You really need to watch it to the end to appreciate what this episode is about. It starts off quite jarringly with seemingly random elements thrown together... first, you have young adults frolicking around the country estate... second, you have two pompous older ladies - a Mrs. Clarissa Hedge-Hacking, and a Lady Corm - both of whom want desperately to be accepted as members of the upper class (there's also a husband, Mr. Hedge-Hacking, who is seen later). The two ladies arrive at the country estate due to the death of a distant relation who was a duke. They are determined to prove themselves as vital members of the duke's family by imposing themselves as organisers of the duke's funeral ...third, you have the new owners of the estate, a wealthy couple from London - Royston Land-Price and his wife Heather Land-Price - who have transplanted themselves from the city to the country ... finally, you have two sons, one from each family, listening to shortwave radio and trying to decipher what they think is the language of Martian invaders! For most of this episode, our attention is drawn to the interaction between the Hedge-Hackings and the Land-Prices... which begins with courtesy and civility despite a buildup of tension surrounding their disagreements about how to conduct the Duke's funeral in such a way that doesn't interfere with the Land-Prices' business retreat scheduled for the same day. It's quite fascinating to watch the tension build and build until finally the façades of both families break open and out flows a deluge of open hostility. Just as this reaches the fever pitch, we discover that the young boys were correct about the Martian invasion. In fact, the boys did try to warn their parents. In the midst of all of the class-obsessed squabbles between the two wealthy families, their sons would interrupt their conversations once in a while, pleading for the adults to heed their warnings that life as they know it will be ending imminently. And, so, the Martians do invade in the final brief scene and the wealthy families are dumbstruck, speechless... We realize that the young people running around the estate were actually the Martians who had already arrived in advance. Once you get to the final scene, the moral of the story is clear. We, as a society, spend far too much time bickering about things which are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. In doing so, we ignore the big catastrophic things building up in the background. Even though this episode is from 1963, this is a timeless message. The genius of this episode is that it actually gets the viewer deeply involved in the squabbling. This sets us up to experience the invasion through the eyes of the squabbling families, as an abrupt and shocking apocalypse that seemed to come out of nowhere.
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