Post by michael on Jul 7, 2010 11:43:00 GMT -5
THE BATTERY PEOPLE REVIEW
Spectre At The Feast dealt with pollution poisoning our food, and this week we see a breakthrough in food technology, albeit safe for the consumer, tragic for the workers. This is the second story in a row to deal with malpractice in business. This time it is far more sinister.
What is in our food? Quite fashionable issue now, public awareness, GM food, (what would Pedler say about that?), labelling, the amount of junk that goes into our food and the processes feature in Pedler's Quest for Gaia. We are so very ignorant about how are food is processed, right down to the humble loaf. We assume it is safe because it is in the shops! And how are food is prepared, we are protected from because of our squeamish nature. We don't look at a prepared chicken wrapped up in polythene and think of it as once being a living, breathing animal. We see it as a product. There are apocryphal tales of children thinking fish comes from tins.
We wouldn't have been so squeamish about where our meat comes a hundred years ago... The scenes cut from UK Gold's transmission of the episode shows the grisly, mechanical nature of the work. Ridge calls the factory farm an abomination but his companion, Jones, berates him for his crankiness. Mind you, Ridge didn't show too much concern in No Room For Error either to the battery hens.
This story is a tragedy that keeps getting more and more tragic once you consider the implications.
It is about the health consequences of an immoral business man, an ex-soldier too, who is used to being obeyed, and perhaps used to soldiers being experimented on (nuclear tests – the Easter islands,) even more recently discovered experiments on soldiers from the cold war period, infected with illnesses and cures... It is only now being admitted – after most of the potential claimants in a costly court case are dead.)
It's not just a health and safety story of Smithson not ensuring proper regulations to be carried out, turning a blind eye. Here it is wilful, employing men who might not notice the changes.
Wearing gloves would not have been enough. Fish splash about, drops get onto your face, water also seeps down your sleeves whether you like it or not. And the men who find the gloves hard to work with, they've unknowingly brought it on themselves. The thing is, they should never have been subjected to the liquid in the first place! The colonel is using a process developed in a weapons research unit and uses a dangerous, abandoned secret for his commercial use.
The central tragedy is Llewellyn's impotency. Hear No Evil investigates how a Man is a Man by his trade. Here, it is about his ability to have sex. The chemical liquid has changed the personalities of the chicken handlers, but the fish farm gives them direct contact with the stuff. So their personalities change. Llewellyn does notice, obviously, his impotency, perhaps after the reasons for his wife's affair became apparent. And he can't understand it. It destroyed his marriage. In this episode we see him coming to terms with this, it was probably only recently that he tried to analyse why he lost his sex drive. A bit of kitchen sink but it's valid, moving and coded! It is good that he gets his revenge. To dismiss these scenes is to miss the point of the menace.
One can only wonder if the revelation Llewellyn has had, might have brought his wife back to him. He divorced her, not the other way round.
This is the first tour of the regions – next week, its Yorkshire. The Welsh are treated with respect. No clichés about choirs, chapels, leaks and 'boyos' here. This was also a period when you could safely talk about national characteristics. So your Welsh coal miners are dog and pigeon fanciers, and hard drinking beer men. Jones becomes quite passionate about his area, knowing what an expose could do to the area. Their MP, Davies too is concerned. Ridge describes them as dying.
Written by Elwyn Jones, the man who didn't write The Highlanders for Doctor Who in 1966, this is hardly surprising. One only hopes he didn't get Gerry Davis to write this script for him too.
Communities that lose a central employer – whether it be a factory or a mine or a shipyard or a steelworks, cries out for new jobs. The young leave, no longer feeling a purpose to stay. And those aforementioned jobs had good wages, and almost a job for life, if you wanted that sort of life, but that was a mythologised. Here it is 1970, and coal mines get exhausted, become uneconomic and the poor man is caught out, a simple economic unit, discarded. We hear talk of development grants and such. Also Jones the reporter attacks Ridge's attitude towards exposing his puzzlement here, a place that needs the jobs. Mrs Adams, proprietor of the Red Lion, is also a supporter of the Colonel. Smithson: we get a little seminar in this episode about how business operates. I'm sure the reasons he choose to settle in South Wales are true, but if not he has an excellent cover.
There is a new Minister for National Security – and he wants a quiet life, which is how he got his job. Quist has it in for him, and is keen to set up an investigation – valid reasons – but doesn't mind if it blows up in his face! This echoes his feelings about the plastic eaters minister. By the second season, he sees them as protecting Doomwatch (Flight into Yesterday) and by the third series, a necessary nuisance. Doomwatch first series doesn't like ministers. The Minister / Quist confrontation is the strongest yet, violent words exchanged. Unlike Burial At Sea's Minister who uses sweet words and then sticks the knife in Admiral Tranton, this one gets to see Quist's methods in action and is convinced. Davies, is of course, worried about the employment situation. Quist is worried about the erosion of a community. One wonders whether Davies would have tried to cover it up and moderate the Colonel's work. And would Quist have alerted the media as he did in Burial At Sea?
So what did happen following the death of the Colonel? We saw no other administrative staff, no hints of other board members. Obviously the 'Taste-Away Trout; would have been withdrawn, but what about the chickens? There was a calcium content reduction, enough to be significant. Would that too have been stopped? Quist said that the chicken process was harmful but not as devastating as what we see with the fish farmers. Did the whole firm shut down? Mass unemployment returns and a community dies out?
Oh, here the 1960s! 'You'll get your cards.... new pence... the British housewife... the snug... ' All we needed was a reference to HP and we'd have the full kit.
Who is Laing, played by Jay Neill? Was he the intercom voice? That's unusual to credit – normally they get another actor to double up! And where did Ridge stay after the cock fight? He only seem to book in to The Red Lion the next day.
It was an episode fondly remembered by Gerry Davis as an example of what Doomwatch is all about. Robert Powell singled it out during the Cult of Doomwatch programme.
Oh, and that Bible quote was apparently: Therefore circumsize the foreskin of your heart and be stiff-necked no longer. In other words, stop worrying and be happy or shut up and believe what you're told. Smithson would have approved.
Spectre At The Feast dealt with pollution poisoning our food, and this week we see a breakthrough in food technology, albeit safe for the consumer, tragic for the workers. This is the second story in a row to deal with malpractice in business. This time it is far more sinister.
What is in our food? Quite fashionable issue now, public awareness, GM food, (what would Pedler say about that?), labelling, the amount of junk that goes into our food and the processes feature in Pedler's Quest for Gaia. We are so very ignorant about how are food is processed, right down to the humble loaf. We assume it is safe because it is in the shops! And how are food is prepared, we are protected from because of our squeamish nature. We don't look at a prepared chicken wrapped up in polythene and think of it as once being a living, breathing animal. We see it as a product. There are apocryphal tales of children thinking fish comes from tins.
We wouldn't have been so squeamish about where our meat comes a hundred years ago... The scenes cut from UK Gold's transmission of the episode shows the grisly, mechanical nature of the work. Ridge calls the factory farm an abomination but his companion, Jones, berates him for his crankiness. Mind you, Ridge didn't show too much concern in No Room For Error either to the battery hens.
This story is a tragedy that keeps getting more and more tragic once you consider the implications.
It is about the health consequences of an immoral business man, an ex-soldier too, who is used to being obeyed, and perhaps used to soldiers being experimented on (nuclear tests – the Easter islands,) even more recently discovered experiments on soldiers from the cold war period, infected with illnesses and cures... It is only now being admitted – after most of the potential claimants in a costly court case are dead.)
It's not just a health and safety story of Smithson not ensuring proper regulations to be carried out, turning a blind eye. Here it is wilful, employing men who might not notice the changes.
Wearing gloves would not have been enough. Fish splash about, drops get onto your face, water also seeps down your sleeves whether you like it or not. And the men who find the gloves hard to work with, they've unknowingly brought it on themselves. The thing is, they should never have been subjected to the liquid in the first place! The colonel is using a process developed in a weapons research unit and uses a dangerous, abandoned secret for his commercial use.
The central tragedy is Llewellyn's impotency. Hear No Evil investigates how a Man is a Man by his trade. Here, it is about his ability to have sex. The chemical liquid has changed the personalities of the chicken handlers, but the fish farm gives them direct contact with the stuff. So their personalities change. Llewellyn does notice, obviously, his impotency, perhaps after the reasons for his wife's affair became apparent. And he can't understand it. It destroyed his marriage. In this episode we see him coming to terms with this, it was probably only recently that he tried to analyse why he lost his sex drive. A bit of kitchen sink but it's valid, moving and coded! It is good that he gets his revenge. To dismiss these scenes is to miss the point of the menace.
One can only wonder if the revelation Llewellyn has had, might have brought his wife back to him. He divorced her, not the other way round.
This is the first tour of the regions – next week, its Yorkshire. The Welsh are treated with respect. No clichés about choirs, chapels, leaks and 'boyos' here. This was also a period when you could safely talk about national characteristics. So your Welsh coal miners are dog and pigeon fanciers, and hard drinking beer men. Jones becomes quite passionate about his area, knowing what an expose could do to the area. Their MP, Davies too is concerned. Ridge describes them as dying.
Written by Elwyn Jones, the man who didn't write The Highlanders for Doctor Who in 1966, this is hardly surprising. One only hopes he didn't get Gerry Davis to write this script for him too.
Communities that lose a central employer – whether it be a factory or a mine or a shipyard or a steelworks, cries out for new jobs. The young leave, no longer feeling a purpose to stay. And those aforementioned jobs had good wages, and almost a job for life, if you wanted that sort of life, but that was a mythologised. Here it is 1970, and coal mines get exhausted, become uneconomic and the poor man is caught out, a simple economic unit, discarded. We hear talk of development grants and such. Also Jones the reporter attacks Ridge's attitude towards exposing his puzzlement here, a place that needs the jobs. Mrs Adams, proprietor of the Red Lion, is also a supporter of the Colonel. Smithson: we get a little seminar in this episode about how business operates. I'm sure the reasons he choose to settle in South Wales are true, but if not he has an excellent cover.
There is a new Minister for National Security – and he wants a quiet life, which is how he got his job. Quist has it in for him, and is keen to set up an investigation – valid reasons – but doesn't mind if it blows up in his face! This echoes his feelings about the plastic eaters minister. By the second season, he sees them as protecting Doomwatch (Flight into Yesterday) and by the third series, a necessary nuisance. Doomwatch first series doesn't like ministers. The Minister / Quist confrontation is the strongest yet, violent words exchanged. Unlike Burial At Sea's Minister who uses sweet words and then sticks the knife in Admiral Tranton, this one gets to see Quist's methods in action and is convinced. Davies, is of course, worried about the employment situation. Quist is worried about the erosion of a community. One wonders whether Davies would have tried to cover it up and moderate the Colonel's work. And would Quist have alerted the media as he did in Burial At Sea?
So what did happen following the death of the Colonel? We saw no other administrative staff, no hints of other board members. Obviously the 'Taste-Away Trout; would have been withdrawn, but what about the chickens? There was a calcium content reduction, enough to be significant. Would that too have been stopped? Quist said that the chicken process was harmful but not as devastating as what we see with the fish farmers. Did the whole firm shut down? Mass unemployment returns and a community dies out?
Oh, here the 1960s! 'You'll get your cards.... new pence... the British housewife... the snug... ' All we needed was a reference to HP and we'd have the full kit.
Who is Laing, played by Jay Neill? Was he the intercom voice? That's unusual to credit – normally they get another actor to double up! And where did Ridge stay after the cock fight? He only seem to book in to The Red Lion the next day.
It was an episode fondly remembered by Gerry Davis as an example of what Doomwatch is all about. Robert Powell singled it out during the Cult of Doomwatch programme.
Oh, and that Bible quote was apparently: Therefore circumsize the foreskin of your heart and be stiff-necked no longer. In other words, stop worrying and be happy or shut up and believe what you're told. Smithson would have approved.