Post by DR. QUIST on Sept 20, 2009 13:16:23 GMT -5
The Radio Times 1st June 1972
PDF: Thanks to Tony Darbyshire
Retyped for this site by Scott Burditt
Doomwatch, Monday 9.20 BBC1 Colour
Cover story
Doomwatch is back - but what on earth has happened to Ridge? Here Gordon Burn talks to the cast about environmental problems.
Does Quist give a damn?
FOUR O'CLOCK on a miserable out-of-season Saturday afternoon in Callander, a one-street market town buried high in the Trossachs, and a pale blue family saloon has swung off the road and wrapped itself around a lamp-post. Desperately, witnesses are trying to wrench the driver out of his seat: his head is where the windscreen should have been and his features have been obliterated by blood, oozing relentlessly. And trafficwise, for this part of Perthshire, it has been a slack day.
'It's the machines themselves I hate'
For Liz Weaver, in Scotland for a week on location, it's the kind of scene that lends weight to her worst fears. She hates the motor car, she says with an almost fanatical loathing, and if she had her way the things would be abolished.
'It's the machines themselves I hate, not so much the pollution from their exhausts although, God knows, that's bad enough. Cars are incredibly ugly things and its getting to the stage where they're blocking everywhere.'
Close-by John Paul (Dr Quist) was saying nothing and getting redder by the minute. Eventually he raised his eyes slowly from the floor, focused them on Mrs Weaver and let his irritation surface. His car, it turns out, is one of his best friends and, no matter what it might be doing to the atmosphere, he insists that he'd be lost without it. 'I'm basically as an anti-social old so-and-so and I depend on my car a lot for my freedom. It's marvellous being able to hop in whenever you like and go straight to wherever you want to go. I certainly would have no truck with some official who wanted to step in and curb my personal freedom.'
The two of them had been filming all day, out in the rain in the mountains up around Loch Katrine, near Callander.
Although there was a tourist shop, a car park and a splattering of visitors, unauthorised vehicles weren't allowed within 100 yards of the water. As a large sign said, this was Glasgow's water supply, so be careful. 'Do not drop litter or throw coins or...' They told us when we came to be careful not to pee in there, but all day there was a motor-boat chugging backwards and forwards, poring oil into the water.'
John Paul lives in the country himself, in a small village outside Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and has done for about the past ten years. In the beginning, he says he left London because with a large family it was cheaper. Now, of course, he realises that there are a lot more advantages: no noise, no smog, no rush.
'Those chimneys puking poison'
Although Paul insists that he's first and foremost an actor, not a scientist, and that being involved with Doomwatch has done nothing much for his social conscience, he says what he does hate is all that industrial pollution 'You know, those tall chimneys all over the country puking poison at all hours. Still, you can't really blame the industrialists.
'I was brought up in a business family myself and its only natural that people should make use of all the resources available to earn money, so long as you stay within the law.
Ultimately, you see, it must be the government's fault. If they don't pass laws preventing people from destroying things, they can't grumble when people go ahead and do just that.'
'It's an enormous problem.' Simon Oates was agreeing, then he thought about it a bit, and changed his mind. 'Um, well, no, I suppose it's not such an enormous problem. You could deal with it at a stroke. if it's possible to pass a law about Northern Island in a day, then it's possible to pass laws about pollution in a day. But to say that we should go on destroying the earth simply because the law says we can is, I think a terribly cynical kind of outlook.'
'You see, the lobby groups are so strong. There are always bodies of people who are financially involved. There are people who make cigarettes, there are people who make petrol, there are the car manufacturers and the people who make non-destructable cartons - and all these people can employ somebody with no real moral sensibilities, somebody who honestly believes nothing's going to happen, to put forward their point of view.
'It's not for us, it's two generations' time'
You know; the cigarette manufacturers minimise the cancer problem, the petrol manufacturers minimise the lead-additive problem. In any given situation there's always somebody who will argue that you should beat children, for example, or that you ought to hunt foxes or shoot birds.
'There's always somebody to say, agh, there's too many of them. And the trouble is, there's always somebody else willing to believe. In a matter of choice, cigarettes for instance, people go to destruction their own way; that's up to them and I'd abhor interference in free choice. But when it's a case of national survival, I care.
It should be a crime for a car to spew into the air what it does spew. It should be a crime to do that, and to do a number of things that seem innocuous because…well, because it’s not use, d’you know what I mean? It’s two generations’ time. You stop somebody walking down Bond Street and ask them if they know what the petrol fumes are doing. They won’t give a damn. It’s a vicious circle you see.’
Three years ago Oates was interested – vaguely – but uncommitted. His information was sketchy and his awareness dulled. ‘Basically speaking, I suppose, when Doomwatch started I had no idea of the problems of pollution. I didn’t know quite what was going on. But if you do 13 50-minute programmes, each one of which is devoted to some aspect of ecological disaster, then you have to become more aware of the problems as they are; you realize more and more – and I’ve said this before – that in about 50 years it’s going to be too late unless something’s done about it immediately.
‘It doesn’t matter how intelligent people are’
‘The levels of safety for civilization are really frighteningly small – I mean real death and destruction, apart from anything else. What one nation might do to another nation by mistake. It has to be realized, I think, and it’s part of what we’re trying to say in this first episode, that it doesn’t matter how level-headed or how seemingly intelligent people are, there is always the possible situation where someone can…can lose control, go round the twist if you like. Unless you can guarantee that three or four people in a chain of command aren’t going to be affected at the same time, then…
‘We’re lucky in a sense, because what started as a job, an actor’s job in a series, has become, for some of us, something much more. It’s an opportunity to make a meaningful statement, to push home a point, to tackle the pressure groups. I mean, what can a man in the street do? How can he say: all right, I’ll stop them putting lead in petrol, I’ll start a campaign? It’s not a question of lethargy: he’s got neither the time nor the money. It’s up to newspapers, the magazines and programmes like Doomwatch.’
Insets: ‘Cars are incredibly ugly things and it’s getting to the stage where they’re blocking everywhere.’ Says Liz weaver, Doomwatch’s Doctor Anne Tarrant. ‘I’m absolutely certain some form of free transport system, possibly one run on electricity, could be devised by somebody’
Insets: ‘What’s more important, cutting an hour off a journey or pouring stinking fumes into the atmosphere?’ asks Simon Oates, Doomwatch’s Dr John Ridge, pictured here on the edge of the future £1million-a-mile M3 motorway that will skirt the picturesque village of Thorpe, in Surrey. ‘If only the train systems were organized properly, motorways like this would become redundant.’ Says Oates.
PDF: Thanks to Tony Darbyshire
Retyped for this site by Scott Burditt
Doomwatch, Monday 9.20 BBC1 Colour
Cover story
Doomwatch is back - but what on earth has happened to Ridge? Here Gordon Burn talks to the cast about environmental problems.
Does Quist give a damn?
FOUR O'CLOCK on a miserable out-of-season Saturday afternoon in Callander, a one-street market town buried high in the Trossachs, and a pale blue family saloon has swung off the road and wrapped itself around a lamp-post. Desperately, witnesses are trying to wrench the driver out of his seat: his head is where the windscreen should have been and his features have been obliterated by blood, oozing relentlessly. And trafficwise, for this part of Perthshire, it has been a slack day.
'It's the machines themselves I hate'
For Liz Weaver, in Scotland for a week on location, it's the kind of scene that lends weight to her worst fears. She hates the motor car, she says with an almost fanatical loathing, and if she had her way the things would be abolished.
'It's the machines themselves I hate, not so much the pollution from their exhausts although, God knows, that's bad enough. Cars are incredibly ugly things and its getting to the stage where they're blocking everywhere.'
Close-by John Paul (Dr Quist) was saying nothing and getting redder by the minute. Eventually he raised his eyes slowly from the floor, focused them on Mrs Weaver and let his irritation surface. His car, it turns out, is one of his best friends and, no matter what it might be doing to the atmosphere, he insists that he'd be lost without it. 'I'm basically as an anti-social old so-and-so and I depend on my car a lot for my freedom. It's marvellous being able to hop in whenever you like and go straight to wherever you want to go. I certainly would have no truck with some official who wanted to step in and curb my personal freedom.'
The two of them had been filming all day, out in the rain in the mountains up around Loch Katrine, near Callander.
Although there was a tourist shop, a car park and a splattering of visitors, unauthorised vehicles weren't allowed within 100 yards of the water. As a large sign said, this was Glasgow's water supply, so be careful. 'Do not drop litter or throw coins or...' They told us when we came to be careful not to pee in there, but all day there was a motor-boat chugging backwards and forwards, poring oil into the water.'
John Paul lives in the country himself, in a small village outside Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and has done for about the past ten years. In the beginning, he says he left London because with a large family it was cheaper. Now, of course, he realises that there are a lot more advantages: no noise, no smog, no rush.
'Those chimneys puking poison'
Although Paul insists that he's first and foremost an actor, not a scientist, and that being involved with Doomwatch has done nothing much for his social conscience, he says what he does hate is all that industrial pollution 'You know, those tall chimneys all over the country puking poison at all hours. Still, you can't really blame the industrialists.
'I was brought up in a business family myself and its only natural that people should make use of all the resources available to earn money, so long as you stay within the law.
Ultimately, you see, it must be the government's fault. If they don't pass laws preventing people from destroying things, they can't grumble when people go ahead and do just that.'
'It's an enormous problem.' Simon Oates was agreeing, then he thought about it a bit, and changed his mind. 'Um, well, no, I suppose it's not such an enormous problem. You could deal with it at a stroke. if it's possible to pass a law about Northern Island in a day, then it's possible to pass laws about pollution in a day. But to say that we should go on destroying the earth simply because the law says we can is, I think a terribly cynical kind of outlook.'
'You see, the lobby groups are so strong. There are always bodies of people who are financially involved. There are people who make cigarettes, there are people who make petrol, there are the car manufacturers and the people who make non-destructable cartons - and all these people can employ somebody with no real moral sensibilities, somebody who honestly believes nothing's going to happen, to put forward their point of view.
'It's not for us, it's two generations' time'
You know; the cigarette manufacturers minimise the cancer problem, the petrol manufacturers minimise the lead-additive problem. In any given situation there's always somebody who will argue that you should beat children, for example, or that you ought to hunt foxes or shoot birds.
'There's always somebody to say, agh, there's too many of them. And the trouble is, there's always somebody else willing to believe. In a matter of choice, cigarettes for instance, people go to destruction their own way; that's up to them and I'd abhor interference in free choice. But when it's a case of national survival, I care.
It should be a crime for a car to spew into the air what it does spew. It should be a crime to do that, and to do a number of things that seem innocuous because…well, because it’s not use, d’you know what I mean? It’s two generations’ time. You stop somebody walking down Bond Street and ask them if they know what the petrol fumes are doing. They won’t give a damn. It’s a vicious circle you see.’
Three years ago Oates was interested – vaguely – but uncommitted. His information was sketchy and his awareness dulled. ‘Basically speaking, I suppose, when Doomwatch started I had no idea of the problems of pollution. I didn’t know quite what was going on. But if you do 13 50-minute programmes, each one of which is devoted to some aspect of ecological disaster, then you have to become more aware of the problems as they are; you realize more and more – and I’ve said this before – that in about 50 years it’s going to be too late unless something’s done about it immediately.
‘It doesn’t matter how intelligent people are’
‘The levels of safety for civilization are really frighteningly small – I mean real death and destruction, apart from anything else. What one nation might do to another nation by mistake. It has to be realized, I think, and it’s part of what we’re trying to say in this first episode, that it doesn’t matter how level-headed or how seemingly intelligent people are, there is always the possible situation where someone can…can lose control, go round the twist if you like. Unless you can guarantee that three or four people in a chain of command aren’t going to be affected at the same time, then…
‘We’re lucky in a sense, because what started as a job, an actor’s job in a series, has become, for some of us, something much more. It’s an opportunity to make a meaningful statement, to push home a point, to tackle the pressure groups. I mean, what can a man in the street do? How can he say: all right, I’ll stop them putting lead in petrol, I’ll start a campaign? It’s not a question of lethargy: he’s got neither the time nor the money. It’s up to newspapers, the magazines and programmes like Doomwatch.’
Insets: ‘Cars are incredibly ugly things and it’s getting to the stage where they’re blocking everywhere.’ Says Liz weaver, Doomwatch’s Doctor Anne Tarrant. ‘I’m absolutely certain some form of free transport system, possibly one run on electricity, could be devised by somebody’
Insets: ‘What’s more important, cutting an hour off a journey or pouring stinking fumes into the atmosphere?’ asks Simon Oates, Doomwatch’s Dr John Ridge, pictured here on the edge of the future £1million-a-mile M3 motorway that will skirt the picturesque village of Thorpe, in Surrey. ‘If only the train systems were organized properly, motorways like this would become redundant.’ Says Oates.