Arguably the first ‘green’ television series, the principal thrust of Doomwatch was simple, direct, and – most of all – timely.
The runaway advances in every field of British science and technology since World War II had initially offered the promise of a bright, utopian vision of the future, but as the decades passed, the vision increasingly proved to be overly optimistic.
Debuting on 9 February 1970, the BBC series questioned the moral and ethical application of technology and the sometimes less-than-noble motives of those who wielded its power.
The core characters worked for the Department for the Observation and Measurement of Science (codenamed ‘Doomwatch’), a specialised government department set up to monitor and, if possible, control major advances in science and technology that could possibly endanger humanity.
The team’s leader was Dr Spencer Quist (John Paul), an abrasive but moral and incorruptible scientist who refused to toe the party line and openly despised the vested interests of ambitious politicians and profit-obsessed businessmen.
The twin mainstays of Quist’s small team of brilliant but highly unconventional field investigators were the unorthodox Dr John Ridge (Simon Oates) and the young and idealistic Tobias ‘Toby’ Wren (Robert Powell).
The series was created by Gerry Davis and Dr Kit Pedler and naturally evolved over time from their private concerns about the inherent dangers unchecked scientific progress posed to humankind’s future survival. The two first met while working on Doctor Who, where they created the Cybermen.
United in their common interest, Davis and Pedler began building a file on potentially questionable advances and devastating hazards, slowly compiling scrapbooks with examples of pesticides, defoliation, chemical and atomic waste, pollution, genetic experiments, and the like.
Prophetically, many of the issues the series dealt with did indeed become chillingly real headlines over the years to come.
The episode ‘The Plastic Eaters’ opened with a shock sequence of an aeroplane dissolving in mid-air, its plastic components eaten away by a mysterious virus.
Shortly after this was transmitted, the search for a plastic-eating organism to ease waste disposal problems was intensified, and scientists launched a research programme involving a range of self-destructive plastics that crumble into a powder which would then be eaten by bacteria.
‘Friday’s Child’ showed a surgeon breeding a human embryo, which he planned to bring to life in a flask in his private laboratory. During the same hour the episode was being televised, newspapers were printing a headline story. At Oldham General Hospital, gynaecologist Dr Patrick Steptoe, in conjunction with others, had just succeeded in fertilising a human egg outside a woman’s body. The egg was alive and developing.
In ‘Burial at Sea’, a group of pop stars and their girls were found drifting out at sea close to a secret dumping ground for surplus chemical warfare projects. Two of them had died from the effect of a defoliant which should have been safe in canisters on the sea bed.
After the episode was written, but before it had screened, a branch of the American armed forces tried to dump something like 10,000 tons of toxic gases in the Atlantic.
They were stopped just in time by pressure of public opinion. Subsequently, the Pentagon dumped nerve agents in the sea near the Bahamas. This time, public opinion was brushed aside.
In Britain, the Ministry of Defence also admitted they had dumped 200,000 tons of poison gas (including 6,000 tons of the nerve gas Tabun) in the Atlantic up to 1957.
The series quickly gained a huge following, netting in its first season an audience of 12 million viewers – the record for a first run.
The show was not afraid to shock and play with the audience’s expectations.
A prime example being the audacious decision to kill off the immensely popular Toby Wren character, blown up whilst heroically attempting to defuse a bomb on a South Coast pier (a bold move at a time when viewers weren’t used to seeing their television heroes die).
Unfortunately, the series eventually began a slow decline. New characters were introduced only to vanish just as quickly as they had arrived – including Dr Fay Chantry (Jean Trend).
The decline proved to be irreversible, and the hoped-for fourth series never materialised – although a 1972 movie version did, starring Ian Bannen as a newly-created member of the ‘Doomwatch’ team, Dr Del Shaw.
Doomwatch could be said to have acted as the unofficial voice for the ecological and scientific concerns of a large proportion of the nation. Sadly, almost 50% of the episodes no longer exist in any form.
Dr Spencer Quist
John Paul
Dr John Ridge
Simon Oates
Tobias ‘Toby’ Wren
Robert Powell
Colin Bradley
Joby Blanshard
Pat Hunisett
Wendy Hall
Dr Fay Chantry
Jean Trend Dr Anne Tarrant
Elizabeth Weaver Commander Neil Stafford
John Brown
The core characters worked for the Department for the Observation and Measurement of Science (codenamed ‘Doomwatch’), a specialised government department set up to monitor and, if possible, control major advances in science and technology that could possibly endanger humanity.
After the episode was written, but before it had screened, a branch of the American armed forces tried to dump something like 10,000 tons of toxic gases in the Atlantic.
