Doomwatch Episodes ( inc. Movie) Ranked- Worst to Best

[michaellevenson]

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 headlines of the day, and saw the Doomwatch team tackling environmental experiments gone awry.
     No Room For Error introduced Jean Trend as a new Doomwatch operative, scientist Dr. Fay Chantry. It was a commendable attempt to have a more intelligent female character in the series, something often considered, particularly with modern eyes, to be one of the series' biggest failings. Even this particular episode features regular Dr. John Ridge (Simon Oates) observing that "She's also a woman, for whom [...] emotion can sometimes confuse priorities."
     What places this episode last is that it's a romance episode that doesn't come off. While the TV series introduces some commendably morally questionable moments in that Fay is seeing a married man, there's no real chemistry between the two, and the dialogue they're given is starch and lacking in any real verve. The plot on which the love story hangs - a wonder drug that could introduce an epidemic - similarly fails to catch fire.

25 The Islanders (2.3)
A community from a fictional British island are re-established in Britain after Earth tremors threaten their island home of St. Simon. Unfortunately they appear to become vulnerable to general diseases on the mainland, and Doomwatch leader Dr Quist is faced with some difficult decisions. While such a set up does appear to contain some inherent drama, the episode is laboriously paced, and never really connects.
     While such elements could be considered standards of the time, given that Doomwatch is over forty years old, many of the earlier episodes have more dynamism than this instalment. On a final note of trivia, this was the first episode to go out at an earlier 9.20pm timeslot. Prior episodes had gone out at various times from 9:40-9:50pm, but from this stage onwards the 9:20pm timeslot became the norm.

24 The Iron Doctor (2.6)
A supercomputer oversees the wellbeing of patients at a hospital, but what if said computer thought that one of its patients was a threat? As with all TV of this vintage, the situation has to be "bought into", and the viewer has to appreciate that the computer here, or the state-of-the-art computer running the entire Doomwatch operation, will look dated. In fact, both were made obsolete by the advent of Chockablock.
     While Doomwatch gets plaudits as a thinking person's sci-fi, it can be, at its worst, a very preachy show, where subtexts and debate are very much pushed to the forefront and spoonfed to viewers. Debates on man vs. computer here are writ large, not helped by Van Der Valk star Barry Foster giving a very wooden performance, which can be written off as an "bad night".

 

[michaellevenson]

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 season. While the later 1972 film was based on their work, this episode is the last direct input from either of them, a Gerry Davis solo script.
     In all, Davis wrote five scripts for the series, including three with Pedler, many of them pivotal instalments such as the series opener, or the dramatic Survival Code. Sadly, this somewhat silly tale of blue plastic spiders carrying a virus isn't really a high point of the series, and not a great bow out from Davis. While the heated arguments behind-the-scenes were acrimonious, Dudley later regarded Gerry Davis as a friend, though sadly he never saw Kit Pedler again.

22 Flight Into
Yesterday (2.7)
The more low-key plotting of the second season here introduces the concept of jet lag as a plot device. The series began with super intelligent rats, and plastic-devouring viruses, so it's something of a comedown, affecting a lot of season two episodes. Yet the main issue with a somewhat pedestrian tale is not really anything the series can take responsibility for - the later fame and familiarity of certain actors.
     First season regular Toby Wren (Robert Powell) became very famous, and other cult TV stars feature in the episodes, including Anthony Ainley, Sally Thomsett, John Savident, George A. Cooper, Peter Duncan and June Brown, prompting scores of "it's so-and-so from..." conversations. Here John Barron takes centrestage as the Minister who oversees the Doomwatch project. Sadly, while fine here, five years later Barron would appear as overbearing boss "C.J." in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
     As the two characters are very similar, even dressing the same and talking with almost the same speech patterns, it can be a post-series distraction that the pivotal role of the Minister is now so closely connected with an unforgettable sitcom character. Barron was clearly very popular as, after appearing in just three episodes throughout the first two seasons, he was elevated to the status of a regular, appearing in every single one of the third season stories. And he didn't get where he is today without appearing in every single one of the third season stories.

21 The Logicians (2.12)
A group of posh private schoolkids (including the aforementioned Peter Duncan and Carrot from Catweazle) use their high reasoning abilities to attempt to conduct the perfect crime. It's an age where children on screen still said things like "jolly good" and had names like "Wagstaffe". It's a fair episode, but Doomwatch chasing after children does seem to be a downturn for the series.
     The series suffered badly from the BBC's 1970s policy of wiping material, with fourteen episodes still missing. Of the episodes that still exist, many of them (including two season one episodes, and every season two episode save Public Enemy) exist only in the form of NSTC 525-line copies sourced from Canadian broadcasts. This does mean that the picture quality, as evidenced from many of the screen captures on this page, is of a very poor standard for many of the episodes.
     With a series as now relatively obscure as Doomwatch, the additional budget required for adequate restoration wouldn't be there, and so the stories were placed onto disc "as is". Such a decision is fine for collectors who are aware of the standards of BBC archive TV, but less so for those invested in a more polished presentation for DVD. Criticisms were so prominent that Simply Media set up a press release to acknowledge the archive quality, including the statement that "The costs to restore Doomwatch to its former glory would have been prohibitive making it impossible for us to release the series on DVD."

 

[michaellevenson]

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 supporting cast is hugely variable, and the themes far more "sci fi" than the original series - including the creation of a man-made "black hole" that looks like the opening from the dire 3D Doctor Who special Dimensions In Time.
     Worst of all for fans of the series is that Quist gets murdered, though the TV movie is generally respectful to the source material, and the death of regulars was a large part of the original series anyway. The use of bad language, including three uses of "fuck" and "fucking", may seem out of place, but instead reflect what the 1970s show would have done had it been allowed... a series that regularly used the word "bastard", it saw the use of the word "fucker" when transferred to the big screen in 1972. The story does begin to grind to a halt during some very poor SFX sequences at the end, but even these represent the cheaper excesses of the original show.
     The decision to buy the rights from the BBC was an odd one for Channel 5, which hadn't been known for quality programming. Launched in 1997, its share of the UK audience was, and continues to be, negligible, with a 5.4% share in the year Winter Angel aired. Consequently Winter Angel's viewing figure of 1.62 million (the sixth most-watched programme on the channel that week) was seen as a large success. No official reason was ever given for why this didn't progress to a full series, though the rumoured £1.5 million production costs may have been a large factor.

19 Public Enemy (2.13)
The low concept of the second season continues, with a final episode featuring factory pollution. Perhaps the sole saving grace of this one is that it's the only season two episode to still exist in its original PAL 625 format, meaning it's the best-looking of the second run. Lowlights here include a bizarre "investigation montage" whereby still photographs of Geoff Hardcastle (John Nolan) talking to factory workers is set to a rendition of "Exclusive Blend" by Keith Mansfield. A similar thing happens at the end of Flight Into Yesterday which, while montage-free, plays out its final moments to "Eagle's Son" by Electric Banana.
     It must be taken into account that, while some of the episodes are relevant even today, the lower-key episodes about things like pollution and overcrowding were quite groundbreaking for the time. While today viewers are used to television that repeatedly attacks "the man", Doomwatch was made in a time where an episode was pulled from broadcast because it was too controversial. However, while regarded as "important" television, many of the episodes present in this ranking do unfortunately talk down to the audience, offering up lengthy political diatribes in place of natural dramatic conflict and realistic dialogue. At its best, it offers food for thought, but at its worst, as here, it talks down to the audience and becomes the antithesis of true drama. Possibly the worst bit in the entire series occurs here, where Quist, delivering a sermon on the nature of pollution, turns from preaching to the cast, and breaks the fourth wall, continuing his lecture to the viewers watching at home.

18 The Inquest (2.11)
Doomwatch was the product of 18 separate writers, with a 19th, Wolf Rilla, behind the series finale that was never made. The Inquest is the sole entry by Robert Holmes, almost inarguably the most lauded of all Doctor Who writers. Sadly, The Inquest fails to bring out his usual wit and invention, and is instead a rather static tale of a suspected rabies breakout.
     Television of this vintage was often performed in a style of theatre on the small screen, and almost every episode of Doomwatch sees one or more of the regulars stumble over a line as lengthy scenes, shot in single takes, put pressure on them that wouldn't be there today. While this does sometimes undermine the perception of the performances in the programme, the 1972 movie adaptation, shot in a more forgiving, edit-heavy manner, does allow them all to shine.

 

[michaellevenson]

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 predict a destructive future, it can use said predictions for scaremongering. Here we receive a projection that the population of Britain will have risen by 14 million by the year 2000... the reality is, it's risen by less than that in 2017.
     Worst of all though is the demonisation of the working class, who are all portrayed as violent, would-be rapists and killers. In a particularly hilarious scene, Quist is beaten up by a gang of 10-year-olds. In fact, the entire thing, frequently badly made (at one stage Fay looks directly into camera, and it's not clear if it's intentional or not) is very entertaining despite, or because of, itself. If a laughter track was added, this would be one of the greatest episodes of the entire series... sadly, as it stands, it's one of the worst.

16 Train And
De-Train (1.10)
Five episodes of season one are still missing from the BBC archives, meaning viewers are unable to get a full picture of how good it really was. Crucially, some of the most lauded episodes, such as Friday's Child and Survival Code, are among them. Of the eight remaining season one episodes, then two of them - this one and Tomorrow, the Rat - are available only in the 525 line NTSC format. As can be evidenced from the screen capture here, the picture quality is far poorer, though we must be thankful that it exists at all.
     John Paul's Quist was an odd choice for a lead character, indicating that the BBC had a thing for grey-haired, somewhat charmless speech makers in the early 70s... the series ran pretty much concurrently with Jon Pertwee's first three seasons of Doctor Who. However, this episode shows that it often needs Quist, sidelined here, as the repetitive storyline lacks true involvement without him. This episode is also a testament to how close to broadcast date the series was produced: the season finale, featuring the death of Robert Powell's Wren, was filmed just five days before this tenth episode aired.

15 Waiting For A
Knighthood (3.4)
Full appreciation of season three is a difficult task, given that so little of it actually exists. Of the 11 aired episodes, only two remain in the BBC archives, meaning huge chunks of storylines are missing. Doomwatch members Geoff and Fay are absent, with an explanation for their leaving given in missing episode 3.2: High Mountain. Not only that, but the season began with John Ridge having a breakdown and holding the world to ransom with anthrax... without being able to see the episode in question, it's left to the imagination whether such an event would be genuinely plausible. Ridge would appear in just four Season Three episodes, and it's unclear if his exit was developed, just as it's unclear why he so readily detests John Bown's Commander Neil Stafford, a ministerial mole who appeared in every third season story.
     For this particular episode, then the big mystery is the exact details of Quist's marriage. Previously a broken man whose wife had died 13 years prior, season three captures him in domestic harmony with new wife Dr. Anne Tarrant (Elizabeth Weaver). Tarrant helps out on cases as a psychiatrist, and largely becomes a member of the team. Directed by Pennant Roberts, a director who went on to helm some of the most languidly-shot Doctor Who stories, it's an episode that actually benefits from his more soporific touch. An easy-going, undemanding watch, Waiting For A Knighthood can be pleasantly viewed like an episode of Downtown Abbey with discussion about petrol; a less vital instalment for those who find watching Great British Bake Off too nerve-wracking.

14 Re-Entry
Forbidden (1.6)
Just one year after the moon landing, this tale of a Brit involved in space exploration would have been very topical at the time. Watched in 2017, with its sets shared with Doctor Who's The Ambassadors of Death and stock NASA footage, it can look dated, as can most of the series. Populated by English actors doing their best "American", it features Quist doing a soft interrogation of an astronaut suffering from psychosis... and keeping up the subterfuge by discussing it at the top of his voice in the room next door. Re-Entry Forbidden isn't an especially popular episode with fans of the series, but, as its relatively high ranking attests here, it has some plusses, and is often a fun watch, even if for all the wrong reasons.

 

[michaellevenson]

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 lighthouse. There is more than a little contrivance with the storyline, in that Quist, suffering from stress, decides to take a holiday in the exact same location where the problems are taking place, but this is one of the better episodes, as evidenced by the relatively high placing.
     With the show's "as live" multi-camera tendencies, there are regular technical issues with the production which have to be glossed over in order to truly engage with the stories. Often episodes will feature one of the crew audibly coughing in the background, or moving equipment while the actors say their lines. Many episodes feature the shadow of the boom mike as it drifts over the studio, but with this particular instalment there's at least three occasions where the boom mike itself is actually in shot. A fairly strong episode, but one of the weakest in terms of production.

12 Project Sahara (1.5)
In addition to the cited numbers of writers in this article, another must be added here - N.J. Crisp. His original script, "The Lord of the Humans", was so heavily rewritten by Gerry Davis (and reputedly based on a Pedler-Davis concept) that Gerry was able to take the onscreen credit. Featuring the odd concept of a character introduced "between episodes", we find that Doomwatch has a new operative, Dr. Stella Robson (Hildegard Neil). An investigation from outside suggests that both Robson and Wren cannot be trusted, and Quist is ordered to suspend them both.
     Robson turns to her lover (involving some of the most chaste, sexless kisses ever screened after the 1940s) while Wren turns to drink. Robson is eventually relieved from duty, though it comes as no real surprise that Wren is reinstated. It all ends with a speech from Quist about man vs. computers, the kind of pious speech-making the character would sadly get dragged down into more and more as the series progressed.

11 Tomorrow,
The Rat (1.4)
There's more to cult television than just strong production, and even the slickest television of today is the dated television of tomorrow. Indeed, the Anorak Zone delights in cheap-but-imaginative TV, with the majority of these "worst to best" articles dedicated to series that specialise in big ideas, small budget.
     However, there is the inescapable feeling that a more gritty, "realistic" series like Doomwatch would have benefitted from some of the larger budgets that ITC were able to summon, rather than the clearly cash-strapped pittance the BBC had thrown together. Fake-looking rats are fine, to a point, in a more humorous, science fantasy-based series like Doctor Who. However, in a series like Doomwatch, where a talented actor like Robert Powell takes it all deadly seriously, it can be a make or break moment.
     It's tempting to be the bigger man and say that it doesn't matter that the centrepiece of this episode is Powell banging a fake rat on a table like Vyvyan in The Young Ones, while Joby Blanshard as colleague Colin Bradley hits another with a clanging frying pan. Doomwatch was a very, very popular series at the time, terrifying viewers and regularly having more than ten million people tuning in. Sadly, it's become something of a forgotten series, and moments like the one described above don't help its reputation, as they now exist as the only public consciousness of the show, dredged out on clips programmes for panellists to sneer at.
     It's a shame, because the programme is frequently better than that. Tomorrow, The Rat features striking moments like the female scientist who tells men at a bar that she's not "a whore", and some clever, witty lines... although also some lines that try too hard to be clever and witty. A montage sequence of rat escapes featuring producer Terence Dudley and his family veers towards parody, and the multiple use of zoom ins is a television language very much anathema today. Despite it all, this remains a worthwhile piece of television, even if it all does seem more of an historical document rather than something incisive in the modern age.

 

[michaellevenson]

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 man being the only animal cognisant of his own mortality, but the story is stationary by its very nature, and the subtexts are spelled out to the viewers. The episode's real attraction lies in talented Doctor Who actor Patrick Troughton playing a dual role as the dying man and his own son. Although Troughton's "Scottish" accent is, if anything, even worse than his "cockney" one in The Sweeney, the quality of his performance shines through regardless.

9 Doomwatch - Movie
Between seasons two and three Tigon British Film Productions released a 92-minute movie based on the series. Starring Ian Bannen as new Doomwatch member "Dr. Del Shaw", it features his investigation into a remote island while the rest of the Doomwatch regulars (save John Nolan) are relegated to around just 15 minutes of screen time. Particularly badly hit is Simon Oates's wildly-dressed ladies' man John Ridge, who becomes far more conservatively dressed for the big screen... Oates later revealed he only agreed to appear as the fee was good. Naturally, being a film production, the five-person Doomwatch office becomes a multi-staffed, multi-level office.
     Tigon was mainly known for horror productions, and it shows with this effort, which is a low-key thriller with some charm, but unique in the Doomwatch canon. Based on a script by creators Pedler and Davis, the final draft was written by Clive Exton. While the programme contained some mild bad language in its post-watershed timeslot, it's something of a surprise to hear Quist apparently described as a "mad fucker" late into the film.
     While the large "header images" in these articles usually attempt to reflect the episodes covered within, a decision was made to take stills from the movie for this particular series. The film has been released on Blu-Ray, and consequently has a far greater picture quality than the badly degraded BBC episodes, and so all the header images - save for the mushroom cloud taken from the TV opening credits - are sourced from this movie.

8 The Plastic
Eaters (1.1)
A high placing for a striking first episode that's nevertheless let down hugely by the BBC's budget. Featuring a plastic-devouring virus that causes aeroplanes to crash, said event is brought to screen by the combination of cheap sets, stock footage of aeroplanes and some appalling colour-separation overlay. As a contemporary of Doctor Who, Doomwatch is in the unenviable position of making Jon Pertwee's era look slick and sophisticated in comparison.
     It's not just the effects budget where Doomwatch pales in comparison with the family tea time show... while no one would ever champion Doctor Who as doing trailblazing work in the name of gender equality, it actually manages to have more developed and rounded female characters than this supposedly adult series. At the time this opening episode aired, Doctor Who had educated scientist Liz Shaw... yet even her far more demeaning replacement the following year, Jo Grant, is leagues above cartoonish secretary Pat Hunnisett, played by Wendy Hall.
     If there's one thing that dates Doomwatch more than even the production values, it's the treatment of women. John Ridge's first remark about Hunnisett is "she would have introduced us... but I pinched her bum just before lunch. Hunger, nothing more" and the character is so one-dimensional and offensively air-headed that it's a genuine surprise her character name doesn't read "Dolly Bird" in the end credits. Robert Powell offered a slight justification, in that this first episode was actually recorded in 1969, and they were just trying to reflect the standards of the time.
     It's an interesting point of view, and one serious way in which television of the past scores over a large chunk of modern television is that there was often no "authorial voice" giving the characters an enforced moral compass or opposing point of view. The following year after this aired, another series covered on this site, Budgie, would cast Adam Faith as a racist, sexist, homophobic, wife-beating thief, and cast him as the nominal "hero" of the piece. The audiences weren't being informed by the programmes that such behaviours were "wrong" or "right", but were instead left to draw their own conclusions about morally questionable, heavily conflicted characters of the day. Yet when every plot point is explained to the ludicrously unintelligent Hunnisett, and a later episode gives us the dialogue "register your brain waves... if we can find any", then it's a justification that isn't entirely watertight.

 

[michaellevenson]

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 Doomwatch, while a hit series, was still frequently beaten in the ratings by whatever ITV was serving up. This particular episode's main competition was a Sheila Hancock sitcom called Mr. Digby Darling, which is now largely forgotten, but was, at the time, a big ratings hit.
     The first of five episodes by Martin Worth, who was later given the role as an unofficial script editor, this is one where the budget, for once, is on screen. The story's reputation almost exclusively relies on its last few moments, where an army battalion drives into a village to evacuate it in the event of a viral outbreak.
     There are some odd moments in the episode, from the era-defining shot of a Golliwog, down to the incredibly wooden guides who get lost in the caves. Perhaps the most inexplicable is a lengthy shot of a young girl putting a penny in a NSPCC charity box, which takes an inordinate amount of screentime. It's unclear if director Jonathan Alwyn intended this as a clever allusion to the nature of the guides stuck in the cave network, or whether this was simply a case of filling time. Regardless, the end result is of a suitably bleak, downbeat episode that sticks in the mind after the final credits have finished rolling.

6 Hair Trigger (3.6)
One of the dangers of ranking a series on a once-only viewing is that certain episodes may become overrated due to where they appear. In the run of existing episodes, then Hair Trigger follows five below-par entries, and so may appear better than it actually is due to placement alone. Still, while somewhat old-fashioned even by the usual standards of the series ("my dear..." is said more than once) this is a psychologically intriguing entry.
     As is very common with a lot of season three episodes, Doomwatch's involvement is peripheral at best. Featuring mind controlling experiments on violent prisoners, it was based on real life research. Ice Warriors creator Brian Hayles gives a more dramatic script than his earlier, languid The Iron Doctor, though it's debatable whether a tale of a manhunt and hostage situation is really the kind of case that Doomwatch should be involved in. At the forefront is Quist's wife, the psychiatrist Dr. Anne Tarrant... while the subject matter of the other season three episode (leaded petrol) is now behind us, the subject of adequate mental health care is, sadly, still very much with us today.

5 The Battery
People (1.11)
When a series is the product of many different writers, it can be hard to maintain a consistent tone. The Doomwatch crew are a group of people who generally don't get along, and prefer blazing rows in place of companionship... not quite Blake's 7 season three in terms of mutual dislike, but close. Here, however, the sole script by Elwyn Jones, while fine, gives us a team who are far more at ease with each other, even cracking regular jokes... though Quist's revelation of "I am circumsized, though" has to go into a file of things you didn't need to know.
     With a Welsh writer, we're allowed to see a Welsh community without the stereotyping so common in this period, even if only one of the actors is actually Welsh. Yet what causes this one to rate so highly is how unique and left-field the plot actually is. When a business uses hormones to aid fish growth, it's discovered that workers handling the fish are becoming impotent. This, by itself, would be a strange enough plot, but there's a subplot involved whereby the only sexual passion the workers can achieve is when they're watching an illegal cock fight. Said cock fight, while staged, looks reasonably realistic thanks to nice camerawork and edits, and Ridge's reactions (as pictured) help sell the effect.
     There is, as there often is, a kind of "and I'd've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you pesky Doomwatch kids!" feel to the whole thing, and Quist shocks the factory so much with his revelations that he's able to say stuff on video and get people to react on film. There's a darker edge to Quist here, though it's not made entirely clear due to the poor editing: one of the factory workers drags the manager into the hormones, killing him, and Quist denies having seen anything. Lastly, it's a very literate episode: Quist's joke is a reference to the Bible, specifically Deuteronomy 10:16, after a minister has called him "stiff necked": "So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer."

4 The Devil's
Sweets (1.7)
Simon Oates is, perhaps, the most troubling of the regulars when seen through modern eyes. A real-life womaniser with an espionage background, he was allowed to bring these things in to the character of John Ridge, and therefore gives us the series' Jason King. Some of the costumes he wears are outrageous - the season two opener saw him wear a dog collar for a £50 bet - but the quality of Oates's performance helps it to work. It perhaps also doesn't help that the actor was 6'4, towering eight inches over Robert Powell, and having to regularly lean on filing cabinets just to fit comfortably into shot.
     Ridge leads most of the study here into an intriguing plot - a special drug, planted in chocolate, that causes people to be more subseptible to subliminal advertising. It's a patronising script, in many ways, calling upon characters to not understand even basic facts in order to have said facts explained to them. As the episode is one of the few to strongly feature Pat Hunnisett, as pictured, then this is often done at the detriment of her character. It's little surprise that she left at the end of the season, her last role in television, as it was such a demeaning part.
     Although the series is light on incidental music, regular composer Max Harris is distracting here, and there's some directorial issues, such as the then-fashionable use of zoom ins, down to the camera going out of focus when Hunnisett is ill, despite the fact that it's being shot from the POV of the viewer, not Pat. There's also the small amusement of Quist throwing a plastic container in anger, which makes him look like a small child throwing a tantrum... it would have been far more effective if they'd used sugar glass.
     Despite such detractions, the episode would have reached the higher levels of this ranking just on the innovation of its plot, and some of the more "out there" choices, such as the opening with the bizarre dress and percussion music of the girls handing out chocolate. What elevates the episode to the higher level is an ending where Ridge, interrogating suspects, is wilfully led to believe that Pat has died, just to enforce his sense of purpose on the case. When it's all over, Quist reveals that he'd deliberately made sure that he'd received a call informing him of Pat's "death", even though she was safe and well all along. "You bastard!" snaps Ridge.

 

[michaellevenson]

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 tour-de-force..
     Throughout the 70s "Public Information Films" would be shown on television, warning children of various dangers. Often, because of the stagy acting of the children involved, combined with the melodramatic depiction of dangers, these would produce laughter as opposed to fear. While some entries like Lonely Water were genuinely eerie, others like Play Safe: Frisbee would be more perversely comic, which was far from the original intention. The opening to this episode, featuring a child with smashed glasses, blown up in a science experiment, screaming with exaggerated intent, mines a similar layer of unintentional black comedy.
     It doesn't end there, as Bernard Hepton plays the Yorkshire-accented father of one of the boys involved, a Pythonesque creation who slams down phones with a "bastard!" and utters inexplicable lines like "if schools are going to bring in psychological and biological big brothers, to sit in genetic judgement on our children..." Hepton's incessant intensity in the face of such a ludicrous script is hilarious, as is the sight of a 20-year-old Sally Thomsett playing a 13-year-old schoolgirl in pigtails.
     As the central character, then Barry Stokes lacks true gravitas as the boy who finds he has an extra Y chromosome. In another episode this lack of true acting depth would sink it, but here his slightly wooden cries of "I'm too tall! Too tall! I want to die!" add further to the amusement within. It all ends with another sermonising speech from Quist, while Olaf Pooley (who has contrivedly been conducting Y chromosome experiments at the exact same time as the dad seeks Doomwatch's help) looks on in horror. On a purely objective level, this may well be the worst episode of Doomwatch ever made. Yet as an unintentional comedy, it's arguably the best.

2 You Killed
Toby Wren (2.1)
Genuine drama is mined from the series here, as the aftermath of Toby Wren's death is explored. Although the cataclysmic Survival Code no longer exists in the BBC archives, the final moments were included as part of the pre-credits sequence here. Many series, when continuing after a lead character has departed, tend to bring in proxy replacements (or even poxy replacements) that fulfil the same basic plot functions and dynamics within the show. While newcomer Geoff Hardcastle is the new "young man" of the show, this is subverted here as Ridge is disgusted by Quist's attempt to replace Toby.
     John Nolan made a promising start as Hardcastle, though, despite appearing in nine more episodes, he became very much a secondary character, given little to do in deference to the others. A talented actor who appeared in other programmes covered on this site (The Prisoner and The Sweeney), when he was approaching his sixties he played a role in a "no budget" film, Following, as a favour to his young nephew who wanted to become a director. His nephew, Christopher, went on to repay the favour when he got more successful in the industry, giving John roles in some larger movies: Batman Begins, Dunkirk and The Dark Knight Rises.
     Also new to the series here is Vivien Sherrard as replacement secretary Barbara Mason. While she would appear in twenty episodes, it was a far less prominent role than Wendy Hall's, which did at least mean she got to avoid most of Ridge's sexual harassment. Then there's the first appearance of Dr. Anne Tarrant, who Quist sees for counselling, and later asks for her number. While this subplot would appear to go unreferenced, the thread was picked up with season three, where, as we've seen, she was brought back as his wife.
     Despite its status here as the greatest of the existing broadcast episodes, You Killed Toby Wren again suffers from the vast gulf between budget and ideas. John Ridge investigates human-animal hybrid experimentation, the implications of which are horrific. Sadly, despite Oates' most dedicated performance, and the descriptive dialogue, what we see is what is unfortunately captured above: a chicken with two rubber heads stuck on it. With animal welfare standards not being as strict at the time, the chicken is clearly distressed and trying to shake off its replacement "head", though far more docile is the dog in the next cage wearing a bald cap. Unfortunately today, this is the legacy of Doomwatch in some of its best instalments... big ideas, poor execution. What should produce horror instead produces hilarity, and ensures that the programme's only appearances in nostalgia "clips" shows are there purely for easy derision. It's a great shame, because the series deserved better.

1 Sex And Violence
(Unbroadcast)
Sex And Violence asks the question... what if Doomwatch wasn't a drama series, but a scathing satire of modern societal mores? The Goodies had beaten them to it by seven months, with the episode Gender Education (also possessing the alternate title of "Sex And Violence") casting Beryl Reid as the puritanical Mrs. Desiree Carthorse. This more than worthy spiritual follow-up has June Brown as "Mrs. Catchpole", while Noel Dyson plays moral campaigner Angela Cressy, giving the instalment two Mary Whitehouse analogues for the price of one. Adding to this - a parody of then-current investigations into pornography in British society - are substitutes for the real-life participants, including Lord Longford and Cliff Richard. The script certainly isn't above some sillier jokes, such as Christopher Chittell's Cliff-mimicking pop star going by the name of "Dick Burns".
     It's a brilliantly savage satire by one-time writer Stuart Douglass, including the observation by a right-wing extremist that "If you have created a society in which a naked couple cavorting on a public stage is more shocking than a million on the dole, a hundred thousand homeless, or half a million dead in Pakistan, don't blame me for taking advantage!" Amusingly "soft porn" footage had to be specially filmed for the serial, as Soho dealers morally objected to such material being broadcast on BBC1. Far more serious is the use of actual execution footage from Nigeria, which still shocks today.
     A huge, legitimate criticism of the story is that it's barely a Doomwatch episode at all. The lead is Quist's wife, Dr. Anne Tarrant, while Quist does little more than watch the various debates take place. The episode opens with Quist insisting that "it's not my area... of investigation" and ends with him asking "What's Doomwatch doing in this mess? [...] I still can't get to terms with my brief." As a piece of television it's compelling, daring and has a lot to say. As a piece of the series Doomwatch it's far less worthwhile.
     Ironically, the serial was pulled from broadcast due to its controversial subject matter, where it would have been aired fifth in the third season. It was finally released onto DVD in April 2016, though its inclusion still only brings the final season up to twelve episodes... the planned season closer, "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden" AKA "The Devil's Demolition" by Wolf Rilla, was scrapped before it was made due to undisclosed reasons. Of the thirteen directors who worked on the programme, Darrol Blake was the most prolific, directing half a dozen, including Sex And Violence. The scrapped episode was due to be his seventh.

 

[michaellevenson]

 

[michaellevenson]

Just watched the episode No Room For Error, rated last on this review thread by The Anorak Zone. Humph.....I liked it. The story was engaging, the typhoid element well done and Fay Chantry is an interesting addition to the Doomwatch team.
Here's a review of it by Archive Musings.

Dr Fay Chanty (Jean Trend) is Doomwatch’s latest recruit, although initally she tells Quist she’s now not sure now whether she wants the job. But her arrival is a timely one. She formerly worked at BAP (British Associated Pharmaceuticals) helping to develop Stellamycin, a drug which can be used to combat typhoid.

A recent typhoid outbreak has seen a score of children hospitalised and fighting for their lives. Stellamycin could be the answer – but despite Doomwatch’s cautiously favourable report the government has yet to give their approval. So whilst Quist heads off to do battle with the ministry he sends Fay to BAP to liaise with her former colleagues.

The government grudgingly agrees to allow Stellamycin to be used, but when a child dies it sets them into a panic. Only one group of children shows such an adverse reaction though and it’s later discovered that they all went to the same school. A working hypothesis would be that somehow they had already been exposed to a very low level dose of the drug over an extended period. But since it’s only just been released, how could this be so?
Like Toby Wren, the arrival of Fay Chantry allows the viewer to observe Doomwatch from the outside. Who are these small group of scientists and what exactly do they do? No Room for Error implies that they’re not highly regarded amongst certain parts of the scientific community. One of Fay’s former colleagues at BAP, Nigel Waring (John Wood), has a particularly jaundiced view of them, wondering why she’d want to give up a decent job at BAP for civil service pay and a role as a government snooper …..

Although Fay Chantry was created in order introduce a woman into the Doomwatch team who wasn’t a secretary, it’s ironic that her initial storyline is somewhat sexist. She spends most of her time rekindling her relationship with Nigel, who’s such an irritating drip that it’s therefore hard to have a great deal of respect for her judgement!

Their brief affair had been one of the factors in his recent divorce and he now suggests they marry and she returns to work at BAP. Nigel’s boss, Professor Lewin (Angus MacKay) doesn’t think this is a good idea, telling him that the pair of them living and working together would be too much of as strain (so much better if she just became a nice little housewife). Ridge takes the biscuit though, when he later tells Quist that because Fay’s a woman she’s likely to react emotionally. Yes, John Ridge, a man who tends to act first and then think later (when he does think) said this!

The Nigel/Fay relationship has a soap-opera feel about it, which is reinforced when Nigel’s daughter falls ill with typhoid and he has to face an urgent dilemma – should she be treated with Stellamycin when might it prove fatal?
After extensive tests by Doomwatch, Nigel is proved to be culpable – a canister of the drug was left at a nearby farm, which in turn infected the milk at a local school. It’s possibly an ironic touch (although maybe not) that Nigel reacts with resentment and a complete lack of personal accountability when Fay gently mentions this to him. Earlier he was scathing about Doomwatch, not regarding them as true scientists, but when it’s revealed he was responsible for a child’s death, he turns his anger on Fay and brings their relationship to an end (a lucky escape for her, I think). He doesn’t stop to think that if it hadn’t been for those “busybodies” at Doomwatch there might have been more deaths.

After being largely anonymous during the last episode, Simon Oates has a little more to do here.
Simon Oates as John Ridge


When we first see him he’s in a slightly battered state and is being attended to by Barbara Mason. She places a plaster on a cut over his eye and is then encouraged by him to kiss it better! Clearly some time has passed since we saw her in You Killed Toby Wren as she’s now very comfortable around him. Possibly this was a little ad-lib worked out in rehearsals, it’s a nice moment anyway as it helps to give a touch of humour and humanity to both their characters.

Angus MacKay (a man who seemed to make a career out of playing headmasters, bank managers and the like) is suitably imposing as Professor Lewin. It’s not much of a role but MacKay’s clipped diction is always worth listening to. Anthony Sharp as Dr Ian Phelps (the Medical Officer of Health) is another solid performer and Anthony Ainley (as the Senior House Officer) has a couple of key scenes. Several points off though for Norman Scase as Mr Elliott, the headmaster at the infected school. He gives an extraordinary mannered performance which has to be seen to be believed.

Although the Nigel/Fay subplot is rather tedious (will she choose him or her career at Doomwatch? Umm, fairly obvious really) there’s a decent mystery at the heart of the story and both Quist and Ridge are used well. But this story is another sign that the series is changing – as character relationships are moving into the foreground whilst the science takes a little bit of a back seat.