Doomwatch Fanzine Issue 1

Kit Pedler

Gerry Davis

Terence Dudley

The DOOMWATCH FANZINE is designed and produced by SCOTT BURDITT. The cover illustration of Dr. Quist is by BRIAN GORMAN. A HUGE thanks to Tony Darbyshire, Michael Seely, Richard Thomas, Stephen Dudley, the late John Paul, Martin Worth, Scott Burditt, Andrew Wilson, IanBeard, David Brunt, Simon Coward, Nick Goodman, Kevin Atkinson, David Tulley, Anthony Brown, Bob Furnell and to all of the contributors ofDoomwatch.org for helping to make this fanzine a reality. All of the proceeds from this fanzine have been donated to Cancer Research UK. Doomwatch.orgare not affiliated with Cancer Research UK or the BBC. This fanzine is dedicated to the classic BBCtv series "DOOMWATCH" which originally ran on BBC Onebetween 1970 and 1972. It includes information on the Channel 5 TV Movie (1999) and the Tigon Feature Film (1972). Doomwatch is BBCtv copyright andno infringement is intended. Doomwatch.org is a non profit making site. Please support the BBC in any DVD, Audio or Book releases. The views and opinionsexpressed in this publication are solely those of the authors.

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Welcometo the very first unofficial and unauthorised DOOMWATCH fanzine.

We hope you enjoy this 40th anniversary issue. A huge THANK YOU

for supporting us!

Contents...

Embryonic Nazis on four legs 3-17

by TONY DARBYSHIRE

A Message from the frontline 18-19

by STEPHEN DUDLEY

Transhumanism in DOOMWATCH 20-21

by RICHARD THOMAS

When will you people learn not to interfere? 22-24

by MICHAEL SEELY

Enjoy!!

Scott Burditt

www.doomwatch.org

The man thepressdubbed

‘Doctor Doom’was Doctor

Christopher ‘Kit’ Magnus Howard Pedler, afourth generation medic who spent a year as ahouse physician and three weeks as a GP,before deciding he couldn’t make life-and-death decisions from the inadequateinformation he was being given. He took a second degree, gained a PhD for work on retinal diseases of thenewborn, and became an experimental pathologist producing pioneeringelectron microscope work on the retina. He later became Head of Researchin his own Department of Anatomy at University of London’s Institute ofOphthalmology. Once ensconced in science, the humanitarian Pedlerturned in his Home Office licence for animal experimentation, finding itdistasteful. He wanted to make a difference: ‘I looked outside mylaboratory door, and didn’t like what I saw.’ Kit Pedler had been DoctorWho’s unofficial scientific adviser since 1966, where he met story editorGerry Davis. The SF fans struck up a writing partnership, creating theCybermen from Pedler’s extrapolations of current work on spare-partsurgery. They conversed about hushed-up environmental disasters, andhow science no longer served humanity but careers and profits, compiling scrapbooks that soon contained enough material for a series.In July 1968 they presented BBC Head of Drama, AndrewOsborn (former producer of R3, which inspected the humanface of science, itself a progenitor of the new series) with ascript for an authentic, adult SF series entitled ‘Earth Force’.They later supplied a title that the BBC considered toodownbeat, but which appointed producer Terence Dudley -an experienced staffer who had already helmed The World ofTim Frazer, Cluff and The First Lady (where he firstencountered Davis) - hadinsisted on: Doomwatch.Davis made clear whatthe series was about: ‘Thedays when you and I

marvelled at the ‘miracles’ of science - andwriters made fortunes out of sci-fi - areover. We’ve grown up now - and we’refrightened. The findings of science are stillmarvellous, but now is the time to stopdreaming up science fiction about themand write what we call “sci-fact.” Thehoneymoon of science is over.’ With Davis as script editor and Pedler asscientific advisor (whilst concentrating onhis optical work and continuing to penarticles for the British Medical Bulletin andScience Journal), casting for Doomwatchbegan. Central to the series wasincorruptible Nobel Prize-winning,internationally-respected mathematicianand nuclear physicist Dr Spencer Quist. Thispart went to the authoritative (andimpressively-coiffed) John Paul. A memberof The Mousetrap‘s opening cast, Paul was aformer POW who had enjoyed entertaininghis fellow inmates by acting, and laterfound TV success in Emergency - Ward 10and Probation Officer, with parts in WitchHunt, The Saint and The Avengers amongst

others. His film career ranged from The Flesh is Weak, The Steel Bayonetand Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb to The Blood Beast Terror and CharlieChaplin’s final movie A Countess from Hong Kong. He would be the onlyactor to appear in every edition of the series. Davis had seen RobertPowell in a play and thought him perfect for the young, idealistic,Cambridge-graduated physical chemist Tobias Wren. Whilst not his screendebut (previous work included The Wednesday Play and The Italian Job),the show was to make Powell a household name. Davis declared it theonly major casting choice he ever made. Likewise, Dr John Ridge madeSimon Oates one of the most recognised men on the box; appropriately,since he was responsible for much of Ridge’s charisma. He was chosen asthe trendy chemist, ex-MI6 operative and Doomwatch 2-i-c by Dudley,who had used him in The Mask of Janus (leading to a reprise in sequelseries The Spies). The 6’4” Oates - variously a member of the IntelligenceCorps during his National Service (where he became Army heavyweightboxing champion, a title he would hold in common with Ridge), pubcomedian and compère who worked alongside the Rolling Stones - hadplayed heavies in The Avengers and Man in a Suitcase and been a lead in1967 film The Terrornauts. He later confessed to fabricating two years’acting experience in order to blag a foothold with Chesterfield Rep. lfJohn Paul was every casting director’s idea of a medic, then JobyBlanshard’s image was that of a jobbing copper. Nevertheless, he becameDoomwatch’s forthright Yorkshire electronics engineer Colin Bradley. Thecharacter actor had made minor appearances in The Saint, The Avengers,Adam Adamant Lives!, Coronation Street and Randall and Hopkirk(Deceased). Wendy Hall (Sexton Blake, Z Cars, The Flying Swan) was hiredto add sex appeal as department secretary Pat Hunnisett. As Dudley laternoted: ‘Our idea was to entertain, but to entertain with cautionary tales.Our objective was to base every Doomwatch subject on something real,something that could and probably would happen in time if nobody tooksteps to stop it.’ There’s a photograph of Pedler, Davis and Dudley in frontof their production office noticeboard. It gives a snapshot of science in thelate ‘60s, and the dangers concerning the team: ‘Life is created in test

Embryonic Nazis on four legs by Tony Darbyshire

THE DOOMWATCH TEAMDr. John Ridge played by Simon Oates

Colin Bradley played by Joby Blanshard

Dr. Spencer Quist played by John Paul

Toby Wren played by Robert Powell

Pat Hunnisett played by Wendy Hall DOOMWATCH FANZINE 3

tube’, ‘Concorde boom blamed for damage’and bizarrely, ‘Americans are not for eating.’Their commissioning brief for prospectivewriters would read: ‘Adventure in theresponsibilities implicit in scientificadvancement when it ignores the humancondition: a kind of science fact-fiction.’ Theseries went before the cameras in October1969 and debuted on Monday 9th February1970 as part of the BBC’s first full-colourseason. Davis and Pedler had already courtedcontroversy with the Cybermen and their new,post-watershed programme was to be cutfrom the same cloth. ‘Man’s greatest dangersmay develop from his own discoveries.Suppose there should be a backlash in theadvance of science. Who would know? Whowould have the ability to protect us?’ askedthe Radio Times cover heralding BBC1’s latest series.

The Plastic EatersThe Plas tic Eaters admirably prepared viewersfor the unsettling tone of the show. Openingwith a pre-title sequence in a passengeraeroplane as one by one the flight deckequipment fails – then begins to distort andmelt. The plane crashes, all lives lost. Thesetup is established via prospective teammember Toby, and the writers impartinformation at a leisurely pace. Colin built theDepartment’s analogue/digital hybridcomputer himself, for example, but moreinteresting is the background of theDepartment’s director. Quist was on the Manhattan Project, developers ofthe atomic bomb first dropped in warfare on Hiroshima in August 1945.Death as a result of his mathematics still tortured Quist, whose office

contained huge wall-mountedphotographs of Nagasaki and BikiniAtoll atomic explosions as a constantvivid reminder of his achievements; itwas these worries over the ethical andmoral implications of his work whichled him to Doomwatch. Whitehall’sdisingenuous disinterest in itsDepartment of Observation and

Measurement of Scientific Work is cleverly implied: the urgently neededlab computer – nicknamed Doomwatch - is off-line, whilst the self-servingMinister of National Security (played to perfection by John Barron)withholds information from Quist, of whom he disapproves. As Quisthandily info-dumps: ‘We were set up to investigate anyscientific research, public or private, whichwould possibly be harmful to Man. In fact agovernment was practically re-elected onthis very issue. And now we’re thedustbin for every brainlessly routine jobthat can be shoved onto us … when wedo get anything rel evant, the essentialinformation is withheld.’ It’s evident hewas installed as director merely for thepolitical interest and potential votes hisappointment provided. The opening talewould stretch all areas of the BBC to put itsconcepts on screen, utilising practical on-set visual effects, video manipulation, stockfilm (notably some crash test dummy footage),and making early use of the electronic blue-screen CSO process. It’s still unnerving to see planewindow-seals oozingdown cabin walls orcontrol joysticksdisintegrating in

Nuclear mushroom clouds bloo m, and the screen turns to static. The ‘TVscreen’ is switched off leaving only a dot, before alternating blood-redfootage of the blossoming clouds, further static, and the words ‘DOOM’and ‘WATCH’. The memorably stark title sequence, by Alan Jeapes of theBBC’s Graphics Department, is accompanied by Max Harris’ strident,superbly ominous theme tune.


4 DOOMWATCH FANZINE

the pilot’s hands, the result of the plastic-dissolving Variant 14 devised tocombat litter. This stems from the way Davis and Pedler dealt foremostlyin strong imagery; it’s telling that episodes with such nightmarish setpieces are often amongst the most compelling and memorable ones.Reviewers seemed uncertain about the episode. Writing in The GuardianNancy Banks-Smith thought it had ‘great immediacy and veracity. Thoughthe characters are such irredemiably plastic people that one hungryenzyme could eat the lot of them for elevenses.’ ‘It looks a vigorous,inventive series’ judged Sylvia Clayton in the Daily Telegraph. ‘Capablydone … with a high degree of suspense … It makes you think. And a serieswhich does just that is worth having around’ asserted the Morning Star’sStewart Lane. Conversely the Daily Mirror’s Mary Malone flatly dismissedit as ‘unbelievable’; whilst The Stage’s disappointed John Lawrence found‘it had more in common with the Boys Own Paper of the fifties than witheven the immediate future. … Where it went wrong was in the actualscripting, and in production. The writers resorted almost entirely tomoving the story along by way of cliché … The production lacked tensionthroughout. I would not have thought it possible that a plane fighting toland before it crashes could be shown battling its way down withoutcommunicating any feelings of excitement or suspense whatsoever, butbetween them [the writers and director] managed it.’

Friday’s ChildFriday’s Child– ‘loving and giving,’ and ‘the story closest to home’ according to Pedler – had one Dr Patrick (Alex Scott) transplanting

monkey hearts into patients, and‘growing’ a decerebrate foetus in anartificial womb. This he intends to killwhen grown, to provide a new heartfor his gravely ill son. Quist and Ridgeare horrified; Toby is more detached,observing an accepted precedent forthe organ harvesting: ‘Every cow andpig bred for the market is a pre-

determined assemblage of joints— the size of an oven decides the sizeand shape of the beast.’ The story also touched on the press’s sanguinityover organ transplantation, in the same way that the initialnewsworthiness of Christiaan Barnard’s pioneering work in the fieldrapidly dissipated after such procedures became more commonplace. Thecast included Mary Holland, then-nationally famous for playing housewifeKatie in Oxo’s TV ads. The Daily Sketch’s Gerrard Garrett praised JohnFriedlander’s ‘very impressive living and breathing foetus’ prop but feltthe story raised discomfiting issues: ‘the programme asked questions. Is itright to chop up monkeys for science? Is it ethical to breed brainlesschildren to provide spare parts? I’m all in favour of light entertainmentdelivering food for thought but these were rather weighty moralproblems. You’re on the right lines, chaps, but don’t try to compete toostrongly with the [BBC discussion series] Television Doctor.’

Burial at SeaIntroduced John Savident’s Minister. This episode tackled the dumping ofnerve gas canisters into cheap ocean sites. The script had a yacht full of

scubadiving pop stars (members ofThe Hoarse Chestnuts) using highexplosives whilst retrieving treasurefrom a sunken wreck at Plymouth —thereby causing the canisters to crackand leak their contents, killing humansand marine-life. This was a timelywarning, given that the US hadrecently attempted to dump ten

thousand tonnes of toxic waste into the Atlantic, whilst inexplicably largeamounts of sea-life deaths in the Irish Sea had hit headlines at the close ofthe ‘60s. The Morning Star’s Stewart Lane returned to the series: ‘Would itbe too far afield to suggest that someone up there (wherever BBC-1’sDoomwatch series is devised and written) doesn’t like politicians?Certainly the Government Ministers who have appeared so far have been

represented as smooth, oily buck-passers, whose primary concern isalways to keep things under wraps to protect their own position.

Indeed, it makes one wonder how such a body as“Doomwatch”, which is designed to safeguard the public

interests against the wilder excesses of the scientists,technologists and politicians, ever got appointed in the

first place. But Monday’s episode … struck very near to probability inother respects, and no doubt too close for the comfort of some actualauthorities. … If this series can continue to strike hard at real problems oftoday, and concern itself a little less with slightly unbelievable cloak-and-dagger activities, it will serve a useful warning, and maybe an educational,function.’ It was with its fourth episode that Doomwatch really gainednotoriety:

Tomorrow, the RatAn instalment given added bite with news of a generation of rats gainingimmunity to poisons in Wales. A spate of rat attacks on humans alert

Doomwatch to geneticist Dr MaryBryant (Penelope Lee), creator of rattussapiens: intelligent, cannibal, flesh-eating rats, the latest step in theongoing war against the rodents. Colinand Toby are subject to one (nowinfamous) assault, prompting apriceless scene with Blanshard beatinghimself around the knees with a frying

pan and missing, whilst Powell violently staggers about in a vain attemptto dislodge the fake rats sewn onto his trousers. Bryant’s research isleading her towards eugenics, and her rats (likened by Quist to sharks and‘embryonic Nazis on four legs’, though which as John Carey in TheListener observed, ‘had a quiet, pet-shop air, and seemed alarmed by thepanic they aroused’) have been escaping to go on the kill. The episodeclimaxed with John collecting Mary for a date, only to discover her half-eaten, abandoned corpse - a scene Oates refused to rehearse, tosuccessfully simulate a genuine response. The BBC switchboard wasjammed with complaints that evening and questions were reportedlyasked in Parliament. Perennial Booker Prize bridesmaid Beryl Bainbridgemade her first appearance as an extra; she would make a further six overthe course of the full run.

Project SaharaThis is a soil virus which reduces fertile, arable grassland to barren scrubin minutes. Biologist Dr Stella Robson (Hildegard Neil) is helping the team

assess it, though this raises importantissues of political sensitivity due to herMiddle Eastern background. She andToby are suspended pending securityclearance, assessed from extensivecentralised computer records (clearlycurrency exchange rate charts: thisand medical records data in Plasticindicates the origins of the BBC’s

computer programs at the time!) which are detailed enough to containinformation on sexuality, financial status and medical/criminal history.‘The contents of every application form filled out in a lifetime neatlystored in that machine and capable of being recalled in an instant,’ fumesthe liberal Quist.

Re-Entry ForbiddenJust over a month before the Apollo 13 moonshot, Re-Entry Forbiddenlooked at the physical and mental strains placed on astronauts, when

human error onboard NASA’sprototype nuclear powered rocket,Sunfire I (doubtlessly inspired by1958’s Freeman Dyson/GeneralAtomics’ Project Orion) causes it tosplash down close to Britain. Quistworries over potential fall-out, Pat ismore concerned about the cost of theUS space programme compared with

the number of starving children in the world. Events take on criticalurgency when Sunfire II goes up with a crewmember exhibiting paranoiactraits – uncomfortably he is the first British astronaut, a former student ofQuist’s for whom he supplied references. The production provided anaccurate representation of TV’s coverage of the rocket launch andsplashdown, with stock footage of Apollo missions, on-screencountdowns and studio mock-ups with James Burke and Michael Aspel.The Sunfire set was co-designed with Doctor Who: The Ambassadors ofDeath to spread costs for both series.


DOOMWATCH FANZINE 5

The Devil’s SweetsIn The Devil’s Sweets Doomwatch, seconded to the Ministry of Health,research cigarette smoking and trace a 100% increase in sales for Checker

Board, a brand mainly bought bywomen. The story dealt with the use ofmanipulative psychologicaltechniques in retail, PR and targetedadvertising, and saw a rare plotline forPat as she’s rushed into Intensive Careafter collapsing from a drug reaction atwork. The pre-titles opener has to beseen to be believed, with scantily-clad

‘dolly birds’ handing out free chocolates to delighted City gents. It’samusing to see the team dismiss subliminal messaging, since the show’stitles urge viewers to WATCH DOOM WATCH! New Scientist cast an eyeover the ‘new scientific soap-opera’ at this point, deciding it was,‘fortunate in its first selection of topics … [but] the scientists inDoomwatch have as much humanity as you would find in a month ofSunday supplements. They inhabit a two-dimensional world (the otherdimension, more often than not, being sex) in which it is impossible toimagine personal relationships that are not constantly charged with highemotional voltage or a domesticity that has no insistent melodramaticovertones. If we ever caught Quist boiling an egg, it would probably blowup in his face ... Doomwatch studiously avoids the stereotype ofomniscience and austerity which is the delight of devotees of old movies,yet replaces it with another stereotype which is certainly trendier but justas incredible ... This is all the more regrettable because of the greatopportunity to break down a few barriers between science and the laypublic … The danger with Doomwatch is that the serious scientific contentmaybe assessed on the same critical level as its cardboard characters anddismissed as enjoyable nonsense. The ironic remedy is that the series canbest do service to science by improving its dramatic qualities.’ This wasperhaps a hasty judgment considering the next instalment .

The Red SkyThe Red Sky went some way towards providing more back history andcharacterisation. Quist holidays in Kent with an old conservationist friend

- who dies, having seen ‘the flames ofHell’ (several months before Dr Finlay’s[infamous ergot] Casebook) - andmuses over a link to the nearbyPaugan Airbase and theirexperimental hypersonic aircraft tests.John is critical of Spencer’s reasons fortaking on the problem, feeling he ismotivated more from personal

interests rather than objectivity, adamant that Doomwatch’s vital workwill not be stopped because of Quist’s ‘dubious’ judgment. When Ridgetries to put his superior into a rest home after he toosees ‘fire in the sky’, it is out of dedication, notdisloyalty. Some impressive location filming wasundertaken at South Foreland Lighthouse, perched onDover’s White Cliffs. ‘Quite honestly, Quist, you’rethe most dangerous man I’ve ever met.’

Spectre at the FeastWith a cast including William Lucas andGeorge Pravda, Spectre at the Feastrevolved around an environmentalpollution conference convened by DrQuist for European Conservation Year,where numerous scientific experts fall foulof suspected food poisoning. This sparksfears of sabotage – though the actual causeproves uncomfortably close to home forsome attendees. Although Quist himself isoccasionally rather overblown (‘Theexcrement that rapes the oxygen in ourwater!’ being one of his more OTTdeclarations) there is some nicediscourse in Terence Dudley’sscript. In a sign of the times,

Roy Stewart was credited as ‘Negro’, having been hallucinated byRidge in his black girlfriend’s flat as a loincloth-wearing,assegai-wielding assailant, whilst jungle drums andmarimba pound on the soundtrack.

Train and De-TrainTrain and De-Train had Wren stumble into theworld of commerce. Here he finds a former tutor

being forcedout of his job ata chemicals firm,his knowledgehaving beenabsorbed: ‘de-trained’. Perhaps themost interestingdialogue comes from

Pat, ex-teacher Don Shaw being the sole writer to view her asa person. As she muses on their lab animals: ‘Nobody’sbothered about this wildlife ... bred to die.’ ‘Well, it’s eitherthem or you,’ comments Brad pragmatically.

The Battery PeopleIn the next instalment Toby researches the South Wales constituencyof new Minister John Davies (David Davies), finding one ex-mining

valley with the greatest number ofbroken marriages in GreatBritain. It also has copious cockfighting prosecutions and areputation for heavy ginconsumption (‘Stone me,the stuff that computerturns up!’ exclaimsRidge). The region’s

main employer, Colonel Smithson (Emrys Jones), ownerof a battery farming plant, has developed a breed ofboneless trout. Doomwatch surmise that he hascarried earlier war weapons researches over into hisrevolutionary food tech, meaning that directunprotected handling of the livestock has anemasculating effect on his male workforce - TheBattery People. Elwyn Jones, late of the BBC’sDramatised Documentary Unit and formerHead of Drama Series, scripted. (The issueof Radio Times promoting the new seriesback in February had unwittingly promised anearlier draft, in which a retired army officer knowinglysold his hens’ excreta, containing artificial hormoneAntimycin S, as manure – contact with which made the collectorsimpotent.)

Hear No EvilColin hangs up his lab coat for some fieldwork inHear No Evil. This was concerned with industrialunrest and unofficial strikes taking place in Brad’shome town of Fylingdale, and the immoral ways inwhich the bosses at the Voltmixer Internationalgroup choose to counter them: smear campaigns

derived from high-tech surveillance techniques(‘that house had more bugs than a lodging housemattress’ comments a disgusted Colin). Peter Milesguested as consultant industrial anthropologist Cook,

hired to spy on the workers; he claimed his strongestmemory from the programme was Simon Oates’aftershave. Brian Cox and Michael Ripper were also inthe cast. To ensure the actors adhered to their White

Rose accents, Gerry Davis scripted some dialogue phonetically, viz. ‘Let’s face it now, t’settlement of this dispute isn’t t’end o’t’struggle

wi’ t’new management.’


6 DOOMWATCH FANZINE

Survival Code Toby - listen. If I’m right ... we have twenty-five minutes,

plus or minus. Then... we’re due for either aconventional explosion or the full nuclear holocaust.’

The most audacious edition closed the season:Survival Code, where a nuclear weapons carrier

plunges into the sea. Two bombs are recovered -the third becomes lodged in Byfield Regis’ pier

after being unwittingly primed. Quist, recentlydubbed ‘Man of the Year’ in the press, ignores

orders from the Minister (Hamilton Dyce, alsoin Rat) to keep away; he fears a reprise of

the 1966 Palomares B-52 collision (whichundoubtedly inspired the plotline,

alongside the similar Thule Air Basecrash two years later). He breaks his

arm attempting to defuse the device.The seemingly selfless act is not

unexpected for Ridge: ‘ever sinceLos Alamos he’s almost been

waiting for death. This one didn’tland in the sea – it landed smack inside his

head and it’s hurting … Every single case we’vebeen into – almost without exception – was someone else’s

brainchild. He’s been wagging his moral finger at theother guy. Now he’s staring straight in the mirror.’

Toby takes Quist’s place at the one megatonwarhead. As the RAF UXB team arrives

he cuts the final wire with scantseconds remaining. However,

removing a component he discoversanother connection. As Quist

announces that Toby must havesucceeded, and against every audience

expectation, the bomb explodes. ‘Non-nuclear,’ murmurs Quist as he gazes at the

debris. ‘Great,’ replies Ridge, turning to hisstunned superior: ‘Who’ll tell Toby?’

Interestingly this final exchange doesn’t featurein the camera script, intimating that it was a late

inclusion, no doubt meant to indicate that theexplosion was merely a conventional, rather than

nuclear, one. The filming of the climactic conclusionwas covered by Visual Effects In Television, a

promotional showreel from the BBC Visual EffectsDepartment, showingMichaeljohn Harrisand his teamconstructing theforced perspectivepier model andconducting theexplosion. Soonafterwards theRadio Timesletters page printed ‘a trickle from a record floodof letters’: Helen Peck bemoaned that ‘if thisletter is tear-stained it is the BBC’s fault … Youhave no soul’, whilst Mrs V Rainbird took amore tongue-in-cheek standpoint: ‘I’ve beena keen viewer of Doomwatch and Ianticipated a new series in the near future.But, you rotten lot, you’ve gone andkilled off poor old Toby. Now I’llnever watch it again.Doomwatch toyou, too!’ Theseries hadstruck

a national nerve: a Plymouth college began issuing ‘Doomwatchdiplomas’ whilst the Daily Mirror, particularly quick on the bandwagon,formed its own Doomwatch squad for readers fretting overenvironmental chaos on their doorsteps. (‘Call in Doomwatch! They areready for action!’) The show had been extraordinarily fortunate in thatmany of its plotlines had been quickly mirrored in reality, lending it averisimilitude which no other programme had. Daily Mail quoted GerryDavis as saying, “It is a staggering coincidence that many of theprogrammes we put out turn into reality a few days later. Of course we doour research in scientific journals but that does not explain everything.”Further to this there was even speculation on a nomination for the BAFTAMullard Award for helping promote public understanding andappreciation of science, traditionally presented to factual series anddocumentary makers. Emboldened by the public and critical reception,plus the almost overnight success and the audience’s amazed outcryfollowing the final episode, the team ploughed on (‘we intend todiscomfort, shock and provoke,’ Davis declared) and season two launchednot seven months after its predecessor...

You Killed Toby WrenThe bitter Ridge believes this of Quist, pinning a huge photo of Toby tothe office notice board. Spencer himself believes it and undergoes

counseling with psychiatrist Dr AnneTarrant (Elizabeth Weaver), whilst thecliché-spouting Minister (Barron)doesn’t care as long as he can oustQuist, who is about to undergo atribunal of enquiry over the Byfieldaffair. A distraught Pat had left,heralding the arrival of the super-efficient — and slightly twee –

secretary Barbara Mason, played by Vivian Sherrard (Call Oxbridge 2000,Callan). Another newcomer was Geoff Hardcastle (John Nolan, previouslyglimpsed in The Prisoner and Hadleigh). A young biologist who droppedhis PhD in protest over inter-uterine conception, Geoff approachedDoomwatch to halt his professor’s work into animal/human hybrids,already created in the form of a chicken and a monkey, both with humanheads. Ridge, sacked by Quist in a blazing row, travels to a Norwichlaboratory to see them and is appalled by what he finds. Real-life researchon hybrid cells was currently underway by Henry Harris’ group at Oxford,with particular application to cancers. But this is John Paul’s episode. Theguilt-wracked Spencer observes: ‘It was a long time ago … that I realisedthe most important thing in life is life. Not science, not technology,politics, religion, riches, power. None of these were sacred. Only life. Thesum total of man’s knowledge, written down for all to read. And whatdoes it amount to? It’s better to be a live idiot than a dead genius.’ Hisbackground is elaborated; the only child of a Reader of Social Science atDurham, he inherited a love of sculpting from his artist mother (as did KitPedler). He tells Anne that his scientist wife Helena worked alongside himbut died in 1957 (tellingly from leukemia, as did Davis’ first wife), the yearhe received his Nobel Prize: ‘I suppose an obscenity needs an obscenesacrifice. The last thing she said to me was, “Start again. Put it right.” I was37. Most mathematicians do their best work before they’re 25. Mine was

killing a quarter-of-a-million Japanese and the only womanI ever loved. And now Toby Wren, sacrificed on

another altar?’ Putting up a spirited defence atthe hearing he is exonerated, reinstates a

repentant John and gets a date with DrTarrant – which would later prove asignificant move. For some, the new run

reawoke old concerns. The Guardian‘s NancyBanks-Smith characteristically wrote:

‘”Doomwatch” (BBC) is an excellent artifact. Thisconstructed creature can be in your house, say,

half an hour before you notice the lack of pores andpulse. The characterisation is routine: one guilt-

ridden genius, one swinging assistant, one salt-of-the-earth lab man, one wide-eyed Girl

Friday, one slippery MisterMinister. The writing ispunchy but pedestrian.

The plot neat and gaudy… It is sometimes a


DOOMWATCH FANZINE 7

little difficult to disentangle in “Doomwatch” where fact ends and fictionbegins. The grafting of informed guesswork of scientific reality is so neat.… Of the six scientists seen: one was summarily blown up, one had abroken arm, one a bandaged hand from breaking the jaw of a fourth andthe fifth was pregnant with a man/animal foetus. Oh, there was a sixth oncrutches but I assume his disability was normal. The production does itproud and as thrillers go, it goes with a bang. It aims to be and is primarilyentertainment, and considering the subject matter, how’s that for horror?

InvasionExpertly scripted by Martin Worth and benefiting from Jonathan Alwyn’sbest direction on the series, was atmospheric, grim and claustrophobic.

Investigating nitrate levels in theYorkshire Dales’ water, two potholersaiding Doomwatch go missing in thecaves. Hunting for them, John andGeoff stumble across WensdaleGrange, a ‘haunted house’ and one-time germ warfare researchestablishment. As the team donprotective clothing to search the

sealed house Geoff realises that the brothers had found their way into thecellars and are now walking plague carriers. The brothers are found dead,having already spread the disease. Local livestock must be slaughtered,and there is a haunting contrast between the departing coaches ofevacuated residents and arriving tanks of gas-masked troops (the 7 FieldRoyal Engineers squadron, filming in the picturesque North Yorkshirevillage of Grassington) armed with disinfectant sprays. The village iscordoned off, possibly forever. The plot was partly inspired by GruinardIsland in Scotland, where in 1942 War Office scientists so contaminatedthe area with an anthrax bomb that it was immediately quarantined for 48years. 13.6 million viewers watched the episode, the highest audience theseries ever garnered.

The IslandersAfter a transmission week off for Christmas/New Year, the team wereworking with another recently evacuated community, the almost Amish

inhabitants of the Fijian St Simon’sIsland, whose ancestors came fromEngland 150 years before. Since theirrelocation they have spent eightmonths interned in a camp, seeminglyabandoned by all authorities barDoomwatch. Isaac Prentice (DavidBuck) is one of the younger, open-minded islanders seeking work in the

city. His employers hire him on minimum wage to exploit his mediapotential, and as he undergoes culture shock his ‘brethren’ fall foul ofRidge’s flu - to them a new disease. Despite fine location work at Bryher inthe Isles of Scilly, The Islanders perhaps suffers from a wordy script andappallingly overdramatic stock music. The storyline bore clear parallelswith the affairs of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago (the Britishprotectorate evacuated in 1961 due to volcanic eruptions and rehoused insouthern England army camps, only being allowed to return two yearslater), and also the plight of the Chagos Islanders (abandoned by the UKGovernment for Cold War ‘realpolitik’ reasons), and represented an earlysidestep into sociological issues which the programme would come tofocus on more as it proceeded. Having already appeared in Wren, futureRuss Abbot sidekick Bella Emberg made her last appearance as an extra.

No Room For ErrorIt was established at the start of the season that Doomwatch, ‘swampedwith medical enquiries’, requires a doctor on the staff. No Room For Error

saw the timely appointment of ex-NHSmedic and research scientist FayChantry (Jean Trend, formerly one ofEmergency - Ward 10’s nurses who hadwritten to Dudley on the offchance ofwork). Introduced to placate feministcritics, we soon learn the divorcedsingle mother abandoned her PhDbecause of emotional pressure; Gerry

Davis had similarly undermined the production team’s best efforts by

describing her to Radio Times as ‘a real dish’. (In fact the programme hadbeen taken to task on this issue in the Radio Times letters page during theprevious run by viewer Leonard Cloake. The storylines of Rat and Saharafired him to ask: ‘Are the scriptwriters of Doomwatch (BBC1) anti-feminists, or are they working to the orders of a misanthropic producer?… each week most of the real villains (all male) suffered neitherretribution nor even rebuke. A scurvy trick.’ Dudley responded: ‘’Rebuke’and ‘come-uppances’ are nigh! Retribution is visited on all successive malevillainy – exclusively. In remaining episodes at least two are sacked… oneeven killed. I submit that two femmes fatales in 13 stories is notmisanthropic, and when you think of those two – quelles femmes! Let mehasten to assure Mr. Cloake that I share his enthusiasm for the ladies andthat, in the next series, Doomwatch recruits an attractive woman scientistto adjust the balance. Those poor cloistered lads won’t know what’s hit‘em.’). The storyline had a group of schoolgirls suffering from a typhoidstrain resistant to every drug — save perhaps stellamycin, recentlydeveloped at Fay’s old research lab, where an ex-lover tries to lure herback. The story seems intentioned to prove that scientists are people too,with the only conceivable Doomwatch slant (save with hindsight, a BSE-style inference plus the dangers of antibiotic overuse) being a warning onimported meat containing enteric bugs. The episode’s highpoint involvescattle listening to fairground music on a rotating carousel. Off set, SimonOates had been bet £50 that he wouldn’t go before the cameras wearing adog’s collar: as the episode testifies he won his money. Roger Parkesmanages to make almost every guest character of his dislikeable, a feataided by some witless acting and stagy direction. Darrol Blake discovered,after Dudley handed him the project, that the script was deemed so poorthat more experienced directors than he had refused to touch it. Thenewspapers paid more attention to the show than usual, given the stir DrChantry/Jean Trend’s hiring had created. Daily Telegraph’s Richard Last:‘Since the present series started, “Doomwatch” has lost some of itsoriginal compulsion. The writing is less assured, the characters havebecome a little tired. The original purpose of the series seems to escapefrom the script’s grasp. Last night’s … was certainly the weakest I haveseen. Ostensibly this was about an outbreak of typhoid which defiedknown antibiotics. But this seemed to be of less importance than amiddle-aged romance between two rather dreary newcomers …[seemingly] escaped from the limbo in which “Compact” now takes its restrather than have any connection with a scientific laboratory. … I wouldgenuinely hate to become an ex-”Doomwatch” fan. I hope Quist’s teamwill carry out a crash examination into whatever ill is presently affectingthem.’This was echoed by Virginia Ironside in the Daily Mail: ‘TheDoomwatch team on BBC-1 remind me more and more of neurotichousewives as the series continues. One would imagine that you require alevel head at least, but Dr Quist flaps about like an old hen in any crisis(under a thin pretence of efficiency) and Dr Ridge spends most of the timestaring at every female through half-closed eyes and behaving like a big-headed pop star. As for the doctor in yesterday’s episode [John Wood’scapricious Nigel Waring] … Every bit of drama was squeezed out of thecharacter’s temperamental and unreasonable personality rather than thesituation itself – a story, incidentally, that could have produced enoughdrama on its own.’ At least James Thomas in the Daily Express had a(mainly) positive word: ‘Miss Trend appeared at times on colour TV lastnight to have green hair. But there was nothing green about herperformance. She has lost nothing of her punch – yet whether this serieswill put her talents to the best use is not easy to say.’

By the Pricking of My Thumbs…This began with an echo of author Robin Chapman’s notorious Granadaseries Big Breadwinner Hog, as a sixth-former’s intentionally sabotaged

science experiment explodes in hisface. A classmate who tried to stopthis, Stephen Franklin (Barry Stokes),had been interviewed as a child bygeneticist Dr Ensor (Olaf Pooley),currently using Doomwatch’s labthanks to Ministerial sponsorship andmuch to Spencer and John’sdisapproval. Ensor encourages the

headmaster to expel Stephen, the one XYY male out of every 700 XY men,the aneuploid extra chromosome believed at the time to be indicative ofcriminal tendencies. Doughty journalist Oscar Franklin (Bernard Hepton)runs to Quist whilst his adopted son is pushed toward a suicide bid at


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Gatwick Airport – a victim of his father’s work as much as the clinicalEnsor’s. Again, this ‘misuse of unproven science’ isn’t wholly Doomwatchmaterial (and was better suited to Chapman’s The Man in Room 17 whichinvestigated the criminal mind). The irony is that criticisms of Franklin’soversimplified, scaremongering science articles (‘You have to modify it forthe general public’) were equally applicable to the show itself. To helpconvey Stephen’s abnormal height, director Eric Hills hired smaller actorsto surround the tall Stokes; less convincing was his casting of 20-year-oldSally Thomsett as a schoolgirl of 13½.

The Iron DoctorThe MD 20/90 at Parkway Hospital is an experimental computermonitoring a geriatric unit. It has extended patients’ life spans and offers

Survival Indices: it can assess survivalprospects, calculate treatment costsand recommend when to cease lifesupport. Doomwatch, brought in bythe concerned Dr Carson (BarryFoster), learn it is becoming sentient:the ward is overseen by a killer whichacts not only on its own Survival IndexRatings but on its own initiative, the

20/90 having defensive capabilities stemming from its origins as a wargames system. Brian Hayles supplies an inventive story which initiallyadheres closely to the original sci-fact brief, though as was becomingcommon veers towards out-and-out SF.

Flight into Yesterday Conversely, Flight into Yesterday retains plausibility by keeping its feetpretty much on the ground (or rather, in the air). Quist appears drunk on

arrival at a Downing Street meeting -the Minister (Barron) is delighted andsounds out a Departmental reshufflewhilst the director recuperates.Spencer and Barbara have just beenrecalled from a Californian scientificcongress, where unctuous PR manAinslie (Robert Urquhart) ispsychologically manipulating his

charges for the political effect his paymasters – opponents of a USDoomwatch - desire, whilst appearing helpful and charming. As a resulthis victims come to admire him, in a classic example of StockholmSyndrome (whilst actually predating the terminology). The story returnedRichard Duncan (Michael Elwyn), introduced in The Red Sky as ‘TheMinister’s hatchet man,’ who does his utmost to protect his master,though fails when the Minister insists on presenting an environmentalpaper to the Americans — ending in a heart attack, the cumulative resultof travel, high living, time differences, jet lag and lack of sleep. Ridge ishappy for this happen, feeling that Doomwatch would achieve morewithout its Ministerial thorny side. Quist, interestingly, disagrees. Theedition can be seen as a lead-in to the internal politicking which wouldcontinue in future episodes; perhaps tellingly Richard Last of the DailyTelegraph felt the edition veered too far from the series format. Dr GeorgeA. Christie, medical director of Syntex Pharmaceuticals, aided MartinWorth on the research front.

The Web of FearDuncan also appears in The Web of Fear, where he accompanies Savident’sMinister of Health to St Morgan, a Scilly Isles health farm where guests are succumbing to yellow fever, later learnt to be a virus derived from aniridescent viricide-insecticide used to kill moths, which had leaked into

the ecosystem. GerryDavis’ final script for theseries (in which he wasaided by the WellcomeMuseum of MedicalScience) was a solid affair which didn’t findfavour with the Scillytourist board, althoughSwanage had been used as a location double.

In the Dark This was another fine instalment (albeit with a very wayward logo on theend credits!), sharing a premise with Roald Dahl’s William and Mary and an

affecting climax with Friday’s Child.Again a wartime vessel has sank,emitting mustard gas offshore, thoughthis proves to be a MacGuffin to getDoomwatch in touch with the ship’sskipper, Lyon McArthur (PatrickTroughton, also appearing in the dualrôle of Lyon’s cousin). The dyingMcArthur is wholly dependent on life–

support systems: his head will soon become infected and removed,leaving him as pure brain administered psilocybins and communicatingvia brainwaves. His old friend Quist must choose whether to advise hisdaughter to halt what Lyon’s son-in-law views objectively as ‘theexperiment’. Failing to see why the team are involved, Ridge advisesSpencer: ‘You absorb all life into your own, did you know that? Everythingthat ever happens becomes part of you. When you’re preoccupiedsometimes I watch you walking: you don’t walk down ordinary mundanestreets jostled by ordinary mundane people. You pace the empty streetsof a deserted village, or you tread the shattered planks of a seaside pier …For once in your life you don’t have to send anyone to their death. Youdon’t have to put anyone at risk. You don’t even have to turn off a switch.’

The Human Time BombForeshadowing J G Ballard’s High Rise, isolation and urban strain featuredin The Human Time Bomb. Dr Chantry is staying in an experimental tower

block to provide an environmentalreport for the Minister of Town andCountry Planning into how thecramped, homogenous livingconditions affect inhabitants. Whatbegins as a fascinating idea into how arising population could be acceptablyhoused rapidly descends into farce, aslife in Ambleforth becomes far too

appalling to remain convincing: one resident commits suicide, another issectioned, Fay is pestered by bikers and delinquent gangs of children, hasher tyres punctured, is harassed by bottle-smashing drunks, receivesobscene phone calls and ends up on the verge of a nervous breakdownthreatening the caretaker with a hammer. When Quist muses amidst allthe hysterical sobbing that high-rise living could produce, ‘a country fullof apathetic, totally conditioned, dehumanised zombies!’ one gets theimpression that he’s clutching at straws as much as author Louis Marks.

The InquestErratically directed by Lennie Mayne - though excellently scripted byRobert Holmes, giving the neglected Colin his best edition of the season -

The Inquest revolves around anIpswich girl dying from rabies. Geoff isinjured whilst investigating thesource, forcing the blunt Bradley (‘Ijust said that every dog in the districtshould be shot!’) to present evidenceto the coroner. Anti-vivisectionistvirologist Mary Lincoln (Judith Furse)accuses a nearby laboratory which

practices animal experimentation and houses tsetse flies, though eventstake an unexpected course via sausages, fruit flies and schnapps.

The LogiciansThere was perhaps another dip with The Logicians: highly intelligentschoolboys mount an elaborate robbery/blackmail scam at apharmaceutical firm to provide funds for their privately-run alternativeschool, all the while eluding the authorities. This they manage thanks totheir logic- and computer-based education, which makes them diffidentand unconcerned as to the morality of their actions. It’s a reactionaryargument against progressive education methods (‘How would youdescribe the Hitler Youth?’ is John’s knee-jerk opinion), though the scriptspecifies that the worries centre on the neglect and misuse of suchsyllabuses. Dennis Spooner’s tale seemed to suffer slightly in its


DOOMWATCH FANZINE 9

realisation by director DavidProudfoot: the pre-titles opener withunseen plotters is seemingly meant toinvoke a professional heist gang, but isunavoidably scuppered by theyouthful stage school theatricality.Catweazle’s Robin Davies and futureBlue Peter presenter Peter Duncanwere amongst the Elsdene School

conspirators. The Sunday Telegraph’s Philip Purser was typically caustic:‘When is Doomwatch (B.B.C. 1) supposed to be taking place? According tothe first series it can’t have been much earlier [than 1970], because in theoriginal episode supersonic transports were in airline service. Since thenthey seem to have been slyly winching the whole thng back to the presentday. One recent episode about life in tower-block flats could have comeout of anything from “Softly, Softly” downwards. I used to wonder why Iwas so irritated by this series, and now I begin to see why. It wasridiculously overpraised when it first appeared. Because of the realconcern which has sprung up lately about the rape of our naturalresources, people went out of their way to discover salutary warnings inthese crude fables ... What no one seemed to notice was that the methodsemployed by Doomwatch were often reminiscent of secret police forces.What no one seemed to care about was that its exploits were muddled orrigged or both ... The wholesome moral [of The Logicians] was that byproducing children with over-developed logical faculties but no extramoral restraints we’d end up with a dangerous elite. The only snag is thatnowhere that I could see was logic involved, and certainly not in theclassroom problem the boys were shown tackling. Behind the gadgetry ofcomputer and closed-circuit TV, there was – nothing.‘

Public EnemyThe season closed on a high note with Public Enemy. A boy dies afterinhaling toxic beryllium fumes whilst retrieving his football from an alloy

factory roof, sparking a debate on theextent of industrial pollution. Shouldthe company fork out for Doomwatch’ssafety recommendations when the boywas trespassing and cracked the pipehimself? Workers and neighbours arekeen for them to do so until the parentcompany elects to close the factory.Since Carlingham Alloys is the main

source of revenue for the town the locals backtrack, and blameDoomwatch for intervening. Quist, under pressure to drop his report, railsagainst their attitudes: ‘We all want a clean healthy world to live in, don’twe? We’re all against pollution in any form? But only when the cost offighting it is borne by someone else ... Well, I’m warning you: forget it andyou’re dead. Not just this community but the whole of industrialcivilisation. The way we’re carrying on, the way were polluting:overcrowding chemicals, noise – we’ve got thirty years. Thirty years ofdirty, slow, dirty dying. Or else it’s thirty years for us to clear up the mess.That’s the choice. That’s your only choice. Pay up or pack up. Not only you… but every single one of us.’ The episode is intelligently written (withdistinct echoes of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People), providing abalanced overview of the situation: the townspeople are victims as muchas those who succumb to the beryllium, whilst the title refers toDoomwatch as well as pollution. Lennie Mayne directs tautly, with someimpressive location footage, though a photomontage sequence playedout to Keith Mansfield’s funky library track Exclusive Blend was possibly illadvised. The show had attracted The Stage‘s attention towards the end ofthe run: ‘The one good idea BBC series have shown recently and whichthey could justifiably say indicates a fallacy about characterisation beingthe dominating factor in series, is Doomwatch. Here, one would havethought, the BBC was back where it belongs, originating a serieswhich dramatised important, disturbing, interesting orcontroversial issues, tackling the kind of series that ITV would notthink commercial enough. Doomwatch, despite some verymediocre acting, halting direction, and too often weakly editedscripts, is not a failure. But it is an irritating programme, irritatingbecause it could be so dramatic (so documentarily dramatic) andcould make a real impact on a public tired of policemen, spies anddoctors. It is difficult to think of a similar series where plotsand thoughts alone could dominate.’ Pedler and Davis

disliked the rapid turnaround in production for the season, since the firsthad been born from a long gestation period. It was felt that Wren’s deathhad left an intrinsic gap in the Doomwatch team dynamic despite hisreplacement Hardcastle; they also objected to story topics and TerenceDudley’s perceived controlling attitude. At one point both Davis andDudley were commissioning scripts without consultation of the other(they ‘had adjoining offices but on principle never communicated witheach other,’ notes Martin Worth wryly). In a mediation bid, AndrewOsborn asked Worth, favoured by both sides, to take over as script editor.He agreed, though not wishing to be known as an editor never actuallytook an office and requested no on-screen credit: despite this he wascredited as script editor on The Human Time Bomb, which he hadcommissioned himself. By now Davis and Dudley were communicating inbackbiting memos and open criticism. The creators abruptly left the show.With them they took their names: from the surviving evidence it appearsthat the third run would air without their customary ‘series devised by’formatting credit. The Guardian would report that they even requested nofurther credit in the Radio Times listings, although format fees were stillbeing made. Clarification of this feeling was given in an interview NewScientist published with Pedler as the run wrapped. Graham Cheddcriticised scripts and production values whilst admitting that,‘Doomwatch has undoubtedly got more about science and itsconcomitant dangers across to more people (some 12 million watch eachprogramme) than a host of earnest, learned documentaries. Pedler[agreeing with Chedd, though justifying the series by the last point] hasthe grace to look uncomfortable as one spells out specific examples ofgrossness, but counters with the argument that he isn’t the programme’sproducer, and that often he disagrees with the production committee’sdecisions.’ As to characters, Pedler considered Ridge ‘a sub-James Bondtype who wouldn’t last five minutes in a laboratory’ adding that a populistdramatic serial ‘can’t really bear a strict, rigorous relationship with what isneeded in real life.’ Kit went on to expound his plans for a real lifeDoomwatch, something Labour MP Ray Fletcher had also tried to launchin Westminster.

Doomwatch - FilmPedler felt that pollution would figure heavily for his Doomwatchers. Italso formed the basis of the Doomwatch film released in June 1972,

originating credits going to Pedler(also listed as scientific adviser) andDavis, with a final screenplay by CliveExton and direction from Peter Sasdy.Tony Tenser produced for TigonBritish. The film (shot at PinewoodStudios, Battersea and aroundCornwall, notably Polkerris and itslocal pub The Rashleigh Inn) is

Doomwatch-by-numbers: investigating a massive offshore oil slick from aholed tanker and the effects of the dispersing detergents on theecosystem, the team – with the abrasive Dr Del Shaw (Ian Bannen)performing on-site fieldwork on Balfe Island - stumble across a cache ofillegally-dumped canisters. These are leaking pituitary growth hormoneinto the marine life; Doomwatch realise that this is causing acromegaly inBalfe’s residents, a main part of whose diet is local fish. Frightened andashamed, they hide their disfigurement, believing it to be divineretribution for decades of ‘inbreeding and immorality’. Exton’s script(which echoes Burial at Sea, In the Dark and particularly The Islanders -down to the cast, Shelagh Fraser appearing in both) is a better-than-average ‘70s horror (certificated ‘A’) complete with insular ‘keep to thepath’ locals. It’s a multilayered story, touching on the science-versus-religion debate (village youths cast stones at Shaw and the duplicitousBible-thumping vicar slams a door in his face, unwilling to engage in

discussion or come to any shared middle ground), the haste of largeconcerns to wash their hands of pollution, and the deviousness of

those involved in chemical disposal – the PGH drums beingunofficially dumped in a prohibited Naval site for radioactivewaste by the firm tendering the lowest bid. ‘Old Mother Nature

has a way of dealing with these things, Dr Ridge,’ sayschemicals boss Sir Henry Leyton (Geoffrey Keen) cheerily,‘that’s what you doom and gloom fellows ought to realise.’

‘Unfortunately Old Mother Nature’s been nobbled in this case, asyou well know!’ is John’s characteristic rejoinder. Paul,

Oates, Blanshard and Trend reprise their BBC rôles,


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though theirs are relatively backgroundcharacters compared to newly-devisedteammember Del and local teacher VictoriaBrown (Judy Geeson). This said, somedramatic scenes are given to Quist, whohones his office arguing / apocalypticpredictioning skills whilst invoking theDefence of the Realm Act to the Navy;similarly Ridge at least lands a scubadivingsequence and undertakes someinvestigating. However Colin remainsstationed in the lab to analyse data andproduce computer reports, whilst Fay ispared down to almost novelty value as thetoken woman scientist. Hoping to catch twoaudiences, promotion went down differingroutes. On the one hand Tigon hinted it wasa topical, thought-provoking SF thriller inthe Quatermass vein: promotional infoemphasised it was ‘terrifyingly close to realevents ... the first major British feature filmto take the dangers of pollution as itstheme’. ‘As frightening as today’sheadlines!’ declared the trailer, with oneposter taglined ‘An ecological nightmaregone berserk!’ Another promised moreprosaic fare: ‘Now on the big screen –Doomwatch means terror’. In some areasthe film was supported by the SteveMcQueen motorcycle documentary On AnySunday. Critical reaction was as mixed as themarketing, though slightly warmer in the USwhere it found praise for its prescientecological content (despite gaining the luridretitle Island of the Ghouls). The lacklustreresponse may be partly due to Ian Bannenand guest star George Sanders (the Oscarwinner and one-time film Saint in one of hisfinal rôles), both presumably hired to give arelatively big-name boost but ironicallygiving the most inconsistent performances.‘Intriguing, well-made’ was how the DailyMirror received it, but for Monthly FilmBulletin’s Paul Madden, ‘the Gothicexaggerations and the scientific revelationsnever really cohere, and for all the topicalityof the plot, Sasdy’s film proves equallyunconvincing as ecological expose orcontemporary horror show’. Writing in TheSun Chris Kenworthy felt that ‘the story isgood, strong Doomwatch stuff … I wouldlike to say that it turns out as exciting on thebig screen as the small – but it doesn’t, notby a long way.’ Time Out’s Geoff Andrewasserted that, ‘Predictably, the seriousintentions of the original series have beenforsaken on the big screen for a half-bakedhorror thriller.’ Cinefastique would agree,deeming the film ‘A bland ecology/horrorthriller’ following its Stateside release inJanuary 1976. (1972 cinema audiences couldalso glimpse an uncredited Joby Blanshardlistening attentively to a Thamesidepollution lecture before spotting the latestvictim of the Necktie Murderer at the start ofFrenzy, perhaps indicating a fan inHitchcock’s casting department?) WhilstPublic Enemy would have made an excellentfinale for the series, the BBC demanded athird season for its ratings winner. Aninternal strike delayed production, but thecrew didn’t necessarily use the time to learnfrom perceived previous mistakes. There

were changes on board: researcher Anna Kaliski arrived as storyconsultant for scientific issues, helping provide starting blocks for ideas,whilst Terence Dudley would take a more hands-on approach to scripts.Although the run began with the Doomwatch set-up as before, from thethird episode onwards there were larger, redesigned regular sets,presumably in a bid to breathe new life visually, as the Department isrelocated to new premises. The Department gained full-time researchstaff (in the form of extras, something visibly missing from the office afterthe first episode), and a Ministerial informant — Commander NeilStafford, late of Royal Naval Intelligence, played by John Bown (Dr. Whoand the Daleks, Quatermass and the Pit, The Saint). This plot strand wasintroduced by Dudley, who was keen to explore how Doomwatch wouldbe politically and practically muzzled by its masters, fearful of an offshootwhich could and would bite the hand of potential benefactors. The cannyStafford would come to side with Quist, however.John Barron’s opportunistic Minister joined the principal cast, finallyreceiving a name, Sir George Holroyd; while Maria O’Brien made threeappearances as Susan Proud, a young woman hired to take over Barbara’sswitchboard duties when Miss Mason is promoted to Quist’s PA. Quist,Ridge, Bradley and Barbara survived from season two, though their week-to-week use was again erratic. The unseen Geoff and Fay had both left for,respectively, a position in industry and a return to general practice.Spencer even gained a home life (though we never did see him boilingthat egg), living with Anne Tarrant, who added a psychiatric slant tostories (mainly a lot of chat about Freud with an occasional nod toWilhelm Reich). Elizabeth Weaver, who had recently completed a run onFraud Squad, reprised Anne from You Killed Toby Wren.

Fire and Brimstone‘Will Ridge destroy the world?’ shrieked the Radio Times cover in June1972. Fire and Brimstone emphatically highlighted John’s impetuous,committed nature as the impatient chemist, frustrated by the continuedlack of government interest in ecological issues despite the team’s work,seemingly goes berserk and holds London and the world to ransom withcanisters of specially-modified anthrax stolen from Porton Down, whichhe sends to six major capital cities before turning himself in to theauthorities. He will only reveal the addresses if he is allowed to publish, atBritish Government expense, ecological warnings in major internationalnewspapers to alert the populace to the current state of the world. He tellsStafford: ‘D’you know what I’ve learned in the time I’ve been withDoomwatch? We’ve got a generation in which to grow up. My generation!

Your generation! During our lifetime, that’sif we get to three score year and ten. We’vegot to get rid of warheads buzzing about upthere round the clock and in submarines,also cruising round the clock. During ourlifetime we’ve got to control population, tocontrol ionizing radiation. We’ve got tocleanse the rivers and the seas, we’ve got tounclog the air. And we’ve got to have made abloody good start by the time we’re dead orhomo sapiens has had it: men perish fromthe Earth. We’ve got to start washingunderneath the arms and stop sweeping themuck underneath the carpet. We’ve got toplant more trees than we cut down. We’ve


DOOMWATCH FANZINE 11

got to recycle the Earth’s resources, even our excrement and urine. We’vegot to abolish the petrol engine or pay more for it. We’ve got to pay morefor everything. Our money or our life!’ Shockingly, he is remanded toHMP Brixton before being admitted to a psychiatric institution in acatatonic state after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, as the urgenthunt begins for the phials. A young Jonathan Pryce appeared as apoliceman. (Intriguingly Terence Dudley has Ridge quote from memorythe Daily Mail’s disparaging review of Horizon: Due to Lack of InterestTomorrow Has Been Cancelled, an episode studying contemporarypredictions of ecological disaster. Doomwatch itself would ordinarilyhave aired opposite the science series, though was off the air that Mondayevening due to boxing coverage.) Writing in that newspaper itself, PeterBlack found the opener distinctly lacking: ‘The wide and lasting influenceof Cathy Comes Home suggested that the best way to ignite theimagination of people against some social wrong was to tell a story. TheClub of Rome’s most helpful ally ought therefore to be BBC1’sDoomwatch, but Fire and Brimstone set a deplorably superficial tone forthe new series. The story - Dr Ridge went potty and stole enough anthraxvirus from Porton to end life on Earth – worked only as a thriller on thelines of ‘Would they recover the last phial before the unwitting carrierbroke it?’ The huge moral question of why the virus was being made waslost sight of in the fast and implausible pace of the story, the actors neverseemed to have time to think about what they were saying.’ In a much-publicised outburst, Kit Pedler went so far as to declare he ‘was absolutelyhorrified. When we started it the clear object of the series was to makeserious comment about the dangerous facts of science, which should bedrawn to the public. They have made a total travesty of the programme.’This was the first of only four showings from Simon Oates. Over theinterim period he had been reunited with Wendy Hall whilst playing JohnSteed in 1971’s stage version of The Avengers; he also auditioned for 007in Diamonds Are Forever (and would reportedly try again before RogerMoore inherited the holster), and was becoming more involved with theissues dealt with in Doomwatch. Tiring of simply being known as ‘the onewith the shirts’, the actor also felt that the show was losing direction, withscripts failing to have any raison d’être for Doomwatch’s involvement andrequiring Pedler’s guiding hand and insight to retain plausibility.

High Mountain‘I thought you were a big man, Dr Quist. The Doomwatch we envisagecould have ramifications that would change the world. Are you reallygoing to turn it down because the people who’d pay for it make enzymedetergents?’ High Mountain (the unusual title being a Biblical quote fromMatthew 4:8) saw Quist lured to Scotland where he is presented with achoice: to continue working for a Government already musing on ways ofclosing the Department of Observation and Measurement, or to becomedirector of an independent and international organisation – albeit onefunded by the Drummond Group, manufacturers of paint and washingpowders. To Quist, Brad and Barbara’s dismay, Neil is attached toDoomwatch by Security, a position deemed necessary by the Ministerfollowing the recent events at the Department. At the close Spencer ishanded unprecedented carte blanche, with a budgetary doubling, new


Ian CurteisBack in August 2010 Ian Curteis, who wrotean excellent episode for Season 3 ofDOOMWATCH, called "Flood" (Episode 9, TX:31/7/72), wrote a letter to Scott Burditt abouthis involvement in DOOMWATCH. Sadly, the episode Ian wrote is still listed asmissing, so all there is left is the two versionsof the script and Ian's memories of his part inthe production. It’s interesting to note thatSeason 2’s The Web of Fear, starts with amention of a report into London in danger offlooding again and in Season 3 this is followed

up. Apparantly, at the time the episode was transmitted there was great mirthat Blacknest (the Government unit for forensic seismology at Blacknest nearAldermaston) when the late Dr. Thirlaway was portrayed as Dr. Tadley ofBirdsnest in "Flood". The Blacknest unit based in the Berkshire village duringthe episode's production, Dr. Thirlaway definitely helped Ian with his scientificresearch, as on Page 19 of the rehearsal script he is referenced (even includinga contact phone number) for correct pronounciation of the richter scalemeasurements by the character of Dr. Tadley. In the same year as the episode,(1972) legislation was provided through the Thames Barrier and FloodPrevention Act which led to the construction of the Thames Barrier and it'sassociated defences. This was a direct result of the Chief Scientist Sir HermanBondi's report of 1966 recommending that the best solution was a tidal surgebarrier and raising the height of the river bank, backed up with a good systemof flood warnings after the catastrophic east coast flood in 1953 provokedrenewed and urgent interest in protecting London from tidal surges. Ian’s letterfollows...

2nd August 2010I have now re-read DOOMWATCH – FLOOD. It is 39 years since I wrote it andI haven't looked at it since. It was an odd and rather heartening experience,as I felt it was quite a respectable piece of work: a good and plausible storythat moved fast about something that mattered very much. As you know,speed in a script is not a matter of the actors dashing about and speaking fast,but of construction, a reason for urgency and paring down the dialogue to thebone. In retrospect, I would have pared it down even more. I once had thereputation of being the only television dramatist who went to rehearsals andcut dialogue, sentences or words, because they had become superfluous inthat matters were clear without them, or that the actor was doing it anyhow,sometimes with an expression, glance or just an attitude. One of the bestpieces of advice I ever received when I was learning my way came from JoanLittlewood, who said "Remember, being a dramatist is not a literaryoccupation". When I eventually found the script, which had been filed in anunlikely place, I was disappointed that there were no papers with it. I usuallykept relevant letters and memos, the original contract and research notes.Perhaps they have been wrongly filed somewhere else, but I've written rathera lot over 44 years and mistaken filing is not easy to unravel. The only thingI seem to have, in another book, is the Radio Times cutting which gives thefull cast. I imagine you have that anyway. The camera script, which I have,lists the complete production team. To my surprise, I can remember very littleabout the production except that I wasn't very happy with it. I do not know ofa surviving recording. Accuracy of research without being pedantic about it isabsolutely essential in this sort of show, and I remember visits to the LondonFlood Rooms where the various plans of action when there was a sudden NorthSea surge, and what to do for drowning Londoners, were in place andrehearsed, with all the variations and levels of crisis taken into account. Sowere the scenes about or set in the secret underground NATO HQ inNorthwood. Although many among the viewwers would not know if suchthings were real or invented, somehow there is an unmistakable ring ofauthenticity when you get it right, I am not sure why, which adds to the drama,The various officials and scientists who I saw were all immensely helpful; asalways, I got them to read the draft script and comment before I delivered itto the BBC, and again they were meticulous in their helpful suggestions. Andthis applies to dialogue, not just fact; I was pleased to come across theexchange (shots 116 to 144 in the camera script, pp 28-29 in my deliveredtyped MS) where the suspicious Morrison is testing Cmdr Stafford to see if heis genuine by using terms a sailor actually uses rather than what a laymanmight think would be used (pronouncing C-in-C as SYNC for example). I musthave got that from some helpful naval person, but I have long since forgottenwho. You ask if I ever met any of the cast. You bet I did. I went, as I alwaysdo, to many rehearsals and all the recording, and I hope discussed sceneswith actors, changed or sometimes rewrote dialogue, gave notes to the directorif he was missing the point. Television dramatists come in two sorts: thosewho deliver a script and run, and those who, like me, believe it is profoundlyimportant that you stay as part of the production. No-one knows the scriptbetter than you do, and if, as it was in my case, one had previously been bothan actor and director, you believe you know how it should be and how to getthere. Shakespeare believed that of course but so far as I know he never wrotefor DOOMWATCH. The issue of how man is wrecking the beautiful world bytorturing and manhandling it and turning it into a profoundly dangerous placeby ignorant and sometimes brutal manipulation is even more important nowthan it was in 1972. Looking back, I am proud that such a vital subject couldbe dealt with in exciting drama made for the mass audience. That is televisiondrama at its best. I wonder what the reception to FLOOD was – I cannotremember, I see a note I made on the Radio Times cutting that the onlycountry it was subsequently sold to and shown in was Zambia. I wonder whaton earth they made of it.

Yours sincerely

Ian Curteis

Ian Curteis Image ©BBC

London is in danger in Season 3 - Episode 9 - “Flood”

Sir George Holroyd played by John Barron Dr. Spencer Quist played by John Paul12 DOOMWATCH FANZINE

office premises and increase in staffand research facilities. Disowned by its principal progenitor,’ wrote Richard Last in the Daily Telegraph,‘Doomwatch (BBC-1), or“Watchdoom,” if the opening titles areto be believed, made quite a fightingcomeback on its second outing …Martin Worth’s script was considerably

better than the blurb suggested and vastly better than last week’sfrenzied nonsense which so properly upset Dr Pedler. The idea of Quistbeing offered a private “Doomwatch” to lend respectability to a giantindustrial combine came out just on the right side of credibility. Moreimportantly, it offered valid opportunities for moral argument, likeprivate ownership of vast estates being balanced against the benevolentuse of that ownership. There was quite a homily on the alleged dangers ofpolyurethane paint, which, as a grateful do-it-yourselfer, I can only hopewere fictional. ‘Prescience had been demonstrated by Worth, who hadnamed one of Drummond’s stain removing products as Vanish. Foresightwould also be shown by Barbara as the regulars settled into the newDoomwatch office in the next episode...

Say Knife, Fat Man‘We’re going to be lumbered with every pseudo-scientific social problemthat other departments can’t find a home for,’ she sighs. A group ofuniversity activists construct their own atom bomb with hijackedplutonium blocks in Say Knife, Fat Man. The title is easily explained: FatMan was the code name of the Nagasaki A-bomb, and Say Knife a threat.Promising physicist Michael Pratt elaborates: ‘When a copper frisks you inthe street for drugs, he knows he’s not going to find them; often hedoesn’t even mean to pretend he has. He’s just trying to show you that heholds the knife. When they bring you up before a judge for being inpossession, or causing a breach of the peace, or publishing an obscenity,all they’re really doing it for is to show you that they have the knife. Well,they’ll never be able to do that after this … you can hardly make pompousremarks about good-for-nothing layabouts when you know they’ve madean atom bomb. Suddenly their knife is no sharper than ours.’ DespiteWorth implementing heavy script revisions to improve accuracy after heand Kaliski consulted with Imperial College, it appears that there wasalready disillusionment with the show and what was seen as itsincreasingly fanciful plotting (some of the unsealed blocks irradiate areservoir after being thrown in, whilst the pro-student Barbara was heldcaptive to witness the activists construct their bomb): The Listener foundBBC2’s Horizon edition - a repeat of 1971’s The Fierce People, about theviolent lifestyle of the South American Ya�nomamö tribe - ‘much morescaring than the fictional fatuities of Doomwatch running opposite it onBBC1’. Fallout from the much publicised backstage row even reached thepages of New Scientist at this point. Noting an upcoming airing ofHammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment, they observed that ‘Connossieurs ofthe “cash-in on the little screen success by making a big-screen version”syndrome may have noticed that “Doomwatch” has just opened at theflicks, while the third small-screen series grinds on to the irritation oforiginators Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis’, whose gripe was cited as theshow’s newfound ‘”mad scientist” ethos’, a reference to the seasonopener which Pedler had described as ‘absolutely awful – a mad scientistgoing amuck [sic] yet again.’

Waiting for a KnighthoodHowever, an explanation for Ridge’s actions was offered in Waiting for aKnighthood: he had unwittingly inhaled lead fumes whilst tinkering withhis high performance cars (a facet inherited from keen motor-racingdriver Pedler) - he is consequently released from hospital. A subplot dealtwith the kidnapping of an oil company boss’s son (Terence Dudley’s sonStephen, previously victim of a ‘pussy’ in Rat) by a woman whose child

died from Pica - when childrendiscover that lead-based paint tastessweet and ingest it. Colin spells out themessage of the edition: ‘Spew lead intothe air and you’re poisoning a basicnecessity for everyone.’ Infamously,Tory Deputy Secretary of State EldonGriffiths assured Dudley that leadpetrol had no injurious effects.

Without the BombWithout the Bomb had Doomwatch assigned to evaluate a newly launchedaphrodisiac contraceptive lipstick: Joyne, a name Darrol Blake claims tohave coined over Roger Parkes’ original, F-U-N. The story owed somethingto Henry Livings play Eh?, and centred on Joyne using pheromones inorder to provoke a sexual response, lowering female inhibitions andmaking the wearer more irresistible to men. The script mused on howsuch a creation could influence population control, as well as religiousconsiderations - Joyne being developed by the Roman Catholic Dr Fulton(Brian Peck), whose beliefs anguish him: if the product contained noaphrodisiac it’smerely anothercontraceptivewhich mayremain unused;with it is heencouraging sexoutside wedlock and general permissiveness? And would Quistcompromise his and his office’s integrity to garner success in his worriesover population growth? Katherine Kath appeared as Lady JanetteHolroyd, the Minister’s French wife. Parkes (who had consulted with DrAlex Comfort - The Joy of Sex author having published research into

pheromones - whilst scripting, comingup with probably the oddest line in theshow’s history: ‘The smegma elementproved to be a strong canineattractant’) had to be gently steeredby Terence Dudley after inadvertentlydepicting Tarrant and Quist in whatwas deemed ‘an overtly-sexualcontext’ which it was feared may point

up the issue of their unmarried status to viewers, a topic for which theproduction team were expecting criticism. His early outline also had theDoomwatch director wanting to set the public an example by undergoinga vasectomy, whilst Sir George was to have a string of girlfriends and awife who turns herself on with the lipstick.

Hair Trigger‘Spencer, they’re creating robots!’ Hair Trigger centred on WeatheroakHall, a top security medical research unit where symptomatic treatmentcomes from electronic impulses to the brain via a constant computer-/radio-control. Ideally this will lead to a direct dialogue between brain andcomputer, the machine taking over basic functions. Anne interviews ‘ex-’

multiple murderer Michael Beavis(Michael Hawkins), but his receiver isdisconnected during a struggle and heescapes, computer control broken.Anne is appalled, but ProfessorHetherington (Morris Perry) counters:‘we live in an age of biologicalmanipulation: chlorination,fluoridisation, vaccination. Doctors

prescribe substances that affect our everyday behavioural activity.Voluntarily we take in alcohol, tranquilisers, caffeine. Your ownpsychoanalytic methods aim at influencing the abnormal personality. Allare acts of violation.’ Brian Hayles returns to his pet issue, over-relianceon technology, with variable results, though the accompanyingexploration of personal identity manipulation offered an intriguing twist.

Deadly Dangerous TomorrowNote the initials of Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow, which opened atBuckingham Palace with the Changing of the Guard to the strains of RuleBritannia, whilst in St James’ Park a starving malarial Indian family iscamped out, with a dead baby lying nearby. This imagery was down toJohn Ridge, still believing in the use of shock tactics, who had had themflown over as a publicity stunt to raise awareness of the situation in theThird World - John now being an out-and-out Green campaigner, havingworked as a chemist for an overseas relief organisation since regaining hisfreedom. His position is seemingly unequivocal, with Ridge keen as everto see the bigger picture: ‘India’s on the verge of becoming self-sufficientin wheat at last. OK, they need heavy doses of DDT to keep off the pests,so what? If it helps fill empty bellies, who cares if one or two birds and


“The smegma elementproved to be a strong canine attractant”


fishes die out? No one mourns thedinosaur. Is hunger really lessimportant than preserving theAmerican eagle?’ Ridge’s continuedcleaving away from Doomwatch ethicswould build later in the run. Havingalready been seen in Fire andBrimstone, Michael Elwyn made a finalappearance as Duncan (continuity hadbeen further maintained during theseason with references to Sir George’ssecretary Miss Wills, from Plastic andFlight). New Scientist paused forreflection: ‘There are mutinousmurmurings in the ranks over thestory-lines of this season’s Doomwatchon television. Cries of ‘Bring backPedler’ are to be heard from variousquarters. The trouble, I think, lies inthe medium’s insistence (for economicas well as other reasons) on a series,once implanted, going on and on.When Doomwatch opened up, therewere enough under-aired topics tokeep writers going, without having tofall back too often on the personalitiesof the scientists involved. But newsorts of environmental hazards,mercifully don’t present themselves every week. You can knock ‘em withoil spillage, or nerve gas, or plastic eating bugs only once. After that it’seither the farther shores of SF (which would make it quite anotherprogramme) or settle for the in-fighting (The Power Game) among thealready established personalities. A pity but inevitable, I’m afraid. Still, Ithought that last week’s gobbet made a fair job of airing the differencesbetween rich and poor countries’ approach to environmental problems.The sensational element which offends the faithful (and perhaps Dr.Pedler) is inescapable in show business.’

EnquiryDoomwatch broke further with tradition by being absent from the officefor the duration of this episode. They are temporarily based at LongsideCamp, a top secret military weapons research lab, to hold the titularEnquiry into whether or not a lab assistant found wandering terrified inthe local area has somehow been exposed to lobotomin, a new aerosolnerve gas under development there, despite the seemingly stringentsecurity and safety procedures. The episode was Pennant Roberts’ firstdirecting assignment.

FloodJoanna Trollope’s husband Ian Curteis (later the controversial author ofSuez 1956 and The Falklands Play) contributed a favourite episode of JohnBarron’s, Flood, whose title speaks for itself — Quist having noted that,once a century, the level of the Thames rises enough to potentially engulfLondon. Fortuitously for the capital, catastrophe is averted by ‘a mereinch!’ The plot was heavily based in both reality (following 1953’s surgetide disaster, an official 1966 report found an unacceptable, annually-increasing risk of a major sea defence breach) and topicality, so much sothat the concept had been flagged by MPs as a suitable plot for the seriesat a House of Commons hearing for the Thames Barrier and FloodPrevention Bill almost two months before the episode was transmitted(and two months or so after recording had actually completed). In fact the

theme had already been brokered inThe Web of Fear, where the team werepressing for a Commission intoThames Valley flood levels. Eminentseismologist Dr Hal Thirlaway (head ofthe pioneering Atomic WeaponsEstablishment’s Blacknest researchgroup at Aldermaston), who had aidedplot research, was amused to findhimself reincarnated in Curteis’ draft

script as Dr Tadley of Birdsnest, though the character was renamed Ridleyfor broadcast.

Cause of Death‘I’m finished with Doomwatch and everythingit stands for. No, I mean finished. ... Pollution... desecration of the environment ...despoiling of nature ... I really wonder if anyof it matters. Maybe it’s a hopeless bloodyworld because it’s inhabited by hopelessbloody people. Maybe what’s happening’sright. Maybe we’re creating just the kind ofworld we deserve. And if it finally destroys usor drives us mad, that’ll be what we deservetoo.’ Plagued by self-doubt and uncertaintyabout his life and career path, John Ridgereturned for the final time in Cause of Death.He is taken aback to discover his sister hasallowed their ailing arteriosclerotic father,Wilfred (Graham Leaman) to be admitted to aprivate clinic under the care of Dr Cordell(John Lee). When Wilfred dies, John becomessuspicious and his accusatory fingerimmediately points to the pro-euthanasiaCordell: ‘I’m talking about a doctor taking iton himself to end a life. When all his effortsshould be directed to saving it. Call it whatyou like, it’s murder.’ In keeping with hisearlier stories, Oxford-graduated doctor ofphilosophy Louis Marks contributed another

characteristically humanistic episode, which touched on the care of theelderly and how society views them. For Simon Oates the storyline wasuncomfortably close to his heart: his own father was dying at the time.

The Killer DolphinsQuist and Stafford were transplanted to Naples in the next edition,investigating a spate of fatal attacks on swimmers at sea by creaturesunknown. Much to the Minister’s annoyance, they undertake this at thebehest of Professor Balbo (Angelo Infanti), a marine biologist keen toestablish ‘La Sentinella del Destino’ – an Italian Doomwatch. It soonbecomes evident that the assailants are The Killer Dolphins, raisingquestions of what has changed the nature of the docile creatures, andwhy. The less than Mediterranean surroundings of Brighton Dolphinariumdoubled for Balbo’s Neapolitan research base where Quist falls into a poolof the mammals, though survives intact. This would be the final broadcastedition of Doomwatch. Unlike both previous runs, there were only 11editions rather than 13 (a repeat of Dave Allen at Large! occupied the‘extra’ slot). The season had already been affected by the loss of WolfRilla’s The Devil’s Demolition/I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (aboutGreen Belt housing and destitution) during pre-production, but hitches ofmore epic proportions had hit the show with...

Sex and Violence‘What’s Doomwatch supposed to do? Report on the moral condition of thepeople?’ The brief: to analyse the extent to which the permissive societyhas polluted the morals of the country’s youth. Quist suspects he is beingrailroaded for political expediency, since the Purvis Committee - of whichAnne is a member - is debating whether to change the laws governing sexand violence in the media and the arts. This group is host to somefascinating discussion. Educationalist Steven Granger (Bernard Horsfall):‘Ideas of family? What about the hypocrisy of family, that’s the fact that

young rebels nowadays are talkingabout. Ideas of love? What about ourlove for a North Vietnamese child withbits of an American shatter-bomb inhis guts? ... When a child is born it hasa great capacity for love: love isendemic to its nature – like sex. It loveseveryone, it loves everything. But weteach it that only a few things are

worthy of being loved, we teach it hate - and what is worse, we teach itcertainty: absolute right and wrong, good and bad. Now there are onlytwo certainties: life and death, and all the rest are changeable ... The oldabsolutes taught at home and in the classrooms: Queen, country, God, thedivine right of capitalism, family, love and chastity; they’re no longer



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OLD PEOPLE LEFT TO DIEWhy has no actionbeen taken over confidentialreport to Ministryof Health? In a leaked Government report, we discover theshocking facts behind the healthcare of the nationselderly people.

A small private ward, an old woman lies in bed,close to death. A nurse takes her pulse, and noticesa syringe and an unbroken phial next to the bed.Worried and hesitant, the nurse decides to give thepatient an injection but shortly after she breaks thephial, Doctor Cordell enters and she quickly putsthem back into the bowl. Cordell, after examiningthe patient, quietly asks the nurse what she isdoing. He hasn't prescribed the injection. 'Sheneeds it. Without it she'll die,' explains the nursenervously. Cordell tells her to take it away, andafter she has gone, he looks angry but keeps it in.He looks at the old lady whose breathing becomesmore faint and erratic.

The Nurse has returned to her desk, fists clenched.Cordell tells her that he knows she gave in hernotice today but she is still has responsibilitieswhilst working at this clinic. And Mrs. Wheeler hasdied. He asks the nurse how long she has workedin geriatrics and she replies two years. He knows itis a strain dealing with old people, physically andemotionally. 'For your next job could I suggest youtry something a little less taxing.' Staring, shereplies: 'I don't find old people taxing at all, doctor.'She watches him go and then goes to look at thedead woman, closing her eyes.

Cordell, meanwhile, has returned to his study. Hehas a death certificate to fill out. He hesitates overthe section called CAUSE OF DEATH...

We see John Ridge driving very fast along amotorway.In the Doomwatch office, Susan tells Doctor Quistthat she has been trying all morning to contactRidge. Quist is suffering from a bad cold and tellsStafford that he can't understand Ridge. He iswaiting for an answer this morning at the latest.'It's not a helping hand he needs,' muses Stafford.'I'm not asking him to come back to Doomwatch.'He has a University job lined up for him,considering he is a first rate researcher. After asneezing fit, Stafford asks Quist if he should takehis germs off home for a couple of days? Quist haspromised the Minister but the decision is notpressing. 'You know as well as I do that with nextweek's cabinet coming up, and our estimates fornext year on the agenda... the more chapter andverse I can give him...' Barbara asks to talk to Quistbut he is still busy berating Stafford. TheCommander reminds Quist that this is a politicaldecision and isn't going to be influenced by a fewsums. 'In the Minister's mind you are Doomwatch.your health is more important than yourestimates.' Quist takes his point and does feelgroggy. Stafford leaves, smiling and Barbara tellsQuist that if he needs to get a message to Ridge ina hurry, she is seeing him tonight for dinner. Quistis surprised. Barbara thinks Ridge needs ashoulder to cry on. 'What is it about him?' pondersQuist. 'Got a brilliant mind – understanding in lotsof ways,' says Barbara. 'Yet something in himmakes him feel he's got to fight all the world'sbattles single handed. Everything becomes a oneman crusade.' Quist tells Doctor Tarrant that he isgoing to take a few days off. He then gives Barbarathe message.

RidgeRidge pulls up outside his sister's house where hiswelcome is muted. He wasn't expected by Edna,despite the telegram she sent. Her husband, Phillipisn't very pleased to see his brother in law either.They have been looking after his elderly fatheruntil a recent fall which broke his thigh and pelvis.Ridge controls himself as Phillip taunts him aboutcoming for a flying visit, considering they haven'thad a visit or a phone call in six months. 'I'vebeen... well, going through a bit of a rough patch.'Edna tries to cool things down and explains that

their father is in a private clinic ran by DoctorCordell who is an old friend from her nursing days.Dad also met him at dinner and thinks the worldof him. Edna is sorry that Phillip was rude and thatDad would have liked to have heard from him. 'Hestill had his illusions...' Ridge wriggles a bit butEdna says that soon they can give up pretending...'There'll be no need for either of us to see the otherever again.' Ridge is confused. 'What do you mean,when Dad dies?' 'He wants to die, John. He'swritten a letter. Dr Cordell has it...' She goes to dealwith the kettle leaving Ridge horrified.

WilfredWilfred Ridge is being attended by Cordell and anurse, a drip in his arm, and a cast covered by acradle over his thigh. Ridge is waiting in Cordell'sstudy with the letter, in a state of almost shockedsilence. Cordell tells him his father is ready to beseen now but advises against discussing the matterwith him now. Edna agrees but her brother issuspicious and sharp. He intends to remove hisfather away from this place as soon as he can. Theletter virtually asks Cordell to kill him, Ridge saysbut Cordell explains that it asks for him to beallowed to die with comfort and dignity when thetime comes. 'Who decided when the time's come?You?' Cordell patiently explains that it asks heshouldn't be kept alive by medicine or machineswhen life has ceased to have any meaning and notto resuscitate him for a few more days or weeks oflife. Ridge sees this as against everything themedical profession stands for. Edna says that theirfather hasn't changed his mind. He doesn't wantto be a burden. Cordell wished Edna had warnedhim of her brother's feelings. Edna explodes at herbrother – he has done nothing all these years, andin tears, runs out. Cordell tells Ridge that lookingafter an elderly patient over a long period can setup a strain especially with a young family, andwarns him that if his father recovers, things willget much worse at home. He is suffering fromarteriosclerosis which Ridge knows about. Soon,father Ridge will need more help as he loses the useof his limbs, he'll need constant supervision andcare to avoid bed sores. 'But any person has a rightto be spared months of endless suffering andmisery.' He asks Ridge to think it over andreassures him that everything will be done to help

his father. Edna, having composed herself, takesJohn to see his father, who, very frail, is pleased tosee him. Edna watches expressionless, 'faceconveys a lifetime of exclusion and bitterness.'

As the Minister pours Stafford a whisky, heexplains that 'At the moment anyway it's merely arecommendation from the think tank. There's noquestion of principle involved. And no one'sholding up any criticism of what Doomwatch hasachieved in the past.' Stafford wonders if theymean to phase out Doomwatch and the Ministeragrees but that is not how it will be out.Doomwatch has been too successful, a part ofgovernment thinking at all levels. 'We should begrateful, they'll say, after all that's what we've beenfighting for for years.' Partly departmentaljealousy, and a desire for a slice of the kudos.'Preservation of the environment isn't thepioneering concept it was three years ago.' TheMinister tells Stafford that they need to keep thetemperature down if to keep Doomwatch in onepiece. 'No heroic gestures, and nothing to give theopposition anything to bite on.' And with Quist outof the office for a week, that will help.

As Philip shouts at his children to turn their musicdown and go to bed, Ridge still maintains thatwhat Cordell is doing is morally indefensible.'Apart from being against the law.' Ednaremembers that what was said about abortionists.Her father's life stopped having any meaning along time ago. Phillip charges in – a year ago whenthe letter was written, Ridge was busy saving theworld with his 'Doomwatch nonsense' and forgotto come up here for his father's birthday aspromised. They posted the card so that heshouldn't feel neglected by his favourite child...Edna tells him to leave Ridge alone. 'And now hecomes here preaching at us what's right andwrong!' Ridge walks out and leaves the houseangrily. Edna is worried... Phillip doesn't know herbrother as well as she does.

Father Ridge finds reaching for a glass of waterdifficult and makes it fall to the floor. A nurseresponds to the smash and looks at him in concern.

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DOOMWATCH INVESTIGATES MERCY-KILLINGS CLINIC

Read more about this shocking story at www.doomwatch.org

absolutes.’ Stuart Douglass supplies a thoughtprovoking story, balancing the script so that even thebigoted campaigner Mrs Catchpole (June Brown)repressed Mrs Hastings (Angela Crow) and politicalopportunist Arthur Ballantyne (Nicholas Selby) are well-rounded characters. Ultimately the Committee andDoomwatch reach the same conclusion: ‘No change’.John Paul had expressed doubts that the story wasDoomwatch material, but Andrew Osborn had widerconcerns: Douglass had mirrored a concurrentcommission of enquiry into the moral pollution of theNation, down to parodies of Lord Longford, MaryWhitehouse and Cliff Richard. The commissionespecially focused on pornography, obscenity andcensorship of the arts, There was also blatantsatirisation in Mrs Catchpole’s militant Housewifeorganisation, clearly based on then popular clean-upbodies such as the Festival of Light and the NVALA. Theedition was prepared for transmission – seeminglyintended to air fifth in the run - but dropped from theschedules at the last minute. The BBC asserted that thiswe due to substandard production but, when Douglasstook issue at this, later claimed it was impossible todiscuss such issues in a fifty minute serial. It alsomaintained that footage of an actual Nigerian militaryexecution in Lagos should not have been used, BBCrights to broadcast it having expired. To this day theedition has never aired (though rumours persist of anAustralian transmission). In the end, the verycensorship which Sex and Violence vehemently railsagainst saw it banned – ultimately an appropriate wayfor Doomwatch to bow out. Reaction to the season was generally unfavourable, theconsensus being that the show had become talky,actionless and confused, with more emphasis onsocietal ills and wild speculation than reasonedprediction and credibility (what Pedler called ‘smalllogical extensions of current reality’) — problemsagreed with by many of the cast and crew, as well ascritics and viewers. Daily Telegraph‘s Richard Last hadremained a keen observer of the final run. Of DeadlyDangerous Tomorrow he had announced, ‘The worsttelevision news of the week is that Ridge is back. Hebounded into Doomwatch (BBC-1) like a wild-eyedstage villain, truculent as ever and clearly still mad as ahatter. Even without him, I no longer give the seriesmuch chance of credibility. It spends its time beingimpossibly melodramatic or making its characters talklike hand-outs - sometimes both.’ Reviewing the finalepisode (‘a fairly mediocre affair in which the barelysuppressed melodramatic elements finally showed in anabsurd confrontation at what appeared to be aNeapolitan orgy’), he emphasised the need for the show‘to secure a tenable balance between the elements ofecology, science fiction and melodrama that go into it.Melodrama has too often been allowed to get the upperhand in the present series, leading to such nonsenses asRidge’s rampaging. And “Ridge Must Go” is an essentialcorollary to “Doomwatch Should Stay,” and a few lessunscientific outbursts from Quist would help. ‘This wasalso exemplified in the New Scientist letters page.Martyn Dryde pointed out ‘the poor storylines and lowexcitement-value of the current BBC-TV series ofDoomwatch. We know, of course, that Dr Pedler and hisassociate are no longer responsible ... Early Doomwatchhad teeth; this one doesn’t ... I also detect an air of “itcan’t happen here” recently, especially in the fake TVprogrammes about population and the environment[Bomb] which have been so overdone as to be blatantself-parody.’ Shane Fahy expressed: ‘intensedissatisfaction, disappointment, and annoyance at thecurrent series ... the fictional government, and the not-quite-fictional BBC have decided to pull out the teeth of

this programme and leave it a toothless, senile idiot ...Doomwatch could have been a very valuable vehicle formembers of both the establishment and the anti-establishment who would like to see people take aserious interest in affairs which could critically affect notonly our civilisation but also our species ... the twoextremes of meekness and ferocity must be avoidedwhich means steering a careful middle course, which sofar only Dr Pedler has managed to do. Therefore, inconclusion, I implore the BBC to bring back Dr Pedler orforget Doomwatch.’ Certainly Dr Quist now seemedmuch fonder of drily recounting facts and figures fromthe comfort of Anne’s armchair than in activelyconfronting environmental na’er-do-wells in theiroffices. Terence Dudley’s introduction of theGovernment’s keenness to put down its scientificwatchdog; widower Quist’s ‘living in sin’ with Anne; andthe arrival on the team of the antagonistic Stafford(initially despised by his colleagues for hounding John)who could simply network with contacts for informationwithout recourse to Ridge’s criticised espionage skills,all point towards him actively confronting theaccusations of cardboardy 2D characterisation head-onby bringing in stronger interpersonal relationships andattempting to curb the perceived excesses of Pedler andDavis’ ‘message over character’ stories. For many,however, this just intolerably simplified and soapifiedthe show. The switch to a mid-summer transmissionhadn’t helped matters, and Doomwatch was quietlyended. Pedler and Davis’ further work together was a veryloosely-linked trio of novels. Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater(1971) was an effective reworking of their Doomwatchopener, replacing the Department with theindependent Kramer Consultancy(headed by Arnold Kramer, whowould later figure in the proposedWorldforce 5 format revival),developers of self-biodegradablesubstance Degron; widening thescope of the original plot the virusquickly and hideously consumesLondon. Tigon and perhaps moresurprisingly Disney both expressedinterest in a film adaptation. 1974’sBrainrack, set in the near-future, sawa maverick computer scientist and aresearch psychologist investigate abrain tissue atrophying disease.Elements of the Doomwatch film aredetectable in a section where scaredlocals huddle in a pub following adisaster at a privately-run lightwaternuclear power station. Their finalcollaboration, The Dynostar Menacefrom 1975, revisited themes fromRe-Entry Forbidden and was amurder mystery thriller set onboarda multinational spacelab carrying anuclear fusion project designed asMan’s last desperate energy source –which is subverted by a saboteur,threatening the ozone layer and thefuture of humanity itself. Also thatyear Longman Educational Bookspublished Doomwatch: The World inDanger. This was a novelisation oftheir scripts Plastic Eaters, Red Skyand Survival Code (as ‘A Bomb IsMissing’) by Davis and Pedler, withediting by Gordon Walsh andillustrations from Richard Osbourne.The textbook formed part of the



Stage 4 Structural Readers series for teaching English as a foreignlanguage, remaining in use for many years.Paul and Oates made guest appearances in The New Avengers (andYorkshire’s sitcom That’s My Boy), Oates also appearing in Beasts,Bergerac, and Remington Steele after moving to the US. Paul appeared onTV in I, Claudius and 1990 but reverted mainly to stage work, commentingof Doomwatch in May 1994, ‘I enjoyed that series immensely.’ John Pauldied in February 1995, and Simon Oates in May 2009.John Nolan took the lead in Shabby Tiger, witchcraft flick Terror, andappeared in The Sweeney, Hustle and Batman Begins. John Bown acted inSecret Army, Blake’s 7 and Van Der Valk; the late Joby Blanshard filmed Inthe Forest and taped editions of All Creatures Great and Small and JulietBravo before his November 1992 death, whilst Jean Trend’s creditsinclude the two Dominick Hide tales for Play for Today, The Chief and OneFoot in the Grave. John Barron won great acclaim as CJ in the four Reginald Perrin series in abroad career also encompassing Timeslip, Softly Softly, Crown Court, Yes(Prime) Minister and All Gas and Gaiters. Robert Powell temporarilylanguished in the likes of The Asphyx and Asylum before regaining successin the prestigious title rôle in ITC’s Jesus of Nazareth, The Thirty-Nine Steps(leading to Thames Television’s Hannay), The Detectives and Holby City –as well as maintaining a high profile in voiceovers (ranging fromdocumentaries to narrating David Bedford’s Rime of the Ancient Marinerconcept album) and on stage – which saw him take the lead in SherlockHolmes – The Musical, reprising the Great Detective he first essayed forBBC Radio in 1974.Wendy Hall retired from acting and was seemingly last heard of in 1994telling News of the World about a near-death experience whilst givingbirth in the ‘60s; similarly Vivien Sherrard withdrew from the professionas the final series aired, moving to the US to become a wife and mother.Kit Pedler maintained his iconoclastic media profile, acted as scientificadviser for Look and Read’s Cloud Burst, steadfastly rallied for theformation of a real-life Doomwatch and promoted the Green Party-inspiring Gaian hypothesis. He continued to lecture on ‘Doomwatchthemes’ (confessing in 1974 that he’d hoped the TV show would inspireviewer action), energy conservation and alternative technologies until hisdeath in May 1981, midway through making a series on the paranormalfor Thames called Mind Over Matter. The tie-in book would be his finalwork of writing in a career which had also encompassed numerous radioplays and documentaries. Terence Dudley continued to produce, write and direct, notably forSurvivors and Doctor Who — perhaps offering a tribute to Tobias HenryWren in Henry Tobias, a character in his script for Who spin-off K-9 andCompany. He died on Christmas Day 1988. Gerry Davis moved straight onto script-editing Softly Softly beforerelocating to America in the mid-’70s, where he worked on The BionicWoman, Vega$ and The Final Countdown. He also took across Doomwatchepisodes to interest potential US producers: at one point Raymond Burrwas apparently slated to play Quist. To his demise in August 1991 hemaintained that the time was ripe for a new Doomwatch. He was right.

Winter AngelProducer Peter Lee-Wright bought the rights from Pedler’s daughter, andTuesday 7th December 1999 saw Channel 5 air the feature-length TVmovie Doomwatch: Winter Angel (rejected by the BBC, apparently as itdidn’t fit then-current drama policy). Roy Battersby directed, with ascreenplay by John Howlett from a concept courtesy of SF novelist IanMcDonald. With impressive visuals and effects, Doomwatch was now moreSF than ever. The production team opined that the Tories would haveclosed the Department in 1979: hence there was little connection to theoriginal show, as the credit ‘based on the television series created by KitPedler and Gerry Davies [sic]’ aptly demonstrates. Intended as a pilot for aproposed series, the movie is pretty much Doomwatch in name only, thesole link to the series being the elderly Dr Spencer Quist, played by PhilipStone. Set, as Radio Times had it, ‘in an authoritarian near-future, the newteam would be freelance and scattered geographically, with operatives invarious walks of life. Spencer (‘the man who asks more questions than heever answers’ as he nattily refers to himself) remained fairly faithful to theoriginal. For the benefit of viewers not remembering the earlierincarnation, Cambridge astrophysicist Dr Neil Tannahil (Trevor Eve)reflects, ‘Doomwatch … Scientists watching scientists. Dr Quist was mymentor and official devil’s advocate in the days when they were allowed.The ethics and consequences of research and experiment. He was retired

as a pain in the arse but he never gave it up.’ When a backslapping lectureby the Minister of Science and Research is disrupted by ‘environmentalconsultant’ Dr Teri Riley (Allie Byrne) and some animal rights activists,Quist is first on his feet to applaud, though is arrested and held overnightdue to a thirty year record of agitation. As Hugo Cox (future GadgetShow/Bang Goes the Theory presenter Dallas Campbell), a sharply-dressedvaguely-Ridgeian quantum-computer expert replete with high-performance car, puts it: ‘It’s all about power cuts and racing pigeonsdisappearing all over the North-East of England.’ Half of the Northrecently lost the National Grid for six hours, and 65 local networksoverloaded - the power being inexplicably diverted to thedecommissioned Shaston power station, where another of Quist’sprotégés, Dr Toby Ross (Miles Anderson) is attempting to construct ablack hole. Spencer’s past returns to haunt him when he is killed in arigged explosion which rips through his cottage whilst he snoozes in anarmchair. Despite being an atheist throughout the ‘70s series, Quistdepressingly gets a full choral church funeral – although maybe this is areflection of the fact that by this stage in his life he is regarded by thegeneral public as a ‘national institution’. He leaves CD-ROM copies of hisDoomwatch files to Neil and Hugo in his will (‘Every scientific nightmareknown to man... he means us to inherit,’ murmurs Tannahil). The two joinforces, and Neil sets off to Shaston to bring events to a suitably climactic-if-wordy conclusion — which is neatly covered up in the media. At thestory’s close the discs are loaded up. The first carries an on-screenintroduction from Quist: ‘When I tell any truths, it is not for the sake ofconvincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending thosewho do.’ The TV Movie is an intelligent drama on its own merits, withsome agreeably sinister moments, and it is intriguing to see how the newDoomwatch team formed by Quist operates. However the tone is a littleuncertain, with shadowy Men in Black Government officials rubbingalongside Cox’s William Blake-inspired Angelware programmes whichlend an unsatisfactory omniscient ‘supercomputer’ vibe. Indeed, it may beargued that in some respects Winter Angel was perhaps too cerebral andabstract, arguably with none of the immediate hooks, either visual orconceptual, which had been the parent series’ stock in trade, and (unlikethe original’s headline-mirroring plots) with little real relevance toviewers. Most critics were guardedly non-committal. Adam Sweeting ofThe Guardian (Quist’s preferred daily) said that whilst ‘there was almostnothing here you would dare call original ... the notion of some misguided



quantum-anorak building his own Black Hole using contraband nuclearwaste from the old Soviet bloc at least had an authentic frisson of lunacyabout it.’ Noting similarities to the 1985 ecothriller Edge of Darknesswhich Sweeting had also caught, The Stage concurred: ‘effective … withgood performances, impressive special effects and a decent budget.What, one has to ask, was it doing among the shoddy old tat of Channel5? Having stoked my paranoia, I can only assume that there is aconspiracy afoot to ensure as few people as possible see it. Will a seriesfollow? … The idea certainly has potential especially with the ever-watchable Eve at its centre.’ Daily Express commented that it played like apilot, noting the obligatory bike-riding eco-warrior, token black character,etc. Radio Times’ Geoff Ellis thought it ‘an entertaining thriller ... Shotthrough with foreboding and paranoia, this is an enjoyably grim suspensedrama,’ whilst Heat found it ‘a lot better than some of the stilted Brit sci-fiefforts we’ve seen in recent years – Channel 5 should spin a series out ofthis if it can.’ Probably the most glowing appraisal appeared in theregional Birmingham Post’s pages: ‘This was rivetingly suspenseful,tensely scripted stuff, atmospherically directed and with superblyunderstated charismatic performances – a series is mandatory.’Mandatory perhaps, but it was not to be. What effect the reviews had onFive is unknown, but given that the movie (by Working Title and VansonProductions) was copyrighted to Doomwatch Ltd, it would appear that theteam had high hopes for reappearance by Professor Tannahil and hisallies. Whether a series would have gone back to the concept’s roots andinstalled the prognostication element of its ‘70s ancestor is debatable -Ian McDonald’s further storylines were reported to involvenanotechnology smuggling, a computer virus which could infiltrate thehuman brain, and protein-based biochips – but it is widely held that thecost of a full run was deemed too prohibitive for the mooted three furthertwo-hour films to be produced (an early report gave Winter Angel abudget of £1.5 million). Only three episodes from the final season arecurrently known to exist in the BBC Archives; there are also five missingeditions from the first (Wren’s explosive demise being thankfullypreserved in the following story). Ten survive on their original 625-linePAL videotape format, and fourteen as 525-line NTSC conversionsreturned from Canada’s CBC, with the second series also existing as 16mmmonochrome film copies. All extant editions bar Sex and Violence werescreened on UK Gold during 1994, albeit generally in slightly edited form(visceral footage of dead chickens being declawed in Battery being

excised via an ad break for example).Rat was repeated as accompanimentto BBC4’s The Cult of…Doomwatchdocumentary in 2006. With PGratings, BBC Video marketed PlasticEaters and Rat, Red Sky and TobyWren on two VHS cassettes in 1991.The first was later re-released byTotal Home Entertainment and onDVD by Revelation in 2000. A fullDVD release of the survivingepisodes was mooted in the mid-2000s by 2|entertain, but poor salesof related cult series shelved theproject. Guild Home Video gave thestill-‘A’-certificated Tigon film anearly release onto the home videorental circuit in 1980; 2001 sawImage Entertainment’s ‘EuroShockCollection’ Region 1 DVD, followedon Region 0 by Prism Leisure Corp in2003 (now certificated 12). In 2010the BBFC awarded the TV Movie a 15rating for a Boulevard EntertainmentLtd DVD release. History has perhapsbeen kinder than the archives.Rescreenings may have been limitedbut the Doomwatch name still liveson today as a media buzzword, aswell as having named various bands,songs, a computer game and aregular column in The Guardian. Iteven has an entry in the OxfordEnglish Dictionary. Most reviewersare fond of claiming that Doomwatchwas one of the greatest drama seriesever produced, a masterpiece offorward thinking and damninglyaccurate concepts. Not so - thoughmany of its extrapolations ontechnological hazards andenvironmental dangers have seenfruition for good or ill - but at its bestthe show could be thoughtprovoking, intelligent, arresting anddownright fierce in its accusations. Itrepresents a unique point in history,a fresh outlook for a new decadewhich simultaneously looked back tothe mistakes of the past and forwardto the future, becoming a figureheadfor society’s burgeoningenvironmental awareness. This, thefact that it coined a new word for theEnglish language, plus its rightfulclaim to be the first Green - certainlyenvironmentally aware - televisionprogramme, is a better epitaph thanmany other series could ever hope for.

Thanks to the late John Paul, MartinWorth, Scott Burditt, Andrew Wilson,Michael Seely, Ian Beard, David Brunt,Simon Coward, Nick Goodman andKevin Atkinson Variations in quoteformatting are as per original sources.



Doomwatch 21.00-22.55Channel 5 Programme Information

Inspired by the original 70s drama series about anenvironmental task force battling the capitalistswho pursue profit at any cost, this feature-lengththriller takes us to the frontiers of modern scienceand the frightening consequences of man’sinsatiable desire to control and tame his world.Based on existing scientific data and researchcurrently being carried out in this country, thisdrama examines a not-too-distant future in whichthe financial rewards for scientific advance leavemoral scruples surplus to requirements.As we approach the end of the millennium, we areincreasingly dependent on technology. Ourprofessional and social lives have changed somuch over the last few decades that it is virtuallyimpossible for us to comprehend what life wouldbe like without necessities like light, heatelectricity and transport.And yet we are also aware that these things arepowered by limited resources: the earth’s suppliesof fossil fuels will have been used up by the endof the next century - so what then?Demand will be so high by this stage thatecological means of power-production will not besufficiently effective, For a while, it seemed thatnuclear power would provide the answer, but ithas proved far too volatile a medium to exploit ona grand scale.For that is the nature of nuclear power — it is anincredibly dangerous process: the slightestmistake can result in catastrophe and the wasteproducts remain poisonous for hundreds, if notthousands of years. In fact, it is the disposal ofspent fuel that is the greatest difficulty. So,imagine if there were a way of getting rid of thewaste without poisoning the planet - if there wassome kind of secure disposal system that wouldsimply remove the problem. This is the projectthat renegade scientist Toby Ross is spearheading.After stealing the work of fellow boffin NeilTannahil (Trevor Eve, above), he has the means tounite the cheapest source of energy with aninsatiable nuclear waste disposal system bycreating the world’s first manmade black hole.On the point of moving abroad with hisradiographer wife, Meg, Cambridge astrophysicistNeil Tannahil has no idea that his work is beingused for such nefarious ends until he isapproached by Dr Spencer Quist, Quist is theageing founder of the original Doomwatchorganisation which has been monitoring TobyRoss’s covert experiments for several years.Believing he has found a kindred spirit in Tannahil,he outlines his fears and manages to persuade hiscolleague to take over the investigation into Ross’spotentially catastrophic work. With the help ofcomputer genius Hugo Cox and environmentalscientist Teri Riley, the Tannahils try to uncover theextent to which Ross has put his theories intopractice, but soon find themselves drawn into aweb of corrupt and unaccountable powers, whereso-called ‘security forces’ will stop at nothing toprotect their guilty secret.Only after the horrific deaths of three of hiscolleagues, including Dr Quist himself, doesTannahil begin to realise that it is too late to walkaway. In fact, he has no choice but to confrontthose behind this dangerous empire, because thewhole project is out of control and so is the blackhole!Neil Tannahil…Trevor EveNeil Tannahil…Amanda OomsSpencer Quist…Philip StoneToby Ross…Miles AndersonHugo Cox…Dallas CampbellTeri Riley…Allie ByrneWriters: Ian MacDonald & John HowettProducer: Peter Lee Wright Director: Roy Battersby.A Working Title Television & Vanson Production

A MESSATHE FR

Stephen Dudley

Doomwatch Biography

Tomorrow, the Rat (1970)

Season 1, Episode 4

Stephen played a Small Boy briefly

shown in the pre-titles. An episode which

also features both Stephen’s parents

(Doomwatch’s Producer, Terence Dudley and

his wife)

Waiting for a Knighthood (1972)

Season 3, Episode 4.

Stephen played Stephen Massingham

Other Filmography

All Creatures Great and Small TV

Big Steps and Little 'Uns (1980) TV

Stephen played Simon Tanner

Survivors

Stephen played John Millon (22 episodes,

1975-1977)

As Himself

New World Rising: The Making of Survivors

Series 3 (2005) Interviewed as Himself


In February 2010 Stephen Dudley, son of the late producer of DOOMWATCH

contacted Scott Burditt.

Dear Scott,

I looked at your excellent website and I was struck by how visionary the Programme

was – forty years on. Climate Change, Lead in Petrol, WMD, population pressure,

GM, the moral position of Corporations and the responsibility of scientists for the

unintended consequences of their actions. These issues still resonate powerfully

today and there was a very talented collection of contributors, makers and players.

I know that Doomwatch was among the things that my late father was most

proud of, and in those distant days the BBC was not only fiercely independent, but

also fiercely principled. He would have hated to see what it has become, but Sport

and Light Entertainment were always kings in budg etary terms. Time was that

Science Fiction was a vehicle to ask the important moral questions in our own age

– and that made for great drama. I was delighted that the BBC put its money where

its mouth was for the Doctor Who revival which has been in the traditions of that

fine programme, but rather less impressed with other programmes recently. My

fear is that any revival might be equally banal and lack the controversy and power

of the original. Releasing the series on DVD would be marvellous, but I am not sure

about the complexity of gaining the permissions and what the business model

would look like to make it worth their while. I suppose also that the quality of the

recording (limited by the technology at the time) and the simplicity of the sets and

effects may lend a rather old fashioned feel. That said, the quality of the direction

owing much to theatre and the legacy of live broadcasting has a tautness and a

tension which is sadly lacking in this age of circular tracking shots and odd angles

more fitted to pop videos. Tomorrow, the Rat was released on DVD and I have

rather less recollection of my part in that than I do for my part in Waiting for a

Knighthood. Sadly the copies of the scripts I had and the Radio Times and most

devastating of all, father’s scrapbook of cuttings and reviews were all lost in a

terrible fire at my mother’s cottage in Dec 2005. She has in fact, only recently been

able to move back in.

May I wish you well for the project.

Lieutenant Commander Stephen DUDLEY MA Royal Navy

Lieutenant Commander Stephen DUDLEY MA Royal Navy

Stephen limited further acting to a purely

amateur sphere, going on to join the Royal

Navy, where the experiences of the

complexity of making television and the

lessons learned served him in good stead both

as a Logistics Officer and a project manager,

although perhaps a wistful spark remained in

being twice part of the winning Ensemble in

RN drama festivals in the early 1990’s playing

McLeavy in Joe Orton’s Loot and Van Helsing

in Dracula.

Lieutenant Commander Stephen DUDLEY,

joined the Royal Navy in 1989 after reading

History at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Initial training included a deployment to Hong

Kong in HMS BRISTOL, and serving in HMS

JUPITER in the Gulf during the invasion of

Kuwait in 1990. Following specialist Logistics

training at HMS RALEIGH he served on the

Personnel and Administration staff of the

Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command

in Portsmouth. In 1994 He served as Captain’s

Secretary in HMS MANCHESTER, a guided

missile Destroyer, a commission which

included an 8 month deployment to the Far

East. Following formal staff training at

Greenwich, in 1996 he was appointed to

London as Assistant Military Assistant to the

Chief of Defence Intelligence.

After further logistic training, he served as

Supply Officer, HMS YORK (a sister ship to

HMS MANCHESTER) and then Supply Officer in

the RN’s premier carrrier HMS ARK ROYAL,

during her £140 M refit at Rosyth. 2000 saw

him join the staff of the Second Sea Lord, first

within the personnel directorate as lead

officer for ratings’ promotion (and on women

at sea and maternity issues), and latterly on

the staff of the Flag Officer Training and

Recruiting. Following a two year sabbatical in

Industry, where he worked with Consultancy

Firm W S Atkins, gaining project management

qualifications, DUDLEY became Staff Support

Officer at HMS EXCELLENT, a Shore

Establishment in Portsmouth housing the

Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief,

Fleet and a wide range of Naval training. The

highlights of this appointment were

supporting the celebration of the Centenary

of the battle of Trafalgar and the

International Fleet Review.

In 2006 DUDLEY joined the Directorate of

Defence Logistics Information in Bath as a

project manager and then served in

Afghanistan in the Headquarters Joint Force

Support as staff officer for Contracts before

joining the Naval Staff in 2009. DUDLEY lives

in Worcestershire with his wife Sue (a former

WRNS officer) where they enjoy exploring the

countryside on horseback and on foot.

AGE FROM RONTLINE...

A Message from the frontline by Stephen Dudley


Trans or Post-humanism is a global movement that advocates

advancing human evolution via artificial means such as genetic

engineering, cloning and other newly emerging technologies.

Made up of academics and enthusiasts alike Transhumanists see

certain aspects of the human condition such as old age, sickness

and mortality as unnecessary and therefore undesirable. The

central premise of the movement being that by merging with

technology humans will be able to evolve into a new race

of Transhumans free of all forms of human suffering.

Back in 1966 Doctor Who was facing a major crisis.

After three years as leading man William Hartnell was

leaving the series due to ill health and to make matters

worse Terry Nation wanted to take his Dalek creations

to America to star in their own spin-off series without the

Doctor. Thus leaving Doctor Who without its two biggest

icons. It was decided then that Hartnell would be

succeeded by Patrick Troughton as the Doctor

and that this transition would be helped via

the introduction of new star monsters to the

series: but who or what exactly could

possibly even come close to replacing the

Daleks? That was the difficult

conundrum then script editor Gerry

Davis approached the unofficial

scientific advisor to the series Kit

Pedler with as Doctor Who approached its fourth season.

Reflecting on his own fears as a medical Doctor of “dehumanising

medicine” Pedler delivered in spades. Pedler imagined a race of

human beings who had been forced by circumstances beyond their

control to slowly replace most - if not all - of their vital organs and

limbs with steel and plastic replacements. Ultimately even

replacing large parts of their brains with computers and

neurochemically programming out their emotions altogether.

In effect, surgically erasing all traces of their humanity and

transplanting it with cold technology and relentless,

uncompromising logic. Pedler and Davis called these

new nightmarish life forms Cybermen. In the 1974

Target Book adaptation of the first Cyber-story The Tenth

Planet (which introduced Troughton’s Doctor) Gerry

Davis described the fictional origins of the Cybermen:

“Centuries ago by our Earth time, a race of men on the far

distant planet Telos sought immortality. They perfected the

art of cybernetics, the reproduction of machine

functions in human beings. As bodies became old

and diseased, they were replaced limb by limb,

with plastic and steel. Finally, even the human

circulation and nervous system were recreated,

and brains replaced by computers. The first

Cybermen were born.” Somewhat ironically,

though, despite this apparent great evolutionary

A Cyberman from Doctor Who

TRANSHUMANISMI N DOOMWATCHby Richard Thomas


leap forward Pedler reasoned that such beings would be driven

solely by the most primitive of biological instincts … the will to

survive whatever the cost no matter what. A frightening

contradiction that made itself felt much more prevalently later on

when Pedler and Davis decided to revisit the initial concept behind

the Cybermen for Doomwatch in the 1970s, oddly enough in an

episode starring Patrick Troughton. Far from battling the

Cybermen, though, on this occasion Troughton does everything he

can to become one of them! In Troughton’s own words: “I keep

trying to tell them machines can’t catch diseases!”

In the season two episode In The Dark a terminally ill man Alan

McArthur (played by Troughton) desperately tries to prolong his life

artificially by replacing his dieing body piece by piece with

experimental life support systems. Although the experiment is

successful it has a terrible price. McArthur begins to think of

himself as well as other human beings (if you can still call him

human at this point?) as nothing more than bio-chemical

machines: ultimately planning on cheating death completely by

becoming nothing more than a living brain attached to a dead

machine. A procedure that would leave him utterly alone and

unable to communicate with the outside world forever, with only

his thoughts to keep him company in the endless darkness.

Fortunately, though, Professor Quist and his daughter manage to

persuade McArthur that this would be a fate worse than death and

he decides instead to finally switch off the machinery and die a

human being. Such a scenario might sound fantastic but even back

in the 1960s and 70s there would have been signs that such a

hypothetical hybridisation between man and machine might

become a reality sooner rather than later. In 1960, Belding

Scribner invented the Scribner shunt a breakthrough kidney

dialysis machine that later saved the lives of countless people with

end-stage kidney disease around the globe. More substantially,

though, in December 1967 (only a matter of months after The

Tenth Planet was broadcast) the first successful human heart

transplant took place at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town,

South Africa. It is difficult to appreciate this today but the spare-

part surgery envisioned in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and

by Pedler was becoming a part of everyday life. In Doomwatch

Professor Quist essentially offered his friend McArthur a simple

choice: live forever as a machine or die a human being? It might

sound absurd now but to people living in the 60s and 70s new

developments in medicine such as heart transplants would have

signalled that many of us might face this kind of difficult decision

ourselves someday. Something which might have been premature

back then but maybe not so much so today.

Runaway spare-part surgery, however, was only

one of Pedler’s concerns when he invented the

Cybermen. R eplacing the human body is one

thing but trying to replace or subvert the

human mind (and by extension the human soul)

is something far more serious. As discussed the

Cybermen had altered their brain chemistry, in

effect, deleting the last vestige of their

biological past: human emotions. And this

concept of suppressing or controlling the mind

chemically also made itself felt more strongly

later on in Doomwatch. In the season one

episode The Devil’s Sweets, for instance,

chocolates laced with a new drug are used to

increase cigarette sales. It is in the season

three episode Hair Trigger where the idea is

explored best though. In it a violent psychopath

and convicted murderer of his family (Michael

Beavis) undergoes a revolutionary form of

therapy aimed at totally rehabilitating violent

offenders and returning them to normal society.

Unfortunately, although having a 100%

success rate, this ‘therapy’ is nothing short of

turning people into remote controlled men and

women. As Professor Hetherington explains in the episode:

“Electrodes are planted in the patient’s pleasure centre, in the

cepstral region of the brain, by stimulating this pleasure centre we

can counter act severe states of anxiety and depression.” And as if

turning people into de facto robots wasn’t enough this ‘treatment’

is also dangerously addictive. In the words of one of the patients

(or victims) “better than sex.” Pacifying people at the push of a

button and suppressing human emotions chemically might sound

like the stuff of pure science fiction but the latter had already

become a serious problem by the 1970s. Directly mirroring the

‘treatment’ seen in Doomwatch so-called 60s “wonder drugs” such

as Valium had been prescribed prodigiously. Thus leaving a

sizeable number of otherwise normal people as zombified drug

addicts. The solution, of course, more drugs! A problem Kit Pedler

as a medical doctor would have been acutely aware of and exactly

the kind of “dehumanising medicine” that inspired the original

concept behind the Cybermen. Antianxiety drugs and spare-part

surgery is one thing but lets fast forward to today. While the

Cybermen might have made interesting food for thought back in

the 60s and 70s, today the human race really is close to

possessing the kind of technology necessary for reinventing

ourselves. Not just limb by limb as Pedler envisioned but gene by

gene. Like heart transplants and dialyses machines such

technology will no doubt save the lives of countless people but we

must be cautious that in saving lives we do not rob people of their

humanity. As Professor Quist points out in In The Dark human

beings are separated from animals by two factors: knowledge of

our own mortality and human emotion. To become a race of

emotionless immortals isn’t a step forward it is a step back. Maybe

then Prehumanism might be a better name for the so-called

Transhumanist movement.

Richard Thomas Binnall of America UK Correspondent and Columnist

www.binnallofamerica.com/rr.html

Richard Thomas lives in Swansea, South Wales. Richard grew up

watching science fiction shows, including his all-time favourite

Doctor Who. As a child this enthusiasm for Sci-Fi evolved into an

interest in space, UFOs and other esoteric subjects. In 2008

Richard began to write a fortnightly column (Richard's Room 101)

for the esoteric think tank Binnall of America. Soon after that, he

started writing a Sci-Fi/TV related column for Stuart Miller's Alien

Worlds Magazine. In 2009, he began to write a spin-off column to

Room 101 for BoA, titled "Sci-Fi Worlds."

Patrick Troughton guest stars in Doomwatch “In the Dark”

Transhumanism in Doomwatch by Richard Thomas


Toby Wren'sdeath did morethan just closethe f irst series ofDoomwatch.It marked the beginning of a new transitionaryera before the consolidation of the third serieswhere the new style bedded in, and Doomwatchwas never the same again. For some fans and viewers, that first series wasdefinitive, what Doomwatch was really all about.When Wren died, Doomwatch died. And there isan element of truth in that. There is a commonconception amongst fans and viewers ofDoomwatch that by the time of the third series ofDoomwatch, it is greatly inferior to what hadcome in early 1970. It was certainly felt at thetime, if letters to the Radio Times and the NewScientist are anything to go by. Kit Pedler andGerry Davis themselves famously went on recordto criticise Terence Dudley's third season openerFire and Brimstone, that the series had nowbecome a thriller, using a mad scientist runningamok as a plot device. Indeed, Fire andBrimstone was not reviewed terribly kindly bythe press, The Daily Telegraph dismissed it as'nonsense', although Richard Last, its televisioncritic was never a great fan of John Ridge, whilstthe Daily Mail thought the episode 'potty.'(Terence Dudley was very pleased with it,though.) Newspaper reviews and letters pagesshould never be taken too seriously, just likeaudience research reports the BBC used tocompile on any given episode of a series. Some ofthese people would be among 'Not We' and have

a tendency not to like what welike. Doctor Who fans havesuffered in the same way foryears and bear marks on theirhands. But Fire andBrimstone aside, there was a

general feeling of dissatisfaction coming fromthe viewers and from those of us who caught upwith the episodes some twenty, thirty or fortyyears later, that as the second series progressed,something was missing, and with what we couldsee of the third season, and indeed read, it hadvanished completely. What had gone wrong?What was happening?The answer seems to be obvious: Kit Pedler andGerry Davis: the clash between the creators andthe producership of Terence Dudley. Disputesover the level of characterisation and storytelling lead to a huge fall out during the pre-production of the second series. At least four ofthe scripts had no input from the creatorswhatsoever, and bears the hall marks of a moreconventional drama style favoured by Dudley.For every The Iron Doctor, there's a moreplausible Public Enemy. Newspaper reviews atthe time, whilst begrudging of Doomwatch'ssuccess and finally coming round to it, comparedFlight Into Yesterday toa poor episode of TheAvengers, whilst TheHuman Time Bombwas seen as more akinto the police dramaSoftly, Softly, aprogramme that wasdragging along at thetime. This becomesmore the case in thethird series.Doomwatch is nolonger a science fictionserial- or at times evenScience Faction.Episodes like DeadlyDangerous Tomorrow,Cause of Death, Sex andViolence, are more

about attitudes you could see in any other type ofsocial or crime drama of the time. First seriesDoomwatch had episodes you could not expectto see in other series. Nuclear powered rockets,

computers dictating the futures ofgovernment employees, drugs inchocolates, a workforce bugged byunscrupulous employers, the noise fromsupersonic aircraft killing, decerebratedmonkeys being harvested for organs,plastic eating viruses (a favourite memoryfor The New Scientist) may seem to be the

stuff from Doctor Who,Department S and a hostof other ITC series, butthey would not be given the same, strict,scientific discipline thatDoomwatch has. Nor did they have a point to make, and give awarning. Certainly, someepisodes feel like an ITCepisode. Burial At Seawas written by Dennis

Spooner, and its opening sequence of aseemingly deserted boat, and later Toby Wrenseeing a hallucination of himself is veryDepartment S! Of course, being a first series,the creators were spoiled for choice with whichissue they wished to highlight, and imagine athreat from something less commonly known,make it plausible such as the homunculuscultivated by Dr. Patrick in order to give his

weak son a new heart in ten years. It could behappening now - well, in 1970. Andserendipitous chance allowed some episodes tobecome seen as prophetic - but they weren'treally. Some of the events had already happened.Survival Code is simply something that didhappen in Spain a few years earlier and what thecomputer was doing in Project Sahara washappening by more conventional means anyway.The series was designed to be a scientificdetective series. Each week, the team would bepresented with an effect. The cause was initiallymisdiagnosed either as something alreadyknown in the sphere of life such as drugs, foodpoisoning, suicide, and so on. As soon as one ofthe Doomwatch team gets interested and digs alittle bit deeper, they discover the reason - sloppylab practises, a combination of uniquecircumstances - which may not remain thatunique for long, or deliberate acts ofmanipulation. Our superb triumvirate of Quist,Ridge and Wren, each with their own welldefined prejudices, attitudes and beliefs, willcharge in on behalf of the public good and theplanet, acting, as Philip Purser said in the DailyTelegraph, almost like an unofficial police force.

WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE LEARN NOT TOINTERFERE?BY MICHAEL SEELY


And within the group, tensions bubbled andsimmered between Quist and Ridge, occasionallycoming out in explosions - usually when Davisand Pedler wrote it.It was exciting stuff. Doomwatch, althoughostensibly an inside organisation, was always onthe outside and had to fight hard to be takenseriously against the vested interests ofgovernment, big business and, sometimes, us. Itculminates in the biggest threat of all - the threatof a nuclear explosion, and the death of the heartthrob Toby Wren at the last moment. And it wasa huge success with the public. For those of uswho caught up with it over the years (normally following a diet ofDoctor Who and wanting to explore richer areasof television) as wobbly, blurry pirated videos, it captured the imagination. It even influencedsome of us...But like all successes, it gains becomes a targetfor those looking for flaws, especially by those forwhom it is not really their cup of tea. Complaintsabout sexism, implausibility, and a few harshwords on characterisations could be heard. JohnRidge a scientist? In those trousers??Producer Terence Dudley's main conflict withPedler and Davis was over characterisation andstory telling. He is on record in The Stage,promoting the launch of Survivors in 1975, assaying that he believes drama should have apoint, He was currently in another conflict, thistime with that series' creator - Terry Nation.'Terry Nation... is always quoting Sam Goldwyn'sdictum that 'messages are for Western Union,'but I've always liked drama that has somethingto say. Doomwatch may have added a new wordto the language, but also it did make a point.' Buthe clashed with the force of Kit Pedler's 'message''Dr Pedler,' remembered Dudley in an interviewgiven in the mid 1980s finally published inTalkback, 'was, in my view, a great man with agut mission in life, which I admired andrespected. Unfortunately, he was so obsessiveabout 'the message' of the series that he wasconvinced all the villains should be despised asfools or rogues, and I felt that to fall in with thisview would depreciate the format. Aunt Salliesdon't make for much opposition, and drama isconflict; conflict of ideas, conflict of opinions,conflict of emotions; conflict of interests.'Dudley does have a point to a degree, that someof the 'villains' of the first series do seem a tadtwo dimensional - Mitchell from Train and De-Train, Falken from Hear No Evil, Smithson fromThe Battery People, or Shipton from The Devil'sSweets, but we do not need to know theirbackgrounds or their family lives; and give biglong speeches. Their motivations are quite, quiteclear. And they are villains of a type. They knewwhat they were doing was wrong - maybe - butjustifiable within their own worlds. Whereas

stories like The Red Sky, The Plastic Eaters,Friday's Child have no clear 'baddies', just coverups and refusals to face the facts. And in Friday'sChild – to save a precious life. Our scientificdetectives confront the baddies and sometimesmake a difference, although not every time.In another interview, this time with the NewScientist during the transmission of the secondseries, Dudley was certainly concerned byaccusations 'cardboard characterisation of whichsome critics have complained, (and) wants toemphasise human reactions to catastrophe a bitmore and develop conflict among his characters,'the magazine reported. Even Kit Pedler, earlierin the series to the same publication a fewmonths earlier ,' agrees that the characters don’tbehave like real scientists—the John Ridgecharacter, for instance, “is a sub-James Bondtype who wouldn’t last live minute in alaboratory”-but contends that the programmedoesn’t set out to convince scientists, who makeup only a tiny proportion of the audience. In anycase, the constraints of producing a popular TVseries mean that the fictional Doomwatch. “can’t,really bear a strict, rigorous relationship withwhat is needed in real life.”For the second series, Dudley's desire for what hesaw as better characterisation (and he himselfwas a superb writer), meant the building up ofthe secondary characters to the degree wherethey begin to dominate any given episode, whichmade for a lack of time for the regulars, and onewho certainly felt that, according to directorDarrol Blake, was Simon Oates, who saw Ridgebecoming more and more a man in loud shirts,leaning up against a filing cabinet - which doesindeed some up quite a few second seriesepisodes! After the cathartic eruptions of YouKilled Toby Wren, a marvellous episode, therewas simply nowhere else for the Quist / Ridgeantagonism to go. The boil was lanced too soon,and there was nothing to replace it with. Thesubsequent Wren replacements seemed to bedesigned to prevent another heart throb frombeing created! Geoff Hardcastle has two episodesin which to establish himself, and then vanishesfor another two and only reappears half waythrough the fifth! By the time he actually has anattitude or an opinion to express, too late - it'sthe last episode! He spent a lot of his time inRidge's shadow. Fay Chantry does a bit betterand only misses one episode out of a run of ten,but as a character fails to make a hugeimpression. She is just so darn nice! With alarger regular cast who pop in and out to fulfilthe minimum number of episodes their contractdemands, they are no longer appear central tothe investigations Doomwatch get involved in.Thus the gap left by the absence of Toby Wren isfilled with guest characters, some moreinteresting than others. For the second series,you had your Nigel Warings, Isaac Lucases,Oscar Franklins. and MacArthurs... Some ofthese characters were rather good. The growling,angry and bitter husband and wife team Griffithswas a fascinating study of how a scientist wantsto achive a success, no matter how many timeshe has been knocked back, and fails yet again –and dies!During the second series, somethingfundamental happens to the Doomwatch storytelling, although judging by the productionorder, this happened very early on. Action, shockhorror moments, adventure and discovery weregradually phased out. The threats fromunchecked science creating exciting, novel andlethal side effects were on the way out. By thethird series, the unique 'I would never havethought of that' ideas were gone. I've just madethe same point three times. Bit like Season three

itself! The menaces of Pedler and Davis werebeing replaced with the more fashionable viewsof the social effects of herding people into blocksof flats or the economic side effects of fightingpollution, or the dangers of jet lag manipulatingour erudite ministers... Doomwatch stoppeddiscovering dangers, instead it ruminated ontopical issues like population and 'ordinary'pollution.Scientists were approached at the beginning ofthe production of the third series to be askedwhat frightened them? Judging by some of theeleven episodes out of a planned thirteen whichfollowed, nothing terribly exciting or original.Only Flood stands out with a premise veryplausible and quite frightening, and not just ifyou were a Londoner... It was the lack offrights,(Doomwatch was once called Doctor Whofor grown ups), scientific discipline, andanything approaching adventure, that theprogramme became criticised for in 1972especially by the younger readers of the NewScientist who remembered the first series asbeing a wholesale slaughterer of populations!.A review of Fire and Brimstone in the papers atthe time expressed surprise that the plot wasmore about 'Will they find the last phial ofanthrax, hidden by Ridge?' rather than thenature of biological weapons. Say Knife, FatMan is a very similar episode dealing with thetheft of plutonium, but is also more concernedwith the recovery and does not give us a Quist /Survival code frisson of horror. Waiting for aKnighthood gives us a mad vicar collapsingduring a sermon (the more you think about it,the more this seems like a dig towards Dr.Pedler!) before the episode becomes a cigarsmoking series of debates and places to impartthe fruits of Dudley's research before it becomesyet another police investigation. Enquiry, asuperior script, is that, an enquiry into how amilitary researcher became a victim of a nervegas they were developing. What was his motive? Accidental, deliberate orself induced? Crime investigation had been anelement in episodes such as Friday's Childand Burial At Sea, integral to the initialmisunderstanding of their respective plots. Butin season three, some episodes became mundanecrime stories where Doomwatch sit back andmutter to themselves whilst the policeinvestigate a missing child, hunt down that lastphial, and sweat out a hostage situation, In The

When will you people learn not to interfere? by Michael Seely


Killer Dolphins, the plot becomes embroiled intoespionage as the hunt for secret military dolphintraining takes a blind alley. Dudley's desire forgreater characterisation lead to lots and lots ofdebate with nothing terribly exciting going on.The angst of a Catholic contraceptive designerhaving to allow for sex to be enjoyable in order toreduce the world's population figures may be ofsome inordinate interest, but fifty minutes of it isa bit too much, especially when nothing muchelse is going on... Whereas a Gerry Davis editedscript made points succinctly and got to the pointbetter, later scripts drew out the moral andphilosophical issues to a much greater, andsometimes, tedious level. Spectre At The Feast wasa first series episode written by Terence Dudleyand you can see his preferred style of drama,merging with the scientific detective series quitesuccessfully. He has his debates between theprotagonists, a few exciting moments(hallucinations once again) and a crackingAgatha Christie style summing up of events atthe end of the story by Quist.In other words, the series had changed direction.Terence Dudley liked each series of whatever heworked on to advance. He would change thedirection of Survivors twice in its three seasonrun, and pushed The Regiment to its doom. Inthird series Doomwatch, he used the need towrite out Ridge as a regular to reinvent whatDoomwatch was as a department and itsrelationship not only to Whitehall, but also theworld, something first developed in Dudleycontrolled episodes of the second series. In otherwords, we were seeing Doomwatch as a victor,with the Minister championing Doomwatch,using it to fight his battles (Flood, Enquiry), evenexpressing sympathy with Ridge's actions, anddefending its continued existence in Cause ofDeath (or the episode where Quist gets a cold).There's no more breaking and entering, anddodgy MI6 actions from Ridge. We now have Commander Stafford to talk to hisintelligence chums from time to time. There's nobig clashes inside the team – Bradleyoccasionally gets to have a moment of attitude,old fashioned or otherwise, Anne Tarrant, Quist'swife (although originally she was going to be hislive in partner), gets passionate over severalissues, but that's about it. Certainly, the thirdseries is not as fresh as the first. There was noway it could have been, and Terence Dudleywould not have allowed all three series to 'feel'the same. But certainly the essence of what madethis series one of the greatest ever made was lostto the demands of conventional drama making.But this does not make the third series bad inany shape or form. Just ordinary top notchdrama. And wouldn't we move heaven and earthto be able to see one of these episodes and beproved wrong?

When will you people learn not to interfere? by Michael Seely

Lookout for Issue 2 of theDOOMWATCHFANZINE...

www.doomwatch.org

“I’m finishedwith

Doomwatchand everythingit stands for.No, I meanfinished.

Pollution...desecration

of theenvironment...despoiling of nature...

I really wonderif any of it

matters. Maybeit ’s a hopelessbloody worldbecause it’sinhabited by

hopeless bloodypeople.”

Dr. John Ridge

Martin WorthThe Doomwatch scribe wasinterviewed in 2001 by Tony DarbyshireMartin, how did you get into script-writing?“Since childhood, I’ve always wanted to be a writer.I sold two or three radio plays in my early twentieswhile working as a journalist. ITV started in 1956 andsoon one of those companies, AssociatedRediffusion (AR) advertised for ‘retainer traineewriters’. I sent them two unfinished TV plays, just thefirst ten minutes of each, pretending this was merelyto save them the bother of reading a whole scriptwhen in fact ten minutes was all I had written and I had no idea how either play wouldend. They were sufficiently impressed (it’s so easy to write a good opening if you’re notbothered as to what will happen next) to give me a traineeship. At AR six of us chosenones spent most of our time trying to adapt various old theatre plays for TV. I did aversion of a football comedy called Shooting Star which AR later sold to Granada – forwhom I did more work on it with director Silvio Narizzano, and it became the first everdrama produced by Granada. At about the same time I sold two original half-hour TVplays - one to the American series Douglas Fairbanks Presents, for which I was paid£250, and the other to BBC TV from whom I got £31.50 (a guinea a minute at the timebeing the going rate). The retainer writer scheme was soon abolished by AR and I foundmyself forced to freelance. After being called back to AR as script editor for their firstSchools programmes, I continued to write in my spare time for different TV drama seriesand, in 1963, having established myself, became a full-time freelance writer.”How did you come to Doomwatch?“As an established drama series writer, I was simply asked one day by Gerry Davis, thescript editor and joint creator if I’d write a script from someone else’s story. It was onehe had devised himself. I happily agreed, discussed and much altered the story. The finalscript was produced under the title Invasion.”The series required a very precise type of story. Where did the plot ideas comefrom and how much research did you do?“It was easy to find ideas for Doomwatch, today it would be even easier. Always in thepress there were references to possible threats to the environment, whether from thedisposal of nuclear waste, use of insecticides, the irresponsibility of big businesses,biological warfare experiments, etc. I and other writers just collected them. NewScientist was always a good source, and so of course was Kit Pedler who had devised theseries, a man of science who had this deep concern for the planet.How much research did you do?“I personally enjoyed research hugely. Once I’d put up on idea and the broad storylinewas approved, I got on at once to the technical expert in this field (usually someonerecommended by Kit). Scientists loved the series since it gave them a chance to try andput over to the layman in popular terms what hitherto they could only express to eachother. I remember a Professor of Nuclear Physics at Imperial College vividlydemonstrating to me how exactly an able student could make a small atom bomb, giventhe chance to acquire a little nugget of Plutonium first (the ease of doing which wasvery much part of the story).” How exactly did you become the uncredited script editor?“Simply because the producer Terry Dudley and editor/creators Davis and Pedler wereby then not even on speaking terms. Head of Series, Andrew Osborn, sent for mebecause it seemed I was the only writer whose scripts for the series had been likedequally by both sides. So the unashamedly appointed me to keep the peace betweenthem and somehow find a way forward – if only to stop the habit that each had got intoof unilaterally commissioning scripts that the other side then refused to have anythingto do with! So as not to offend Gerry Davis, it was important I had no credit as a scripteditor; and I was very happy with anonymity since it meant I could go on writing forother series and for other companies at the same time. I did not even have an office atTV Centre. Each morning I would drop in first on Producer Dudley, who spent the nexthour rubbishing that bastard Davis next door, often calling in his secretary to send hima furious memo he dictated to her. When I made my escape, I would then find GerryDavis hanging about in the corridor knowing exactly who I’d been with and wanting ablow-by-blow on everything that bastard had said to me. This was usually interruptedby Dudley’s secretary (who was also Gerry’s) delivering the memo that had just beendictated to her and having to stay while Davis dictated an equally vitriolic reply. Hisoffice and Dudley’s were literally next door to each other.”Kit Pedler told ‘New Scientist’ that he often argued with the production team’sdecisions. How vocal were he and Davis in their criticisms?“It infuriated Dudley that Pedler could air his views in ‘New Scientist’ where Dudley hadno chance of reply. Basically Pedler’s objection was more interested in making dramaticprogrammes than properly airing the issues at stake. And he was right. It’s what madeDudley a good producer and the series itself so popular. Nevertheless, theirs was reallymore a clash of personalities than any difference in attitude to the subject.”Was the second series actually in front of the cameras when Davis and Pedler left? How did the cast and crew react to their jumping ship?“Certainly Davis and Pedler were still around during the second series when I wasworking behind the scenes (and reporting regularly on the fray to Andrew Osborn);neither of them left until the start of series three. Frankly, I doubt if the crew evennoticed, let alone cared, and the leading actors knew which side their bread wasbuttered so were careful not to talk out of turn to Dudley, whatever they may have saidto Pedler privately.”Did you stay on as script editor for the final season? Anna Kaliski was credited asscript consultant.“I certainly stayed on for a whole series after Gerry had gone, coming into my own at lastas script editor. But it was not in my interest to have a credit on the screen, so AnnaKaliski (originally on the payroll as a researcher) took the title of script consultant. Thethird season was very different. It wad Dudley’s idea to make the Minister a regular andintroduce Stafford as a kind of government mole. Dudley was always more interestedby them (and I was too, I think) in the way government would try to muzzle andmanipulate the organisation, this itself being the biggest environmental threat of all.”Do you think Doomwatch still stands up well today?“More than ever. Many of the issues we faced then are still around now in an even morealarming form. The reason it might not work so well now is for that very reason; itssubject matter is too close to home. In the 70s it was mainly enjoyed as exciting sciencefiction: it couldn’t possibly really happen, of course not.”

Martin Worth Image ©BBC


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