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3 By The Pricking Of My Thumbs... (2.5) On a purely objective level, there's no real justification for this episode reaching so high in this ranking. It's far from the best episode in terms of writing, acting or concept. However, what makes it rank so highly is that it's an unintentional comic...

7 Invasion (2.2) The most-watched episode of the series, with 13.6 million viewers tuning in. Although this does make the story lauded, it does beg the question as to how popular it really was, as by definition the viewing figures dropped afterwards. It also doesn't take into account that...

10 In The Dark (2.9) An appropriately dark tale, whereby a man wants to live on as a brain kept alive by machine, long after his body has died. Quist, an old friend, is the man appointed with talking the man into euthanasia. There are some interesting themes at work here, such as the concept of...

13 The Red Sky (1.8) The Red Sky is one of the lower-key concepts of the first season, looking at hallucinations brought on by low-flying aircraft. Written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, it sees the use of a new jet engine which causes sensory difficulties when heard from the structure of a...

17 The Human Time Bomb (2.10) The concept of social decay in a tower block may seem old-hat today, though this was made four years before J.G. Ballard's novel "High-Rise". Sadly, it marks one of the negative aspects of the series: while its remit was to use then-modern advances in science to...

20 Doomwatch: (Channel 5 reboot) Winter Angel In December 1999 Channel 5 brought back the series with a new pilot, "Winter Angel", with Philip Stone playing Quist after John Paul had died in 1995. The elderly Quist enlists the help of a new character, played by talented actor Trevor Eve. The...

23 The Web Of Fear (2.8) There was a large power struggle over the direction of the series between creators Kit Pedler/Gerry Davis and producer Terence Dudley. Dudley would also write five episodes and direct two, but Pedler and Davis's involvement ended when they withdrew after the first...

Ranking by The Anorak Zone- surviving episodes only 26 No Room For Error (2.4) Doomwatch concerned a government department for "the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work". Run by Doctor Spencer Quist (John Paul), investigations were based on real-life scientific discoveries and...

1 Dance Of The Dead The Prisoner isn't an especially female-orientated show, a world where Patrick McGoohan insisted on "no kissing" in the scripts, and most of the female characters are there to be imperilled, or, more often, to be treacherous and untrustworthy. This particular episode contains...

1Timelash → No change One of the last three episodes to be produced, Timelash was completed between July and August 1970. As this episode, thoughtfully shot by Cyril Frankel, features Straker and Lake trapped inside a "millionth of a second", then it's questionable as to how far the series...

24. TIMELASH SYNOPSIS: Time stops still - and Commander Straker runs amok. A lot can happen in a fraction of a second! An attack of madness seems to have struck Commander Ed Straker. Astonished members of S.H.A.D.O. Control reel as he savagely smashes equipment, knocks Paul Foster across the...

18. KILL STRAKER A lunar module, piloted by Captain Craig and Colonel Foster, is about to land back on the Moon when a UFO is spotted close by. Straker orders an emergency re-entry, but it’s too late – unknown to SHADO the UFO has intercepted the craft. But the module is not destroyed...

22. MINDBENDER SYNOPSIS: Two members of an interceptor crew go berserk and try to kill their colleagues. Yet they believe they are killing their enemies . . . Why should a UFO get within three miles of Moonbase and then destroy itself? This is something Ed Straker wants to know, and it...

21. THE PSYCHOBOMBS A trio of innocent civilians, Linda Simmonds, Clem Mason and Daniel Clark are captured by aliens using a hypnotic signal and imbued with superhuman powers. Straker encounters Clark, who overpowers him and leaves him unconscious. When he comes round, Straker is given an...

17.CLOSE UP Straker has a idea about how to be proactive in the fight against the aliens. He plans to place a highly advanced new camera in a probe which will follow a UFO back to its home planet. They will therefore be able to see, for the first time, pictures of the mysterious home-world of...

19.THE CAT WITH TEN LIVES SYNOPSIS: A Siamese cat brings sinister drama into the lives of a S.H.A.D.O. Interceptor pilot and his wife. Jim Regan, a S.H.A.D.O. interceptor pilot who has just returned from a battle with UFO’s, is driving home after a visit to friends with his wife Jean...

25. REFLECTIONS IN THE WATER SYNOPSIS: Commander Straker and Colonel Foster find themselves in a strange underwater double-world in which they come face to face with their own apparent twins. Two incidents take Ed Straker and Paul Foster to a volcanic island in the Atlantic. One is when...

23. THE RESPONSIBILITY SEAT In his role as a film studio executive, Edward Straker is interviewed by reporter Josephine 'Jo' Fraser of the Global Press Agency. She records the interview using a microphone in the front of her purse, but when she leaves the purse in Straker's office while he...

20. COMPUTER AFFAIR SYNOPSIS: Can a computer identify love? The death of an astronaut when intercepting a UFO has strange implications. Red alert: SID (the Space Intruder Detector) in orbit around the Earth on the opposite side of the Moon has confirmed that a UFO is flying towards Earth...

16. ORDEAL While Moonbase responds to a UFO sighting, Colonel Paul Foster arrives at the SHADO Research Centre to take part in a mandatory fitness training programme. Tired and hung-over from an all-night party the evening before, he undergoes a gruelling exercise regime supervised by Dr...