Post by DR. QUIST on Jan 24, 2010 10:46:37 GMT -5
The seventies dawned with a shocking wake-up call in February of the new decade. The reason that DOOMWATCH was to have such a lasting and prophetic effect on its audience can be attributed to the fact that it was not just a work of fiction. A 'green' programme years before the word (or even its creative terms of reference) had been properly defined much less articulated. DOOMWATCH was the nickname for the "DEPARTMENT FOR THE OBSERVATION AND MEASUREMENT OF SCIENTIFIC WORK".
Officially, DOOMWATCH was setup as an agency dedicated to preserving the world from dangers of unprincipled scientific research. Unofficially, it was meant as a Government agency set up with little power meant to stifle protests and secure (green) votes. However, the leader of DOOMWATCH, Doctor Spencer Quist and his team soon gave the agency some real power and people had to listen. Quist was also driven by guilt and the determination to put see that science was not being abused again ever since he had worked on the development of the H-bomb and lost his wife to radiation sickness in the process.
DOOMWATCH was created by Gerry Davis and Doctor Kit Pedler, who had previously collaborated on scripts for Doctor Who, a programme on which Gerry Davis had been the story editor and Doctor Kit Pedler the unofficial adviser and scientist who advised the show during the 1960s. Their shared interest in the problems of science changing and endangering human life had led them to create the popular alien race the Cybermen, and it was similar interests that led them to create DOOMWATCH, which explored all kinds of new and unusual threats to the human race, many bred out of the fear of real scientific concepts. Pedler was working at the University of London and had become something of a media star, an apocalyptic science pundit! They took their format for a series about a government Quango that suddenly acquires more bite than bark to veteran BBC producer Terence Dudley. Terence Dudley was always keen to remind people that Doomwatch was not Science Fiction. The stories are a work of fiction and the science and technology contained in them are fact.
DOOMWATCH took real science into people's living rooms, explaining about embryo research, subliminal messages, wonder drugs, dumping of toxic waste, noise pollution, nuclear weaponry, animal exploitation and genetic mutations creating a particularly large and vicious race of rats and a virus that consumed plastic causing aeroplanes to fall out of the sky. Even simple stories such as severe jet lag. After Davis and Pedler left the series at the conclusion of the second season in 1971, it turned into a more conventional thriller drama, which the two creators openly criticised.
The first two seasons both consisted of thirteen episodes, and the third only twelve as one episode called Sex and Violence, intended as the fifth episode - was not originally transmitted. This brought the total number of DOOMWATCH episodes to 39, if you include Sex and Violence and Winter Angel, the Channel 5 TV movie. It has been suggested that Sex and Violence was not transmitted as the episode was seen as too hot a potato politically for the time, so was held back. It contains real stock news footage of a public execution in Lagos and presentation of characters designed to be satirical analogues of Mary Whitehouse, Cliff Richard and Lord Longford. The execution footage has appeared on British television several times since 1972 and notably in a 1988 edition of Panorama about violence on television. The first episode of DOOMWATCH broadcast on 9th February 1970 broke all new series records with 13.6 million viewers. Every season had a cover feature on the BBC's Radio Times listings magazine, which even now is a prestigious feat for a programme. The show was also popular when transmitted in Canada on CBC.
The greatest strength of DOOMWATCH was the frequency with which real life events would echo its fears, at the time of transmission or even during recording, though other concepts have proven unfounded in later years and can now seem slightly comical. As a result it struck a chord with audiences and its cast and crew alike, with actress Jean Trend (who joined the cast for season two) taking onboard Kit Pedler’s fears about wasteful packaging and water use long before such lifestyle changes became widely fashionable, while Simon Oates chose to leave the series after the second season as he felt that, without Kit Pedler’s direct involvement, it had already lost its edge (though he did agree to return for some third season episodes, and remained keen to participate in any revival until his recent death). But this also proved its Achilles’ Heel, as producer Terence Dudley became so keen on moving DOOMWATCH away from Science and more into a Thriller, that he clashed with Pedler and Davis, who left mid-way through season two, with Pedler publicly attacking the third season on BBCtv. This perhaps contributed to the decision to end the series after its third run, with the season cut back by one episode leaving a completed script unproduced, while a completed episode, Sex and Violence, was pulled from the schedules and left unshown.
As was common at the time, the BBC wiped or re-used the DOOMWATCH master tapes soon after transmission. Despite many episodes returning from Canada, several are still missing and season three is the most heavily affected by this with 10 episodes missing. Thanks to CBC, the whole of season two is complete, but season one is still missing 5. Four of the episodes had a limited release on VHS and DVD in the UK, and all - except Sex and Violence - were repeated on the satellite channel UK Gold during the 1990’s. Pedler and Davis re-used the plot of the first episode of the series, The Plastic Eaters, for their 1971 novel Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater. This is not officially a DOOMWATCH novel and does not contain the characters from the series. The book also re-used the Radio Times cover photograph of a melted plastic aeroplane in a briefcase. It was the fourth episode, however, Dudley's Tomorrow, the Rat, that gained the show the notoriety for which is it still vividly remembered. Questions were raised about it in Parliament. Other episodes featured issues like hormonal change in Welsh factory workers (The Battery People), drug-aided subliminal advertising (The Devil's Sweets) and the mental anguish caused by sonic booms (The Red Sky). This was every Guardian readers' wet dream, a new cause to get annoyed about every week. The blend was what Pedler called 'sci-fact', dramatic situations staged around real contemporary fears.
The leader of the department and the central character throughout the series was Doctor Spencer Quist, a dedicated, thoughtful character, who had been given the task of setting-up and running the department by the British government. Doctor Quist in the BBC’s original run was played by John Paul, still well remembered as the star of Probation Officer. After DOOMWATCH he appeared in I, Claudius. Philip Stone reprised the role of Doctor Quist in the 1999 Channel 5 TV Movie as John Paul had sadly died in 1995.
Prominent members of the team were Doctor John Ridge, played by the fabulous Simon Oates. Simon Oates was a familiar figure from a lot of British 70’s TV drama. He played Ridge as the macho dandy-about-town, an espionage agent who wore John Collier suits and Hai-Karate aftershave, sweet-talked all the mini-skirted secretaries and always had a witty quip on standby. Ridge served to lighten episodes which contained a lot of serious content. He only appeared in four episodes of the final season and the season suffered because of of it.
Completing the central trio was Toby Wren a gentle, dedicated conscientious researcher, played by the then virtually-unknown young Robert Powell
In what proved to be a career launching role as idealist Toby Wren. Wren (rather than Ridge) was to become the series' heart-throb. The character’s death in the final and memorable episode of the show’s first season was a genuine shock to the audience. In the episode Survival Code (now sadly wiped), Tobias 'Toby' Wren was dramatically killed off in an explosion at the conclusion of the episode whilst attempting to disarm a terrorist nuclear device, which had been traced to a pavilion at the end of a seaside pier. Having done most of the work with a screwdriver, it slips from Wren's hands and falls between boards into the sea... Wren knows he is still doomed even though he has disarmed the nuclear part of the bomb. The pavilion explodes as the conventional explosive still goes off killing Wren. For many years after DOOMWATCH Kit Pedler would receive large amounts of mail from Robert Powell fans. Powell later found worldwide fame as Jesus in the television series Jesus of Nazareth, and starred in the 1978 film version of The Thirty-Nine Steps.
The ministerial antagonist to the DOOMWATCH team was Sir George Holroyd. He was determined to stop the department “rocking the boat”. Played by John Barron, better known as 'CJ' from the David Nobbs comedy series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Also regularly featured on the team were Joby Blanchard as Colin Bradley, Wendy Hall as Pat Hunnisett, Vivien Sherrard as Barbara Mason, John Nolan as Geoff Hardcastle, John Bown as Commander Neil Stafford, Jean Trend as Doctor Fay Chantry, Elizabeth Weaver as Dr Anne Tarrant, and Moultrie Kelsall as Drummond. DOOMWATCH never stopped being controversial, angry and, more often than not, brilliant.
Officially, DOOMWATCH was setup as an agency dedicated to preserving the world from dangers of unprincipled scientific research. Unofficially, it was meant as a Government agency set up with little power meant to stifle protests and secure (green) votes. However, the leader of DOOMWATCH, Doctor Spencer Quist and his team soon gave the agency some real power and people had to listen. Quist was also driven by guilt and the determination to put see that science was not being abused again ever since he had worked on the development of the H-bomb and lost his wife to radiation sickness in the process.
DOOMWATCH was created by Gerry Davis and Doctor Kit Pedler, who had previously collaborated on scripts for Doctor Who, a programme on which Gerry Davis had been the story editor and Doctor Kit Pedler the unofficial adviser and scientist who advised the show during the 1960s. Their shared interest in the problems of science changing and endangering human life had led them to create the popular alien race the Cybermen, and it was similar interests that led them to create DOOMWATCH, which explored all kinds of new and unusual threats to the human race, many bred out of the fear of real scientific concepts. Pedler was working at the University of London and had become something of a media star, an apocalyptic science pundit! They took their format for a series about a government Quango that suddenly acquires more bite than bark to veteran BBC producer Terence Dudley. Terence Dudley was always keen to remind people that Doomwatch was not Science Fiction. The stories are a work of fiction and the science and technology contained in them are fact.
DOOMWATCH took real science into people's living rooms, explaining about embryo research, subliminal messages, wonder drugs, dumping of toxic waste, noise pollution, nuclear weaponry, animal exploitation and genetic mutations creating a particularly large and vicious race of rats and a virus that consumed plastic causing aeroplanes to fall out of the sky. Even simple stories such as severe jet lag. After Davis and Pedler left the series at the conclusion of the second season in 1971, it turned into a more conventional thriller drama, which the two creators openly criticised.
The first two seasons both consisted of thirteen episodes, and the third only twelve as one episode called Sex and Violence, intended as the fifth episode - was not originally transmitted. This brought the total number of DOOMWATCH episodes to 39, if you include Sex and Violence and Winter Angel, the Channel 5 TV movie. It has been suggested that Sex and Violence was not transmitted as the episode was seen as too hot a potato politically for the time, so was held back. It contains real stock news footage of a public execution in Lagos and presentation of characters designed to be satirical analogues of Mary Whitehouse, Cliff Richard and Lord Longford. The execution footage has appeared on British television several times since 1972 and notably in a 1988 edition of Panorama about violence on television. The first episode of DOOMWATCH broadcast on 9th February 1970 broke all new series records with 13.6 million viewers. Every season had a cover feature on the BBC's Radio Times listings magazine, which even now is a prestigious feat for a programme. The show was also popular when transmitted in Canada on CBC.
The greatest strength of DOOMWATCH was the frequency with which real life events would echo its fears, at the time of transmission or even during recording, though other concepts have proven unfounded in later years and can now seem slightly comical. As a result it struck a chord with audiences and its cast and crew alike, with actress Jean Trend (who joined the cast for season two) taking onboard Kit Pedler’s fears about wasteful packaging and water use long before such lifestyle changes became widely fashionable, while Simon Oates chose to leave the series after the second season as he felt that, without Kit Pedler’s direct involvement, it had already lost its edge (though he did agree to return for some third season episodes, and remained keen to participate in any revival until his recent death). But this also proved its Achilles’ Heel, as producer Terence Dudley became so keen on moving DOOMWATCH away from Science and more into a Thriller, that he clashed with Pedler and Davis, who left mid-way through season two, with Pedler publicly attacking the third season on BBCtv. This perhaps contributed to the decision to end the series after its third run, with the season cut back by one episode leaving a completed script unproduced, while a completed episode, Sex and Violence, was pulled from the schedules and left unshown.
As was common at the time, the BBC wiped or re-used the DOOMWATCH master tapes soon after transmission. Despite many episodes returning from Canada, several are still missing and season three is the most heavily affected by this with 10 episodes missing. Thanks to CBC, the whole of season two is complete, but season one is still missing 5. Four of the episodes had a limited release on VHS and DVD in the UK, and all - except Sex and Violence - were repeated on the satellite channel UK Gold during the 1990’s. Pedler and Davis re-used the plot of the first episode of the series, The Plastic Eaters, for their 1971 novel Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater. This is not officially a DOOMWATCH novel and does not contain the characters from the series. The book also re-used the Radio Times cover photograph of a melted plastic aeroplane in a briefcase. It was the fourth episode, however, Dudley's Tomorrow, the Rat, that gained the show the notoriety for which is it still vividly remembered. Questions were raised about it in Parliament. Other episodes featured issues like hormonal change in Welsh factory workers (The Battery People), drug-aided subliminal advertising (The Devil's Sweets) and the mental anguish caused by sonic booms (The Red Sky). This was every Guardian readers' wet dream, a new cause to get annoyed about every week. The blend was what Pedler called 'sci-fact', dramatic situations staged around real contemporary fears.
The leader of the department and the central character throughout the series was Doctor Spencer Quist, a dedicated, thoughtful character, who had been given the task of setting-up and running the department by the British government. Doctor Quist in the BBC’s original run was played by John Paul, still well remembered as the star of Probation Officer. After DOOMWATCH he appeared in I, Claudius. Philip Stone reprised the role of Doctor Quist in the 1999 Channel 5 TV Movie as John Paul had sadly died in 1995.
Prominent members of the team were Doctor John Ridge, played by the fabulous Simon Oates. Simon Oates was a familiar figure from a lot of British 70’s TV drama. He played Ridge as the macho dandy-about-town, an espionage agent who wore John Collier suits and Hai-Karate aftershave, sweet-talked all the mini-skirted secretaries and always had a witty quip on standby. Ridge served to lighten episodes which contained a lot of serious content. He only appeared in four episodes of the final season and the season suffered because of of it.
Completing the central trio was Toby Wren a gentle, dedicated conscientious researcher, played by the then virtually-unknown young Robert Powell
In what proved to be a career launching role as idealist Toby Wren. Wren (rather than Ridge) was to become the series' heart-throb. The character’s death in the final and memorable episode of the show’s first season was a genuine shock to the audience. In the episode Survival Code (now sadly wiped), Tobias 'Toby' Wren was dramatically killed off in an explosion at the conclusion of the episode whilst attempting to disarm a terrorist nuclear device, which had been traced to a pavilion at the end of a seaside pier. Having done most of the work with a screwdriver, it slips from Wren's hands and falls between boards into the sea... Wren knows he is still doomed even though he has disarmed the nuclear part of the bomb. The pavilion explodes as the conventional explosive still goes off killing Wren. For many years after DOOMWATCH Kit Pedler would receive large amounts of mail from Robert Powell fans. Powell later found worldwide fame as Jesus in the television series Jesus of Nazareth, and starred in the 1978 film version of The Thirty-Nine Steps.
The ministerial antagonist to the DOOMWATCH team was Sir George Holroyd. He was determined to stop the department “rocking the boat”. Played by John Barron, better known as 'CJ' from the David Nobbs comedy series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Also regularly featured on the team were Joby Blanchard as Colin Bradley, Wendy Hall as Pat Hunnisett, Vivien Sherrard as Barbara Mason, John Nolan as Geoff Hardcastle, John Bown as Commander Neil Stafford, Jean Trend as Doctor Fay Chantry, Elizabeth Weaver as Dr Anne Tarrant, and Moultrie Kelsall as Drummond. DOOMWATCH never stopped being controversial, angry and, more often than not, brilliant.