Doctor Clayton Forrester (The War of the Worlds) in Steven Spielberg's 2005 remake, as an homage to the original George Pal 1953 film. The "War of the Worlds" TV series (developed as a direct sequel to the film, not the original H. G. Wells novel) makes a number of references to Dr. Clayton Forrester, but does not actually feature the character. The show's back-story establishes that Forrester adopted a young boy, Harrison Blackwood, who was orphaned during the Martian invasion in the film. (Blackwood's parents were Forrester's colleagues at Pacific Tech). Forrester's discovery that the aliens, believed to have been killed by common bacteria and viruses, were still
Fighting machine (The War of the Worlds) free-flowing organic legs described in Wells' novel. They are also described in the prologues of the live stage versions as being modified versions of similar walking machines the Martians use on Mars. This interpretation of the Martian tripods also appears in the 1998 and 1999, video games based on the Jeff Wayne album. In Kevin J. Anderson' "The Martian War" the Martians use two type of tripods, the ones from "The War of the Worlds" and a smaller, "overseer" variant. In "Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds", the fighting machines are described as having legs that can telescope down allowing