Awesome / Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds

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• You have to admit, the Martians are terrifying, but they also inspire quite a bit of Rooting for the Empire. There's a reason the Martian destruction of Thunder Child is on the album cover. From their arrival in "The Eve of the War", to the attack on Horsell Common, to their routing of the British Army in "The Artilleryman and the Fighting Machine", they're just plain cool. Every time they scream "ULLA!" while rejoicing over their kills is awesome, in both the classical and modern sense of the word.
• Thunderchild. Floating silently while the Tripods wade out to sea to block off escaping steamer ships. "Then with a deafening roar and whoosh of spray, it swung about and drove at full speed towards the waiting Martians."
  Moving swiftly through the waters
  Cannons blazing as she came
  Brought a mighty metal War-Lord
  Crashing down in sheets of flame
  Sensing victory was nearing
  Thinking fortune must have smiled
  People started cheering
  'Come on Thunder Child'
  'Come on Thunder Child'
  • Becoming such a threat sees it promptly destroyed, as the steamers escape to sea.
• It's a Dying Moment of Awesome, but Beth defiantly singing her defense of, well, The Spirit of Man.
• While it would have been a Senseless Sacrifice, Parson Nathaniel being shaken out of his misanthropy and into a Church Militant spirit, trying to turn back the tripods armed with nothing but his cross.
• The Artilleryman's plan to rebuild society underground - unrealistic, sure, but the sheer enthusiasm and gusto makes it believable.
  Artilleryman: We'll build shops and hospitals and barracks right under their noses - right under their feet! Everything we need - banks, prisons and schools... We'll send scouting parties to collect books and stuff, and men like you'll teach the kids! Not poems and rubbish - science, so we can get everything working! We'll build villages and towns and... and... we'll play each other at cricket! Listen, maybe one day we'll capture a Fighting Machine, eh? Learn how to make 'em ourselves and then wallop! Our turn to do some wiping out! Whoosh with our Heat Ray - Whoosh! And them running and dying, beaten at their own game! Man on top again!
• The narrator's realisation of the Martians' defeat - not by military means but by bacterial infection. Richard Burton's Narrator gives the moment a lot of gravity:
  I scrambled up to the crest of Primrose Hill, and the Martians' camp was below me. A mighty space it was, and scattered about it, in their overturned machines, were the Martians: dead. Slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things upon the Earth: bacteria. Minute, invisible bacteria! Directly the invaders arrived and drank and fed, our microscopic allies attacked them. From that moment...they were doomed.

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