Customer Reviews

The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Like "Time After Time," this three-part British TV miniseries features a fictional H. G. Wells embroiled in several fascinating SF adventures. Each segment runs 90 minutes and contains two stories; the entire show runs 4 hrs. 30 mins.

This is one of the best films I've seen this year. Each story (loosely based on Wells's fiction) is well told and the lead characters are utterly charming. If you're in the mood for some quality science fiction this is the best bargain you'll find.

Great acting, dialogue, story, sets, costumes --- thoroughly enjoyable!

As a struggling young writer, H.G.Wells is introduced to some great scientists who become fantastic friends, while strange things begin to happen to him as some of his own short stories are woven into the fabric of this series.

I can't say enough good things about this series. Because it's made like a period piece, when the science fiction stories start happening it's all the more amazing! Each story is such an unusual twist, i challenge you to guess what's really going on.

Tom Ward (Dr Harry in the tv series Silent Witness) holds the series together with his self-assured and sensistive portrayal of H.G.Wells, but the real treat of this series is the developing friendship and love he finds with the scientists and his future wife within the stories.

By the end of this, the whole cast feels like a very close family and you wouldn't want to lose a single one of them, which makes the final scenes all the more poignant as Wells grows old.

This dvd is impossible to get in Australia, has never been seen on tv here, that i know of, you can only rent it in selected stores. God knows why it's treated like such a b-grade series, it's really outstanding, i saw it over a year ago and it sticks in my mind to this day.

This movie originally previewed on the HallMark channel ( @2001).
I eagerly sought after a copy of it then and was shocked to find out that they weren't releasing it. Well I gave up hope trying to get it for several years until recently seeing it available at Amazon. Wow, what a find. My wife and I love this film!
The adventures have a strong 19th century flavor to them and the budding relationship between H.G. Wells and his "lady" friend add a nice point of interest to each story. We've all read H.G. Wells fiction novels, but most of us have no clue of the life and times in which He wrote these stories. This movie offers a romantic view to that past.

I never did see this when it was originally aired as a miniseries, and had no idea that it even existed until I did a search for "H.G. Wells" in the Dvd section at Amazon.com, and I really must say, it was one of those truly excellent rare finds that comes only once or twice a year at the most. I wasn't in the least bit sorry or disappointed that I ordered this Dvd; it was truly an excellent video adaption of some of H.G. Well's very best science-fiction short-stories.

Tom Ward played a very good H.G. Wells, in his prime as an ambitious writer for a popular London publishing company (The Saturday Review) and also as the elderly Wells, being interviewed and sharing a review of the past with Eve Best, who plays a reporter but is also connected to the Ministry of Science and has a special interest in some of the speculative works of Wells. Katy Carmichael plays Jane Robbins, the college professor that Wells eventually married. Wells and Robbins are like a Victorian version of Mulder and Scully of the X Files, as together they investigate strange events and follow the stories to do their best to understand the scientific nature and get to the truth.

The very first story is about strange events at the college where Jane herself works, and introduces us to one of Well's most intelligent friends, a Professor Gibberne (Nicholas Rowe), after a spectrograph suddenly vanishes during an experiment and Wells is enlisted by Gibberne to investigate the case. The investigation leads them to another Professor, who has been conducting experiments with a powerful chemical, which they discover, accelerates the metabolism. The special effects for this particluar episode were state-of-the-art; perfect tri-dimensional stop-action scenes with Wells and Gibberne moving about within it all, while the rest of the world was completely frozen still.

Each of the stories were interwoven by the personal lives shared by Wells and Robbins, as they became better acquainted with each other, taking lunch together and walks in the park. After Wells is kicked out of his "Saturday Review" publishing company office by the department editor, for turning in the story about the chemical accelerant instead of the romantic piece that was assigned to him, he and Jane go out and about together looking for another story which he hopes will make up for the sudden set-back.

What they found was perhaps even more fantastic than the episode about the accelerant, even though it also pertained to the relativity of time. In this case, however, it involved a paradoxical event that occurred after a subterranean power-line worker experienced a temporal displacement which put him back in time about a week. As time-travel stories go, this one wasn't all that different than others, as it gave the somewhat disillusioned man the opportunity to use his knowledge about the future to his advantage and also pointed out the dangers such manipulation of events could pose. But the really unique twist to this one was provided at the very end, after the man handed Jane's book, detailing the entire story, to Wells in the tea shop, even though they themselves never recalled the experience, because it never actually occurred in the "adjusted" time-line.

The next episode is somewhat reminiscent of "War of the Worlds", as it involves what might be considered one of the very first meteoric probes from Mars, which crashes somewhere in Northern Britain and is sold to a curios shop manager, to be sold as either a large, interesting paper-weight or whatever. Before it is sold, however, the manager studies it more closely and sees something, like a vision of another world, and an alien creature. When the man takes a drawing of the creature to Jane Robbins at the college, seeking to identify the species (Robbins is a biology professor), Wells shows up and takes a special interest in the case.

Three other episodes include one about a man that experiences a temporary bipolar disorder after an accident involving a powerful electromagnet at the college, which puts him in a mental ward speaking about visions of being alone on an island somewhere at sea; another about an over-weight friend of Wells that becomes light as a feather on the wind after drinking a potion from a mysterious apothecary, and finally, an episode about a fan of Wells that uses him to get to Gibberne, solely for the purpose of stealing some of the experimental viral cultures Professor Gibberne has been storing, to be used as a weapon against the British government.

This series is extremely well-done, an excellent adaption of the speculative science fiction of Wells. The Victorian era settings appear to be very authentic, the characters all quite believable, the effects at their best, and the fictional stories all very intriguing. Ward was excellent as Wells, Carmichael was a perfectly adorable supporting actress as Jane Robbins, the kind of strong, intelligent and attractive woman every man dreams about, and Rowe made a perfectly fun-loving zany Professor Gibberne.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the complete series is the perspective from which it is presented from the beginning and throughout; the perspective of the elderly Wells telling each of the stories to the reporter Ellen McGillvray (Eve Best). This is most interesting because it adds to the ultimate mystery by presenting each of the stories as if they are actually true; as if they were, in fact, based upon very real events experienced by Wells and Robbins and their friends and associates in late Victorian England. This fact-based fiction angle is very well-done and intriguing, and to some extent, quite believable. While each story does seem quite fantastic, at the same time, anyone who knows what a truly mysterious and fantastic universe we live in, will also realize that there could be some genuine factual basis in reality for much of it.

When one also considers how much of the 20th century history H.G. Wells foresaw and predicted, and how much more was opened up by the relativity theory of Einstein, The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells is a wonderful source of intelligent speculation as well as a reminder of how much more is possible beyond the tedious, monotonous and mundane reality so many of us find ourselves confined within, in the much more complicated beginning of the 21st century.

Unknown to most viewers, this 4+ hour long show was made by Hallmark. Unlike Hallmark's more famous works such as Merlin, Helen of Troy, Gulliver's Travels, and the 10th Kingdom, this one was not an adaptation of a fairy tale, myth, children's book, or a remake of some other movie. Instead, this is a highly original synthesis of multiple works by H.G. Wells, such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds.

The story is told in flashback. An old H.G. Wells in retirement is approached by a lady working for the English government but posing as a journalist. She proceeds to ask him questions about his past. Each question is answered in a flashback by Wells. These flashback periods occur around the end of the 19th century, and each one involves something paranormal, fantastical or extraterrestrial. It is these components of the flashbacks that make the show part fantasy, and part science fiction. Each flashback also alludes to one of the books authored by the real H.G. Wells, many of which are mentioned in this movie.

The overall pace of the movie is slow and deliberate, such that the fantasy / sci-fi parts of the story are not the central theme. Instead, it is the romance between Wells and his fictional love interest played by the beautiful Katy Carmichael. The theme music, and the realistic dialogue adds to the slow pace. My only complaint about the movie was the lack of English subtitles. The movie is set in England, so the accents are very thick, which makes it somewhat difficult for an American to understand some of the dialogue.

good acting! Based on the works of H.G. Wells, from the Martians to time travel, from dealing with the magic of Hobs to the science of the truly weird, we have it all. Lots of action, adventure, romance, great sets and costumes, and they seem to get the late 19th Century and the 1940s right on the button. Can't help but find the outfits, buildings, everything, right down to the tearoom they seem to have lunch in, lovely to look at. And realistic enough to help you slip right into the story without wondering about if something was right for the period or not. Get it new or used, you will love it. Because of the violence and some cursing, it is suggest for 12 and up.

This is an Excellent DVD. An exceptional Bargain for what you get. The mini series presented contains over 4 hours of adaptations of H.G. Wells short stories. The 3 part series contains 2 stories in each but the fun part is, they are all told as a sequence with H.G. Wells relating his rememberance to some one else. Costuming and Set/sites is perfect. All the actors involved do an excellent job on their part. This is one DVD I'll enjoy watching again and again.

H.G. Wells, was way ahead of his time in making the unbelivable belivible both in movies, radio, and print. But notably, he is about stange or other worldly stuff such as "War of the Worlds" "Time after Time", and the "Time Machine". "The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells" is a series of short stories about unexplanable events, scientific labs and Government intrigue.

The stories are each told separately by a survivor of the envents, each telling fades into the story as he talks. In each story, the same main actors, one journalist and the other a lab technician, tackle a different scientific problem or strange event they are confronted with. If you are interested in such things, the acting by the main characters is exceptionally well done for this genre and includes a bit of romance to provide continutity through the several stories.

It's intrigue and strangeness does stick with you for a few days. For 264 minutes, great scenary and costumes of the times and under $4 at Amazon, it is good entertainment and well worth your time.

I didn't know what to expect with this DVD, but sent for it because of the name H.G. Wells. It's a mini-series taken from Wells' short works and includes him as an observer in most. If you enjoy period science fiction matched with warmth and good acting, and plenty of fun surprises, try this one.

"Watch what you ask for -- you may get it" and "May you live in interesting times". This seems to be the lesson of this finely-convoluted show. I may not have believed it easily possible to create such an H. G. Wells-inspired multifaceted movie -- to have it be funny, enjoyable and understandable in under ten hours. But, indeed, that is what we have in "The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells". This wonderful fun movie is great for H. G. Wells fans, sci-fi fans, history fans, romance fans and just about everyone. It even touched-on most of H. G. Well's main topics by weaving them naturally into the ongoing plot. It was so easy for me to get into this show and its leading couple. It was so colorful, thematic and lively with clever action. Yet, despite me being a sci-fi-fantasy-gaming fan, I was pleasantly tricked and totally fooled by some of the turns and twists -- surprised big-time several times -- for final delight +++