Post by DR. QUIST on Mar 14, 2010 6:40:47 GMT -5
An Archive Interview with Doomwatch writer MARTIN WORTH
from September 1989.
Martin Worth started to write for television during its boom in the 1950s as the independent channels forged into existence with series like ITC’s “THE ADVENTURES OF WILLIAM TELL” and the BBC required suitable playlets for its schedules. His career has involved a great variety of series arid serials, including memorable episodes of “DOOMWATCH” and “SURVlVORS” for the BBC in the 1970s.
“I got into the business when commercial television started, I was a journalist before that and I’d also had several radio plays produced.
There were more opportunities for young writers then than there are nowadays. There were so few of us.
“By the time I was really established I was in continuous work. For Ted Willis, I wrote several episodes for each of his popular drama series – “THE SULLIVAN BROTHERS”, “MRS THURSDAY” and “SERGEANT CORK”. For Granada, I wrote two plays for their “CITY 68” series and later several scripts for Philip Mackie’s “MR ROSE” which Bob Holmes worked on too.
Incidentally, I’d also been the author of the very first tele-drama ever done by Granada – a very free adaption of a stage play called “SHOOTING STAR” that Silvio Narizzano directed for Sydney Bernstein.
‘For the BBC I contributed to many drama series such as “DR FINLAY’S CASEBOOK” before becoming script editor of “THE BORDERERS” produced by Peter Graham Scott. I worked a lot with Peter on television. He was the first producer of “THE ONEDIN LINE” for which I wrote at least twelve scripts. I also wrote for “CHAMPION HOUSE”, “SUTHERLANDS LAW”, “RYAN INTERNATIONAL”, “OUT OF THE UNKNOWN”, and an anthology series of original plays under the umbrella title of “MENACE” one of which I subsequently turned into one of five stage plays I’ve had produced.
For Anglia I wrote one of “ORSON WELLES GREAT MYSTERIES”, a series of half-hour adaptions of short stories introduced each week by Orson Welles – not that Welles ever chose, read or saw any of the scripts himself, I believe. All his introductions to camera were shot on a single day somewhere in Paris.
I remember trying to write on the first season of “THE AVENGERS” but nothing came of it. For Richard Bates I did, however, write lots of scripts for his later series, “PUBLIC EYE” with Alfred Burke. One of these “You Have to Draw The Line Somewhere” was the first TV play about gays in which a woman who knew there was somebody else in her husband’s life hires Marker, the private eye, to find out who it is. On hearing it’s someone called Pat she threatens to “get the bitch” to which Marker replies – “Pat is not a woman.” End of Act One. Sensation! The IBA cleared the script and ABC TV put out a special press release, very nervous of how it would go down. But brilliantly acted by Zena Walker and Peter Jeffrey, it was a big success.’
How had Martin got involved with writing for the BBC’s science-faction series “DOOMWATCH”, devised by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler, which was in its second season by late 1970?
“Kit was a very distinguished scientist who was interested in the environment; I suppose you could call him an ecologist. I was engaged to write just one script for the first season, but it led to many more. The interesting thing about “DOOMWATCH” is that all the issues that we covered back in 1972 are still very much with us today.
“Invasion”, my first script featured a village that had been used by the army for germ warfare experiments The army were moving out but they left something toxic in the water supply. It wasn’t anthrax, although this was one of the things that Kit and Gerry were concerned with at the time. There is an island in Scotland that was contaminated with anthrax during the war, which has only recently been made safe; for many years no one was allowed to visit it. These dangers are still around today. This story was about the villagers who returned to their village only to discover that there was this appalling toxin left over from some mad experiment.”
The script was liked a great deal by both producer Terence Dudley and script editor Gerry Davis, and Martin was asked by Andrew Osborn, then Head of Series at the BBC, to contribute more for the show. “I was soon to become the last script editor. I wasn’t credited because I didn’t want to be. I said “I don’t want an office and I don’t want my name on the screen” because I was busy as a writer elsewhere and i didn’t want to lose that business. It was only going to be a six month assignment.
I remember Terence Dudley wrote an episode about the danger from lead in petrol (“Waiting for a Knighthood”) This was back in 1972 and it is only now nearly twenty years later, that we have legislation and concern about it.
“We got a lot of help from scientists and it always Impressed me how eager they were to provide us with the essential research material . I remember spending a whole day at Imperial College with an atomic scientist who took the time to show me how a group of students with limited resources could make a small atom bomb.”
“The script was called “Say Knife, Fat Man”. It reflected dangers that are still with us today such as the fact that radioactive materials, perhaps even plutonium, are sometimes container carried by train or truck and capable of even being hijacked. In the USA at one time these transporters were also carrying Scotch and god knows what else, and the alarming thing was a load like that could be hi-jacked not for the plutonium, but for the cigarettes and drink . The script started with some students who knew some plutonium was being carried by road and managed to steal it. The government then tried to pretend that nothing had been stolen at all — because they couldn’t face the publicity.”
“As a writer I have always enjoyed doing research . I wrote for the BBC series “WARSHIP”, In my first episode a helicopter had to be scrambled on this ship. I was on a naval frigate and said to the Captain, “I want to know exactly what happens from the moment you decide this helicopters got to go up. You don’t just say ‘scramble the wasp’ and suddenly this thing takes off” I find that if a writer calls the bluff of an expert and actually insists he wants to know everything, he gets a good response. I remember this captain saying to me “actually It takes seven minutes to get that helicopter off” and I said “okay we’ll make a virtue of that and build the suspense element into the story”.
“The last episode of “SURVIVORS” (Power) was about trying to get hydro-electric power going again. I remember going up to Scotland and getting massive help from the Scottish Hydro—Electricity board. I asked them to imagine a situation in which someone walks into a defunct and deserted plant and has somehow to get the place working. What does he do? What mistakes would he make? I wanted every detail and no cheating. They responded brilliantly to the challenge. I was shown that even if you got the power station working, a sub—station somewhere else had to be activated too if the current was to get onto the national grid. So I insisted on visiting this sub-station too. We got into a car and drove to the mountainside where it was and I was shown exactly how it worked. Getting it all right, doing accurate research, is very satisfying. Do it responsibly and you can always get dramatic value out of the difficulties you encounter.”
“In “DOOMWATCH” there was a very delicate balance between what I would call science-fiction and straight ecological issues. For instance, “Invasion” is certainly not science- fiction as that sort of thing had already in reality happened. But in the very first episode, by Kit and Gerry, “The Plastic Eaters” the plastic inside a ‘plane begins to melt as it is attacked by a ‘virus’. That was pure science-fiction because that could not possibly have happened. But it asked a very shrewd question - why should man be dependent on something as synthetic as plastic when we haven’t even bothered to examine the effect that such a dependence might have? Often in “DOOMWATCH” we took a science-fiction/fantasy idea, but used it to show our concern for the social implications of the subject.”
“There was an episode about genetic engineering, “You killed Toby Wren”, with chickens going around with human heads. Absurd, but it raised important questions such as whether we have the right to experiment at all, and whether business, industry or scientists should carry out such experiments without any responsibility or accountability to society. That was the point of “DOOMWATCH” and I still see a need for that today.”
“I would like to see “Sex and Violence”, with the moral climate as it is today. The interesting thing there is the subject of censorship What the story was I don’t know as I didn’t even read the script. It was banned because of the title and the Mary Whitehouse influence.”
“Ideas for “DOOMWATCH” that we thought could make a play included one about jet-lag about which there was a lot in the press at the time . It seems almost laughable now, but at that time there was some idea that you could exploit people suffering from jetlag and that was what “Flight Into Yesterday” was about. I suggested to Terry that the Minister could be seen going to sign some important contract in America where those who wanted to discredit him could exploit his jet-lag so that by the time be got to the meeting, he’d be a complete mess. So he was given the wrong sort of food on the plane, and when he arrived in the States he was immediately whisked off to parties and given no time to relax. Every time he thought it was the middle of the night he was reminded that it was the middle of the day, and so on. It was fun to write and there were some lovely performances, notably from Robert Urquhart as the villain manipulator.”
“We now know that Jet-lag was never really the danger we thought it might have been then. Much the same can be said of “The Human Time Bomb”, which I commissioned from Louis Marks, about people living in tower blocks who suffered such stress that they might go mad and end up committing suicide. Although the urban neurosis that living in tower blocks can bring on is recognised now, it wasn’t in those days. Not that I think the dangers were ever anything like as alarming as we made out.”
“If you are doing a police series it’s easy to generate conflict because you have a goodie and a baddie. But in “DOOMWATCH” our baddies where less clearly defined - usually vested interests, whether government bureaucracy or big business “High Mountain” raised issues about vested interests still with us today. I think it was one of my best scripts.”
“I remember in that episode I wanted the wealthy Scottish laird to have a Rolls-Royce. But the director told me he’d got something even better - a Range Rover. At that time it was the beginning of Range Rovers and he said “It’s tremendous!” Nevertheless it was not a Rolls and completely missed the point I was trying to make.”
For the final season, Anna Kaliski was brought in to act as script consultant. “She’d been working for Terence Dudley as a researcher and consultant, and so that he didn’t have to have a script editor foisted on him he gave her that post. She was a good researcher and often came up with fascinating scientific papers we could make good use of.
“From just such scientific papers I got the idea for “Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow” which was intended to be about the effects of DDT, but became a play about the Third World and the way we exploit it for our own interests. It opened with a small Indian family apparently living close to the soil with a little tent in the scrub. Then the camera pulled back and showed we were in the middle of St. James’ Park where bowler hatted gents were walking along and watching the scene which had been staged to draw public attention to world hunger. It was not only about our responsibility to the Third World and our exploitation of it, but about our ignorance about it. I remember, when researching, being told how shocked an American was on seeing a whole lot of children on a hillside in Malaya wrapping cucumbers in newspaper just to protect them from bugs. He thought this was terrible. All it requires is a helicopter to spray the whole lot with DDT and they won’t have any problems. To which the Third World says “Yes but what shall we do with the children?” To which the American replies, “But they shouldn’t be working, they should be at school”. This episode explored the arrogance of applying our western concepts to Eastern society as if we knew the best way to live.
“Dennis Spooner did a script for the series, about a would-be Member of Parliament who through brain surgery had some form of bug inserted into his brain so that he could be manipulated by others! Absurd fantasy, though the theme and implied message were serious enough. More credible would have been a story about a doctor who suggests doing a brain operation on a violent prisoner to change him into someone placid (“Hair Trigger”) Do we have the right to change anyone, even a criminal, in this way? That was the question being asked.”
“Although “DOOMWATCH” introduced a new word into the English language, the series eventually ended because it suddenly looked as if we’d ‘done it all’. Yet these issues haven’t gone away. We still live under the shadow of the bomb and there are more ecological disasters threatening us now than there ever were when we were writing “DOOMWATCH”.”
“Kit Pedler cared passionately for the natural environment of man. He once said in an interview, “the thing that really frightens me about London is the fact that from here for miles and miles it’s all ground, not land, and that every bit of soil is covered up”. He fell out with his producers in the end because he seemed always to want to write about just one particular subject.“DOOMWATCH” would inevitably take off into areas which Kit wasn’t really very interested in.”
“When Gerry Davis finished work on “DOOMWATCH” in England, he went over to America with the idea of setting it up there. Carl Foreman was going to produce it and they were going to have Raymond Burr playing Quist. Nothing came of it but at least the attempt gave Gerry a chance to meet American writers and producers and he has been working over there ever since.”
Meanwhile, Martin had submitted to Terrance Dicks an idea for “DOCTOR WHO”. “But I don’t think I was ever really a “DOCTOR WHO” writer and nothing came of it. It was about plant life taking over, a kind of ‘Triffid’ story. It was technically too difficult to produce anyway.”
After “DOOMWATCH”, Martin went on to work on other Terence Dudley productions, the first being “THE REGIMENT” and then
“SURVIVORS”.
“SURVIVORS” was one of the first series where Outside Broadcast video cameras were used to record a drama production . “We went down to Monmothshire , where there was a self sufficient community of about twenty people, all different ages living in this lovely location. We were going to base our “SURVIVORS” community on this real one. When I went down there to research with the other writers, they were pleased to see us and showed us exactly how they lived and farmed, all the things we needed to see. I wrote a script, then went back later to see it being recorded. I was absolutely horrified because the OB unit had now totally taken over this location. The people who were living there were now huddled together in little caravans, and they had big notices saying ‘keep out’, ‘go away, this is our’. And their house, where these people had actually lived, was now occupied entirely by actors pretending to be them . The disruption from the production unit was terrible and it did in fact break up the community. They were of course paid a lot of money by the BBC, and that was the only thing they were getting out of it because they couldn’t do their farming. So when eventually the BBC went away the whole community broke up and they all disappeared back to the towns they had come from. It was mainly due to the “SURVIVORS” OB unit that we destroyed the very ‘Survivors’ we were trying to write the series about. So when it came to the third season we couldn’t go back there.
“I never met Terry Nation who came up with the first idea which is basically about the panic in the aftermath of the plague. I didn’t come into it until that part of the story was over and we were into the community self-sufficiency theme which at that time was a very ‘in thing’.
“By the end of the second season, the two main actors, Denis Lill and Ian McCulloch, had to acme extent fallen out with each other, so producer Terry Dudley thought it best that the next season should be done without these two ever meeting. So I made a suggestion. “At the end of this season, we have Greg sailing off in a hot air balloon never apparently to be seen again!” My idea was that he should, in fact, return to land somewhere else in England and set up a rival community. Even in the exciting episode where Greg and Charles did both feature, they failed to meet face to face as they passed on opposite sides of a wall.
“By Bred Alone” was all about a priest. It was a strong story about a man who was completely impractical and who had not revealed to anyone that he was a parson, because he thought that was a joke, as I’m sure he would feel “after the bomb”. In this play he’s discovered to be a priest and it’s up to him whether to revive Christianity and its values.”
Martin also wrote “Law of the Jungle”. “I met Brian Blessed a while ago. I should have reminded him of his splendid performance in that episode. Again, we had to find a location, this time by an old railway line. It was about a sort of pirate, a violent buccaneer character whom our heroes have to try and fight off and then turn into a civilised man.
“I wrote some of the last scripts in which Greg wanted to create a kind of monarchy - hence “Long Live the King”. There was talk of creating a currency. Barter was what they used before. Now paper money was issued, based on the most valuable commodity they had, which was petrol. Once the currency was in circulation, it didn’t matter that the petrol didn’t actually exist at all.
“I don’t recall there being a script editor for “SURVIVORS”. Terry (Dudley) was in charge of everything. And though the shape of this last season was largely dictated by his view of a personality clash between the two leading actors, I think he made a mistake in allowing the survivors to succeed in getting the country organized again. Though it was fun to write, it effectively killed off the series. If we’d stayed with the community in Wales trying to get by through their own self-sufficiency, It could have gone on for many more seasons,
“I think Terry made the same mistakes with “THE REGIMENT” -for which I wrote an episode called “Heat” by moving it on from India in 1911 to the First World War. We never did that with “DOCTOR FINLAY’S CASEBOOK”. That was a series which lasted a lot, lot longer than the period in which it was set . It ran on screen for seven years, but in the terms of story, it ran from 1928 to the middle of 1929 . “Young” Finlay, played by Bill Simpson, got older and older, yet it was always 1928-29!
“The thing that interests me about what we refer to as science-fiction, is that it needn’t necessarily have anything to do with science at all. For “INTO THE LABYRINTH” I wrote an episode called “Succession”. It had been suggested we do a story about Tutankhamen’s tomb. So I started research and found that the Egyptians had this marvellous idea about the sun - that it rose in the East every morning, travelled through the sky during the day and disappeared in the West at night. How did it get back to the other side to start another day? Obviously to the early Egyptians it must somehow travel through the Earth. Clearly there had to be an underground river along which it would pass at night. So when you died and were buried, the Sun King would collect your soul as he passed through the earth and release you into the morning at dawn in the form of birds that followed the sun up into the sky. The voyage of the sun along this river at night was in modern terms absurd, but a credible concept at the time - and a wonderfully exciting idea for a science-fiction drama.
“I never actually saw my episode. I’m told that the “TVTimes” omitted my credit. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t informed when it was going out. Peter Graham Scott produced the series, most of which took place in the same permanent set, a kind of cave in Harlech’s big studio. There were only about six or seven scripts per season . It was Peter’s idea to do an episode about Tutankhamen’s tomb because being underground it would suit the set perfectly.
‘I originally put up a story to Hammer - for “HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE” - which I had worked up in some
detail, but it was perfectly obvious that the script editor, Don Houghton, didn’t like it. You only get one bite of the cherry as a writer, if you want a commission, so I had to come up with another idea there and then. I remembered a story which I had in fact done in a slightly different form for the BBC series “OUT OF THE UNKNOWN”. It was called “The Last Witness”, starring Anthony Bate and set in the Channel Islands. But now I told Don Houghton, “I’ve also got an idea which is based on the concept that if you see a ghost does the ghost see you?” Don Houghton was thrilled. “We’re in business that’s all I need. We’ll sell it! The Americans will love this!”, and he was on the ‘phone saying “Have you heard this one? If you see a ghost, will the ghost see you?” He just loved it, yet all I had in mind at the time was the idea of a young man being haunted by a much older man who nobody else can see. Gradually he realises this is himself, as he is going to be in forty years time. He is appalled at realising what he’s going to become, just as the old man is appalled at seeing himself as he once was. Called “A Distant Scream”, the film was made with David Carradine and Stephanie Beacham, but I can’t say I liked the way it was done. It was understood that I would also write for a second season, but Twentieth Century Fox who financing Hammer pulled out of that which was a great pity. I was paid infinitely more for “A Distant Scream” than for anything else I’ve ever written.
I wrote the first episode to be shot of “C.A.T.S. EYES” “Double Dutch Deal”, I would like to have worked on the second season too, but none of the original writers were asked back; the series was totally revamped. It was made by London Weekend Television for TVS, so there were two lots of bosses on it. I had a few fights with that script. It was accepted, paid for, liked by everybody and all set to go. Then about a week before they were going to shoot, I was asked to go and see the director Ian Toynton “to go over a few points” We went through the scripts, changing the odd line of dialogue, fitting in new locations and stunts etc. We were getting on quite well till we got to page 40 and he said “Just one small point here. This Dutchman, who everybody is trying to kill eventually finds the girl he’s looking for and we have a happy ending. A pity. I think be ought to be killed”. I was astonished. To have come up with a logical but up-beat ending in an otherwise downbeat story was what everyone else had liked. But I was made to feel that if I didn’t give in I’d not work for TVS again. I was so angry I got on to Jimmy Gatward, the managing director, but he supported Ian Toynton. So the shoot went ahead and the guy died, and it turned out that they had already hired a stunt man to do the death-scene shot before I’d even been asked to change the script! I wish I’d stuck to my guns as I was legally entitled to under my contract. It’s not as if I’ve worked for TVS again anyway.
“Changes are often made by directors without the writer even knowing about them. I remember at the end of “High Mountain”, an extra silent scene was added by the director, but as it contained no dialogue it was not considered a revision that required the writer’s approval. But to me it ruined the whole thing. Though I protested through the Writer’s Guild it was too late to have the offending scene removed.
‘Directors, when filming, often play havoc with a writer’s script, sometimes distorting it out of all recognition in the interests of exciting film shots. On location they don’t have producers or script editors breathing down their necks, certainly not writers. Out there on their own they do what they like and come back with hundreds of feet of film that cost so much to shoot that no one afterwards wants any of it cut. If it doesn’t really fit the script then the writer is under pressure to rewrite his script to fit the film. At the end of the day it’s always the director who gets all the credit, not the writer, which is why so many of us would love to direct our own material. But unless you’re a really big name such as Dennis Potter, you don’t get the chance to. Directors, of course, are allowed to write their own scripts and often do. But the reverse must never happen. Writers should know their place. Such is show business
We should like to thank Martin Worth for giving up a couple of days to attend the Tachyon Convention in Stourbridge on 5th, 6th November 1988 and for giving us the two interviews from which this material is taken, as well as his help in editing it — September 1989.
from September 1989.
Martin Worth started to write for television during its boom in the 1950s as the independent channels forged into existence with series like ITC’s “THE ADVENTURES OF WILLIAM TELL” and the BBC required suitable playlets for its schedules. His career has involved a great variety of series arid serials, including memorable episodes of “DOOMWATCH” and “SURVlVORS” for the BBC in the 1970s.
“I got into the business when commercial television started, I was a journalist before that and I’d also had several radio plays produced.
There were more opportunities for young writers then than there are nowadays. There were so few of us.
“By the time I was really established I was in continuous work. For Ted Willis, I wrote several episodes for each of his popular drama series – “THE SULLIVAN BROTHERS”, “MRS THURSDAY” and “SERGEANT CORK”. For Granada, I wrote two plays for their “CITY 68” series and later several scripts for Philip Mackie’s “MR ROSE” which Bob Holmes worked on too.
Incidentally, I’d also been the author of the very first tele-drama ever done by Granada – a very free adaption of a stage play called “SHOOTING STAR” that Silvio Narizzano directed for Sydney Bernstein.
‘For the BBC I contributed to many drama series such as “DR FINLAY’S CASEBOOK” before becoming script editor of “THE BORDERERS” produced by Peter Graham Scott. I worked a lot with Peter on television. He was the first producer of “THE ONEDIN LINE” for which I wrote at least twelve scripts. I also wrote for “CHAMPION HOUSE”, “SUTHERLANDS LAW”, “RYAN INTERNATIONAL”, “OUT OF THE UNKNOWN”, and an anthology series of original plays under the umbrella title of “MENACE” one of which I subsequently turned into one of five stage plays I’ve had produced.
For Anglia I wrote one of “ORSON WELLES GREAT MYSTERIES”, a series of half-hour adaptions of short stories introduced each week by Orson Welles – not that Welles ever chose, read or saw any of the scripts himself, I believe. All his introductions to camera were shot on a single day somewhere in Paris.
I remember trying to write on the first season of “THE AVENGERS” but nothing came of it. For Richard Bates I did, however, write lots of scripts for his later series, “PUBLIC EYE” with Alfred Burke. One of these “You Have to Draw The Line Somewhere” was the first TV play about gays in which a woman who knew there was somebody else in her husband’s life hires Marker, the private eye, to find out who it is. On hearing it’s someone called Pat she threatens to “get the bitch” to which Marker replies – “Pat is not a woman.” End of Act One. Sensation! The IBA cleared the script and ABC TV put out a special press release, very nervous of how it would go down. But brilliantly acted by Zena Walker and Peter Jeffrey, it was a big success.’
How had Martin got involved with writing for the BBC’s science-faction series “DOOMWATCH”, devised by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler, which was in its second season by late 1970?
“Kit was a very distinguished scientist who was interested in the environment; I suppose you could call him an ecologist. I was engaged to write just one script for the first season, but it led to many more. The interesting thing about “DOOMWATCH” is that all the issues that we covered back in 1972 are still very much with us today.
“Invasion”, my first script featured a village that had been used by the army for germ warfare experiments The army were moving out but they left something toxic in the water supply. It wasn’t anthrax, although this was one of the things that Kit and Gerry were concerned with at the time. There is an island in Scotland that was contaminated with anthrax during the war, which has only recently been made safe; for many years no one was allowed to visit it. These dangers are still around today. This story was about the villagers who returned to their village only to discover that there was this appalling toxin left over from some mad experiment.”
The script was liked a great deal by both producer Terence Dudley and script editor Gerry Davis, and Martin was asked by Andrew Osborn, then Head of Series at the BBC, to contribute more for the show. “I was soon to become the last script editor. I wasn’t credited because I didn’t want to be. I said “I don’t want an office and I don’t want my name on the screen” because I was busy as a writer elsewhere and i didn’t want to lose that business. It was only going to be a six month assignment.
I remember Terence Dudley wrote an episode about the danger from lead in petrol (“Waiting for a Knighthood”) This was back in 1972 and it is only now nearly twenty years later, that we have legislation and concern about it.
“We got a lot of help from scientists and it always Impressed me how eager they were to provide us with the essential research material . I remember spending a whole day at Imperial College with an atomic scientist who took the time to show me how a group of students with limited resources could make a small atom bomb.”
“The script was called “Say Knife, Fat Man”. It reflected dangers that are still with us today such as the fact that radioactive materials, perhaps even plutonium, are sometimes container carried by train or truck and capable of even being hijacked. In the USA at one time these transporters were also carrying Scotch and god knows what else, and the alarming thing was a load like that could be hi-jacked not for the plutonium, but for the cigarettes and drink . The script started with some students who knew some plutonium was being carried by road and managed to steal it. The government then tried to pretend that nothing had been stolen at all — because they couldn’t face the publicity.”
“As a writer I have always enjoyed doing research . I wrote for the BBC series “WARSHIP”, In my first episode a helicopter had to be scrambled on this ship. I was on a naval frigate and said to the Captain, “I want to know exactly what happens from the moment you decide this helicopters got to go up. You don’t just say ‘scramble the wasp’ and suddenly this thing takes off” I find that if a writer calls the bluff of an expert and actually insists he wants to know everything, he gets a good response. I remember this captain saying to me “actually It takes seven minutes to get that helicopter off” and I said “okay we’ll make a virtue of that and build the suspense element into the story”.
“The last episode of “SURVIVORS” (Power) was about trying to get hydro-electric power going again. I remember going up to Scotland and getting massive help from the Scottish Hydro—Electricity board. I asked them to imagine a situation in which someone walks into a defunct and deserted plant and has somehow to get the place working. What does he do? What mistakes would he make? I wanted every detail and no cheating. They responded brilliantly to the challenge. I was shown that even if you got the power station working, a sub—station somewhere else had to be activated too if the current was to get onto the national grid. So I insisted on visiting this sub-station too. We got into a car and drove to the mountainside where it was and I was shown exactly how it worked. Getting it all right, doing accurate research, is very satisfying. Do it responsibly and you can always get dramatic value out of the difficulties you encounter.”
“In “DOOMWATCH” there was a very delicate balance between what I would call science-fiction and straight ecological issues. For instance, “Invasion” is certainly not science- fiction as that sort of thing had already in reality happened. But in the very first episode, by Kit and Gerry, “The Plastic Eaters” the plastic inside a ‘plane begins to melt as it is attacked by a ‘virus’. That was pure science-fiction because that could not possibly have happened. But it asked a very shrewd question - why should man be dependent on something as synthetic as plastic when we haven’t even bothered to examine the effect that such a dependence might have? Often in “DOOMWATCH” we took a science-fiction/fantasy idea, but used it to show our concern for the social implications of the subject.”
“There was an episode about genetic engineering, “You killed Toby Wren”, with chickens going around with human heads. Absurd, but it raised important questions such as whether we have the right to experiment at all, and whether business, industry or scientists should carry out such experiments without any responsibility or accountability to society. That was the point of “DOOMWATCH” and I still see a need for that today.”
“I would like to see “Sex and Violence”, with the moral climate as it is today. The interesting thing there is the subject of censorship What the story was I don’t know as I didn’t even read the script. It was banned because of the title and the Mary Whitehouse influence.”
“Ideas for “DOOMWATCH” that we thought could make a play included one about jet-lag about which there was a lot in the press at the time . It seems almost laughable now, but at that time there was some idea that you could exploit people suffering from jetlag and that was what “Flight Into Yesterday” was about. I suggested to Terry that the Minister could be seen going to sign some important contract in America where those who wanted to discredit him could exploit his jet-lag so that by the time be got to the meeting, he’d be a complete mess. So he was given the wrong sort of food on the plane, and when he arrived in the States he was immediately whisked off to parties and given no time to relax. Every time he thought it was the middle of the night he was reminded that it was the middle of the day, and so on. It was fun to write and there were some lovely performances, notably from Robert Urquhart as the villain manipulator.”
“We now know that Jet-lag was never really the danger we thought it might have been then. Much the same can be said of “The Human Time Bomb”, which I commissioned from Louis Marks, about people living in tower blocks who suffered such stress that they might go mad and end up committing suicide. Although the urban neurosis that living in tower blocks can bring on is recognised now, it wasn’t in those days. Not that I think the dangers were ever anything like as alarming as we made out.”
“If you are doing a police series it’s easy to generate conflict because you have a goodie and a baddie. But in “DOOMWATCH” our baddies where less clearly defined - usually vested interests, whether government bureaucracy or big business “High Mountain” raised issues about vested interests still with us today. I think it was one of my best scripts.”
“I remember in that episode I wanted the wealthy Scottish laird to have a Rolls-Royce. But the director told me he’d got something even better - a Range Rover. At that time it was the beginning of Range Rovers and he said “It’s tremendous!” Nevertheless it was not a Rolls and completely missed the point I was trying to make.”
For the final season, Anna Kaliski was brought in to act as script consultant. “She’d been working for Terence Dudley as a researcher and consultant, and so that he didn’t have to have a script editor foisted on him he gave her that post. She was a good researcher and often came up with fascinating scientific papers we could make good use of.
“From just such scientific papers I got the idea for “Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow” which was intended to be about the effects of DDT, but became a play about the Third World and the way we exploit it for our own interests. It opened with a small Indian family apparently living close to the soil with a little tent in the scrub. Then the camera pulled back and showed we were in the middle of St. James’ Park where bowler hatted gents were walking along and watching the scene which had been staged to draw public attention to world hunger. It was not only about our responsibility to the Third World and our exploitation of it, but about our ignorance about it. I remember, when researching, being told how shocked an American was on seeing a whole lot of children on a hillside in Malaya wrapping cucumbers in newspaper just to protect them from bugs. He thought this was terrible. All it requires is a helicopter to spray the whole lot with DDT and they won’t have any problems. To which the Third World says “Yes but what shall we do with the children?” To which the American replies, “But they shouldn’t be working, they should be at school”. This episode explored the arrogance of applying our western concepts to Eastern society as if we knew the best way to live.
“Dennis Spooner did a script for the series, about a would-be Member of Parliament who through brain surgery had some form of bug inserted into his brain so that he could be manipulated by others! Absurd fantasy, though the theme and implied message were serious enough. More credible would have been a story about a doctor who suggests doing a brain operation on a violent prisoner to change him into someone placid (“Hair Trigger”) Do we have the right to change anyone, even a criminal, in this way? That was the question being asked.”
“Although “DOOMWATCH” introduced a new word into the English language, the series eventually ended because it suddenly looked as if we’d ‘done it all’. Yet these issues haven’t gone away. We still live under the shadow of the bomb and there are more ecological disasters threatening us now than there ever were when we were writing “DOOMWATCH”.”
“Kit Pedler cared passionately for the natural environment of man. He once said in an interview, “the thing that really frightens me about London is the fact that from here for miles and miles it’s all ground, not land, and that every bit of soil is covered up”. He fell out with his producers in the end because he seemed always to want to write about just one particular subject.“DOOMWATCH” would inevitably take off into areas which Kit wasn’t really very interested in.”
“When Gerry Davis finished work on “DOOMWATCH” in England, he went over to America with the idea of setting it up there. Carl Foreman was going to produce it and they were going to have Raymond Burr playing Quist. Nothing came of it but at least the attempt gave Gerry a chance to meet American writers and producers and he has been working over there ever since.”
Meanwhile, Martin had submitted to Terrance Dicks an idea for “DOCTOR WHO”. “But I don’t think I was ever really a “DOCTOR WHO” writer and nothing came of it. It was about plant life taking over, a kind of ‘Triffid’ story. It was technically too difficult to produce anyway.”
After “DOOMWATCH”, Martin went on to work on other Terence Dudley productions, the first being “THE REGIMENT” and then
“SURVIVORS”.
“SURVIVORS” was one of the first series where Outside Broadcast video cameras were used to record a drama production . “We went down to Monmothshire , where there was a self sufficient community of about twenty people, all different ages living in this lovely location. We were going to base our “SURVIVORS” community on this real one. When I went down there to research with the other writers, they were pleased to see us and showed us exactly how they lived and farmed, all the things we needed to see. I wrote a script, then went back later to see it being recorded. I was absolutely horrified because the OB unit had now totally taken over this location. The people who were living there were now huddled together in little caravans, and they had big notices saying ‘keep out’, ‘go away, this is our’. And their house, where these people had actually lived, was now occupied entirely by actors pretending to be them . The disruption from the production unit was terrible and it did in fact break up the community. They were of course paid a lot of money by the BBC, and that was the only thing they were getting out of it because they couldn’t do their farming. So when eventually the BBC went away the whole community broke up and they all disappeared back to the towns they had come from. It was mainly due to the “SURVIVORS” OB unit that we destroyed the very ‘Survivors’ we were trying to write the series about. So when it came to the third season we couldn’t go back there.
“I never met Terry Nation who came up with the first idea which is basically about the panic in the aftermath of the plague. I didn’t come into it until that part of the story was over and we were into the community self-sufficiency theme which at that time was a very ‘in thing’.
“By the end of the second season, the two main actors, Denis Lill and Ian McCulloch, had to acme extent fallen out with each other, so producer Terry Dudley thought it best that the next season should be done without these two ever meeting. So I made a suggestion. “At the end of this season, we have Greg sailing off in a hot air balloon never apparently to be seen again!” My idea was that he should, in fact, return to land somewhere else in England and set up a rival community. Even in the exciting episode where Greg and Charles did both feature, they failed to meet face to face as they passed on opposite sides of a wall.
“By Bred Alone” was all about a priest. It was a strong story about a man who was completely impractical and who had not revealed to anyone that he was a parson, because he thought that was a joke, as I’m sure he would feel “after the bomb”. In this play he’s discovered to be a priest and it’s up to him whether to revive Christianity and its values.”
Martin also wrote “Law of the Jungle”. “I met Brian Blessed a while ago. I should have reminded him of his splendid performance in that episode. Again, we had to find a location, this time by an old railway line. It was about a sort of pirate, a violent buccaneer character whom our heroes have to try and fight off and then turn into a civilised man.
“I wrote some of the last scripts in which Greg wanted to create a kind of monarchy - hence “Long Live the King”. There was talk of creating a currency. Barter was what they used before. Now paper money was issued, based on the most valuable commodity they had, which was petrol. Once the currency was in circulation, it didn’t matter that the petrol didn’t actually exist at all.
“I don’t recall there being a script editor for “SURVIVORS”. Terry (Dudley) was in charge of everything. And though the shape of this last season was largely dictated by his view of a personality clash between the two leading actors, I think he made a mistake in allowing the survivors to succeed in getting the country organized again. Though it was fun to write, it effectively killed off the series. If we’d stayed with the community in Wales trying to get by through their own self-sufficiency, It could have gone on for many more seasons,
“I think Terry made the same mistakes with “THE REGIMENT” -for which I wrote an episode called “Heat” by moving it on from India in 1911 to the First World War. We never did that with “DOCTOR FINLAY’S CASEBOOK”. That was a series which lasted a lot, lot longer than the period in which it was set . It ran on screen for seven years, but in the terms of story, it ran from 1928 to the middle of 1929 . “Young” Finlay, played by Bill Simpson, got older and older, yet it was always 1928-29!
“The thing that interests me about what we refer to as science-fiction, is that it needn’t necessarily have anything to do with science at all. For “INTO THE LABYRINTH” I wrote an episode called “Succession”. It had been suggested we do a story about Tutankhamen’s tomb. So I started research and found that the Egyptians had this marvellous idea about the sun - that it rose in the East every morning, travelled through the sky during the day and disappeared in the West at night. How did it get back to the other side to start another day? Obviously to the early Egyptians it must somehow travel through the Earth. Clearly there had to be an underground river along which it would pass at night. So when you died and were buried, the Sun King would collect your soul as he passed through the earth and release you into the morning at dawn in the form of birds that followed the sun up into the sky. The voyage of the sun along this river at night was in modern terms absurd, but a credible concept at the time - and a wonderfully exciting idea for a science-fiction drama.
“I never actually saw my episode. I’m told that the “TVTimes” omitted my credit. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t informed when it was going out. Peter Graham Scott produced the series, most of which took place in the same permanent set, a kind of cave in Harlech’s big studio. There were only about six or seven scripts per season . It was Peter’s idea to do an episode about Tutankhamen’s tomb because being underground it would suit the set perfectly.
‘I originally put up a story to Hammer - for “HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE” - which I had worked up in some
detail, but it was perfectly obvious that the script editor, Don Houghton, didn’t like it. You only get one bite of the cherry as a writer, if you want a commission, so I had to come up with another idea there and then. I remembered a story which I had in fact done in a slightly different form for the BBC series “OUT OF THE UNKNOWN”. It was called “The Last Witness”, starring Anthony Bate and set in the Channel Islands. But now I told Don Houghton, “I’ve also got an idea which is based on the concept that if you see a ghost does the ghost see you?” Don Houghton was thrilled. “We’re in business that’s all I need. We’ll sell it! The Americans will love this!”, and he was on the ‘phone saying “Have you heard this one? If you see a ghost, will the ghost see you?” He just loved it, yet all I had in mind at the time was the idea of a young man being haunted by a much older man who nobody else can see. Gradually he realises this is himself, as he is going to be in forty years time. He is appalled at realising what he’s going to become, just as the old man is appalled at seeing himself as he once was. Called “A Distant Scream”, the film was made with David Carradine and Stephanie Beacham, but I can’t say I liked the way it was done. It was understood that I would also write for a second season, but Twentieth Century Fox who financing Hammer pulled out of that which was a great pity. I was paid infinitely more for “A Distant Scream” than for anything else I’ve ever written.
I wrote the first episode to be shot of “C.A.T.S. EYES” “Double Dutch Deal”, I would like to have worked on the second season too, but none of the original writers were asked back; the series was totally revamped. It was made by London Weekend Television for TVS, so there were two lots of bosses on it. I had a few fights with that script. It was accepted, paid for, liked by everybody and all set to go. Then about a week before they were going to shoot, I was asked to go and see the director Ian Toynton “to go over a few points” We went through the scripts, changing the odd line of dialogue, fitting in new locations and stunts etc. We were getting on quite well till we got to page 40 and he said “Just one small point here. This Dutchman, who everybody is trying to kill eventually finds the girl he’s looking for and we have a happy ending. A pity. I think be ought to be killed”. I was astonished. To have come up with a logical but up-beat ending in an otherwise downbeat story was what everyone else had liked. But I was made to feel that if I didn’t give in I’d not work for TVS again. I was so angry I got on to Jimmy Gatward, the managing director, but he supported Ian Toynton. So the shoot went ahead and the guy died, and it turned out that they had already hired a stunt man to do the death-scene shot before I’d even been asked to change the script! I wish I’d stuck to my guns as I was legally entitled to under my contract. It’s not as if I’ve worked for TVS again anyway.
“Changes are often made by directors without the writer even knowing about them. I remember at the end of “High Mountain”, an extra silent scene was added by the director, but as it contained no dialogue it was not considered a revision that required the writer’s approval. But to me it ruined the whole thing. Though I protested through the Writer’s Guild it was too late to have the offending scene removed.
‘Directors, when filming, often play havoc with a writer’s script, sometimes distorting it out of all recognition in the interests of exciting film shots. On location they don’t have producers or script editors breathing down their necks, certainly not writers. Out there on their own they do what they like and come back with hundreds of feet of film that cost so much to shoot that no one afterwards wants any of it cut. If it doesn’t really fit the script then the writer is under pressure to rewrite his script to fit the film. At the end of the day it’s always the director who gets all the credit, not the writer, which is why so many of us would love to direct our own material. But unless you’re a really big name such as Dennis Potter, you don’t get the chance to. Directors, of course, are allowed to write their own scripts and often do. But the reverse must never happen. Writers should know their place. Such is show business
We should like to thank Martin Worth for giving up a couple of days to attend the Tachyon Convention in Stourbridge on 5th, 6th November 1988 and for giving us the two interviews from which this material is taken, as well as his help in editing it — September 1989.