Post by michael on Jul 3, 2010 14:47:18 GMT -5
It is often been complained about that Train and de-Train doesn't feature much in the way of science fiction and precious little about the environmental consequences of pesticides. This is rather over-looking the fact that as a piece of drama, which I hope is what attracts us to Doomwatch, it doesn't need to be a menace exaggerated. There are two environments in this story: the natural and the workplace. One can almost see this story as the first of a trilogy about business and science gone bad in the workplace. Apart from the pesticide, there is precious little science in this story.
The story itself looks like it is going to turn into different directions but chooses not to: Ellis did not die from exposure to the pesticide over the years, as the story was hinting at. And Ridge talking about chemical warfare to Branston for a moment makes you think whether Alminster Chemicals were secretly developing something a bit more than just an ordinary pesticide. But it doesn't: it keeps it real.
It isn't a sequel to Silent Spring, a book that questioned the over-use of DDT and pesticides in general. That had been published in 1962 Its author Rachel Carson had been worried about pesticide misuse since the 1940s. Even President Kennedy felt compelled to ask the Science Advisory Committee to look into the book's arguments, By 1972, the time of Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow, a near total ban of DDT was enforced in the USA. If anyone can claim to be a proto-Doomwatcher, it is Rachel Carson whose work inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. And it is still not well liked by the right wing!
But, unless someone can point this out to me, what exactly happened in Somerset to bring in Doomwatch? An area of Somerset now almost devoid of wildlife, animals suddenly killed. Judging by the animals they found, none looked as though they were decomposing. If this test had happened over a year ago, why have all suddenly fallen off their perches now? Why was that squirrel frozen to the spot? Had there been a series of tests and this latest one went wrong? Ellis said that he had been back to Somerset recently in one scene, so was this test the Field Pilot Mitchell talks about? Surely it was performed over a year ago - before Branston joined the firm. The company had spent twenty thousand pounds on safety tests alone in the past year, claims Mitchell. Was the test therefore only a few days ago, another test that Ellis may have been involved in? If the pesticide test took over a year or two to kill grasshoppers and later squirrels the it wasn't very effective. Are we seeing the long term effects?
We don't know if the field tests were controlled or not. Were their corners cut? Was their an accident? This isn't very satisfactory in story telling terms. It keeps me awake at nights. But that's not what the story is about.
A running theme in this first series of Doomwatch is economics, trying to find the cheapest options. Burial At Sea was one, and Tomorrow the Rat showed under-investment consequences. This story is about business in a desperate hurry, Export or Die, to quote post war Britain.. But it is interesting that Alminster Chemicals is owned by an American outfit, at a time when pesticides and the chemical industry were none too popular but still an important economic backbone to America. Neopolomo Chicago. Chicago - good base for gangsters! And Alminster Chemicals has only one viable product: AC3051 This is a company with only one chance and Mitchell plans to succeed and export before the rival firms mentioned do so.
But something malignant had crossed the pond. Ridge called it standard procedure in the States. Detraining - or rather demoralising.
AC3051 is a metaphor for Mitchell: His personality pervades what we see of the firm. His attitude spreads from the top. Like DDT, it has an accumulative effect, a corrosive effect. He doesn't engender loyalty in his staff, he works through fear and directness, thus Miss Sephton's evident delight at his own detraining at the end is palpable - and she, played by Patricia Maynard, obviously takes her cues from Mitchell in the way she talks to Wren in their initial scenes and no doubt to the rest of the staff that crosses into her sanctum. No wonder she would later change her name to Hilda Winters and try to blow up the world in a Doctor Who story. This is a totally morally bankrupt outfit and one hopes the Americans closed it down! Branston, smooth, smarmy, witty, a man who knows that he is on the way up. And apologises insincerely when he's stamping on your head.
Deliberating demoralising your targeted employee is an interesting way about it. Had Ellis still not complained, Mitchell would have probably sent in some East end thugs to remark what a nice office you have a drop a few files on the floor...
Mitchell is a tour de force of characterisation and performance by the man who went on to be Tiberius, George Baker, of a ruthless managing director who wants to keep his company going by sheer force of personality. He is probably a psychotic and has no idea of the harm he does to the human spirit. Makes you wonder whether he sees the starving in presumably Africa as a tragedy or a commercial opportunity. The latter, obviously. Rude, and ruthless, although he would probably call it being honest and straight forward, you almost want to boo him whenever he appears on screen. He lights a cigar with a letter sent in from his prime target. He praises Ridge for being some one whose certain, sure... Business, rather than academics. The way he literally chews up and spits out Ellis, a man now considered to be useless because of his age and his moral scruples over the safety of their product, he is honest, callous and crushes the man, offering him a dignified exit by relocating him to another division where he can no longer be an obstruction to the company's whole reason of existence. He delights in it, possibly even recorded the conversation in order to play to his American masters. Or listen to in the bath...
Wren handles Mitchell badly. It probably didn't help that by being a much younger man, and improperly dressed for such a job as he claimed, Mitchell does not take him at all seriously. Why should he just hand over a sample of a top secret commercially sensitive pesticide just to someone who comes in and says that they are empowered! His first thoughts are that he is from a rival company, acting upon an act of industrial espionage. But Wren is unable to conceal his true feelings and is simply not in a position for his opinions to matter or effect Mitchell. Instead, his canny, underhanded business mind sees possibilities in Wren's emotional outburst.
Quist was right: this was a man who did have something to hide - the safety of his product. An immaterial side effect that could be worked on later whilst there is a business to work on it! He could have had Wren arrested there and then - for trespass at least, and implicated in Ridge, who for some reason used his real name instead of a fake handle amidst his disuse as a man from the Export Advisory Board. He keeps on doing that.
His recording of the conversation that sees Wren temporarily sacked from his job was a technique that would later bring down President Nixon whose habit in recording all Oval office conversations proved his knowledge of the Watergate break ins. And showed the American public what a potty mouth he had. The next time we see bugging in the work place it will be in Hear No Evil where an adulterous liaison will be used as a weapon against trade unionists.
Quist handles Mitchell quite differently. He lets the managing director do most of the talking, and says very little back. There is no angry monologue such as the one Hear No Evil ends with. If it wasn't for Toby Wren coming back with the letter at the end of the episode, Quist would have lost this fight. He knew and Mitchell knew that the Somerset deaths were Alminster Chemicals fault. But Mitchell expected Quist to ask for the master tape back, but Quist does not do this, and does not even confirm or deny this charge!
The best candidate for Human Being there is Ellis, but he is hugely flawed and slightly pathetic. He may well indeed be past his best, but his background as an English gentleman, and a Cambridge tutor made his working at such a firm completely out of his league and environment. He probably was employed there before Alminster Chemicals was bought out. It couldn't have been that long ago since Wren would have been in Cambridge only a couple of years earlier. If that. He smokes a pipe, his uncertain hand echoes Quists' in The Red Sky and is probably about the same age. Quick to temper. We have a chief chemist who expressed concerns over the safety of their product, and felt forced into running tests, the result of which has decimated wildlife in a target area. But the stain on his honour and his fragile self esteem , brought about by turning a blind eye to Wren stealing a sample results in his rather drastic over-reaction to commit suicide. Had he made a fuss, it would have appeared to be the revenge Mitchell suggested for his last letter and ignored. Instead, his letter looked like an attempt at justifying himself. Instead, it was a calculated time bomb. And he found events out of his control. He wasn't even certain if he was actually going to post that letter. An impatient passer by made the choice for him.
In Project Sahara, Quist talks about Toby's weakness: to hit the bottle when he comes across injustice. Whether or not he did kick in the booze as was suggested at the end of that episode we doubt since he was looking forward to a drink in The Red Sky. One can only imagine how much he downed after this incident. He allows his outrage over Mitchell to cloud his judgement, take very bad risks,and loses his temper; implicates his former tutor in a theft, helps him to lose his job and later, life! Then he gets sacked. Even then he hopes that Ellis's death wasn't suicide but evidence of a malignant side effect of AC3051! What a nice chap. Fancy a trip to Byfield Regis? But he is learning nefarious practises, the way he bluffs, and, frankly, not very convincingly, the pathologist, Mr Stephen is beautiful, Superbly played by Brian Badcoe, knows that there is something fishy going on, possibly emotional too, as he doesn't refuse to help Toby. Another human being. But Ellis saves his career by sending him a copy of the letter which he knows will destroy Mitchell. He is able, in his last confrontation with Mitchell, to take both of their revenges!
Letting your judgement be clouded by emotion is often touched upon in Doomwatch - it becomes the central theme of You Killed Toby Wren, for example, and Survival Code touches upon it. Scientists who let their judgement be clouded by emotion - either theirs or other people - cannot do their job properly. Or at least they shouldn't. Kit Pedlar had very strong views on a scientists responsibilities to the world, and not letting all the significant decisions be made by business or politicians. That is a cross Quist bears since 1945. Ironically, Wren accuses Ridge of this very matter in Friday's Child. Wren could see the value of the work as a scientific exercise, and analysed it as such rather than as a moral issue. Quist has no choice but to sack Wren for clouding his judgement, something Ridge warns him against earlier in the episode. Quist is not vindictive, offers to give him a damn good reference. But later, the next time we see them together in Mitchell's office, Quist is completely thrown by Toby's arrival (nicely done John Paul). He doesn't even make eye contact with him until they are out in the car park. Wren respectfully holds open the door for him but they stand around, unable to talk to each other, just glances by their respective cars. Quist is obviously caught in a dilemma. Perhaps he sees a younger him in Wren? I doubt he can very much identify himself with Ridge! Ridge points out that Quist's biggest weakness is he can't admit he's wrong. Oh he can, perhaps just not to his subordinates! So he uses the Greenland lice report to reinstate Wren after giving him a snappy 'Don't you go self-pitying on me!' Wren's tiny little smile says it all.
Finally, here's another thing. Doomwatch in 1970 had no issues with animal experimentation. Those rats were bred to die. 'It's either you or them,' says Bradley to Pat who brings up the issue. A modern Doomwatch would never dare be allowed to use that logic. Emotion would cloud the issue. Doctor Quist would not approve of that...
In terms of the production, Vere Lorrimer directed this episode as well as he could. It is difficult making car parking scenes exciting, although seeing George Baker lose his temper over his parking space at the end of the story was nice! But a director directs actors - or at least they ought to, as well as worry about the visuals. And in stories such as this where there isn't much scope for visual flare, dynamic editing and so forth, getting a good performance out of your actor counts. He creates that atmosphere of intimidation in every scene George Baker is in. Even when Baker is playing it calmly and smilingly, you can sense the malignancy, waiting for a victim to walk into his trap. The aforementioned pathology lab scene could have been straight forward and routine and friendly, but it is underlined with suspicion and uncertainty. We never did know if that was Ellis's body Stephens was cleaning up from... Patricia Maynard plays a superb secretary, Miss Sephton, someone who you just feel is as ruthless and ambitious as Mitchell. Vere Lorrimer, often a police series director, went on to direct some of the best Blake's 7 episodes, and became its final producer - killing them all off in a memorable final episode.