Season 1
- John Paul as Dr. Spencer Quist
- Simon Oates as Dr. John Ridge
- Joby Blanshard as Colin Bradley
- Robert Powell (
) as Tobias Wren [ 1 ]
-
Wendy Hall
as Pat Hunnisett [ 1 ]
-
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 1]
The Plastic Eaters
Shown 09 Feb 70
Tobias Wren (Robert Powell -
) gets hired by a UK Government department
that investigates scientific events.
His first job is to get evidenced from a plane crash.
The original plane crashed because its controls
were eaten by a plastic-eating microbe.
Unfortunately, when Wren takes a passenger jet home
he accidentally contaminates the plane.
Will he live long enough to be a series regular,
or is he just an expendable one-off guest-star?
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 2]
Friday's Child
Shown 16 Feb 70
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 3]
Burial at Sea
Shown 23 Feb 70
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 4]
Tomorrow, the Rat
Shown 02 Mar 70
This is set in a working-class area of London.
A child is attacked by wild rats,
reminiscent of the opening scene of
Jurassic Park 2
. The main storyline seems to have influenced
Michael Crichton
a lot, since it is about a genetic engineering experiment
that goes wrong when the mutants escape
and develop a breeding colony.
Tobias Wren (Robert Powell -
) gets sent to catch one of the rats as a live sample.
He discovers the hard way that the rats are smarter than normal,
and might be smarter than the men hunting him.
As smart rats go, they are not as nice as the
Rats of NIHM
.
Toby's cow-orker gets an easier assignment,
seducing the female biologist suspected of creating the rats.
He even debates scientific ethics with her,
although he does break Godwin's Law.
She is somewhat naive about working for the government,
and learns the hard way that the political leaders
will happily scapegoat her to cover their own involvement.
This has a serious tone, and a downbeat ending.
Quite a change from the American shows
that have no consequences for actions.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 5]
Project Sahara
Shown 09 Mar 70
Tobias Wren (Robert Powell -
) gets suspended from duty
on the orders of the Internal Affairs department.
He gets investigated by Nigel Stock,
best known as Dr Watson in the 1960s Sherlock Holmes movies,
who actually turns out to be a competent investigator
rather than the bumbling fool that Watson became.
The team's token woman scientist is also investigated.
This leads to a 1970s comedy of errors
as she keeps a drunken Toby in the spare bedroom
while being interviewed by Nigel Stock
with her married lover hiding outside.
The IA investigation of Doomwatch has been given priority
because the team is investigating Project Sahara,
a new super-weapon that can reduce farmland to a desert.
This is too horrible for NATO to use,
but if the half-Syrian scientist sold it to an Arab government
they could achieve peace in the Middle East.
The IA team uses an AI to detect possible leaks.
Well, Doomwatch is the name of the supercomputer
that the good guys use to detect bad science.
The UK Government has done the same thing with a different supercomputer,
using data on citizens to predict crime - like in
Minority Report
. They have decided to start with government employees first,
before they go mainstream with the general population.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 6]
Re-Entry Forbidden
Shown 16 Mar 70
A NASA spacecraft makes an emergency landing in the UK.
Since it is now in his jurisdiction,
Dr Quist is able to get involved.
Especially since he had provided a reference
for the token British astronaut.
The British astronaut is jealous of the men his wife spends time with.
This turns out to be enough to make him seem paranoid,
which then gets diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia.
Yes, it all escalates.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 7]
The Devil's Sweets
Shown 23 Mar 70
The team's token woman, the secretary,
is an ex-smoker who takes up smoking again.
Since the team has been assigned to investigate whether
the government's anti-smoking campaign is working,
they have to investigate.
The cigarette manufacturer employs a marketing executive (Maurice Roeves -
). He is clearly up to no good.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 8]
The Red Sky
Shown 06 Apr 70
Quist takes a few days off work,
staying with an old friend in a disused lighthouse.
The previous occupant went mad and jumped off the cliff,
while Quist's friend is now also halucinating.
Before long, Quist himself will fall victim too.
Yes, this is the old busman's holiday storyline,
combined with the team regular in jeopardy trope
to increase the stakes.
Tobias Wren (Robert Powell -
) gets called in to investigate.
The airfield next door is now run by an aicraft manufacturer,
run by Mr Reynolds (Paul Eddington - Yes, Minister).
They are developing a hypersonic system for the civilian market,
with the intention of taking an hour off the flight time to the USA.
Well, this was the era of Concorde.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 9]
Spectre at the Feast
Shown 13 Apr 70
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 10]
Train and De-train
Shown 20 Apr 70
The team investigate illegal testing of pesticides.
Tobias Wren (Robert Powell -
) discovers that his former mentor is chief scientist at the chemical company responsible.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 11]
The Battery People
Shown 27 Apr 70
As with the previous episode,
this story is about scientists trying to secure the food supply
to prevent future famins and food shortages.
The team investigates a battery chicken farm.
The man in charge, Colonel Smithson,
has been genetically engineering the livestock -
which puts the workers at risk.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 12]
Hear No Evil
Shown 04 May 70
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 1, Episode 13]
Survival Code
Shown 11 May 70
The TV company re-used its video tapes,
so there is currently no saved copy of this episode.
It is believed that the climactic ending
was reused as the opening scene of the next Season.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 1]
You Killed Toby Wren
Shown 14 Dec 70
This opens with a nailbiting scene of Tobias Wren (Robert Powell -
) attempting to defuse a bomb.
Since this episode's title gives away the outcome,
we can only assume that this scene was originally shown
as the climax of the previous Season's final episode.
Months later, Pat has quit over the loss of Toby.
An office temp, Barbara Mason (
Vivien Sherrard
), is now trying to fill in for her.
Ridge blames Quist for Toby's death,
and is busting his balls about it.
The Ministry is holding hearings into the explosion,
and it looks like Quist will be scapegoated.
A female psychiatrist interviews him,
and the focus is on his role in the Manhattan Project.
His guilt at creating the Hiroshima bomb
is now compounded by his part in Toby's death.
Geoff Hardcastle (John Nolan) has a story he wants to tell Quist.
A lab that Geoff was doing his PhD thesis in
has created animal-human hybrids.
Ridge is disgusted at the idea,
and investigates to find out the truth.
These are not cool hybrids,
but horrifying ones like at the end of
Todd Browning's Freaks
.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 2]
Invasion
Shown 21 Dec 70
This was shot on location in Yorkshire.
Geoff Hardcastle (John Nolan) is sent to locate
a couple of tweenage boys who went missing
while exploring some caves.
They may have found a secret entrance into a secret base, like in
Edge of Darkness
. The Commanding Officer of the local Army base,
Major Geoffrey Palmer (
Tomorrow Never Dies
), is uncooperative.
The secret base turns out to have been the site
of a biological warfare experiment.
The British military was developing a Satan Bug
to be deployed only if the UK was invaded -
a scorched Earth policy of sorts.
Now it looks like it might get loose.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 3]
The Islanders
Shown 04 Jan 71
A group of people have been evacuated from St Simon's Island,
something akin to the Falklands or the Pitcairn islands.
They have been relocated to a disused army camp in England,
where they have problems fitting in with the modern way of life.
After all, they lived without modern technology -
not unlike the Amish.
Some of the refugees start to fall dangerously ill.
Doomwatch investigators visit St Simon's Island.
This looks like Cornwall, where it was filmed.
The problem has been caused by pollution.
Yes, even on the most isolated islands on Earth
there is still a problem caused by a WW2 shipwreck.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 4]
No Room for Error
Shown 11 Jan 71
Dr Anthony Ainsley (
Dr Who
) has discovered a disease epidemic.
Not the Satan Bug from two episodes ago, but mere Typhoid.
It is treatable by a new drug, Stellamycin,
but Doomwatch gets the blame for double-checking everything
before they will allow the drug to be distributed.
Quist has hired a new female scientist.
Ironically, she had an affair with the male scientist
who developed Stellamycin.
Even more ironically, that scientist's daughter is a typhoid victim.
When Quist approves the drug for human use,
some of the patients have an adverse reaction -
including the daughter of the man who invented it.
Did Quist approve the drug prematurely?
It seems that whatever happens,
someone will always try to blame Doomwatch.
The recognisable face in the supporting cast is Anthony Ainsley.
Ironic since here he plays a Doctor,
he took over as The Master after Roger Delgado passed away.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 5]
By the Pricking of My Thumbs...
Shown 18 Jan 71
A school science class goes horribly wrong
when a couple of bullies sabotage an experiment
and blow up the class nerd.
The headmaster has three suspects,
but thanks to his scientist friend Dr Ensor
he manages to pin the blame on the boy
with the Double-Y chromosome.
Yes, this episode deals with the theory that XYY males
are predisposed to violence - like in
Alien 3
.
The accused boy's foster-father, Oscar Franklin (Bernard Hepton),
is a freelance journalist.
He goes to Doomwatch for help,
but Quist writes him off as an alarmist tabloid hack.
Of course, Quist changes his tune
when he discovers that the scientist involved
has been using Doomwatch's lab for his experiments.
The point of the episode is that the research into XYY carriers
was far too limited to draw any real conclusions at that time.
Only a hundred had been discovered, out of an estimated 45,000.
Research had been limited to prisons,
and the whole thing begins to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The episode's guest-stars are recognisable figures
from BBC TV shows of the 1970s and 1980s.
Hepton was the lead in Secret Army,
while his screen wife (
Patsy Byrne
) was Nursie in Blackadder Two.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 6]
The Iron Doctor
Shown 25 Jan 71
A 1970s hospital has an experimental mainframe computer
that monitors patients wellness,
while the staff stay in the Data Surveillance room
unless they are needed.
Fifty years later,
the computers would be operating on a one-per-patient basis
and the staff would be much closer at hand.
Dr Carson (Barry Foster -
Frenzy
) thinks that the hospital's computer is killing patients
by selecting DAT - Discontinue Active Treatment.
He becomes a whistleblower, leaking info to Doomwatch.
It turns out that the hospital computer
is a repurposed wargames machine,
with a military-grade self-defence system.
Worse, nobody programmed it with the three laws of robotics
so it might kill anyone who threatens its existence.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 7]
Flight into Yesterday
Shown 01 Feb 71
Quist is forced to return home from a mission in the USA,
so he can give a briefing to the Prime Minister.
Unfortunately Quist appears to be drunk,
which is fuel for his political opponents.
He might have been cleared by the inquisition in
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 1]
You Killed Toby Wren,
but he still has people after him.
The Department's Minister decides to go to the USA
to deliver the speech that Quesit was meant to.
His head of publicity, Thompson (Desmond Llewellyn -
Licence To Kill
), accompanies him.
This episode focuses on office politics rather than science.
However, it does delve into the behind-the-scenes stuff
that Quist has been dealing with.
Doomwatch has allies in the department, as well as enemies,
and it is good to see everyone pull together.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 8]
The Web of Fear
Shown 08 Feb 71
The Minister and his aide are in a health resort
where one of the other guests falls mysteriously ill.
The doctor identifies it as Yellow Fever,
a deadly virus found in the tropics.
The island, off the coast of Cornwall again,
is quarantined.
Quist needs the Minister's signature on a vital document.
To break quarantine, he gets himself trapped on the island.
While there he discovers that the virus outbreak
may be yet another case for Doomwatch after all.
To avoid the use of harmful chemical pesticides,
a scientist has tried to create a biological one instead.
The plan is to use infected moths that are only in certain areas.
However, the moths get ingested by spiders ...
and the spiders get everywhere.
Even their webs are contaminated,
which is especially bad when Ridge has to enter a disused mine
and save a trapped victim.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 9]
In the Dark
Shown 15 Feb 71
A young man dies while swimming in the Atlantic ocean.
He turns out to have been contaminated by mustard gas
from a leaking ship that sank at the end of the Second World War.
The Royal Navy has no record of the precise location
of the sunken ship.
It turns out that the captain was Quist's old friend,
Dr McArthur (Patrick Troughton -
Dr Who
). However, McArthur goes to extreme lengths
to avoid speaking with Quist or Ridge.
Finally, when cornered the man who claims to be McArthur
seems to have forgotten the details of his ship's sinking.
When this episode was released,
the war had ended only twenty-five years earlier.
Dr Quist discovers the true fate of his old friend.
Dr Who has become more like Davros,
although in all fairness this is years before that character was created.
Perhaps this episode inspired the creation of Davros.
Quist is caught up in a moral quandry.
Would it be right to keep him alive as nothing but
a living brain trapped in a paralysed body?
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 10]
The Human Time Bomb
Shown 22 Feb 71
The topic of the week is overcrowding.
A property developer tells Quist that the current (1971)
population of the UK was over 50 million,
and that this would rise to 80 million by the year 2000.
In reality, the population in 2020 was less than 70 million.
However, this was the kind of thing that fostered
the nightmarish concept of Mega-City One in
Judge Dredd
. The answer to overcrowding was deemed to be city-blocks ...
The Doomwatch team's female doctor is given a field
assignment, where she has to live in a tower block.
She suffers a lot from stress,
and may be the victim of a hassment campaign
by the property developer's goons.
After all, if she cannot complete her report
then Quist cannot object to the developer's tower blocks.
Unfortunately, Ridge and Quist both dismiss her concerns
and write her off as being a hysterical female.
This episode was helmed by a female director.
She really brings out a lot of the things
that would increase the female lead's discomfort.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 11]
The Inquest
Shown 01 Mar 71
After the fate of Toby Wren,
now his replacement is in jeopardy.
Geoff is inspecting a laboratory
when he gets shot by an unknown assailant.
A young girl has died,
and it looks like the cause of death was rabies.
Doomwatch oversees the investigation,
which has several suspects.
One is the laboratory Geoff was inspecting.
Another is the local animal-rights woman,
who has been blamed for a series of attacks on the lab.
These two sides point the finger at each other,
although neither has any convincing proof.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 12]
The Logicians
Shown 15 Mar 71
The Doomwatch team investigates a pharmaceutical company
which has produced a new antibiotic.
The company fixes its formula to remove unpleasant side-effects,
so the Doomwatch investigation is happily concluded.
That night the formula's documents are stolen
from the manager's office safe.
Ridge has suspicions about who the burglars were.
On the day of the theft,
a group of schoolboys - including Colin Tredget (Peter Duncan -
Flash Gordon
) - visited the factory.
The boys were from a local school with progressive teaching,
which has trained them in logic.
As a result, they are more than capable of planning the robbery.
This was written by Dennis Spooner,
a veteran writer for many UK TV shows of the era.
It is reminiscent of the Eggheads episode
of the original 1960s Avengers show, in the Emma Peel era.
That episode was basically about Mensa,
with all the names changed.
Doomwatch (1970) [Season 2, Episode 13]
Public Enemy
Shown 22 Mar 71
A young boy retrieves his football from the roof of a factory.
While up there, he inhales a lethal dose of beryllium.
Doomwatch is called in to fight deadly pollution,
and make the workplace healthier and safer.
The lack of a health and safety culture is evident
from the lack of care in the use of the ladder in the opening scene.
How the man got the boy's body down safely is a miracle.
The episode itself has a modern-day fifteen rating,
not for sex or violence but probably because
one of the characters smokes a cigarette on-screen.
Quist delivers a series of recommendations
as to how the factory coule be made safe.
However, the company would rather close the old factory
and replace it with a bigger purpose-built one elsewhere.
Everyone who wanted the pollution defeated
now turns against Doomwatch.
The Trade Unionist wanted the workers safe,
but now has to worry about their jobs.
The Town Councillor wanted the locals to be safe,
but now has to worry about their economy.
In all fairness the scientist was always against Doomwatch,
because he would rather make-do and take chances
in order to mass-produce a revolutionary new alloy.
