![]() The other main regular character throughout the run was Dr John Ridge, played by Simon Oates. He was played throughout the BBC run by John Paul, a familiar face from a range of British television series, who later went on to appear in I, Claudius. Quist is haunted by guilt through having worked on the Manhattan Project, making the first nuclear bomb. Moultrie battery box series#The main character throughout the series was Nobel Prize winner, Dr Spencer Quist, who had been given the task of setting up and running the department by the British government. All of the existing episodes, other than "Sex and Violence", were repeated on the satellite channel UK Gold during the 1990s, although that episode was erroneously published in broadcast schedules. Series two is complete, thanks to the returns from Canada, but series one is missing five episodes. However, a copy of the un-broadcast episode survives in the archives, one of only three from the final series to do so. Moultrie battery box archive#Although some episodes have been returned from Canada or exist as telerecordings, many are still missing and will probably remain so, although all are being sought by the BBC Archive Treasure Hunt as a whole. The series was also sold abroad, gaining some popularity when transmitted in Canada.Īs was common at the time, the BBC wiped the Doomwatch master tapes soon after transmission, regarding them as being of little further use. The start of every series merited a cover feature on the BBC's Radio Times listings magazine, which even today is a prestigious feat for a programme. ĭoomwatch was popular, and at its peak drew audiences of as high as 13.6 million for the episode "Invasion", filmed mostly in the village of Grassington in North Yorkshire. The execution footage has appeared on British television a number of times since 1972, notably in a 1988 edition of Panorama about violence on television. It has been suggested that this was because of objections to either its use of stock news footage of a public execution in Lagos, or its presentation of characters designed to be satirical analogues of Mary Whitehouse, Cliff Richard and Lord Longford. The first two series each consisted of thirteen episodes, and the third of twelve, of which one, titled "Sex and Violence", was not transmitted. The two creators openly criticised this change. After Davis and Pedler left the series at the conclusion of the second series in 1971, the series turned into a more conventional thriller drama. There were also less dramatic stories such as an episode that centred around the medical dangers of jet lag. ![]() Storylines included a genetic mutation that created a particularly large and vicious race of rats, and a virus that ate away at all types of plastics causing aeroplanes to fall out of the sky. ![]() ![]() Together they took science into people's living rooms, explaining about embryo research, subliminal messages, wonder drugs, dumping of toxic waste, noise pollution, nuclear weaponry, animal exploitation, etc. Quist had worked on the development of the atomic bomb and seen his wife die of radiation poisoning Ridge was the secret agent type and Wren a conscientious researcher. However, the incorruptible Spencer Quist and his allies soon gave the agency some actual power and influence. In the words of one character, "We were set up to investigate any scientific research, Public or Private, which could possibly be harmful to Man." Its actual intended purpose was to form a body with little power meant in order to stifle public protest and secure green votes. Officially Doomwatch was an agency dedicated to preserving the world from dangers of unprincipled scientific research. The formal name of the protagonist's organization was "Department for the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work". Similar interests led them to create Doomwatch, which explored new and unusual threats to the human race, many bred out of the fear of real scientific concepts, with a "this could happen to us" angle. Their interest in the problems of science changing and endangering human life had led them to create the popular cyborg villains the Cybermen for that program. The programme was created by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler, who had previously collaborated on scripts for Doctor Who, a programme on which, for a time during the late 1960s, Davis had been the story editor and Pedler the unofficial scientific adviser. ![]()
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