Post by michael on Jul 4, 2010 14:41:14 GMT -5
RE-ENTRY FORBIDDEN REVIEW
Pedler and Davis are postulating nuclear powered rockets – or rather the capsules and the frightening consequences of a disaster. The Apollo capsule was powered by hydrogen based fuel cells, which produced water as a waste product which the crew drank! It is safe to assume that the two Sunfire capsules were launched using conventional chemical fuel rockets. The nuclear fuel was on-board the capsule. It was an experiment, the first step to manned flight through the solar system. Chemical rockets get you off the planet, but with nuclear powered flight in space there are many advantages.
Here's a brief guide to current thinking on nuclear powered rockets.
www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/exploration/futurespaceflight/nuclearpower.shtml
According to a recent BBC4 documentary, there were plans to launch massive rockets into space using controlled nuclear explosions as thrust. This was called Project Orion. They came to nothing due to the level of fall out they may produce, amongst other reasons. These were abandoned in the early 1960s.
Quist is concerned by the fallout from any capsule burning up in re-entry, polluting Europe if the current flight corridor is used. In the episode, he sees formulating such disaster scenarios as part of his job to warn against. What he doesn't realise until it was nearly too late, was that one of the crew is unstable... And he's British.
The episode is more psychological. Human error rears its ugly head – and the efforts Dick Larch uses to cover it up. No one he worked with picked up on his condition – because no one spoke to his wife where he lets his guard down. Goldsworthy has suspicions but realises without proof, the impact it could have on Larch's career. The political situation is tricky again, an American agency blaming its only foreigner – the British one.
Quist, in being persuaded to analyse and secretly question Larch is doing a job he doesn't really no how to handle. It is a job he loathes and he has to lie. He does it very badly and not with much subtlety! In the end his conscience gets the better of him and passes the buck back to those with true responsibility. In the end his caution is justified. He accidentally uncovers what they needed to know months ago, and a technical error instigates the tragedy they wanted to avoid – but thankfully without the radioactive result.
Most of the regulars take a back seat on this one although each has something interesting to contribute. Ridge seems to be Quist's confessor for the middle of the episode, having antagonised him in the first, and then acts as a diagnostician in the last. Wren clumsily alerts Quist to Mrs Larch's anecdotes. Pat is allowed briefly to mention the cost of the Space Programme with a very clumsily inserted line about where the money could be spent. Bradley is suddenly a sour northerner who doesn't like frivolity!
It is quite a different sort of story from the previous five episodes. For one thing, and this is quite unusual in a Doomwatch episode, a great deal of time has elapsed between the two launches seen in the episode. Who knows what happened in between – The Devil's Sweets, perhaps? Or just the usual routine fodder that occupies the Doomwatch team.
The pace of the episode is quite gentle and low key. Plenty of stock film of rocket launches, splash downs, boats and helicopters. There is no special film effort for this episode.
We are not sure what happened to the capsule at the end. It obviously didn't burn up in re-entry as it went back out into space. Did it just head off into the void waiting to run out of oxygen? They lose communication – out of range or did they indeed burn up?
One can only imagine there must have been one hell of a political row after the events. The cross communication was not Quist's fault. But Mrs Larch seems to think that Quist was the one who gave Larch a clean bill of health which influenced the Americans. So did Kramer and Goldsworthy get fired or demoted? They both suspected the truth but did nothing without evidence – hardly surprising. Was the Sunfire project curtailed or cancelled?
This business is never referred to again, unlike The Plastic Eaters (referenced in The Red Sky – so that's authors referencing themselves) or Survival code – which haunts two episodes in the second season.
Perhaps Quist's last words in this episode should have been: 'Oops.'
Pedler and Davis would later base their third Doomwatch inspired novel The Dynostar Menace on an attempt to more away from nuclear fission, and the titular space station was designed to utilise nuclear fusion – the power of the sun. Unfortunately, it appears that should the Dynostar be activated, it will disrupt the Earth's ozone layer and create more havoc and devastation. What doesn't help is that there is a murderer and a saboteur on-board. We can its origins here in 1970.
Re-Entry Forbidden was recorded in Wednesday 1st February 1970, two days before the first episode of Doctor' Who's The Ambassadors of Death using the same set, slightly modified and with an airlock not seen previously. The two production teams had agreed to share the cost of the set and was overseen by the two designers Ian Watson and David Myerscough-Jones respectively. Doomwatch would transmit first.
img257.imageshack.us/img257/7995/catsix.jpg
NASA Technician inside capsule – Doomwatch
img684.imageshack.us/img684/2342/cats2r.jpg
The input panel – Doomwatch
img96.imageshack.us/img96/3938/cats3o.jpg
Recovery 7's input panel modified
img717.imageshack.us/img717/657/cats4y.jpg
Van Lutyens in the cabin
img149.imageshack.us/img149/3407/cats5i.jpg
Deserted Recovery 7
Pedler and Davis are postulating nuclear powered rockets – or rather the capsules and the frightening consequences of a disaster. The Apollo capsule was powered by hydrogen based fuel cells, which produced water as a waste product which the crew drank! It is safe to assume that the two Sunfire capsules were launched using conventional chemical fuel rockets. The nuclear fuel was on-board the capsule. It was an experiment, the first step to manned flight through the solar system. Chemical rockets get you off the planet, but with nuclear powered flight in space there are many advantages.
Here's a brief guide to current thinking on nuclear powered rockets.
www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/exploration/futurespaceflight/nuclearpower.shtml
According to a recent BBC4 documentary, there were plans to launch massive rockets into space using controlled nuclear explosions as thrust. This was called Project Orion. They came to nothing due to the level of fall out they may produce, amongst other reasons. These were abandoned in the early 1960s.
Quist is concerned by the fallout from any capsule burning up in re-entry, polluting Europe if the current flight corridor is used. In the episode, he sees formulating such disaster scenarios as part of his job to warn against. What he doesn't realise until it was nearly too late, was that one of the crew is unstable... And he's British.
The episode is more psychological. Human error rears its ugly head – and the efforts Dick Larch uses to cover it up. No one he worked with picked up on his condition – because no one spoke to his wife where he lets his guard down. Goldsworthy has suspicions but realises without proof, the impact it could have on Larch's career. The political situation is tricky again, an American agency blaming its only foreigner – the British one.
Quist, in being persuaded to analyse and secretly question Larch is doing a job he doesn't really no how to handle. It is a job he loathes and he has to lie. He does it very badly and not with much subtlety! In the end his conscience gets the better of him and passes the buck back to those with true responsibility. In the end his caution is justified. He accidentally uncovers what they needed to know months ago, and a technical error instigates the tragedy they wanted to avoid – but thankfully without the radioactive result.
Most of the regulars take a back seat on this one although each has something interesting to contribute. Ridge seems to be Quist's confessor for the middle of the episode, having antagonised him in the first, and then acts as a diagnostician in the last. Wren clumsily alerts Quist to Mrs Larch's anecdotes. Pat is allowed briefly to mention the cost of the Space Programme with a very clumsily inserted line about where the money could be spent. Bradley is suddenly a sour northerner who doesn't like frivolity!
It is quite a different sort of story from the previous five episodes. For one thing, and this is quite unusual in a Doomwatch episode, a great deal of time has elapsed between the two launches seen in the episode. Who knows what happened in between – The Devil's Sweets, perhaps? Or just the usual routine fodder that occupies the Doomwatch team.
The pace of the episode is quite gentle and low key. Plenty of stock film of rocket launches, splash downs, boats and helicopters. There is no special film effort for this episode.
We are not sure what happened to the capsule at the end. It obviously didn't burn up in re-entry as it went back out into space. Did it just head off into the void waiting to run out of oxygen? They lose communication – out of range or did they indeed burn up?
One can only imagine there must have been one hell of a political row after the events. The cross communication was not Quist's fault. But Mrs Larch seems to think that Quist was the one who gave Larch a clean bill of health which influenced the Americans. So did Kramer and Goldsworthy get fired or demoted? They both suspected the truth but did nothing without evidence – hardly surprising. Was the Sunfire project curtailed or cancelled?
This business is never referred to again, unlike The Plastic Eaters (referenced in The Red Sky – so that's authors referencing themselves) or Survival code – which haunts two episodes in the second season.
Perhaps Quist's last words in this episode should have been: 'Oops.'
Pedler and Davis would later base their third Doomwatch inspired novel The Dynostar Menace on an attempt to more away from nuclear fission, and the titular space station was designed to utilise nuclear fusion – the power of the sun. Unfortunately, it appears that should the Dynostar be activated, it will disrupt the Earth's ozone layer and create more havoc and devastation. What doesn't help is that there is a murderer and a saboteur on-board. We can its origins here in 1970.
Re-Entry Forbidden was recorded in Wednesday 1st February 1970, two days before the first episode of Doctor' Who's The Ambassadors of Death using the same set, slightly modified and with an airlock not seen previously. The two production teams had agreed to share the cost of the set and was overseen by the two designers Ian Watson and David Myerscough-Jones respectively. Doomwatch would transmit first.
img257.imageshack.us/img257/7995/catsix.jpg
NASA Technician inside capsule – Doomwatch
img684.imageshack.us/img684/2342/cats2r.jpg
The input panel – Doomwatch
img96.imageshack.us/img96/3938/cats3o.jpg
Recovery 7's input panel modified
img717.imageshack.us/img717/657/cats4y.jpg
Van Lutyens in the cabin
img149.imageshack.us/img149/3407/cats5i.jpg
Deserted Recovery 7