Post by michael on Jul 10, 2010 15:55:00 GMT -5
Another classic example of the scientific detective story Doomwatch was so good at in Doomwatch.
We can only imagine how the defocussed shots of 'gorgon masks', cockroaches in fruit bowls, and Ridge's fight with an invisible Negro looked like. It is primarily a Quist episode – and he has a lot at stake.
This story is primarily about pollution and its consequences. Can we live with it, who pays for cleaning it up, who pays for preventing it, will it kill us if we don't? The protagonists are in the form of Benjamin Fielding, who is chairman of Newington Chemicals Ltd, and his chief scientific adviser, Doctor Robert Whitehead, who the script describes is an academic who has sold out to commerce. We will meet another pair of them in Train and De-Train. The issue this time is the plastic waste the company is venting into the river Whittle in Yorkshire. This is combined with a sub-plot concerning food poisoning – what is causing the hallucinations seen by the members of a conference set up to discuss pollution – interestingly, Fielding insisted on joining the conference and help to host it in order to discredit it, and becomes it's central issue!
The debates within the script between Fielding and Quist are pure Dudley – polished, sophisticated, witty. The viewpoint of industry is represented by Whitehead and Fielding, Pollution is a fact of life and to deal with it ruthlessly involves cost – and who should pay? Industry or the man in the street? Quist is the most dangerous man Fielding has ever met. His view is that you don't solve a problem by crippling the economy. Often right wing or even left wing business men regard environmentalists as dangerous. Only recently, Sarah Palin recently blamed the disaster in the Gulf on environmentalists 'forcing off shore drilling more and more off shore.' 'Get it, yet?' she cried on her blog. Missing the point by several miles. Once again, the waste product at issue here is plastic. Newingtons are developing a plastic engine for a car. Fielding believes that where there is muck, there's money. This episode dealt with issues that Public Enemy would address head on in the next season.
If the oil industries clean up the petrol, the motor engine will have to be redesigned and the motorist will have to pay for that. A fallacy of course since these costs, like in all research will be absorbed over the long term. This issue of the oil and petrol companies will be seen in Waiting For A Knighthood. Lots of cigars and brandies in that one too!
So much of what Quist says could be directly from The Quest For Gaia, written by Kit Pedler and since he wrote the basic premise for the story which Dudley then scripted in his own style. Quist/Pedler maintain that people's lifestyles have to change, and that someone will have to pay more for certain things. Sounds very familiar! This is precisely the argument that has been raging for the past ten or twenty years. Who pays and why should we? And there are men in the street who don't see why they should, and feel put upon when it comes to recycling, energy saving bulbs, leaving the car at home and so forth. The middle class man who recycles, buys 'natural, local products' and then flies abroad several times a year, owns a car and so forth. He feels not using a plastic bag is quite enough.
'Mr. Fielding, no one's suggesting you're either a villain or a fool.' That is DEFINITELY a shot over the bows for Kit Pedlar by Terence Dudley. He regarded Pedler's views of industry chiefs and politicians as just that. The chemist Whitehead has the finger of blame pointed at him. Kit would regard Fielding as a 'technological toymaker' and Whitehead as surrendering his responsibility as a scientist.
And what about Whitehead, Fielding's unloved chief chemist in the middle. He supports the party line but his conscience is bothering him as Fielding cruelly points out. At the end of the final conference scene he is left alone feeling terrible. Is it really his fault that he overlooked the warm water in the Whittle affecting his plastic effluent? Could he really have predicted the mixture of the polluter further up stream? Would fielding have pressurised him into facing 'business realities?' The script seems to point the finger of blame at the scientist advising him. But it is clear from an early scene between the two that Fielding does know that he sees Whitehead as chief defence in the conference, backing up his case about the necessity of pollutions of all types. Fielding accuses him of having a cosy sense of guilt, a common Dudley theme and indeed, a description he reuses in other episodes. Whitehead loses all credibility when he feels that man will adapt to the pollution, learning to breathe sulphur dioxide! He is a fool, after all.
The plot is structured to make the 'nobbling' of the scientists a real possibility. Bau, for example, sees Whitehead shortly before his collapse. The business man is seen trying to buy up support in a very familiar way. He has at least four scientists in his pocket, he claims and we see the actual technique on Dr. Bau. Whitehead throws offers of money at the man in a way and pretends he wants people like him to fight the pollution – but only after fielding has made it. Not to prevent it in the first place!
Pollution in rivers is an issue that won't go away. The Thames has been moderately cleaned up. Permitted levels are very interesting, but if you have many polluters working at permitted levels, it does make it a bit strong.
Looking at recent river pollution stories, there have been stories of fish changing sex due to the oestrogen in women's urine who are taking the contraceptive pill, the blame is being pointed more at us than industry. The major pollutants in rivers from industry are phosphates from detergents, warm water from power stations and chemicals such as asbestos, lead, mercury, nitrates and sulphur.
The cost of pollution is seen in the poisoned lobsters. The Doomwatch team take a surprisingly long time to think about where the fish actual comes from, and whether there is a problem there. And what a surprise – it's Fielding's lot who are primarily to blame! The final scene does indeed address the minor point – coincidence! Or is it nemesis? No, it's an acceptable dramatic device!
The final conference scene, though, has a marvellous feel of an Agatha Christie denouement – get the suspects in the room, and get through the evidence and pin the blame! So we have plastic waste, combined with the warm water from the power station with something else from upstream and it concentrates into the lobsters. Fantastic stuff! A good, scientific mystery.
The final episode of Doomwatch will once again have a mystery spate of deaths, and another animal behind it, affected by river pollution.
This is probably how Dudley would see a perfect Doomwatch drama script. Lots of debate, and an off screen death. A conflict of ideas, a clash of issues and positions and no definable villain. Modern day sensibilities alert: Ridge, who may well have had an unconscious fear of savages in Africa, being a product from 1932, seeing himself being speared by one in Laura's flat. Ridge is penetrated by the spear of a huge black man – oh dear, how Freudian is that? Ridge was rather hoping to do something similar to Laura! Ridge is this week's Doomwatch victim, following on from Wren's nerve gas (a similar hallucination as well), Pat's near death chemically induced illness and Quist's brainstorm from the previous week. Colin Bradley was probably nervously looking over his shoulders...
Pat is given a fair amount to do this week – a date with Egri, wear Wendy Hall gets to wear a gorgon mask for the hallucination scenes, comfort a bereaved widow, use her sexual charms on the manager of Jaystons, cook some lobster, and so on. Wren is developing a fine line in reacting to clues that provide the solution. It will backfire next week – he'll get it wrong!