Martian (The War of the Worlds) antagonists are the "squid-walkers", a cybernetic race of tripods controlled by a single entity inside their mothership. Inside the mothership, humans are kept alive and their blood is filtered, homogenised, and fed to the aliens. They are killed by infected blood injected into the mothership's core, telepathically shutting down the Tripods. In the film "H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds", the Martians are large, bulkish creatures, keeping the two large eyes and tentacles described in the book; but do not seem to possess the beak-like mouth. They meet the same fate as the originals, having caught Earthly diseases. Their
The War of the Worlds (radio drama) fell to Paul Stewart, the person Welles would later credit as being largely responsible for the quality of "The War of the Worlds" broadcast. Welles wanted the music to play for unbearably long stretches of time. The studio's emergency fill-in, a solo piano playing Debussy and Chopin, was heard several times. "As it played on and on," Houseman wrote, "its effect became increasingly sinister—a thin band of suspense stretched almost beyond endurance. That piano was the neatest trick of the show." Dress rehearsal was scheduled for 6 pm. "Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of the meteorites to