The Tripods: Distinction, Science Fiction and the BBC

<jats:p> This article focuses on how mode and genre shaped the formal and narrative possibilities in The Tripods (BBC, 1984–5). It explores how the first and second series are substantially different from each other and offers an approach that attempts to explain the complex ways in which generic boundaries are made to operate within television. Such an approach can offer insight into how modifications in mode were a desire to replace an existing but ailing show, Doctor Who (BBC, 1963–) with one that would be successful because it fitted the existing industrial model of televisual flow. However, The Tripods ultimately failed because it deployed a strategy of visual distinction in contravention of the prevailing industrial televisual model. The regulation of form can be shown to be historically specific on British television, and the article examines assumptions regarding the fluidity of genre in this particular medium. The modification of The Tripods from an adventure show that addressed a general television audience to one that specifically addressed fans of science fiction demonstrates how shifts in genre can be linked to wider arguments about the increased complexity of the television image and a strategy of visual distinction as an example of the ‘era of availability’ on British television. Finally, a discussion of genre demonstrates the tensions between stability and uncertainty in an extensive cultural form such as television, and how the modality of genre is made complex by bringing together the social and the technological. </jats:p>