Richard Burton's narration (used in the musical) is very dramatic, almost perfect infact.
I've never heard a banjo sound so good DUM DUM DUMMM, while being mixing in with eerie noises from the other instruments.
And it's funny to think that the 1938 radio narration caused mass hysteria
"Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact"
Also I happenned to notice the many narrational differences between 1938 radio broadcast and Jeff Wayne's 1976 Musical Version, for example.
1938 radio broadcast
We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's, and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small, spinning fragment of solar driftwood which, by chance or design, man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space.
Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
Jeff Wayne's musical 1976 version
No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.
