7 / 10
score
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The Disc
 
Extra Features
All of these were put together by Power, the Canadian production company and there is a lot to wade through.  There are interviews with virtually every cast member and more with the principal crew – 16 in total.  Most of these are a decent length and allow everyone to talk about their characters, how they became involved in the project and what they enjoyed about the shoot.  Eddie Izzard’s is particularly enjoyable as, just as you would expect, he flies off at tangents and takes five minutes to answer a one minute question.
 
Most of these form the basis for the Making Of which looks at the CGI and features interview clips, some of which weren’t included in the interview section.  This isn’t as in depth as I would have liked and there isn’t enough about the adaptation and creature design as a longer piece would have allowed. 
 
Additionally there are deleted scenes, none of which are really missed.
 

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The Picture
Shot on HD Digital, the image quality is extremely high and it seems that digital gets better all the time as the artefacts and problems in low light situations that effect some productions aren’t evident here.  It’s amazing how the cast interacted with nothing or metal poles and how the computer wizards made it look like they were really battling with giant plants!
 
The Sound
I chose to forgo the stereo option and just watched with the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack which is very good, with clear dialogue and the surrounds are neatly employed to emphasise the Triffid threat.  The sound design really helps in this respect with the rustling and clicking movement and communication of the plants coming across as really sinister and intimidating.  Also helping is the score which is very good and presented well by the soundtrack.
 
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Final Thoughts
The Day of the Triffids is a fantastic story which has been well updated – the timescale in the book would be impossible to do in a 180 minute TV mini-series, so changing and truncating characters and events is a necessity.  I liked a lot of what they did here, with Bill Masen and Torrance as very different to Wyndham’s vision but the idea of Triffids as a GM fuel source that gets out of hand is pretty topical given the debates over climate change and GM crops.  I felt the ending let the good stuff down and is a limp and slightly daft way to finish the story but, overall, this is impressive stuff with star turns from just about everyone involved.
 
The package is pretty good, a decent amount of extras and good audio/visual quality so, if you watched this on television you’ll know whether to buy/rent this or not.  If, like me, you didn’t, it’s worth a watch.

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