A dozen pairs. I hope you stop growing!
- Is David asleep? - Of course he's not.
- Good night, Dad. - You close your eyes.
My fault. Pleasant dreams, son.
- Good night, Uncle Bill. - Good night, Alice.
(MARY) It's time you were asleep, so put that candle out.
Sorry, Mummy.
- How did you know it was on? - I guessed. Supper's ready, Bill.
Mmm. Good pickings. Good pickings.
It was a good trip from the store's point of view.
I got nearly everything we wanted, including the new Braille books.
- How's London looking? - Greener and greener.
- I suppose the parks have gone wild? - They've taken over some streets.
- (JO) Must be eerie. - It is.
- Are there any signs of life? - A few cats and dogs.
Triffids, of course. I'm pretty certain other people go raiding there.
There's indications of that, but I didn't see anybody.
- I think it's my last visit, too. - Why?
I was cruising down Tottenham Court Road and a building collapsed.
Oh, my God!
It was ready to go. The vibration of the Land Rover did the rest.
From now on, it'll have to be smaller towns. We'll get what we need in a hand-barrow.
- Did you find another flame-thrower? - I got two.
Not much of the fuel, though. There's not much of that anywhere.
- What was the triffid count this morning? - Over a thousand.
But it's only ten days since you wiped them all out.
- Did you see many between here and London? - Not in these numbers.
- You suggest we move? - No.
We've got a good place, a place we know. You need that when you can't see.
You built a fence. They're on the outside, we're on the in.
If you burn them off, there's no real problem.
No. No, I shouldn't think so.
(BIRD SONG)
(GENTLE TAPPING)
Aagh!
- Jo? Jo? - They've broken through the fence!
- Mummy! - David!
Mummy!
(WHIPLASH SOUND)
Wait!
Stay there! Don't move!
We won.
Yeah.
Are you sure this is safe?
I doubt if triffids can walk on shingle. They'd make a hell of a noise.
It's so marvellous to get out of the compound!
Oh! Look at the gulls!
To watch them, you could almost think nothing had ever happened.
There are more of them this year. I'm glad about that.
Are our chances getting better?
If it weren't for the triffids, I'd say we had a very good chance.
There hasn't been a single break-in since we electrified the fence.
If we kept the generator running all the time, the fence would be wonderful,
but you know we can't get enough fuel.
But I thought we'd found the answer to that.
Turn it on for a few minutes at a different time each day.
Susan says they'll work it out. She says they can hear the generator.
Sometimes I think they do have intelligence.
They know their purpose is to get us. And sooner or later they will.
No! Look, we're gonna beat them. We've got to.
I don't want our children living in a reservation spending all their time keeping triffids out.
Oh, God, I'm sorry. Here I am being depressing
when it's the first time we've paused from the business of keeping alive.
And I am alive.
More than I've ever been.
And I'm happier, too.
I'm sorry about the weather.
What are we going to tell the children?
Sooner or later they're going to want to know why all this has happened.
Do we tell them that the world was wonderfully clever
but so very wicked it had to be destroyed?
Or do we tell them it destroyed itself by accident?
We tell them the truth.
We destroyed it.
- We created the triffids. - We didn't create the comet.
Was it a comet?
What do you mean?
Do you know how many satellites were going round up there?
How many weapons? Or what was in the weapons?
They never told us.
They never asked us.
I suppose one of these weapons had been specially constructed
to emit a radiation that our eyes couldn't stand.
Something that would burn out the optic nerve.
- That couldn't blind the whole world. - Suppose there was an accident.
This weapon would operate at low levels, only blinding people they wanted to blind.
But after the accident, it went off so far up
that anyone on earth could receive direct radiation from it.
What about the mysterious disease? Where did that come from?
We were walking on a tightrope for a hell of a long time.
Sooner or later, a foot had to slip.
Well, if that's right,
it means our children can't make a worse mess of it than we did.
And that's cheering for them.
Yes, it is.
(JO) Oh, my God! The farm!
- What's going on? - I had to burn it to signal them.
(BILL) Jack?
- Hello, Bill! - Jack! My God! I thought you were dead!
- Who, me? Not yet! - Jo, this is Jack Coker.
- We have met. I was his prisoner. - It's a little late for me to apologise.
It's great to see you. It's six years since we've seen another human being.
Sit down. Tell me what happened to you.
- I went to Tynsham to look for you. - The disease hit us.
- Yes. I found Miss Durrant's body. - She stayed to nurse the sick.
I admired her, but those who can survive must. I took the healthy ones away.
So where's the helicopter from?
- Did you know we were here? - I knew where to look.
We're on the Isle of Wight. That's my third helicopter. I smashed the others up!
- Well, you try learning to fly from a book. - (LAUGHTER)
We're getting things organised over there now.
An island is the only defence against triffids.
- There are no triffids there? - They were there.
We moved into a large house. They congregated in thousands.
We wiped them out with flame-throwers. More came.
We must have wiped out 50,000 at least.
Then, when they didn't come any more, we hunted them down and destroyed them.
The seeds still blow across, but we have a hunt for those every spring.
- That's wonderful. - (JO) Are there other inhabited places?
I've come across several since I've been flying.
I ask if they want to join us. Some do, some don't - those who don't want to be governed.
A large group in Brighton shot at the helicopter, so I left them to stew.
There's several hundred of us now - who can see, I mean,
and a good few blind as well.
What we need is you.
Me?
We can keep the triffids away from the island, but that's not enough.
We've got to find a selective killer to finish them. That means research.
You were a biologist on a triffid farm. We can give you facilities, help.
We need your experience and skill. Are you interested?
- Yes, very! - Good.
- If Bill goes, we all go. - Of course. One thing I should make clear.
We have all agreed we're...we're not out to reconstruct the world as it was.
We want to build something new, better.
Some people don't agree with that. They want to keep the old features.
If anybody doesn't like us, we ask them to move somewhere else.
"Somewhere else" sounds like a poor offer.
I don't mean we throw them back to the triffids.
One group did move to the Channel islands. I believe they're doing well.
Anyway, the best way to learn about us is to come and find out for yourselves.
I'm sure we will take to each other, but if we don't,
you'll find the Channel islands is better than this a few years from now.
(BILL) Isn't it what we've been waiting for?
(JO) I know.
We must beat the triffids. We can't do it here. We must go.
Bill, couldn't we have one more summer here?
One more summer without any worry 'cause we know we've got somewhere to go.
One marvellous summer.
I suggest we go the first day of autumn.
(FLIES BUZZ)
♪ We all live in a yellow submarine
♪ A yellow submarine, a yellow submarine
♪ And our friends are all aboard
♪ Many more of them live next door... ♪
My name's Torrence. I'm Commander, South-East region.
I'm Chief Executive Officer of the Emergency Council for the South-East.
As such, I supervise the distribution and allocation of personnel.
I'm sorry, but I've never heard of this council.
We were equally ignorant of your group until we saw your fire yesterday.
When such a group is discovered,
it's my job to investigate it and make adjustments.
It's a good place you've taken over.
- It belongs to Mr Brent. - We can leave Mr Brent out of it.
He's only here now because you made it possible.
The society which gave sanction to his ownership no longer exists.
Mr Brent is not sighted and so is not competent to hold authority.
There are seven of you, all sighted except these two.
Yes.
That's quite disproportionate, I'm afraid. We have to be realistic these days.
I'd better put you in the picture. Regional headquarters is in Brighton.
We survived the sickness and we had plenty of stores.
Later on we conveyed them from other places.
But the roads are getting too bad for lorries now.
So we've got to disperse and live off the land. To do this, we've got to break into smaller units.
The unit has been fixed at one sighted person to ten blind, plus children.
We shall allocate you 18 more blind persons, making 20 with the two you have here.
20? This land won't support 20 people. It's enough just to feed ourselves.
It's perfectly possible. I'm offering you command of the double unit here.
If you don't take it, we shall get someone else in.
- Look at the place! It can't be done. - It can be done.
Of course, you'll have to lower your standards a bit.
For the first six or seven years it'll be hard work.
But after that, you'll be able to relax until you're simply supervising.
You'll be head of a clan and you'll have an inheritance to hand on to your sons.
Do I understand that...
you're offering to make me a kind of feudal lord?
That's a very good parallel in many ways.
It's the obvious social and economic structure for the state of things we're facing now.
Yes. I don't quite see. Perhaps you could explain where you and your council stand in all this?
Supreme authority is vested in the council. It will rule.
- It will also control the armed forces. - Armed forces?
Then, of course, there's the rest of the world to consider.
Everywhere must be in the same sort of chaos.
It's our national duty to assume a dominant role
and discourage any aggressors.
- God almighty! He wants to start a war. - "War" is an unjustifiable exaggeration.
It will simply be a matter of pacifying the tribes
that have reverted to primitive lawlessness.
To come back to the matter of allocation.
You have three sighted adults here. Your 20 blind people only rate two.
The girl can come to headquarters.
We shall find suitable work until she's old enough to take charge of a unit.
Er... My wife and I regard Susan as our daughter.
I'm sorry. Those are the regulations.
I am empowered to enforce them.
We'd require guarantees and undertakings as to Susan's future.
Naturally, we shall offer you all possible assurances.
I trust you'll be our guests for tonight.
Give us a chance to get to know each other, eh?
You're very kind.
(RAUCOUS LAUGHTER)
Susan.
They're not going to take you anywhere.
Not after the treat we've planned for them tonight.
(LAUGHTER WITHIN)
if you'd ordered this in a restaurant, you'd have fainted when you got the bill.
I liberated it.
- Let's liberate another. - No, we can't take all your best.
Nonsense! You can't take it with you. And if you can, you're not going to!
(BILL) I'll pop into the cellar, get another one.
(JO) You must try my mead later. It's guaranteed to fell an ox.
Steady on.
Fell an ox? It'd fell a whole load of elephants!
Now, what was I saying?
Oh, God, I've forgotten again.
(BILL) We haven't had such an evening since we came here.
(TORRENCE) Wonderful evening. I shall sleep like a baby tonight.
(DAVID) Mummy... (BILL) Shh!
(TAPPING)
Everybody keep down low.
(GUNSHOTS)
Amazing what honey will do.
- Isle of Wight? - Yes!
- Sorry you couldn't end the summer here. - We'll come back one day.
(BILL) Shall we ever be able to come back?
Oh, yes, we shall. We'll work and we'll learn.
And then we, or our children, will come back and drive every triffid from this land.