Doomwatch Fanzine Issue 3

8/3/2019 Doomwatch Fanzine Issue 3

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/doomwatch-fanzine-issue-3 1/28



WATCH FANZINE ISSUE 3 REAL NEWS...

Or the Michael Seely issue as I’m sure it will be

known! Michael has written a fantastic analysis of

the premier episode of DOOMWATCH - The Plastic

Eaters, and he has taken a look at news stories from

the 1970s that reflect the influence the show had.

Plus, if you don’t already own it (and why not?) an

analysis of Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater book.

So, I am very proud to present you with the latest

issue of the fanzine (the biggest so far) and I hopeyou enjoy reading it as much as I have producing it.

Scott Burditt

www.doomwatch.org

ContentsIndex 2

The Plastic Eaters preview 3Planning for Doom 4 - 5

Character Profiles 6-7The Plastic Eaters analysis 8 - 19

DOOMWATCH Investigations

in the Daily Mirror 20 - 21Real-life DOOMWATCH 22 - 23

Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaterbook synopsis 24 - 28

DOOM-MONGER

IT'S THEDR. WHOTEAMAGAIN!

THE DAILY EXPRESS - 30th January 1970

The BBC is joining the debate onpollution hazards – with a fictionalTV thriller series.

The series, 'Doomwatch', willmove into the 'Take Three Girls' spoton Monday nights next month andpromises to be fairly controversial.

Not only does it seem to be basedon Mr. Harold Wilson's latestcrusade for the environment, it isalso about a Government, catchingvotes by promising a special 'watch-dog' unit to combat the hazardsfrom new scientific discoveries.

POISONED

The series has been devised bythe 'Dr. Who' writers Gerry Davisand Dr. Kit Pedler, a real lifescientist who invented those TVspace horrors the Cybermen. Nowthe scientific inventiveness thatwent into creating havoc for Dr. Whois about to be launched on theproblems of our own poisonedplanet.

Heading the Doomwatch unit is aNobel Prize winning scientist playedby actor John Paul and among hisassistants is dolly girl Wendy Hallwho is guaranteed to brighten

up any environment.

JOBY BLANSHARD as Colin Bradley▲

DOOMWATCH FANZINE ISSUE 3 - JULY 2011

DOCTOR DOOMa.k.a Kit Pedler

►

DW FANZINE - ISSUE 32

The Doomwatch Fanzine is designed and produced by Scott Burditt. Doomwatch is ©BBC and no infringement on this is intended



Astewardess goes down the aisle checking on thepassengers... And the very first actress seen in

Doomwatch is Gracie Luck (now author Susan Surman). “At

the time of Doomwatch, I was living in London as an actress,

later writer. I played the First Stewardess in Ep. 1 - The Plastic Eaters. I had 3 different agents, can’t remember who

arranged this job. It’s odd - I can remember what I wore in

1956 as a summer stock apprentice in Connecticut, but as the

First Stewardess, in Ep. 1, it was such a brief moment, I can’t

remember much. I never had a script. And regrettably, I have

no pictures. I think I was introduced to

Powell and Oates at a rehearsal (they were

very polite) and then for filming, I was in

and out. I don’t think I had any lines. I

buckled up someone’s seat belt on the first

flight out. I think it was my first job with the

BBC, although I had been living and continuing my acting studies in London

since the early 60’s and was working my

way up to becoming an Equity member.”

Six extras made up the compliment of the

airline passengers, none of them looking terribly South

American though. The extras are listed in the camera script:

Dylis Marvin, Earl Gray, Maria Allen, Isobel Sabel, Bob E.

Raymond and John de Marco. Two of them will be seen in the

Beeston laboratories. Of one, all you can

see is her red sleeve in the right hand

corner of the very first shot, whilst another

unseen is the chap who has his belt tightened by Gracie Luck! The tannoy

announcer has an American twang. Her

identity is currently unknown.

All the passenger extras were needed

on Friday 28th of November, the first of

three studio days for this episode. This was

the first ever studio day for Doomwatch. The schedule was

quite unusual for television drama at the time. Scenes were

rehearsed and then recorded between 2:30pm and 5:30pm,

and again after dinner from 7:30 pm and 10:00pm.

Presumably this was for the complicated effects of the plastic

melting, and the new CSO process.The flight is reaching its end when the pilot notices one of

his dials is not working, he gives it a tap to see if it will

register but nothing. The Flight Engineer pulls out a panel

and notices inside that the cable insulation is melting... As

the air hostess make sure their passengers are safely belted,

the situation worsens in the cockpit. Anything plastic is

softening and melting. The Captain orders a mayday alert

and initiates an emergency descent drill. Controls begin to

spark.It’s colour TV and here we see an early example of what

the BBC was pleased to called colour separation overlay (CSO)

whilst the rest of the industry called it chromakey.

Tony Sibbald, Richardson Morgan and Monty Brown

played the First Captain, First Engineer and First Co-pilot

respectively. A lot of this dialogue was

improvised in rehearsals and some of the

camera directions were worked out on the

day by director Paul Ciappessoni. Kit

Pedler and Gerry Davis had this and their

other two scripts adapted as an

educational book called World In Danger,edited by Gordon Walsh and with

illustrations by Richard Osbourne. This pre-

titles sequence has far more dialogue,

explaining what is inferred in the scene.

Even the First Stewardess gets a line: ‘Sir, it’s terrible in there!

All the plastic’s melting – the roof, the walls, everything... And

it’s the same in here isn’t it?’ Thirty five people died in the

crash and this bit takes place on a Tuesday!

On the ground, emergency airport

response teams drive out from their

hangers. The Captain and his crew have

lost control of the plane, his joystick oryoke breaks up in his hands as a sticky

mess. The plane crashes in the scrub land

and is destroyed.

The rather melodramatic stock footage

seen to depict the crash, complete with

crash dummies in their seats comes from a

15 minute film produced by the FAA in America, called the

Phoenix airplane crash in the camera script, the Douglas DC7

was sent down a run way full of obstacles to study the

resulting devastation. Instead of fuel, coloured water was

placed in the tanks in order to study its dispersal. This

happened on April 24th

1964 near Phoenix, Arizona. You can see a bit of it on Youtube. Until you realised that the nuclear

explosion that followed was part of the main titles, the first

time you watch this episode, you felt that was a little bit over

the top...

DW FANZINE - ISSUE 3 3



Early 1968 and the eleven pageformat for Doomwatch wassubmitted by Kit Pedler and GerryDavis to Andrew Osborn, Head of Drama. He was very keen on thepotential of a series like Doomwatchand investigated the rights issuesover a collaboration between afreelance and a BBC staffer. A pilotepisode script was commissionedwith Gerry Davis after he was givenspecial dispensation to collaboratewith Pedler towards the end of Juneon the grounds that he 'is the mostobvious and suitable person tocollaborate with him on this pilotscript.' The first half of the £275 feewas paid to Kit Pedler to cover hisshare of the script. Davis wasworking on The First Lady with

producer Terence Dudley at thispoint, writing an episode called'Take-Over Bid.' The script wassubmitted with the title 'The PlasticEaters' to Osborn and by September,the BBC were about to engage inserious discussions about the script,recognising that it requiredconsiderable revision. As he told anexcited Pedler, 'This is not to say thatI do not believe the idea to be anexcellent one or that there isanything in the script which cannotbe put right. This is a strongcontender for a pilot spot early next

year.' By the end of the year, TerenceDudley was assigned Doomwatch ashis next project, and a second script,'Operation Neptune' and other storylines were commissioned fromthe pair...

Scientific research has now advanced to the stagewhere, unless carefully

monitored, mankind’s greatesthazard may well be from hisown discoveries. Already wehave the nuclear bomb, rising radiation levels, the risks of poisoning by insecticides. How many other scientific advanceswill prove double-edged weapons unless handled with great visionand restraint? The time willcertainly come when a measureof governmental control willhave to be devised to keep tabson the long range effects of thevarious discoveries made inprivate and public workshopsand laboratories. To perform

this task a group of exceptionalmen must be assembled. In thewrong hands, administered withtoo much power, such a checkcould be as disastrous as theeffect of the Inquisition uponGalileo. The group musttherefore be much more thantrained scientists – they must bemen of vision, able to estimatethe long term implications of aninvestigation. They mustpossess the capacity fortaking quick decisions and,occasionally direct action to

avert a possible disaster.

They will probably operate asa semisecret department undera code name. This series takes alook forward at the possible

situations that could evolve. We call our group

“DOOMWATCH”.

The series is set in presentday Britain. A newly-formed Government have been elected on a main platform of concernfor the individual against theencroachment of the State and technological advance. Thepeople of Britain have becomeincreasingly disturbed aboutmany of the after-effects of current industrial, medical and fundamental scientific research.

The "Ombudsman" departmenthas been enlarged but isclearly incapable of dealing

with increasing complaints onthe lines of "Silent Spring",destruction of wild life,pollution of the seas withatomic wastes, tanker oilfouling the beaches, missing H-bombs, etc.

For this reason the Cabinet,through the Ministry of Defence, have decided to setupa small group to study theeffects of ethical/moralproblems arising from specificresearch activities. On the

surface the group, code-named "Doomwatch", is little morethan the equivalent of a RoyalCommission and is quicklyforgotten by the public since itis clear that any information

PLANNING FOR DOOM...




they might produce will not beforthcoming for some months or years. What has not been madepublic, however, is the fact thatthe group is very well financed and has been given the brief not only of investigating and making reports but alsotaking action. Thus, if anytechnological danger arises theyare empowered to put it right.

When the series opens,several months after theinauguration of theDepartment, it has becomeobvious to Dr.QUIST, theHead of Doomwatch, that theGovernment have had cold feetabout the amount of freedom

and initiative to be allowed himand his team. The pressures of both private industry and Governmental researchinstallations, alarmed at thereports circulating regarding the powers of Doomwatch, haveresulted in the Minister (of Defence), who is responsible forthe Department, clamping downon the project and trying to cliptheir wings. This prowessproves much more difficult thananticipated, however, becausethey have failed to take into

account the full character and calibre of DR. QUIST. As one of Britain’s Nobel Prize winners,he was carefully picked forthe job and his appointmentreceived the maximum amount

of publicity. Once given hismandate, he refuses to beinfluenced by the blow hot, blow cold currents of higher politics.He has been given a job to doand he intends to carry itthrough – no matter what.

He remains impervious toeither threats or the bribes of a title, a higher paid job, and his dismissal would lead toexactly the kind of searching publicity as to the function and effectiveness of Doomwatchthat the Government are soanxious to avoid. The Minister,therefore, starts a steadycampaign of attrition to wearQUIST down, demolish his

enthusiasm for the post and drive him to resign.

But in QUIST they havechosen the last man ever tosubmit to threats, pressure or bribes. A man of fanaticaldedication to his job, and adeep-seated personal reason forwanting to make a success of it.

The men of Doomwatchare by no means omnipotent

supermen. There are manyfailures on their files. Ontwo occasions the computer“Doomwatch” has broken downor its message jammed withdisastrous results. Sometimes

their on-the-spot evaluationof a situation causes them todisregard the computer’sadvice. WREN habitually followshis own line of enquiry withvarying results.

All too often they workagainst the direct instructions,or prohibitions of their official brief. This puts not only their jobs in jeopardy but, confronted with police, troops etc. theycould face a possible prisonsentence or bullet.

One of the minor irritationsof being, even loosely, agovernment department meansthat right in the middle of an

urgent investigation they areapt. to be side-tracked bytrivial cases sent on from otherdepartments. They are apt.to retaliate by using the latestscientific discoveries to createconfusion among the moreparasitic and time-wasting of their colleagues. For example,a carefully administered paper-destroying-virus planned toeradicate files shortly to bepassed over to them.

These activities provide a

little light relief from thehigh tensions of their main job besides identifying themin the Civil Service as adepartment to be left strictlyalone.

DOOMWATCH HQ

The group is housed in aconverted, but closed, church inWestminster. On the outside of

the building there are “Keep Out”“Dangerous Building” notices. Insideand down in the crypt, there areoffices, bedsitters, a laboratory anda communications room.

In the laboratory is a combinedanalogue-digital computer.

This looks on the outside to beconventional but has “graphic read-out” facilities: that is, any item of information that is recalled from itcan be displayed on a screen, Thusfaces, documents, places etc. can beput on the screen. Print-out facilitiesalso exist thus, given certain co-ordinate information about events,the machine can formulatestrategies in much the same way asthe “war game” machine of the Randcorporation.

Thus the activities of the groupcan, when necessary, be planned bythe machine, although the membersmay not necessarily take the adviceof the machine.

Of course, this locationwas altered to a tower block in Westminster overlookingthe Post Office Tower as it was then known.




The Contented Sole (Victorian Fish and Chip shop pictured above) in South Kensington,where Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis spent many lunches evolving DOOMWATCH

DOOMWATCH - THE ORIGINAL CHARACTER PROFILESby KIT PEDLER & GERRY DAVIS

DOOMWATCH

A

ge 50. Formerly read in puremathematics at the University of

Ipswich. After a brilliant universitycareer he gained his F.R.S. at the ageof 26 for his original study of thetopology of Riemann space.

This early brilliance also drew theattention of the Atomic EnergyCommission and he spent the latteryears of the war at Los Alamos,where his calculations provided anindispensable link in the creation of the first Atomic Bomb.

While there, he met his future wife,an American scientist also engagedon research. They were married and

Quist spent the next few (andhappiest) years of his life working onthe successors to the first Atomicbomb.

Then, in 1950, his wife fell illof radiation poisoning.

Quist resigned from the projectand spent the next seven yearsnursing his wife and trying tocombat the effects of the radiation.

When she died in 1957, ironicallythe year he received his Nobel Prize,he took a prolonged sabbatical fromthe world of science.

On his return, despite offers of

posts from all over the world andmuch to everyone’s surprise heretired to the New University of Ipswich, a sardonic, withdrawn manliving alone with few friends orintimates.

Now, at the age of 50, his sufferingand soul-searching have left himwith a sizeable guilt neurosis abouthis early work and its result upon theworld.

Unable to unmake the situationhe helped to bring about, he isdetermined to make sure as far as hecan, that scientists will face themoral and ethical implications of thework they do and become aware of the consequences before thedecisions taken are irreversible.

As a further goad and spur hekeeps a large blow-up of theHiroshima mushroom on the wall

opposite his desk as a perpetualreminder.He is a powerful and strong

personality with an obsessionalthirst for knowledge. A walkingcompendium with instant recallof many other subjects rangingfrom zoology to experimentalpsychology, he is outspoken andaggressive. The latter quality causedhim much trouble in the quietsurroundings of the UniversityCampus. At scientific meetings hiscriticism from the floor was oftenbrutal and totally destructive,

although correct. He suffers foolsnot at all.At times a sardonic sense of

humour and a sudden unexpectedlywarm charm suggest that there isanother man hidden beneath the

formidable persona he has createdaround himself, but a chink rarelyshows in his armour. The exterior isvery nearly, but not quite, the totalman.

He has made a special study of the qualities of leadership.

These, he believes to be composedof rigid personal discipline, totalcommand of his feelings, objectivityand total application to the job inhand. He can be ruthless, is oftenarrogant, but bears absoluteresponsibility for the notionsof any member of his group.

His qualities earn him complete

loyalty from his group. He will flaythem for the slightest negligence,drive them to breakdown, but letanyone from the Ministerdownwards criticise any one of themand he will fight like a tiger and beprepared to sacrifice job, reputationand even his personal liberty intheir defence.

They answer only to him and he judges them entirely from his ownunorthodox standards.

His distinguished but erraticgroup presents a ratherunwholesome appearance to their

fellow civil servants. Each, whilebrilliant in his own right, has acharacter flaw that mightdisqualify him from a key positionunder a more conventionallyminded leader.

Attractive, quick-witted, loyal, sheis secretary, teamaker, mother

and potential mistress to the group.Pursued by RIDGE she, in fact,favours the unresponsiveTOBY WREN.DR. SPENCER QUIST

PATHUNNISETT




Age 38. Ridge’s career has beenequally as individual and erratic

as DR. QUIST’S. After a near scrapethrough Cambridge and a degree inOrganic Chemistry, he proceeded tomake a name for himself in abrilliant line of research intoantibiotics.

Then, unexpectedly, aftercollecting a doctorate and aninvitation to take a chair at Keeleuniversity, he threw it all away andwent on a scientific expedition tothe interior of Brasil. He ended upfighting for a lost cause withBolivian guerrillas, only justescaping with his life.

On his return to Britain, he wascontacted by M.I.5. with aparticularly dangerous andspecialised espionage job, spying inan Iron Curtain country.

To this end, he was thoroughlytrained in espionage techniques.He was successful in the first job

and took on a further assignment.He returned unexpectedly from

this second trip and with littleexplanation to M.I.5., resigned fromthe service. This has caused them toregard him with some suspicion.

In fact, he was thoroughlydisillusioned with the spyinggame and with his fellow scientistson both sides of the cold war.

QUIST met him at Ipswich whenRIDGE was trying, unsuccessfully, toread just to provincial universitylife, and picked him for Doomwatchfor his scientific background and,more especially, for his espionagetraining. He was also attracted bythe very quirk in his nature thatbrought him under suspicion byM.I.5. – his sense of the greaterloyalty to mankind in general asagainst the purely narrow loyaltiesto class, nationality or race.

He needs constant action and issuspicious of intellectual solutionsto particular problems. At 38, he isslowing down a little and suspectsthat he may be incapable of

forming any permanentrelationship with anyone, man orwoman. This bothers him.Underneath his rather hard exteriorhe is a kind man and is able andhappy to help the weak. He fightswhen fought. QUIST has chosen himbecause of his amoral approach toany given problem.

JOHN PAUL RIDGE

COLINBRADLEY

Age 26, just graduated from M.A.from Cambridge, he is the baby

of the Doomwatch team. Initially,very overawed by the whole set-upand especially by the vast prestigeof DR. QUIST, he grows in self-knowledge and confidence alongwith the series. In effect, herepresents to some extent theordinary viewer in the programme.We occasionally see developments“through his eyes” as it were.

He is an average young man inlooks and personality, at times a bittongue-tied before the clashingegos of QUIST, RIDGE, andBRADLEY. His particular strength,spotted by QUIST after reading hisresearch thesis, is his imagination –in fact he is the most imaginativemember of the group.

Whereas RIDGE is all cold logicand action, WREN is very much theintuitive artist. He can very oftenfind a completely unexpectedsolution to a problem.

He is not as physically tough asthe others on the Doomwatch teamand, unlike RIDGE, uses his witsrather than physical notion to getout of a tough situation.

Because of his sensitive, highlystrung temperament, he is chiviedand occasionally babied by theothers and especially by Pat.

TOBY WREN

Colin is a highly-skilledInstrument Designer with a pass

science degree.A slow, big North-countryman, he

has a dry throwaway humour. Hecan do anything with his hands,make, unmake, or redesign anydevice.

He has become almost a friendlyuncle to RIDGE and WREN and

arbitrates their disputes. He canalso be seen, on occasions, to stir itup between them and initiate a row.

He comes from a working-class

background and is very slightly jealous of their demeanour andability. He tends to do things bythe book. He maintains andprogrammes the group’scomputer.




According to The World In Danger book, it’s the following Mondayfollowing the San Pedro crash.

In the Doomwatch office, thesecretary Pat Hunnisett shows in TobyWren and heads towards Quist’s officebut before she goes into the next room,she glares at Doctor John Ridge who ishaving a cup of coffee with his feet onhis desk. Ridge introduces himself toWren and says that Pat would haveintroduced them but he had pinchedher bum just before lunch. ‘Hunger,nothing more.’ Wren doesn’t look tooimpressed. Since Wren has been let in,this means he’s joined Doomwatch.‘Gawd help yer,’ says Ridge. DoctorQuist is on the telephone and tells Patthat Wren will have to wait.

”John Paul, best known in the ITV “Probation Officer” series, gives Quist an indignant integrity.” - Sylvia Clayton,

The Daily TelegraphQuist resumes talking to Colin

Bradley about the San Pedro airdisaster. Something affected the wires

or the insulation and Quist wonders if that is why it was sent down to them. Italmost looks like solvent action. ‘Youbetter find out and quickly. What’s upwith that overgrown adding machine of yours?’

So where is San Pedro? Is it in Spainor Mexico? The episode never goes intothis. There's talk of the plane over the

Atlantic, but that's it, and the passengers are terribly British. ThePedler/Davis adaptation in The World inDanger changed the location to theoriginal one in the camera script: El Dorado, Bogota! The Radio Times and the newspapers say it is South America.San Pedro does sound nicer...

In the lab between the outer officeand Quist’s, Ridge is showing Wrenaround. Their pride and joy is acomputer nicknamed Doomwatch.

And never again is it referred to by name! Doomwatch – the name of thecomputer and the nickname for thedepartment. In The World In Danger ,Ridge tells Wren the purpose of the

Department: ‘Science has given theworld many good things – but sciencecan also be dangerous. Sometimes

scientists make mistakes; they can becareless. So the government have

started ‘Doomwatch’. We’re all scientiststoo, and we watch all the scientists work in Britain. If we’re sure it’s safe, we donothing. But sometimes we find work that may be dangerous. And then wehave to stop it.’ Makes you wonder if Wren read the job description whenapplying for the job.

The story title and writer credit is played over a shot of Ridge’s feet up on his desk in the Doomwatch outer office.

by KIT PEDLER & GERRY DAVIS

The Plastic Eaters was transmitted on BBC1 on the 9th February 1970 between 21.41 and 22. 29, lasting 48 minutes and 10 seconds.

THE

PLASTICEATERSAnalysis by Michael Seely


cont.



Three white coated extras can be seen lurking around the computer.These actors are Karl Bohun and RonGregory. The third is not listed.Presumably they are here to repair it for until the third series, the Doomwatchteam never have any extra staff except for the occasional scientist like StellaRobson or Professor Ensor. They last for the rest of the scenes set inside the lab.

Since they keep their faces away fromview as practically possible, they

probably double up as lab assistants at Beeston, of which there are four.

‘It’s an analogue digital hybrid,y’know.’ Quist emerges and tells Ridgeto investigate plastic solvents old ornew, from the data retrieval service, if there is a Governmental project it willbe under wraps otherwise they wouldhave a file. Ridge suggests talking to theMinisters PPS, Barker. Wren followsQuist about trying to get his attentionand fails. Everyone is focused on their

work. Quist goes back into his officeand Wren has had enough and turns toleave. Quist calls, ‘Where do you thinkyou’re going?’ ‘Out,’ replies Wren.Apparently so; Quist tells him that he iscatching a plane in three hours toinvestigate a plane crash! Wren proteststhat he is not a crash specialist, he camehere for an interview for a job, butQuist knows his background and says

he has joined and this is his first effort.Pat gives him some reading material forthe flight...

So that’s the core cast set up. Like alot of first episodes in any type of series,a newcomer is used as a way of introducing the set up, meet the regular cast and, perhaps, make mistakes whichdistinguishes them from the rest.However, unlike other first episodes,

this is it for Wren’s interaction with theregulars! Next week’s e pisode,Friday’s Child will

see Wreninteracting withQuist and Ridgeand the coretriumvirate of therelationship

develop. Barker mentioned here, will be seen in the fifth episode Project Sahara played by Robert James. In The World InDanger , Ridge mentions that Barker doesn’t like Doomwatch and feels he

should be running the department himself.

”...I was pleased to see that Robert Powell, whom, I thought too scholarly

to be a labourer in a recent play, is cast as Quist’s assistant and credited with afirst at Cambridge.” - Sylvia Clayton,The Daily Telegraph, 10th of February 1970.

Wren studies the photos from thecrash next to a rather bemusedpassenger...

Needless to say, the one section of the flight cabin is used to represent thethree planes seen in the episode.Precisely who the four extras are,including the one conveniently shielded

by a newspaper is unknown.


“It makes you think. And a series which does just that is

worth having around.” Stewart Lane, The Morning Review

L I F E I N T ES T

T U B E R E PO R T B Y

N E WS PA P E R U P H E L D

A Da i l y E x p ress re po rt f ro m

Los A nge les t hat Sta nfo rd

U n i ve rs it y, Ca l ifo r n ia, had

a n no u nced its s uccess i n c re

at i ng

l ife i n a test t u be, led to a

co m p la i nt to t he P ress Co u

nc i l

w h ic h was not made o ut, t he

co u nc i l a n no u nces toda y. T h

e

re po rt, sa ys t he co u nc i l, sa id

:

' T he fasc i nat i ng res u lts of t h

e

Sta nfo rd e x pe r i me nt ha ve to

be

v ie wed u nde r a po we rf u l e le

ct ro n

m ic rosco pe. B ut t he re t he y a

re -

m i n ute, p r i m it i ve, b ut v is i b le

, a

mo v i ng fo r m of l ife, a n e nt i re

l y

ma n- made v i r us. D r A rt h u r

Ko r n be rg, D r Me h ra n Go u l ia n

,

a nd D r Ro be rt S i ns he i me r a r

e t he

leade rs of t he tea m w ho c rea

ted

t he v i r us.'Afte r sa y i ng t h

e ' b rea kt h ro ug h'

co u ld lead to t he co nq uest of

ca nce r, t he a rt ic le refe r red to

't he

h isto r y- ma k i ng s y nt hes is k n

o w n

as D NA (deo x y r i bo n uc le ic a

c id )

s i m i la r to t he t y pe of v i r us t h

at

i nfects bacte r ia to p rod uce, s

a y, a

co ld. T he ot he r v ita l t h i ng a b

o ut

D NA is t hat it is t he s u bsta n

ce

t hat co nt ro ls he red it y - it is t

he

bas ic s u bsta nce of l ife.'

D r C. M. H. Ped le r, reade r

a nd head of t he de pa rt me nt

of a nato m y, I nst it ute of

O p ht ha l mo log y, U n i ve rs it y of

Lo ndo n, co m p la i ned t hat t he

re po rt was 'co m p

lete l y w it ho ut

fo u ndat io n a nd i n v ie w of itss u b ject matte r

, utte r l y a nd

da nge ro us i r res po ns i b le,' sa y

s

t he co u nc i l.

M r De re k Ma r ks, ed ito r of t he

Da i l y E x p ress, to ld t he co u n

c i l

t hat t he a rt ic le e x p la i ned fo r

t he

be nef it of la y peo p le w hat D r

Ko r n be rg had ac h ie ved, a nd

a lt ho ug h t he re m ig ht be so m

e

roo m fo r p h i loso p h ica l d is p u

te as

to t he p rec ise mea n i ng of l ife

, no

reaso na b le pe rso n co u ld

c ha racte r ize t he a rt ic le as

da nge ro us l y i r res po ns i b le.

T he P ress Co u nc i l

ad j ud icat io n was: ' T he co m p l

a i nt

of i r res po ns i b i l it y aga i nst t h

e

Da i l y E x p ress is not made o u

t.'

I n t ha t fa mo us Rad io T i mes

p ic t u re of Ped le r, Da v is a nd

D ud le y toge t he r w i t h a hos t

of ne ws pa pe r c l i p p i ngs

be h i nd t he m, t he c lea res t o n

e was f ro m T he Da i l y Ma i l

head l i ned L I F E IS C R EA T E

D I N T ES T T U B E... We l l...

T H E G UA R D IA N - 5 t h o f J u ne

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Ridge reports to Quist. There’splenty on solvents but nothing thatcould account for that wiring. Barker just gave him the usual departmentalcodswallop. Why does Quist think thegovernment knows something aboutthis? The source could be anywhere inthe world. ‘But we’re one of the mostcongested. Our problems with gettingrid of plastic waste are liable to besomewhat more acute.’ And theMinister would like to be rememberedas the man who had the foresight totackle the problem.

Although the script had apparently been written in 1968 or early 1969, the

problem of plastic waste was somethingthat had been long recognised as a

serious problem. According to thenewspapers of the time, 250,000 tonswere disposed of in 1970 with this

projected to increase five fold by 1980.The Science Research Council’sbiological Sciences Committee met withrepresentatives from major industrial companies to discuss the problem of waste disposal in May 1970 aware that there was no quick fix solution to the

problem. However, a Professor Gerald Scott of Aston University, Birminghamhad been investigating the possibility of ‘sunlight initiated breakdown... A highly

photosensitive ethylene carbonmonoxide copolymer has recently beendeveloped in the United States to beused for such things as disposabledrinking cups...’ (The New Scientist,

25/02/1971.) In other words, a plastic which breaks down when exposed to

sunlight. The Daily Mirror, who by July had their own Doomwatch teamconsisting of Kit Pedler and two Daily

Mirror journalists, one of whom wastheir science correspondent, welcomed the advance which Scott hoped would be usable in three years. Well, theeditorial welcomed the news. Kit Pedler

did not. Pedler and Davis’s first novel Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater features

such a material, and solved the problemof how to control the reaction of turninga plastic bottle into powder until it is nolonger needed. However, the plastic eating virus of this book was developed at home by a scientist who is killed by abrain haemorrhage at the point herealises he has made an excitingbreakthrough and as a result, the virusis thrown into a sink during his death

spasm. The virus feeds on the rottingremains of plastic powder from

packaging designed to disintegratewhen exposed to sunlight. This gives thevirus food in the sewers underneath

London, and the gas it produces isexplosive, creating the resultingexciting devastation in the book. Thedescription of carnage on pages 109 to111 could not have been achieved on aDoomwatch budget. Scott’s researchesinspired the plot of the novel althoughPedler later refused to name the mannor his university in an interview withThe Guardian in 1973 promoting the

book’s publication by Pan. According toan earlier Guardian interview in 1971,the original title of the book was TheDeath of Plastic.

You can see an interview withProfessor Gerald Scott, talking to ATV news in November 1970 here:http://www.macearchive.org/archive.ht ml?Title=15290

More from this man later.

Pat has the Minister on the phone.Quist talks to him about the San Pedro

air disaster.

Here we see John Barron playing theMinister. But he is clearly not theavuncular Sir George Holroyd whom

producer Terence Dudley claimed tohave created in You Killed Toby Wrenwhen seeking permission to write Fireand Brimstone. He is more a GeorgeWigg type, an MP under the Wilsonadministration who worked with the

security services and did not engender many feelings of affection, especially from the left of the party.... Thisminister is cold, undemonstrative,

secretive, sly, almost sinister. contained in his movements, almost the completeopposite to how Terence Dudley will write his lookalike in the second and third series. Likewise, characters likeBennett and Symonds speak terse,direct language. The ‘flowerful’ dialogue of Terence Dudley and later,Martin Worth won’t begin to blossomuntil later.

In The World In Danger , Quist knowsthat the Minister only saw the good things from science and did not likeQuist because he has stopped projects.

Colin Bradley, meanwhile is tryingto get the computer to work.

Quist is pressing the Minister hardon any new development of plasticsolvents that he is aware of. DespiteBarker’s assurances, Quist doesn’tbelieve that they are being properly

informed. ‘We cannot functionwithout a full and frank exchange of

information on every new project.’The Minister disagrees. When Quistasks about the Beeston Laboratories the

Minister becomes alarmed and shortensthe call by saying that there is nothingin Beeston that need concern them. The

Minister reflects for a minute andthen dictates a memo onto a

ROBERT POWELLRobert Powell was contracted to

play Toby Wren on the 2nd of October 1969, to appear in aminimum of ten episodes between2nd November that year and the2nd May 1970. His contract – unlikethose of his fellow male artists, did

not feature anoption for asecond series.Like the others,his specialactivity wasto drive a car.The contractspecifies thathe could notappear on anyother non-BBCprogrammetransmittedwithin the

United Kingdom.




Dictaphone about Dr. Quist andDoomwatch: ‘Far too much license hasalready been given to the director. Heand his department must be made toconform to Ministry policy. If not...’

Bradley enters Quist’s office andtells them that the computer is workingagain, it only took four and a half hours. But Quist doesn’t see the point

since they have no information to feedit. ‘We were set up to investigate anyscientific research public or private thatcould possibly be harmful to man. Infact, the government was practically re-elected on this very issue. Now we’re adustbin for every routine job that couldbe shoved on to us. If we do getanything, the essential information iswithheld.’ He had considered resigningbut the Minister would be too eager toaccept and replace him with a robotcivil servant....

And in The World in Danger , that

would be Barker. Practically re-elected? This suggests a third term for the Harold Wilson government which was widely expected to happen later this year. It didn’t happen and Edward Heath’sConservatives beat him in a

surprise result.

By the decade of the 1960s, scientific breakthroughs and advances were still

seen as the way forward but their sideeffects, sometimes lethal, was causingalarm. Despite all the advances in homeconsumables like fridges, washingmachines and the like making lifeeasier, especially for the house wife (nomore mangles, hours in the wash tubsand having to buy fresh food every day)we were also living under the shadow of the nuclear bomb. CND was created inthe 1950s and late 1962

saw the Cuban missileCrisis and the world was perilously closeto its first, possibly last, nuclear exchange. After that things cooled.Harold Wilsonwanted tomodernise Britishindustry which waslagging behind

America and places. Hecreated the Ministry of Technology. ‘The Britain that is going tobe forged in the white heat of technology will be no place for restrictive practises or for outdated methods on either side of industry.’ Hewas referring to unions and industry resistant to change. Government is

pushing. He had a vision of science and technology solving problems. Lots of

people did because it was possible! New vision politics. But by the sixties, peoplewere becoming suspicious. There were

side effects. Waste, poisons, devastated environments... And for what ends?

(‘We’ve grown up,’ declared Gerry Davisin a contemporary interview,) and not

so ready to embrace the revolution.Disasters at Windscale, the side effectsof modern industry, new forms of

pollution competing with the old Victorian problems. Plastic waste is oneof them. And our Minister, has a New Vision.

“Watch out for the technological

appeal. Harold Wilson cooked this oneup and he was a master of political tactics. Technology means the use of

scientific knowledge for practical purposes. That’s a little vague and hard to pin down. So another characteristic of New Vision politics is that it promisesa fresh set of technological toys to solve

problems. New visions never have any sympathy with anybody who wants to sit whittling a piece of wood in the back garden. A new Vision demands a get-out-there-and-do-things outlook...” Brain Walden, himself an ex-Labour MP at this time writes in 2001.

Kit Pedler saw the dangers of our new life style... and saw the need for Doomwatch. To him, a plastic eatingvirus was a technological fix, a toy,which did not address the central issue:do we need as much plastic as we have,or indeed at all?

...A telegram tells Quist that Wrenhas arrived in San Pedro and is on hisway to the scene of the crash. Ridgecoolly suggests breaking into theMinister’s office! Bradley is appalledand Quist doesn’t want to be forced intobecoming some quasi-MI5 in order toget basic information.

In The World In Danger , Ridge wasformerly army intelligence.

Ridge goads him on, asks himwhy he took on this job. Pew in

the house of Lords or an attackof conscience? He points to thethree pictures of a nuclearblast on Quist’s wall. ‘I justwondered how much yourmaths helped to make thatpossible.’ Quist is lost for

words and Bradley tries to getRidge out of his office. Quist

stops him, Ridge is waiting for aconfrontation but instead is told to do

it. Quist is left alone and stares at thepictures.

Two of the three blown up photos of nuclear explosions came from the Bikini Test and the Nagasaki explosion. TheDoomwatch office was designed by either Barry Newbery or Ian Watson, theepisode’s two designers. The episodewas recorded on 30th of November 1969

following a day of camera rehearsals.Newbery would have been about to start a mammoth and stressful sevenepisode stint on Doctor Who and theSilurians which started filming earlier in

THE DAILY EXPRESS 10th February 1970

'DON'T PREACHDOOM AT ME!'

TV by James Thomas

I don't think I would have chosen

'Doomwatch' as a title likely to gladden the

hearts of Monday viewers.

And, however seriously the BBC may pretend

to take its message, for me it was just a new

kind of romp which is probably going to be a

secure successor to 'Quatermass.'

WAYLAID

'Doomwatch' is the code name of a

department set up to stop the population

coming to harm from the activities of the

scientists (it seems a little late off the mark), an

idea born from the conversations of the original

script editor of 'Dr. Who' (Gerry Davis (sic)) and

anatomist Dr. Kit Pedler.

Between them they decided that the very

progress man was making in research was in

danger of rebounding. And so was created Dr.

Quist (John Paul) and his off-beat team.

Their first episode spent so much time setting

up the characters that the story seemed to get

rather waylaid.

Its theme was about Variant 14, a top secret

formula designed to destroy plastic waste.

But nobody realises its massive danger

potential until it is accidentally carried out of

the plant and plastics begin to melt in such

unfortunate places as airplanes which end up in

disaster.

FANTASY

A highly improbable story despite the eager

performances, and one which veered towards

the ridiculous.

Last night, one of the senior officers of the

department actually had to break into the

government laboratories to find out what was

going on – and there seems no point in

Whitehall taking the trouble to keep a curb on

the scientists if the very investigators they

employ are denied access to secret information.

For myself, I like science fiction kept strictly

in its place as fun and fantasy. 'Doomwatch'

tends to preach too much about the danger of

man's inquiring mind. As an idea I feel it will

take a lot of sustaining.

It is only fair to let the series develop its

motives. But on this showing it looks as though

we shall not have the excitement of being either

frightened or informed.

THE DAILY MIRROR 9th February 1970

THE PERILSOF WENDY

Wendy Hall stars in a TV version of the Perils

of Pauline in a new thriller series, 'Doomwatch',

starting tonight (BBC 1, 9.40)

The perils she faces are caused by man's

scientific progress.

Wendy plays Pat Hunnisett, Girl Friday to a

Government department team whose job is to

ensure that man does not destroy civilisation

with his own ingenuity. Irresponsible factoryfarming, pollution, atomic waste disposal. These

are some of the evils they will investigate.

Tonight's episode is called... 'The Plastic

Eaters.'




November with recording in studio inDecember . Ian Watson will designTerror of the Autons , another Doctor Who serial featuring a plastic menace...But first he had another five episodes of Doomwatch to get through.

Ridge is shown to the Minister’soffice by a helpful commissioner andRidge pretends that Miss Wills, the

Minister’s secretary is already there.Alone in the office, Ridge makes awarning signal to be alerted to any visitors and runs through drawers andfiling cabinets before entering theMinister’s office. He is alerted tosomeone entering the office and isnearly caught in the act by Miss Willsas he is trying to close a stuck drawer.With a diversion from a painting anda spot of flirting he pretends heis returning some files for theMinister. Ridge smashes a vase behind her back andpretends he is a clumsy

man, offering to help theannoyed, but secretlyamused Miss Wills to clearup the mess. She tells himto wait in the outer office.With the file, he needs toreplace the fake one he brought intothe office. Ridge takes some miniaturepictures of the appropriate document.

“Battle was joined, not only tocontain the danger but to smashthrough bureaucratic departmental

secrecy, through the unorthodoxy of adepartment such as Doomwatch doestake a bit of swallowing.” Stewart Lane, The Morning Star,14th February 1970.

This is Miss Wills' first of two appearances onDoomwatch although

Jennifer Wilson will alsoappear in the third seasonepisode Cause of Death ,reuniting with John Lee. Shewill play Ridge's sister, whichmakes these scenes highly interesting in hindsight... Her christian name incidentally, is Alice.

Jennifer Wilson made irregular appearances in the first incarnation of Special Branch transmitted at this timeas Detective Sergeant Helen Webb. Sheis still working on stage and TV and ismarried to actor Brian Peck who playsDoctor Fulton in the third seasonepisode Without The Bomb. Of ThePlastic Eaters , Jennifer remembers how much fun Doomwatch always was, and that even from this early episode,Robert Powell had no intention of doinganother series...

Christopher Hodge is theCommissionaire. He was lucky to avoid the editor's scissors. This scene, and indeed set, and the next few shots of Ridge entering the Minister's offices

were allocated for cutting if the episode over-ran its forty

nine minute length. Had thishappened, the scene would have

picked up from Miss Wills entering theoffice and then discovering Ridge in her boss's room.

Quist studies the document in theoffice later on. There is work going ondown at Beeston on plastic solvents,but it seems to be a biologicalmechanism rather than a chemical onebecause that is what Beeston does, it is

a purely microbiological researchstation. They call it Variant 14.

But what the devil couldit be?

Wren meanwhile is inside theremains of the crashed fuselage of theSan Pedro flight. He finds moreexamples of wiring stripped of itsinsulation and places it in a plastic baginside a metal container.

Robert Powell filmed this scene oneither the 4th or 5th of November 1969.He stayed overnight at Bishop’sStortford where he travelled to and from by train. 16mm film stock wasused in this story. Bishop’s Stortford isclose to Stanstead Airport, which becameLondon’s third airport later that decade.

They can’t confront the Ministerwith their information without




revealing how they got it, Ridgeagrees, and not very seriously suggestsbreaking into Beeston. This time Quistlikes the idea, but Ridge doesn’t agree!‘That’s a germ warfare establishment!’‘With your training Beeston should be apush over.’ They need a sample of theVariant 14. And if Ridge is found,Doomwatch will disclaim anyresponsibility!

With appropriate equipment and arather unwise all black outfit, Ridgebreaks through the wire fencing of Beeston with ease.

Even though it’s broad daylight,Ridge is in all black. Whether somenight filming was intended is not known. It beggars the question what

sort of security does this establishment

have? This was filmed onthe 3rd of November, again at Bishop’s Stortford.

Inside a well equipped lab, JimBennett is supervising a test. Aprotected assistant is trying to remove asample from an inspection hatch andnearly drops it. Bennett comes over tohelp her and isn’t impressed.

Sexism alert! Doomwatch will becriticised by George Melly in TheGuardian for being sexist by having at least two women being responsible

inadvertently for the problems inTomorrow, the Rat and Project Saharabecause of their emotions getting in theway. And here it is - a female labassistant (June Hammond) who fumbles

with the flask of – presumably – Variant 14! And Miss Wills doesn't escapeuntarnished neither.

Ridge enters the lab and quicklydons a white coat. Ridge has done hisresearch. He goes over to Jim Bennettand pretends to know him from school,and that the Minister has sent himdown. ‘In connection with the

Dungeness test?’ Bennett is suspiciousand asks for his D14. Ridge bluffs thatHal Symonds, the director, obviouslyhasn’t written it yet. Bennett goes off tocheck, leaving Ridge enough time, andunnoticed by the other lab assistants toacquire a test tube of somethingand put it in his top pocket.

Michael Hawkins will play Beavis in the 1972

episode Hair Trigger , one of the triumphs in that season.

As he leaves the multi-levelled set to fetch Symonds, notice

how wobbly the book shelves next to the door are! The three lab assistantsare Bob E. Raymond, John de Marco and Bill Lodge.

Quist is in the computer lab,determined to find a link betweenBeeston and the aircraft crash. AsBradley goes over the list of names of passenger and crew, the name of astewardess Wills alerts Quist to a

connection with Miss Wills, theMinister’s secretary!

Symonds is brought into the lab anddoes not recognise Ridge who pretends

he is from the Sunday Gazette. Bennettis shocked. A lab coated man, Jones,takes Ridge, none too gently outside.Symonds wonders who he really is. Hephones the main gate and asks them tophotograph Ridge and do a thoroughsecurity check on him.

Kevin Stoney makes his only Doomwatch appearance in this episode.

However, he did appear in the Kit Pedler sourced Doctor Who story The Invasionas Tobias Vaughn. Jones is played by Brian Gidley whose height the camera

script conveniently lists as 6' 1”.

The Daily Express thought this idea was ludicrous. ‘...there

seems no point in Whitehall taking the trouble to keep acurb on scientists if the very

investigators they employ are denied access to secret information.’ Which wasthe whole bloody point! In The World InDanger, the Minister stresses to Quist that Doomwatch is a small department and if it needs information, it will begiven it. The Minister does not want the Dungeness test stopped or interfered with.

The results lead Symonds to theMinister’s office who disclaims anyauthorisation from him over Ridge’sbreaking and entering. He tellsSymonds about Quist. ‘He heads a

special investigation department, he’ssomewhat unorthodox.’ The Ministerdid not make the appointment either.He tells Symonds of the exaggeratedpublicity over Quist’s appointment. You


“There is no

longer any need

for thriller writers

to invent a

menace from

Mars. Horror ishere and now and

in newspaper

clippings.”

Nancy Banks-Smith

The Guardian



can’t remove a man like that. TheMinister wants the sample of Variant 14returned his way. He won’t allowthere to be any interference on theDungeness test.

It was the Prime Minister whoappointed Quist, something that he will use to his advantage during Project Sahara. Hardly surprisingly we never

see the PM during the series but he isbriefly mentioned in Flight IntoYesterday and Flood.

Ridge is worried, they have had timeto trace him. Pat Hunnisett offers tosend his effects to Pentoville! Quist isstudying the results of their tests of four trails on Variant 14 with Bradley.Quist has worked on the assumption of how the variant would react in anordinary environment. It would spreadlike a plague, from plastic to plastic likefood, growing exponentially. ‘It wouldgo through a city like a bush fire,’ Quisttells Pat. It could go through London intwelve hours! Quist and Brad explain

that it has been developed to rid thecountry of plastic waste. Quist knowsthat they must be planning a field testwhich leads to Ridge remembering whatBennett told him about Dungeness.

‘Have they got all this data?Do they know a way of limiting its growth?’ Patthought that surely they wouldwouldn’t do a test withoutknowing it’s safe. ‘Put a scientist underpolitical pressure, and he’ll do anythingyou like, he’ll even justify it... I know!’

Pat Hunnisett is presented as the person who asks the boffins all thequestions that we need answered. But

did she have to be presented in such anobviously brain dead, dolly manner? Nowonder Wendy Hall was keen to find abetter role as much as Robert Powell did not want to be tied down!

Quist is not ready to facethe Minister, who according

to Pat, is hopping mad. Theyneed more data to prove it

brought down the first plane. Acable has arrived from Wren: he is onFlight 272 from San Pedro with a bit of the crashed air craft on-board in hisbrief case. If that plane returns back tothe airport and if the virus is out, itcould infect the whole world... To divertthe plane to a West country RAF field,they first need to convince the Minister.

The idea of a plastic eating viruswas certainly one which peopleremembered as quintessentially Doomwatch. It was often used as anexample of how the third series and its concepts paled in comparison by readers and writers of The New Scientist. Raymond Williams mentioned the episode in his review of that month's television for The Listener: 'InDoomwatch I liked the emphasis on

social responsibility in science and that suspicion of secret research which

is now becoming habitual.

But I remained puzzled that a viruscould consume plastics...' He would repeat this complaint the next time he


“A highly

improbable

story despitethe eager

performances

and one which

veered towards

the ridiculous.”

James Thomas

The Daily Express

Pedler and Davis wantedDoomwatch to be farmore hard hitting than

the BBC would allow them tobe. Their original formatshows how the Doomwatchteam was envisaged to be

more of a secretive, trouble-shooting agency, with a supercomputer (a tool Pedler would later see as essential for areal-life Doomwatch)constantly under attack from the establishment.



talks about Doomwatch, and in moredetail: The Red Sky.

Wren is making notes on board,opens the metal box and takes out hisplastic wrapped sample. He holds acoffee tray with a hand whilst astewardess pours in coffee.

The Minister summons Quist and

tells him to bring Ridge. Quist feels thiswould be useful: whilst he works on theMinister, Ridge can work on Miss Wills.‘He’ll do that alright,’ says Pat as sheleaves. ‘It’s our last card. If appeals fail,we may have to use it.’

Unnoticed, Wren’s plastic bag ismelting, dripping down inside his brief case. Wren returns to his seat andhands over his tray to a passingstewardess who is asked by an elderlypassenger if they are running toschedule...

Every airplane disaster movie has at least one elderly passenger goingberserk and The Plastic Eaters is noexception. Here, he is played by AndreasMalandrinos. The Visual Effects were

provided by Peter Day.

Quist is introduced to Symonds by acold Minister. Ridge is introduced andsent to wait in the outer office. Quistbegins. He has evidence of a disasterthat could have been averted hadproper care been exercised.

The Daily Express felt that they werebeing preached at. They only reviewed Doomwatch again (as far as we can tell)when No Room For Error was aired to

see what the new girl was like! Perhaps

Rapidly becoming a disillusionedresearch scientist himself, and re-evaluating his own life (in creating

the Cybermen, Pedler feared that inhimself he was all intellect and no love),Pedler saw Doomwatch as a weaponagainst all that he loathed in science. Hehad attended enough seminars,conferences, etc and talked to enoughpeople from different disciplines to seethat the human condition getting worserather than better, Science andtechnology, rather than liberatingpeople, was enslaving it further, as atool of commerce and politics. He alsowanted to write science fiction. Sciencefiction was a way of expressing his fearsand anxieties. He was a man of contradictions, and at this point in hislife, he was beginning to formulate away of living that he would one dayembrace, and would soon start toexplain in lectures and talks, but not yetpractise himself. Back to 1969, and hehad a message to give.

Pedler was certainly not a brilliantwriter of fiction, and needed thesupport from his friend Gerry Davis.Davis had enough experience in writing,but their joint approach was moredirect, less subtle and frankly morerefreshing than the rather stodgy affairBBC drama could produce at this time. Itveered more towards adventure, andaway from the over the desk debatesfavoured by more conventional writers.They wanted to shock the audience and

frighten them with what they could see,not by a clever, nuanced line. But theBBC probably feared anothercontentious series like Adam AdamantLives! or Counterstrike, an attempt at anITC adventure series on 625 linevideotape. They probably also fearedmurmurings of discontent from theirdrawing room drama loving peers...

But Terence Dudley did supportDoomwatch, and what it stood for, buthe wanted it rooted in reality, andprobably quite rightly too.

"Entre nous, Pedler is brilliant in hisfield but doesn't understand (or choosenot to understand) the nature of theCivil Servant Animal and consequently

underestimated the 'Doomwatch'opposition. The characterisation in histwo direct contributions (with Gerry)needs to be much tougher minded anda good deal more sophisticated." Memofrom Terence Dudley to Head of Seriesand Serials. 26th June 1969. Dudleyexplained further in a series of interviews he gave to Doctor Who fanAnthony Howe, finally published in theTelos book Talkback: 'We quarrelled over the over-simplification that Kit particularly wanted in thecharacterisation of Doomwatch'sopposition. I felt that it was tootendentious – and too like propaganda,actually, to be dramatically viable.... Hewas so obsessive about the 'message' of the series that he was convinced all thevillains should be despised as fools or rogues, and I felt that to fall in with thisview would depreciate the format.'

Doomwatch was to be a civil servicemachine, albeit an unconventional one.It would have offices in an office block,not a disused church. Dudley won thatfight for plausibility, and fought forrewrites when he felt they were needed.Pedler and Davis wrote all the storylinesfor the first series together, an idea thatDudley supported in the hope of getting scientific accuracy in the scripts.Dudley wasn't afraid to reject storylineshe felt were too fanciful, and towardsthe formation of the second series,rejected those he thought were moresuitable for Doctor Who. Gerry Davis

went ahead and commissioned some of those storylines into scripts anyway.Dudley asked for his head of department to arbitrate on matters of quality and won his support. Dudleythen withdrew the right for the pair towrite the storylines and Pedler becamesimply a reader of scripts and Davisasked to be moved to anotherprogramme. The programme, underDudley's control, moved further andfurther away from science fiction andthe final expression of that was 'PublicEnemy,' an episode the BBC very muchapproved of. 'It is what Doomwatch is all

about,' said the Head of Series. The BBChad claimed Doomwatch for itself. Butthe resulting unpleasantness is foranother time...


TROUBLE AT’ MILL...



they were disappointed that the star of the series was not Wendy Hall ‘guaranteed to brighten up any environment!’ as their preview of the series suggested...

Ridge congratulates Miss Wills onher perfect self composure.... She ispuzzled by him, he has been sitting ona desk staring at her in a very

penetrating manner. ‘I think, that if I

were in your shoes, I would feel theslightest twinge of compunction... If I’dbeen responsible for the deaths of somethirty five people ... including myown cousin.’ This gets throughto Miss Wills. Janet Wills, theair hostess on British Latinoairlines. He shows herpictures of the crash butshe can’t bear to look at it,he tells her about themelted insulation, that shehad been to Beeston Monday,and the plane crashed onTuesday. Confused and upset, sherefuses to help. Ridge tells her that as adirect result of her action there isanother plane in danger. Miss Willsfinally co-operates, pressurised byRidge into remembering when she lastsaw her cousin, owed her money, wroteher a cheque, with a pen, her pen.Ridge forces her to remember wherethe pen is.

In traditional, first seriesDoomwatch, we have a trail for our three scientific detectives to follow and our fourth journeyman detective

is in the thick of it! Like in The Devil’sSweets , assumptions are made toadvance the plot: Quist is convinced that the melted wires was created artificially and by somethingoriginating in this country because of our acute plastic waste problem. Not being allowed access to Beeston adds tohis hypothesis. And so on. What a good

job Miss Wills’ cousin hadn’t married...

That gave them the link from Beeston tothe Minister’s Office and to the doomed flight. And it is the Minister who secretly used a nice bit of modern technology,the Dictaphone, in a restricted area whowas responsible. Why on earth did MissWills continue working for this man? She is still name checked in the third

season!

An air hostess is surprisedto see a plastic cup hasmelted, and its contents allover the tray previouslyused by Wren. As she clears

up, placing a contaminatedhand on a table, a telegramhas arrived for Toby. He issoon to be appalled by itscontents and looks at his briefcase

in horror.

Has he only just noticed the mess inside it??? A boommike briefly comes into shot at the top right hand corner of the screen as Wren ishanded the telegram. This

would not be noticed on aVHS video played on an

ordinary TV.

Both the Minister and Symondsfinds Quist’s evidence inconclusive.‘Purely circumstantial.’ Variant 14 couldbe the cause but Symonds won’t admitto it, making Quist angry. Quist hassome new data from one of his owntests.

Miss Wills find the penshe used at Beeston – andat the airport where shemet her doomed cousin –in her handbag. Takingthe metal lid off it, shefinds the plastic tube has

softened... Ridge re-enters the room andtells her not to move and not to touchanything.

“We were also treated to atense moment of the don’t

move – there’s – a –tarantula – on – your – sleeve variety, this timeusing a contaminated

plastic pen picked upinadvertently by one of the

characters, and I really could not see why it was such a

dramatic moment to reveal that it was the Minister himself who had transmitted the substance to the plane.They were not suggesting he had done it on purpose, so it was no more than ared herring.” The Stage, John Lawrencewho rather misses the point that it wasthe Minister’s secret recording that had inadvertently caused the crash.

Toby Wren shows the Captain in theflight deck the telegram. ‘What are wesupposed to do about it?’ The Captainneeds more evidence.

Playing First Pilot is John Lee, afamiliar face on television in the sixtiesand seventies. This was his first of threeroles in Doomwatch. He would later

play a Scandinavian in The Web of Fear and the doctor who favours euthanasiain Cause of Death. Eric Corrie is theSecond Co-Pilot and Edward Dentith isthe Second Engineer.

He soon gets it: a plastic handle bagbetween two passengers has melted andone of the women adjusts the airconditioning thinking it must be atfault...




The second set of passengers whohave lines to say or direction to take,are Mike Lewin, Pat Beckett, TobaLaurence, Cynthia Bizeray, Peter Thompson, Michael Earl and Tony Haydon. The camera script lists Elsie

Arnold and Ned Hood as passengers onthe second plane.

Quist tells the Minister that another

plane is in danger over the Atlantic.The Minister is pleased that Symondsdismisses it as rubbish. The Ministerwill allow Quist to examine the planeafter it has landed. That’s his finalword. Suddenly Ridge enters holding ametal tray containing the melted plasticof the pen. ‘Exhibit A. The missing linkbetween Beeston, and the crash andyour staff.’ Symonds cannot deny thatthis isn’t Variant 14. Miss Simms isbeing taken care of according to Ridge.Symonds cannot understand. Theirisolation procedures are 100% effective.‘But exceptions are apt to be lethal,’

says Quist. Now does he havepermission to isolate the airport? ‘Indifferent circumstances I would regardthis as blackmail...’ The Minister is alsoannoyed that the Doomwatch officeshave phoned him on his private line totalk to Quist! It is Bradley. The virushas got out on board the San Pedroflight... Quist asks Symonds to getdown to Cornwall, where Brad wasearlier dispatched to, with as many of his Beeston staff ready for the plane.The Minister quietly agrees and asksQuist to stay behind. There is a greatdeal to discuss. Quist wants to knowabout the Dungeness test...

There are no lectures about the evilsof plastics waste. We don’t need it. The

problem is how to dispose of it, and how a method which has been developed isnot safe enough yet to be used, but theNew Vision of political pressure isforcing through an early test. Theredoesn’t need to be a lecture because theepisode demonstrates our reliance onan artificial material and how another artificial product can destroy it. A

second or third season episode would have had debates about landfills,

pollution and strangled swans. The fear expressed in this episode, is of a leak...

Roger Lewin, writing in theNew Scientist summed up the

problem of tackling plastic waste‘A good deal of useful scientific work could be done on devising ways of recycling plastic waste: this makes good economic sense.. The whole area of

plastic litter is a mass of scientific,technological, social and economic

problems. It is important to identify inthis morass what the real problem is,

and then solve that. Leaping to tackle achallenging scientific problem just because it exists should be avoided...’

And that’s the point of the episode. It could go wrong.

Pedler would, in the words of The New Review in 1975, tick us off for an over-reliance on plastic in hisdocumentary Choices For Tomorrow.‘More could be made of natural materials like wood.’

The Captain broadcasts to hispassengers for them to stay in theirseats. But the PA packs up. The plasticbag is now almost totally dissolved,ugly orange liquid has spread down thegang way. The Captain had been tryingto tell the passengers that they wouldbe landing in the RAF Station StMorgan in Cornwall. There’s afault in the main power pack aswell. The automatic pilot hasalso gone... Wren watchesfrom a corner.

For plastic, read iron.The Victorians and Edwardians had fears of how

society would cope if this staple metal rusted away tooquickly.

The Minister assures Quist that anynews will be relayed to them. Quistknows: he’s arranged it. Infuriated byhis taking over, the Minister decides to

launch an exhaustive inquiry into theactivities of Quist and his staff and thatas director, he is suspended!

In The World In Danger, Barker is put

in charge of Doomwatch... Ridge hasMiss Wills taken back to the Doomwatchlab to decontaminate her.

By now, the plane is being escortedby an RAF jet but they cannot hear him.They must have been sent to take themdown which is good because theCaptain has no idea where they are.

The film of the fighter was takenfrom the Royal Air Force, silent 16mmfilm, nine feet in length!

The Minister tells Quist that MissWills can’t be responsible for

spreading the virus. She wentto Beeston with the Ministerbut she did not enter thebiological laboratory.

An elderly passengeris beginning to lose his

nerve as another PAannouncement on a different

route is made. He wants to seethe Captain... He had been sitting

opposite Toby Wren. They both watchas melting plastic oozes from the ceilingand the cabin wall...

Discussing the barriers facing plastic

disposal, Doctor Roger Lewin in the New Scientist edition dated 25th of February 1971, he notes: ‘Doomwatch fans

should note that no plans were made tocultivate bacteria with a penchant for




devouring plastics...’ Oh really? Professor David Hughes of Cardiff University was reported in The Daily Express (7 th of June 1971), of making abio-degradable plastic – one that isvulnerable to bacteria in the same way

paper and wood is. The paper described it as one of the most controversial ideasever thought of to Keep Britain Tidy. ‘Anarmy of little germs gobbling up oil

slicks and cast off cans and boxes madeof plastic.’ He stressed that though his

present research is not directed at turning out test tube germs toget rid of waste, “in the longterm it is on...”‘ Hughesexplained: ‘What we do is

sink the slicks by spreading something like ash onthem. In the ash we put food for the bacteria likenitrogen and phosphate. Wefeed them up and make themmultiply and they eat the oil.There is no danger that they could overfeed and go on to attack other forms of marine life.’ He knew it was atouchy subject. ‘Some firms areabsolutely wild. But I must stress no oneis tampering with nature.’ Professor Gerald Scott was asked to comment. ‘Avery dangerous development,’ he isreported to have said. ‘The prospect hasthe sort of ‘Doomwatch’ implicationsthat are frankly frightening. Somedistinguished men feel it is toodangerous even to contemplate.’

The pilot and second pilot arestruggling to control the plane. ‘It’sgoing to be a bumpy landing...’ jokesWren but it is not appreciated.

The striking image used on the cover of the Radio Times to promote theepisode would later be reused as thecover to the 1973 edition of the novel

based on the ideas. It was taken by Julian Cottrell. The photographaccompanying the listing wasapparently part of a photo call for thecast taken at Kit Pedler’s own lab at London University.

This time, a window blind hasmelted. A plastic rain coat in thepassenger rack is dissolving. Theelderly passenger panics and forces hisway onto the flight deck but Wren

pushes him out, and stops theflight engineer from touching

the door. They watch as itstarts to ooze... Unnoticedby the second pilot,complaining about themurk.

An oxygen maskdescends, dripping wet all

over a passenger.

To add to the impact, it looks as if avideo disc was used during therecording to slow down some of theooze effects and add to impact. Videodiscs were used by the sportsdepartment for action replays and drama sometimes had to beg, borrow or

steal the facility for their dramas. It could slow down or speed up action asrequired, something normally done onfilm.

‘It looked very nice too. Like adripping multi coloured ice cream cone.’ The Daily Sketch, Gerald Garrett. 9th of February 1970. So he had a colour television set, did he? Most of the rest of the country would have seen this in

black and white, and not necessarily asa 625 line picture, but a fuzzy 405.

The Captain needs all hisconcentration now they are close to

Cornwall and tells a nervous Wren,trying to crack a joke, to shut up.

These scenes were also recorded onthe Friday. The Saturday was taken upwith camera rehearsals for thefollowing day's scenes which took up all the non-airplane stuff. The extras for the labs were booked for these later days. The third studio day over-ran,

which meant overtime payments for thecast and crew! A photo call was held today although the pictures in theRadio Times seem to come from theearlier session in Dr. Pedler's lab withhis precious electron microscope.Robert Powell was also paid for overtime on November 22nd,

presumably during rehearsals. He isalso listed as being paid overtime oncamera rehearsals day and performed in a pre-recorded insert.

Quist watches the Minister finishinga memo on his Dictaphone. This gives

Quist an idea. He asks to speak to MissWills. The Minister sees his drift asQuist questions her about the cassettesused... Is there one labelled Beeston?The Minister nods and Miss Willsconfirms this. She goes to fetch it, asthe Minister, trying to cover up hisfeelings of nerves, tries to explain thatthey are strictly confidential and hisresponsibility. He refuses to open themetal container. Quist picks up the caseand notices a smell. Inside is acongealed mess of tape which Quistholds up with a metal spike. ‘You tookthis to Beeston,’ he tells the numbMinister. ‘It was concealed, wasn’t it?’

Quist will visit Beeston as mentioned in a throwaway line during Re-Entry Forbidden.

The co-pilot spots Newquay and thepilot prepares to bring them down.

At the RAF station, ambulances andthe fire brigade rush out to prepare forthe landing.

As the plane begins a 360 degreemanoeuvre to reduce height, a sectionof the plastic overhead units collapsesonto the passengers. Passengers usetheir coats to try and block the hole.




Wren is told to go back into thecabin and tell the passengers that theyare going straight in. The Captain ishaving to be directed visually by his co-pilot. Wren is reluctant and as he pullsopen the curtain, sees the depressedand anxious passengers, terrified of their ordeal – and the virtual plasticrain around him.

‘I could have wished that last night’s episode was a serial so that theenzyme could continue its rampage.Decomposing and liquefying television

sets and telephones and typewritersand washing up bowls. I can think of nothing plastic I possessed which I could not cheerfully live without.’ Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian.

The three flight crew with theirremaining working instruments preparefor their emergency landing. TheCaptain notices the receptioncommittee of ambulances and fireengines racing to meet them as theytouch down and bring the plane to a juddering halt. They have made it. Nowthey sit tight.

There is a fire on the runway, whichthe fire brigade using foam quicklyextinguishes. The plane is covered inthe stuff. Two suited men climb up aladder to get into the plane.

The set piece of the episode is theforced landing at the end, althoughwhere all those flames come from,

someone tell me. Was it the burningtyres, if so why are there flames in front of the plane? Never mind, that foam

stuff looks gorgeous, strangely erotic.Yes, I said erotic. I also love the fact that an ambulance will park where a man

puts a sign for it. Very English.Presumably the majority of the firefighters in this scene are not extras but the real thing in a practice drill? The filmwas edited by Alastair MacKay. The filmeffort on this serial was transferred tovideotape after the recording of Friday's Child , by the same director. It

was scheduled to take place after 10:00pm for half an hour.

One can only imagine that followinga fatal crash followed swiftly by a crash

landing, British Latino Airlines went out of business rather rapidly through nofault of their own! Quist would havekept good to his word and maintained

silence on the matter, but what of the passengers telling their tale of amelting aircraft? Were the infamous D-notices slapped around Fleet Street advising the press to remain quiet onthe matter? Did the airline sue the

government? Were they paid off?

The passengers on an infected planein Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater were not

so fortunate... Still, it meant that aromantic sub-plot could reach fruitionnow that an irritating husband wasremoved.

“The production lacked tensionthroughout. I would not have thought it

possible that a plane fighting to land before it crashes could be shownbattling its way down without communicating any feelings of

excitement or suspense whatsoever, but between them, the writers Kit Pedler (sic) and Gerry Davis, and the director Paul Ciappessoni managed it. “ TheStage, John Lawrence.

Director Paul Ciappessoni was a prolific series director for the BBC withcredits stretching back to episodes of Dr. Finlay’s Casebook in 1965. He would go on to direct another two episodes of the first series, Friday’s Child and Re-Entry Forbidden. He only recently died.

The safe landing is relayed to theMinister who tells Quist. All alive. TheMinister regrets this terrible tragedy, hecouldn’t have been properly briefed.

Quist has checked and he was. Andthey can expect the same thing again atDungeness? ‘The people aren’t ready forthis test. The proof is there. And youwere the carrier.’ Quist knows it wouldbe grossly unfair to blame the Ministerdirectly but he doesn’t think the pressor the opposition would think so... ‘Thefacts are there. People have died. Themud will stick.’ The test will be

deferred. And Doomwatch? There willbe no need for another Beeston affair if Quist’s department is kept properlyinformed... Quist gets up and leaves.‘Good day, Minister.’

As an introductory episode, I can’t think of many examples that sets up the

premise of the series and its charactersin as satisfactory a manner. We learnwhat we need to know of Quist – his

passion, his frustration with being kept at arms length from inconvenient factshe may need to know in order to fulfil his function; his guilt and involvement

with the creation of the atomic bomb;his nobel prize, and popularity with the

press and public. Like a hound dog hecannot leave the trail alone once he’scaught its scent. He goes ahead and ruffles more than a few feathers. It’salmost as if he has nothing to lose.

The Minister, at this point, is anenemy he has made. However, withlater ministers, they will understand each other better.

The World In Danger: The Minister was thoughtful. Again, Doomwatch had

saved lives. Their careful watch wasnecessary, he knew. But Quist was avery difficult man...


“It is rather like a

Doctor Who for

adults which is not

surprising since theauthors, Kit Pedler,

a professional

scientist and Gerry

Davis, both worked

on the children’s

programme.”

Sylvia Clayton

The Daily Telegraph



Doomwatch struck a chord note not only with nine million viewers but alsoThe Daily Mirror. A month after the series finished, the soft left paper began theirown Doomwatch style investigations, with help from a certain Mr. Pedler... Bycontrast, the Daily Express would ignore the Doomwatch phenomenon as best itcould and it would be a further year before the latest new buzzword in theEnglish language began to make regular appearances in their vocabulary and theystarted to cash in upon the growing concern over the environment and themenace of unchecked science...

On the 22nd of June, the Daily Mirror launched its Doomwatch Mirror Team.'It's object,' declared the leader, 'to probe and crusade against the dangers that

threaten the world around you. Many people in Britain fear the effects of scientific progress. Technology is all very well - but what are the scientists doingto YOUR lives?' The team comprised of Kit Pedler 'a distinguished doctor andscientist and runs a research team at London University.' Mirror Science EditorRonald Bedford and writer Michael Hellicar made up the rest of the team. TheMirror declared: 'Now they are waiting to hear from YOU about the things thatworry you - from aircraft noise to insecticides, from the state of your breakfastkipper to the state of your local river. In fact anything, however trivial orbaffling, that disturbs you about the conditions of your daily life.

CALL IN DOOMWATCH! THEY ARE READY FOR ACTION!'And the paper had a case already lined up and not only did it

seem to be trivial, it was also nice and scintillating for a tabloidreadership!

'FIRST ASSIGNMENT: THE CASE OF THE TATTERED TIGHTS...There was a picture of a lady in just her tights to remind you of

what they looked like... A case for Doctor John Ridge, certainly...It transpired that there was a mysterious blight afflicting tight

wearers three hundred miles apart, in Erith in Kent, and at Barrow inFurness. Could the villain of the piece be the British Oil and CokeMills upon whose sports ground lady golfers were finding theirnylons melting, especially when the wind blows from the west -where another one of four industrial plants can be found...? Whilstscientists from the Greater London Council's Environmental Sciences

Group studied the Erith sunbathers' tights, Pedler performed someexperiments on the stockings from Barrow, and found that the areasexposed to the air - between the skirt hemline and above the shoes -were certainly marked.

After ruling out cigarette ash fall or spills from alcoholic drinks, Pedlerapplied strong acids. Only this reproduced the problem. In both cases, acid was toblame, tiny microscopic particles of the stuff, probably discharged from factorychimneys. The GLC scientist Mr Daniels concluded that they came from a factoryboiler burning oil which contained too much sulphur or a chemical processdischarging acid fumes or a factory boiler with an unsuitable chimney. "I have anuneasy feeling that this is a concentrated sample of what is going on fairlygenerally... I think that the smuts are too small to be dangerous to health but it isnevertheless wrong that we have to live with little drops of acid in the air.' A

spokesman from British Cellophane in Barrow, one of the suspected factories,denied responsibility. The acid smuts come from oil fired boilers, not the burnersthey use. 'We are taking steps to reduce any pollution for which we areresponsible,.'

Under a year later, a factory in Doomwatch land would be under a similarspotlight from Quist, but melting tights were the least of their problems...

Ten days later, on the 2nd of July, under the banner DOOMWATCH: WHAT ISWORRYING YOU? the paper reported that the concerns of readers stretched fromwhat are they doing to our bread to what are pesticides on our food doing to ourinsides? Why do birds no longer sing in certain places in the countryside? Veryvalid questions. The issue of bread was one Pedler would talks about in depth inThe Quest For Gaia, especially the high technological process of making whitebread, which seemed to be designed to take out what is actually good about thatstaple food! Another rather traditional worry or paranoia for the time was how

much radiation does a colour television screen emit? The answer: not as much asthe luminous dial on your watch.

This weeks case was the mystery of the dying plants. One side of Mr Pelling'sgarden in Sutton, Surrey, died overnight. What killed off his marigolds, geraniumsand roses? Kit Pedler sent samples to plant pathologists at London Universitywhere they concluded that one plant died through natural causes but the othershad been poisoned by a weed killer. Mr Pelling suspected someone outside hisgarden was responsible. He was relieved that there was nothing sinister in thesoil...

Dr. Pedler's services were not in evidence until the end of the month. In themeantime, two days later, the word Doomwatch was used to headline a storyabout a rather invasive new plant called the Giant Hogweed that was creatingextreme allergic reactions amongst people who came into contact with it. Seeds

from this foreign plant apparently escaped from Kew Gardens where it had beenbrought in as a novelty. Kew scientists said that it was only dangerous whenhandled in direct sunlight. Recent hot weather had helped the Hogweed tobecome more noticeable this year. On the 14th of July, the Mirror's Doomwatchteam got involved on the day a debate was due to be held in the House of Lordsupon the subject. They asked ten questions... And that was it. However, in acomment piece, the Mirror welcomed news of a Professor Gerald Scott of AstonUniversity in Birmingham who was developing a process of reducing plastic to a

disposable powder, an idea Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis would expandupon in Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater novel. The Doomwatch teamwas very interested in plastics, they related.

After a scare story about pollution threatening the Loch Nessmonster, and a far more interesting story concerning the setting upof an international watchdog by young scientists, Pedler was calledin to comment on a new scare, this time super mice. If cannibal ratsweren't enough to deal with, now there were nests of mice becomingimmune to Warfarin, which has been used by the Ministry of Agriculture and local authorities for more than twenty five years.This was a horrible poison that caused death by internal bleedingover a ten day period. The Ministry was quoted as saying that themice were far more widespread and more of a problem than thesuper rats which bred mainly around Welshpool, Carmarthen andparts of Kent and Scotland. Cases of super rats were now being

reported in Hull, Suffolk, the Isle of Wight, the Cotswold's and theWest Midlands. One official from Rentokill stated: 'Once theWarfarin resistant rats get into the towns no one can stop them.' Theuse of stronger poisons posed risks not only to pets and live stock,

DOOMWATCH investigations in The Daily Mirror

CALL IN DOOMWATCH! TH

FIRST

ASSIGNMENT:CASE OF THETATTERED

TIGHTS

mwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch...





but also creates 'bait shyness.' If a rat or mouse drops dead after taking the bait,the others are not so keen to follow... And here, six months after Tomorrow, theRat, is Dr Kit Pedler, chief scientific adviser to the Mirror Doomwatch teamreporting:

'The answer is to find a new wonder-killer but everyone from the Ministry toprivate drug firms and local councils so farfailed.

But something MUST be done. Cases of leptospirosis, a potentially fatal disease

spread by rodents nearly trebled between1968 and 1969.

In the meantime, rats and mice,which already outnumber us by two toone, are increasing steadily, at a roughannual cost to the nation of £1 a rat andten shillings a mouse.

THREAT TO NEW BORN BABIES -Read about an unseen menaceinvestigated by the MirrorDoomwatch team in the Mirror nextweek.

If this advert on the front page of the first edition inAugust hadn't terrified parents everywhere, then the actual story three days later

would, especially if you lived in an area which got its water from the NorthLindsey water board in Lincolnshire where the nitrate level was a level higherthan that recommended by the World Health Organisation. The first warning wasa bluish tinge to the new born babies skin, showing a reduced oxygen carryingcapability leading to possible brain damage. The cause could either be fromfertiliser or from bacteria which live around the roots of plants such as the pea,and the catchment area for the reservoir is a big pea growing area. The bacterialtakes up the nitrogen from the air, uses it to make a chemical compound and thisultimately turns into nitrates.' A local health officer favoured intensiveagriculture to blame, whilst the secretary to the Lincs County National FarmerUnion favours over pumping of the water supply, and has investigated suchmatters himself and was not simply passing the blame. The article was trying tostrike a balance, as was everybody else. However, one case of serious nitrate

pollution in Suffolk in 1954 resulted in a death.Kit Pedler took the matter seriously. 'Nitrate will always get into the water,

no matter what precautions are taken. It can come from animal matter, manure,even from cemeteries and the build up may take hundreds of years.

'No one really knows the long term effects of continually spreading the landwith fertilisers containing nitrate. It's a 20th century problem which has nosimple answer.

'We have to rely on the vigilance of public health experts and laboratorychemists. Too much nitrate puts too many young lives - and eventually our ownfuture - in danger.'

Interestingly, high nitrate levels was the reason why Doomwatch was sendingyoung potholers into Yorkshire caves, an episode that was being filmed...

By the August bank holiday weekend, the Mirror was concerned about thestate of our beaches because of the amount of raw sewage being pumped into ourseas. Although they were suggesting that the shore was an unhealthy or a dirtyplace to be, there was concern of a rapidly growing ring of dark watersurrounding the UK. The River Thames, said the paper, swills 500,000,000 gallonsof sewage every day into the estuary. Kit Pedler, on the other hand, could seeproblems ahead: 'Water which has been contaminated by sewage can carry manydiseases - such as typhoid, polio, hepatitis and dysentery. It is time for an up todate examination of the dangers in the sea.' The last report on the subject hadapparently been conducted in the late 1950s by the Medical Research Council. Intwo years time, Doomwatch found out what happened when the sea is polluted

by human waste and agricultural wash-offs. you get killer dolphins.It was until the beginning of October that Kit Pedler was once again assisting

the Mirror with their enquiries and this time with something a little moresubstantial. Kit was the focus of the Doomwatch article, conducting an

experiment in the affects of air pollution with science correspondent MichaelHellicar reporting. The experiment was to measure the levels of carbon monoxideabsorbed into the blood stream from the exhaust fumes of the traffic in centralLondon. Not so easy because being a smoker, Pedler would have had carbonmonoxide in his blood stream anyway. So something had to be done about that.The paper tells the story best:

'Fourteen hours before taking his first blood sample, Dr. Pedler gaveup smoking and stayed overnight at Knockholt,

Kent, in the country air; sixteen miles

away from London's traffic fumes.This was to disperse the CO already inhis blood.

Next morning, when he arrived atLeicester Square in the West End of London, his CO level was 0.8 per cent.

Two hours later, this had almostdoubled to 1.4 per cent. When a lightbreeze sprang up, he took another bloodsample (because CO fumes are carriedaway by the wind) and found a slight dropto 1.1 per cent.

This level was maintained until thelate afternoon until the late afternoon

traffic had begun to build up. After standingon road islands amid heavy jams for two hours, the CO level had trebled to 3.2 percent.

'By this time,' reports Dr. Pedler, 'I felt sick and had a slight heachache. Thiswas not only due to the carbon monoxide. The traffic noise, smell and residues of lead and sulphur from the petrol also affected me.'

He then smoked three cigarettes - his first for nearly twenty four hours - andtook the final blood sample. This showed another steep rise to 4.6 per centsaturation.

The Medical Research council's Air Pollution Unit is currently investigatingwhat long term effects - if any - the CO fumes have on us. The article then goes totalk about the affects various levels of carbon monoxide have on the humanbeing, with a warning from car manufacturers - as they were prone to do - about

how expensive petrol would become if carbon monoxide was cut. Waiting For AKnighthood was only two years away too. 'Britain's cities are comparatively clearof fumes. We do not yet have the choking traffic smogs which blanket Los Angelesand New York... And in Tokio (sic), the most air polluted city in the world, trafficfumes are so thick that policemen on point duty are relieved every ten minutes toclear their lungs with whiffs of pure oxygen.'

And that was it. Although Doomwatch would prefix 'warnings' to describeanything as hazardous to health for the foreseeable future, there were no moreinvestigations for Kit Pedler to get involved in. Either he was too busy with thenext phase of his life away from London University, and as a campaigner or asimple parting of the ways. He was now to be found broadcasting and lecturingon the need for a real life Doomwatch. Earlier in the year he gave a talk at ascience fiction convention in London for the need of a scientific ombudsman.They would be called Czars now... The Daily Mirror would continue to keep aninterest in pollution and campaign quite aggressively against transgressors as acertain Mr. Dumper would find out in a year's time...

It is interesting how several of the issues described above are still a cause forconcern today. The state of our water, either from the tap or by the beach; trafficfumes, and what comes out of the factory chimney - acid rain. Kit Pedler wasconsulted, although how much of his statements were cut down for size andrewritten or para-phrased into 'mirror speak' is unknown. Though the headlinessuggested shock horror, the articles were soothing in tone and less sensationalthan they could have been. Lots of 'possibles, maybes,' and so forth and counter

arguments were heard. On the face of it, good reporting. The second seriesepisode By The Pricking of My Thumbs, on the other hand, will show us the sideof a clumsy, sensationalist journalist, having his own scare stories affect hisfamily with near tragic consequences.

Y ARE READY FOR ACTION!mwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch... Doomwatch...





POLLUTIONPrince Charles, on St. David's Day in 1971 spoke of the 'nal horror'

of pollution. A man who is oen mocked and riled for his stance onarchitecture, homoeopathy, and distrust of progress loathed pollutionand not just as an aesthetic conceit. 'e Doomwatch warnings aboutpollution are not all exaggerated. If we are not careful and if we continueto use the sea as a vast dustbin, we shall destroy some of the oxygenmaking processes. en we shall be in a real mess.' He toured an oilterminal at Milton Haven and couldn't resist a dig. 'To go on virtually destroying what we live in, and on, until the nal horror really strikes us,and then start trying to dosomething is surely aninsult to human rationalthinking... Because of it youget angry demonstrations

and opposition to new proposals like the buildingof oil terminals. forinstance, you have thesituation of a factory producing something

which has chemical effluentand one day a commieedemonstrates aboutpollution outside its gates,something no one has bothered to do before.'

PROPHETS OF DOOMProphets of doom were springing up everywhere. e end of the

millennium was seen as the cut off point if nothing was done to stop thepopulation explosion and the constant release of chemicals into the seasand the land. en, as now, there were those who couldn't or wouldn'taccept the realities of the situation. It wasn't helped when the Prophetsslipped into hyperbole or at least, reported by the media as such.

e le wing saw pollution as a necessary by product of technology improving the life of ordinary people. If it hurt people, another ingenioustechnological x can sort it out. e right wing saw pollution as anunfortunate by product of wealth creation – where there's muck there's

brass. As long as it didn't interfere with the trout shing... But by the early 70s, more and more people were siing up and paying aention that therush towards a technocracy during the post war period was havingalarming consequences as much, if not more, than the industrial

revolution's pollution of body and mind in Victorian Britain.DOOMWATCH DEBATE

1971's Trade Union Congress conference held a Doomwatch debateon the overuse of chemicals in farming and what impact they are having

outside of their intended uses. Congress wanted stricter controls and aresearch programme on toxic side effects. One delegate said, 'We aredriing into an ever-widening sea of uncertainty which may easily createdisaster or even destruction for future generations of mankind. We must

beware that technical skills do not outweigh our ability to control them.

FAMILY PLANNINGIn October, the threat from over-population was concerning e

National Council of Women of Great Britain. ey called for free family planning advice for all but drew the line at sterilisation on the NationalHealth. Mrs Enid Evans, who worked in a family planning clinic who may have watched e Human Time Bomb or even Tomorrow Has BeenCancelled Due To Lack of Interest a fortnight later – and will enjoy

Without e Bomb, added to the debate: 'England is now the third mostcrowded country in the world. If it continues how can everyone be

housed, fed, educated and have their health cared for? I am sorry if thissounds like Doomwatch. But having successfully interfered with death, we must interfere with birth.' No one argued for a lipstick contraceptiveaphrodisiac. At least not in public.

LEGISLATIONLegislation, as Fire and Brimstone will have Ridge argue, seemed to

be the only answer. 'Debate centres on the way control should beoperated,' said the Guardian on the 24th of July 1971. 'In the UnitedStates the Administration is experimenting both with direct physical

bans on certain forms of industrial waste disposal and with schemes totax companies for the amount of pollution they produce.' Wouldcurtailing growth contain pollution? Would that stop the third worldfrom developing? Or would rampant growth cause even more problems?

CYANIDEe Ecologist printed their landmark edition A Blueprint for Survival

(later to be a book) in January 1972 wrien by scientists, looking foranswers to the pollution and population debate and saw economicgrowth as the problem. Public Enemy did it in 1971! Britain's

Conservative Minister for theEnvironment Peter Walker didnot think that a nationalDoomwatch commiee asrecommended should be set up toprevent mankind from destroyingitself. Questioned by the press on

the 15th of January, Walker'commended them for theirconcern but disagreed with thesuggestion that economic growthshould be stopped and that we

In 1970, a new word hadentered the language.DOOMWATCH. Although it was supposed to bea word synonymous withdangerous, foolish uncheckedscience and research with

catastrophic consequences, itsoon became a more generaldescription for environmentalpollution; industrial wasteproducts, the more mundanebut nasty everyday realitieswhich the programme startedto deal with once it lost itsmore imaginative sci-fiorientated originators.

R e a l l i f e

by MICHAEL SEELY

'Raise production, raiseconsumption, raise wages,advance the standard of

living. But is anyone anyhappier? All that happensis that the debris that mustinevitably accumulate inthe process, slowly buildsup until one day it mustchoke us.'

Quist – Public Enemy

'Nobody's denyingthere’s a pollutionproblem. But you don'tsolve the problem bycrippling the economy...

We pollute withinpermitted limits.'Fielding– Spectre At The Feast




should go back to what Mr Walker called 'primitive living.' He said that without economic growth he would be unable to nd the resources toclear slums, improve public transport, restore derelict land and clean theair and the rivers.' Even as Walker spoke those words of wisdom,cannisters of cyanide were being washed ashore the coast of Cornwall by two separate freighters.

NEW SCIENTIST

is debate happened on the pages of the New Scientist later that March. An editorial spoke for the need of 5% growth and a leer quickly arrived to criticise the view. 'It is deplorable that such naivety shouldappear as the editorial opinion of New Scientist.' OK, not much of adebate admiedly, but it was there.

LEGISLATIONEven e Daily Express, a paper slow to notice Doomwatch type

affairs, or perhaps not wanting to copy the le leaning Daily Mirror's cashin crusade, decided to wade in. eir 19th of January edition introducedtheir plan... 'Hardly a day goes by without some new wave of pollution –of the mind, of the body, or of the land – ooding across our country. Are

we powerless to turn the tide?e Daily Express gives its

answer in a massive,campaigning counter-aack.Today we turn on thespoilers of the environment.'Chapman Pincher, billed ase Man Who knows even

before MPs – and had an earin the intelligence services –

wrote a powerful argumentdemanding legislation withteeth 'to force industrialistsand local authorities to spendmore on pollutionabatement.' He identied oneof the problems was thepublic's reluctance to spendmore money. 'An increase in

the price of coal to prevent mine washings fouling rivers or a rise in therates to pay for a beer sewage works is usually resisted.' He's been

watching Public Enemy, this boy! His third point on why inaction is thecause of the day is the industrialists argument that anti-pollutionrestrictions will cause unemployment as they are put out of business.

GODGod, too, wanted Doomwatch – or at least the Bishop of Oxford, the

Right Reverend Kenneth Woollcombe. In May, he was reported in eDaily Mirror as recruiting thousands of 'Doomwatch' spies to curb

pollution in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. . e aim is to pinpointthe indiscriminate dumping of rubbish and waste. 'We must be able tomobilise public opinion in such a way as to prevent the kind of disastersthat have happened as a result of water pollution in America.'

MR DUMPER e Daily Mirror had been continuing their own Doomwatch

investigations into 1971 and 1972 without Kit Pedler. One of their moresuccessful campaigns was against waste disposal rms who cut cornersand just dumped where ever they felt they could get away with it. Regularreports would appear of hazardous substances found near playgrounds.eir biggest aack came on a man they nick-named Mr Dumper, the

boss of Britain's biggest waste disposal rm faced allegations that hiscompany was illegally tipping on council rubbish dumps up and down

the country. MPs of all parties were concerned about their revelations.New legislation was announced in March as a result of the publicity the

Mirror gave to the issue – or so they would claim! e same paper alsosaw documents relating to the problems of lead poisoning at a smeltingplant in Avonmouth owned by Rio Tinto Zinc. A reference to this would

be sneaked into Waiting For A Knighthood, the last episode of Doomwatch to go before thecameras in a few months time.

WASTE DISPOSALIn March, the Royal

Commission on Environmental

Pollution issued its second report:'ree Issues in IndustrialPollution.' e Commission had

been set up in 1970 and is due to be axed by the current coalitiongovernment. It too called for anearly warning system against theintroduction of new products

which could cause pollution. eissue 'was not being givenadequate priority by theGovernment,' it said. 'While it

would not be reasonable to regardsubstances as guilty until proved

innocent,' it is reasonable to regardthem as under suspicion...' Firms were legally permied to keep thecomposition of pollutants a secreton grounds of commercialsensitivity – the usual excuse. Iturged the Government to actsooner since the the current plan

was to wait until 1975 before thenew system of local government would begin to operate 'new comprehensive control of waste disposal.' Mind you, the Expressreported how Norfolk County Council's countryside commiee wereseing up their own vigilante Doomwatch commiee to keep an eye onpollution and waste disposal. A similar group in Warwickshire exposedillegal sodium cyanide dumping to the press.

CLUB OF ROME Just as Doomwatch was about to return to BBC1, the United Nations

environment conference opened in Stockholm. 112 nations, includingChina aended. But politics being so polarised in the 1970s, this event,planned for three years was boycoed by the Soviet Bloc because of theexclusion of East Germany. e issues of the environment seemed to bedominating the schedules. ames, an ITV channel, had Limits of Growth, about the Club of Rome's recent projections for the future. isgroup of professionals from diplomats to industrialists to scientists, werecreated to lobby governments about 'the concerns of unlimited resourceconsumption in an increasingly interdependent world.' Limits of Growth

was their report based on the ndings of a group of systems scientistsfrom the Massachuses Institute of Technology. It showed thecontradiction between unlimited consumption and nite resources.Something To Say – a debate following the main programme featuredthe former Labour Minister Tony Crossland who was accused of

watching a serious documentary on the environment with his eyes closed(suggesting which side of the fence he sat on). BBC2 had an edition of

Man Alive focusing on how a big oil multinational was affecting the livesof the people of Aberdeen in their quest for an oil strike, whilst Down toEarth, billed as the rst ever series on environmental concerns, whichfeatured contributions from our Kit was in the middle of its run.

And then Doomwatch was back – tackling issues which were oldground like over-population, pollution, vested interests... It was suddenly ordinary. Except for remote controlled pyschopaths, perhaps. Even

Doomwatch itself was now seen as establishment. It wasn't sure to whomit was shaking its st at! It wasn't about taking an existing problem andgiving it a sci- boost any more. It was pedestrian. Real life had made itseem tame. But all the same, it had done its job.

We had that word.

THE DAILY MIRROR 22nd of April 1970

WELCOME TOWESTMINSTER'SREAL LIFEDOOMWATCHERS

The BBC may not know it, but ahandful of avid viewers of their weeklyDoomwatch play is to be found in theHouse of Commons.

Doomwatch is a not so fictionalseries about a dedicated governmentdepartment whose job it is to discoverand eliminate threats to humanity andits environment by some modernscientific techniques.

The thrilling (and so far alwayssuccessful) battles are with thetechnocrats of commerce and thebureaucrats of the State. These arecontinually trying to knock the publicoff by poisoning, by noise, and by otherways of upsetting the balance of nature.

How near to real life problems arethose which Doomwatch poses?

Some M.Ps, including Labour's RayFletcher, think they could be very nearindeed.

Inside Page learns that Fletcher and agroup of colleagues are planning to forma Doomwatch Committee based onParliament.

The idea is to discuss regularly withscientists, technologists, architects andplanners what sort of dangers futureholds and to get Ministers to act out ontheir warnings.

One of those said to be extremelyinterested is biologist Dr. Kit Pedler,who helped devise the television series.

'What happened to theTobacco Bill? Talked out!The manufacturers volunteer theirminuscule warning...Legislation! The onlysalvation we've got.Outlaw the poisoners!Outlaw the filth makers!It's our only chance!Publicity, publicity andstill more publicity!'

Ridge– Fire and Brimstone




A routine

space shot goestragically wrong

during re-entry... a

plane crash lands

into a town centre

near Heathrow in

the fog, a RoyalNavy exercise

featuring Polaris

missiles is cancelled,

a new scheme for

controlling and

regulating traffic

flow ends in disasteras the experiment is

switched on for the first

time, and a robot display in

a toy store goes berserk...

MUTANT 59The Plastic Eater

Book analysis by Michael Seely




Each incident is connected by some small isolated circuit,where the insulation has vanished, creating a short circuit orfailure to do what it is supposed to do. In the case of the robot,there is a softening of the Aminostyrene plastic where no solventhas been anywhere near... Its creators are called in...

This is a scientific consultancy or think-tank, convened by theHarvard educated Arnold Kramer, a man once driven byscientific ideas, now looking for money spinners, devised a newplastic called Aminostyrene, a cheap and easy to produce plastic.This think-tank comprises of Gerrard, Buchan and Wright.

Aminostyrene is their biggest money spinner, the foundations oftheir success. Wright, by chance, experimented on Aminostyreneand together with Buchan devised an experimental compound,which, when exposed to sunlight and oxygen broke down after afew hours into a disposable powder. Thus they created abiodegradable bottle called Degron. Pull a strip of other plastic ofthe surface and the bottle breaks down and with a bit of tinkering,the other plastic, too, would melt! A soft drink manufacturer usethe destructible plastic container as part of its sales campaign forTropic Delight.

Gerrard, the hero of the novel, is starting to become attractedto Kramer’s ex-wife Anne who has been investigating the failureof the toy robot display. He is slowly becoming aware that all theplastics involved in the recent disasters, are Aminostyrene based.

‘He looked back at the array of shapes on the wall. On the displayboard were mounted various examples of the use of Aminostyrene:telephone cables; gas pipes; electricity conduits. Suppose there was some fault in the basic plastic and, under certain conditions, it all started tobreak down? What sort of chaos would communications be throwninto?’

Gerrard meets Slayter, who was the brainsbehind the Knightsbridge traffic controlsystem which ended in disaster. Slayter isbeing held up for blame but Gerrard is nottoo sure. The air crash investigators Myersand Holland are also onto the insulationfailure and the company makingAminostyrene, Neoplas, take it up with the

Kramer Group. Is there a fault in the productitself or is it sourced from a pirated version?Tempers become frayed when the Kramer

group discuss the issue. Their product iseverywhere: if there is a failure, theirresponsibility will be huge. Buchan, the moreresponsible of the group, says it is their duty to take a long hardlook at it again. Kramer gets Gerrard to speak to the departmentsinvestigating the disasters...

Meanwhile, a London underground tube train halts midtunnel due to a signals failure. The confused driver discovers asection of cables ‘covered by a glistening wet mass of multi-coloured viscous slime dripping slowly away on the trackbeneath.’ Then, as Gerrard talks to Myers and Holland, they aresummoned to the Admiralty – the first Poseidon sub – the HMSTriton has been lost with all hands west of Arran... Circuit failure- leading to a catastrophic implosion.

‘They were all imagining the sudden – rending – water rushingdeath of 183 officers and men – the great steel hulk – an almost perfectlydesigned submarine microcosm of warmth and security, plummetingthrough the dark cold water. The implosion of the hull round the nuclear pile and sixteen multiple warhead Poseidon missiles.’

The investigation of insulation failure has now reachedCabinet level.

Gerrard, Slayter, Holden and Ann Kramer descend into theunderground to investigate the signal failure. Suddenly, a seriesof explosions rock the underground, and as a train halts, is caughtby fire. Total panic and a stampede. With a few survivors, theinvestigators and the station master begin to find a way back to

the surface unaware of the chaos afflicting London at thismoment. King’s Cross has exploded from beneath after two wires,stripped of their insulation explodes pockets of gas created bythe melt and from something in the sewers... Gerrard and thesurvivors struggle to reach another station, starting to suffer from

carbon dioxide build up. They discover a tunnel that has hadworkmen using it recently. Meanwhile, the rest of Londonbecomes a disaster zone as the plastic melting menace spreadsthroughout the capital, shutting it down. Radio stations come offair, gas mains with polypropylene seals fail, and water pipesburst. A state of emergency is declared on the television as thenature of the emergency becomes clear and decontaminationsquads are set up. London is sealed off.

The survivors break through into an old disused station calledGray’s Inn. One of their number, Wendy, had been electrocuted

when a live cable touched water she was wading through.Resting, a stench makes Ann Kramer, Gerrard and Slayterinvestigate its source: underneath the platform is a seething massof bubbling brownish slime. Gerrard recognises the smell fromthe decaying cables in the tube and gears of the robot. Amidst thecorruption are remnants of Degron bottles which the substance isparticularly keen to feed on. Ann takes a sample as Gerrardexperiments with a cheap plastic ball pen, and it begins to softenand melt. Gerrard postulates a bacteriological attack on plastic,feeding on the biodegradable residue of Degron before mutatinginto eating other plastics. It has spread from the sewers, formingnew conduits seeping throughout the underground. At the sametime, Buchan’s experiments with Degron and the plastic eatingfoam prove that there is a bacteriological agent at work.

Meanwhile the authorities underneath the Horseguards’Parade are sorting out the details of the decontamination squads,evacuations of Londoners, and the need to find an antibiotic thatwill fight the plastic eating bacteria. The army find it difficultdealing with Londoners in a state of shock, refusing to accept theenormity of the crisis. Soon, an eerie silence settles over the

capital. Except for a group of robbers, lead byan ex-army man Menzelos, who takeadvantage of the situation and blow theirway into a jeweller’s merchants – and destroya section of street!

‘Complex biochemical signals began to pulseas the static protoplasm of the cells began onceagain to constrict and divide. By now the Variant

was an almost perfectly equipped biological entity.Defying the laws of Darwin, each generation wasacquiring some of the most successful attributes of the last, learning new methods of unstitching plastic molecules to get energy and life. Learningto use the complex artefacts of man.’

Kramer is now fighting for the future of the Consultancy nowthat they know Aminostyrene is not directly responsible for thefailures. Kramer prepares to fly off to New York and talk with arather concerned NASA. Kramer sees it as a contract worth abouta million and a half dollars in royalties lost if he cannot persuadethem.

Meanwhile, the trapped group of survivors encounter one oftheir original number, Purvis, who has become demented with hisstruggles. They have to burn down a boardered up door in asignal box to reach a short tunnel to a shaft which takes Gerrardto the surface. He needs to get samples to St. Thomas’s hospital.But before he can find help for the others left behind, he runs intoMenzolo’s gang who have no intention of letting him go.Menzolos sees an opportunity and uses Gerrard’s credentials toget through a road block with some booty – but also specimens ofGerrard’s of the slime. They are decontaminated, but pretendinghis booty is a part of Gerrard’s specimens, that avoids treatment.An exhausted Gerrard gets to St Thomas’s, where it is a bit of ablur after that.

Kramer infects the flight to New York. The cabin crew thinksomeone has used thinners in the cockpit and wince at the smell,a stewardess watches a plastic cup melt and buckle before hereyes, a passenger wonders if a heater is on as her handbag is

detached from its handle, and then the plane nose dives due toinsulation free wires, before the captain regains control. Kramerrealises what is happening and has difficulty in persuading thesteward and then the Captain. soon, preparations are made for anemergency landing in Boston. But it is too late, and a build up of


On the 23rd of February 1972, KitPedler was interviewed about hisbook on Late night Extra on BBCRadio 2, and was joined by GerryDavis for a two and a half minutechat on New Worlds on Radio 4which was taped on the 22nd. Thepair also gave an interview to TheGuardian - Prophets of Doom whichwas published to coincide with thepaperback release on the 13th of December 1973.



gas ignites.Anne Kramer was more upset that her late husband was

flying out to America to defend the consultancy than remainingbehind, waiting for news of his wife. Menzola is killed when his

ocean going cruiser is infected by the spoils of his burglary andthe engine tank explodes.The remaining scientists from Kramer’s group assist in finding

a ‘cure’ for the plague. Professor Kendall talks to Wright whodesigned Aminostyrene. Wright is getting more and moredefensive and hostile and still refutes the idea of a plastic eatingbacteria. Gerrard suggests an azide of cyanide molecule could actas a poison. They are running out of time as the bacillus iseating out the heart of the city.

Back at the Consultancy’s labs,progress is made and they plan tomake enough for Neoplas to massproduce. Buchan works out that thecommon factor between the variousdisasters that started the crisis, and theone on board the Triton, can be tracedto the same component. A smallintegrated circuit element – a logic gatecalled M13. Buchan was sent someexamples of the gate from the makers andfound spores of the bacteria inside –germinated by heat and moisturegenerated on a cadmium plate. A biologicaltime bomb in each gate. The earlieroutbreaks were mild but each newgeneration adapted and increased and consumed more rapidlyuntil the situation which they are in now occurs. The firm thatmade the contaminated circuits have supplied aircraft makers,road computer makes and to NASA. In particular, to the

California Rocket Corporation, the who built the unmanned Marsprobe – the Argonaut One. And that took off six weeks ago.

Gerrard leads a field test on the cure - infected Aminostyrene -on a designer clothes shop where an outbreak had occurred, andit succeeds. It takes a couple of weeks before the bacteria is

brought under control.Taking a break from the work that has driven him, Gerrard

realises that to the consultancy, he is a form of traitor as it was hewho pointed the blame at their product for feeding the plastic

eating bacterium. A battle is about to commence for the control ofconsultancy now that Kramer is dead. Wright and Scanlon wouldnot want him to remain. Gerrard had joined the group becauseKramer was developing a policy of increasing socialresponsibility in science. At the meeting, Gerrard is outraged thatWright expresses no regret or self-recrimination at having beenindirectly involved in the deaths of thousands. Gerrard arguesthat their group can work to design and fabricate on behalf ofpeople, not to just make a profit.

‘No one will ever know just how muchresponsibility we will bear for this disaster.We made Degron, we designed the bottle.Nobody could have foreseen the bacteria which grew on it, but our product – the result of our thinking – our ingenuity – played an essential part. None of us set out to do anything morethan be technically ingenious. We succeededand London nearly died. Surely that’s morethan enough to make us redirect our activities.The next time it may be the whole world.’

Wright sarcastically dismisses hisconcerns and finds himself nominated as a new chairmanof the Consultancy by Scanlon and Sir Harvey Phillips, the

accountant. Buchan nominates Gerrard.It made sense. Wright calls this nomination frivolous but AnneKramer takes over the chair of the meeting – Wright is not yet theleader and the lawyer, MacDonald seconds the nomination. Thisleaves Anne with the casting vote and Gerrard wins. Wrightwithdraws: a broken man. As Gerrard makes a pass at Anne, she

tells him to be patient – her husband has only just died, forheaven’s sake.

Meanwhile, on Mars, Argonaut 1 has made its descent. Twohours later, NASA loses communications with it. A circuit has lostits insulation...


LONDON is melting screams the blurb on theback cover of the American edition of anuncomfortable bit of predicta-fiction which will

hit the station bookstalls here this week. The Frenchtitled it “La Mort du

Plasti-que." which, if spoken slowly in agravelly voice, has anice doom laden aura.In Britain we'll just bereading “Mutant 59:The Plastic Eater." It's

just as well that theBritish title keeps itscool, otherwiseLondon Transportmight find itself witha few morerecruitment

headaches since the book opens with theextermination of King’s Cross station, its environs, anda few thousand hapless humans. Kit Pedler and GerryDavis have certainly devised a novel if extremesolution to the problem of one or Britain's mostgrotesque city environments. But it's all in the causeof science fiction, although the reader might hesitateover the book’s ficti onal qualites since Kit and Gerryhave an uncomfortable knack of finding their

creativity come true. They devised th e BBC-TV'secological drama series “Doomwatch" and stayedwith it until the fiction became larger than thescience, which is to say that the originators of theseries wanted a fairly tweaking sort of programmewhich might encourage gran to stop ditching herempty stout bottles in the canal while the BBC had itseye on a straightforward science fiction cops androbbers. And so “Doomwatch” lost its story editorand scientific adviser. But before their resignation theprogramme chalked up a few notably uncomfortablecoincidences.' There was the one about the trawlerwhich hauled up a neat piece of nuclear hardware in

its nets and almost solved the problem of the fishshortage by killing of the demand. Kit and Gerry setoff for the Holy Loch to confirm at their idea wasfeasible. They were sufficiently impressed to ditch thestory whereupon the US Air Force wrecked a neat PR

job by accidently dropping a warhead in Texas. Whenthe top brass went to inspect their toy theydiscovered that five of the six fails afe devices were inthe unsafe position. Four days later Kit and Gerryemerged sleepless but triumphant with a new scriptfor " Doomwatch."

Kit and Gerry are an unlikely duo, not quite Ericand Ernie, but they have their moments. Gerry hasbeen in television, as he puts it, for 20 years. Heworked his passage to Canada on a Clyde-built tugwhich almost foundered in mid-Atlantic, worked forCBC and the Canadian Film Board, and returned toBritain and Granada for the early days of CoronationStreet. Then he freeked out to Italy to train as anopera singer. He mumbles something about musicbeing his hobby, a notion which is readily confirmedsince his front parlour bears more than a passingresemblance to a recording studio. Kit graduated as amedical doctor –in 1953 and practised in medicine andsurgery for two years before taking a seconddoctorate in experimental pathology. He then spent12 years in brain research. His publisher obviouslythinks this a fitting start for the doom business. Pan's

PR man waxes eloquent about their author being intoelectron microscopy cybernetics. Gerry says that hiscolleague concocts a very nice home brew.

The two met via a Horizon programme on Kit’sresearch. They continued their discussions at‘ TheContented Sole, a pricey fish and chip shop inKnightsbridge. There, says Kit, science and showbusiness met in order to s ave “Dr Who” from too fewDaleks and too much fantasy. It seems that when theDaleks departed .”Dr Who” could only master anaudience of three million. And so Kit and Gerrydevised the Cybermen. Very frightening, says Kit. Notat all toylike, as were the friendly Daleks, says Gerry.

In fact the Australians refused to screen one of theCybermen episodes says Kit. A great seethe, saysGerry. Kit confides that they did go a bit over the topwith the things spewing “Fairy Liquid” out of their

joints and generally writhing about.

While contemplating their respective soles Kit andGerry came up with the idea of an ecologicaladventure series. They brought together the storylines, wrote the first four episodes and sold thecomplete package. as “Doomwatch,” to the BBC. Ki twas moonlighting at the time between his universityresearch project and the studios. The boffins didn'tlike it. He says: “While I was still working in universityI got a tremendous amount of crap flung at me. I wasa popularist, I was a fiction writer. I had to take thisand my skin was no thicker than anyone else's and itupset me a great deal. But now I've left theorganisation within which that criticism starts andI've started, on my own, hopefully, sociallyresponsible science. I think that science must turntowards the needs of people socially. But it was a badtime. At one point I was almost kicked out. I wroteabout animal experiments which were beingconducted for careerist rather than scientificpurposes. I knew perfectly well that it was true but Imade the mistake of saying so in a daily paper and sothey tried to grind my testicles in public."

Kit has left the university and continues his

scientific endeavours in ecology. He has finished hisfirst project on ecological housing, which will bepublished shortly. His own Victorian house inClapham has already round itself shot in thetwentieth century with a methane fed generatorwhich provides 1ighting and eventually he hopes torun this from the family garbage, And just in case itall sounds a little po-faced Kit is thinking about a raterebate when his house becomes fully self-sufficient.Going public has had its problems for Kit. Whileguesting on a television programme he referred to anumber of atom bomb experiments in Nevada whererabbits were put in cages with their eyelids sewn

back. Their eyes were burned. He said that this wasbad science because the dosage could have beenfound by calculation. It was degrading both to theanimals and to the experimenters. Next morning alady phoned the Home Office to complain that a

British scientist called Kit Pedler was conducting aseries of brutal experiments. Kit calls it the mediaproblem. In “Mutant 59” a series of scientificaccidents and straightforward short cuts result in thedestruction of all the plastic in London. Electricitycables are exposed and ignite gas supplies and anexplosive chain reaction begins. The fact that we canread such a book and then toddle off to bed for apeaceful night's sleep is a small example of ourconditioning which scientists like Kit Pedler wouldlike to change. Kit believes that one of the problemsof the environmental issue is that people aresaturated with horror stories. If energy sources aredrying up, says Kit, it is no use saying to people thatthey have been wicked and raping the earth for toolong. You must say that, but you must also suggestwhat they can do. Kit says that the best title for anecological documentary was “ Due to Lack of InterestTomorrow has been Cance1led." And as evidence of hisconcern he points out that the documentary wasshown on BBC2 to a small converted audience. Whichis why he was pleased to work with Gerry Davis on"Doomwatch."

“Mutant 59" is based on an idea being worked on ata British university which Kit refuses to name. Theirconcept was of a biodegradable plastic which wouldbreak down under ultraviolet light. It may seemunlikely that as the first biodegradable milk bottlegoes on sale in their novel that another scientistworking in the same area of self-destruct plasticshould release a plastic-eating virus into the sewersof London. But then no one ever thought theAmericans would accidentally drop a nuclearwarhead in Texas.

Mutant 59 : The Plastic Eater was published as a Panpaperback at 40p.

PROPHETS OF DOOMRaymond Gardner interviewed Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis in The Guardian 13th Dec 1973

It looks like theComic 2000ADIssue 139 from 1979was influenced

by a certainDoomwatch story,as Judge Dredd isinvolved in “TheGreat PlasteenDisaster!”



COMMENTARY:The book opens with the obituary of Doctor S. Ainslie, whose

unknown invention was the catalyst for the events in the book.OneThe first two pages are of the doomed space flight, which does

remind you of Re-Entry Forbidden but also Kit Pedler’s first co-written Doctor Who script The Tenth Planet. He likes killingastronauts... Gerry Davis remembered in his 1988 interview withDoctor Who Bulletin that Pedler liked writing about rockets andsilos whilst Davis favoured dark, claustrophobic environments

which may well explain the adventures in disused undergroundstations later.

The plane crash described vividly up to page 13 is the first ofthe mass slaughters that strike Greater London. It makes FlightInto Yesterday seem quite tame. Like other incidents in the book,the build up to the event is described cleanly and clinically. Justthe way in which a scientist would relate. The crash does remindyou of the opening to the television version of The Plastic Eaters.No stock footage of test crash dummies here!

p13 We meet Anne Kramer here, the estranged wife of theleader of the consultancy group observing Royal Naval exerciseswhich are delayed for mysterious reasons.

p15 Here we meet Lionel Slayter PhD and learn howhe came up with the new traffic flow system by

glancing down at a Brooklyn street system from aplane. We get an insight into how a scientist stumblesupon a ‘good and original idea.’ We learn of the civilservice resistance on the day of the great switch on asit is watched by a Minister, and how it goes wrong,and why it goes wrong. We as readers are never keptin the dark over the issue. We always know morethan the participants. Pedler was very scepticalabout city living and the conditioning it inflictsupon its citizenship in order to survive.

Twop21 We meet Luke Gerrard and

his fellows at the KramerConsultancy: Buchan, Wright and

Scanlon. We get the background toArnold Kramer and his transformationfrom a socially conscious man excitedby ideas, to the businessman wanting tomake money. Also, we get the first hintsof Gerrard’s unconscious fascination withKramer’s wife as the toy robot goeswrong.

Threep38 We return to Slayter and the inquiry

into the road chaos. He is more than a littleanxious and is running through people whomight back him, from the unlikely – the civil servant Atherton toacademics and suppliers of computer components. This chaptershows the link between all the recent disasters with the chairmanof the enquiry, Holland, talking to Myers, the air crashinvestigation officer.

Fourp51 As Gerrard becomes aware of the link, the chapter delves

into how Aminostyrene was developed and then how it waslicensed. This is clearly based on the 1970 researches conductedby Professor Gerald Scott of Aston University, Birmingham. (Seeelsewhere in this issue). The disposable bottle is called ‘Degron’.Pedler and Davis have some fun in the team’s original namessuch as Suncrap, Kramer’s Krumbling Krud or the more boringOxynure. (Manure?) They make their feelings clear on thistechnological quick fix to the problem of plastic waste disposal!

Pedler also gets in a dig in the soft drinks industry: thesuccessful winner of the license was a manufacturer who

‘basically wanted a new gimmick to sell the mixture of tartaricand citric acid, saccharin and colouring which he shamelesslycalled Tropic Delight.’ Kit has made his feelings on Coco-Colavery clear in lectures and later in The Quest of Gaia, which ratherupset the writer of his profile in the magazine In-Vision, Season

19 overview, who rather misses the point of the book!p52/3 Here we have Pedler’s view of the responsibility of the

scientist writ large: Gerrard remembers how Kramer was onceconcerned for the future of science and how he wanted to reorientthe skills of the scientist towards social problems before afinancial bonanza corrupted his ideals.

FiveWhen the Kramer Group discuss the possibility of a flaw in

Aminostyrene, Wright, who was one of its major developers,accuses Kramer of pressurising him into finishing his researches

before he was ready. He defends his tests, that he is incapable offaking good results. ‘I’m a technological animal – brainwashed ifyou like – but for me the only bad technology is technology whichdoesn’t work.’ In other words, the product he devised is perfect.

Sixp69 We get a lovely vivid description of what’s underneath

your feet in central London close to the Mall where the Admiraltyhosts one of the most secret rooms in Britain, and here we learndetails of the missing submarine.

p73 Here we get to look inside the mind of Arnold Kramer’swife and what lead to their marriage to breakdown; when theinitial inspiration of the consultancy began to fade. She evensuspects her husband had caused the breakdown of the Gerrard’s

marriage, and then hired the man!

Sevenp84 Brilliant! The team of investigators

from different areas of responsibilities getcaught underground by a series of explosionsand a train which halts and catches fire. Thewriters go into detail in the chaos: an elderlyman is carrying a polythene container of paraffinand explodes into a ball of flame, a woman staresat horror as her maxi-coat catches fire... Thewooden frames of the coaches burn merrily, ‘andpeople fall like blackened dolls as the flameswashed over them.’ It’s really quite gruesome! Ourcharacters are joined by survivors. Gerry Davis getsto write his favourite claustrophobic scenes at last!

EightThe chapter begins with one of Pedler’s themesthat London is not built on land, but ground. It

describes the complicated network of tunnelsunderneath King’s Cross and St Pancras – thetube lines, the gas, electric, sewers, walkways,conduits and escalators, the diverted riverssuch as the Fleet. It also explains the uniquecircumstances that lead to the disaster andhints what might be in the sewers. The rest ofthe chapter takes up the trapped characters

trying to get to a station and Gerrard’s interestin Anne and her legs. Well, it’s the 1970s...

A genuine disaster will befall King’s Cross in the 1980s.Nine

p109 We read about further explosions in London created bythe gas from a ‘malodorous corruption .. thrusting its way silentlytowards the surface’ in the sewers. One explosion is caused by acommuter tossing a lit match into a grille. London’s breakdowncontinues. As London is isolated, Scanlon, Myers and Wright atthe Group argue over whether their product’s breakdownmechanism has contaminated all plastic? One postulates a factorX that is transferable between plastics, a cell with possessedstored information...

TenWhen Wendy dies, she screams. Apparently, you don’t

scream when you are electrocuted. Gerrard, Anne and Slaterdiscover the source of the explosions.

Eleven

This chapter details the experiments of Dr Simon Ainslie, anunremarkable bacteriologist, who got an idea when unblocking adrain and found some polythene sheeting down there. It wouldnever have been harmed by bacteriological attack. He hit upon anidea and was lost in its research back home, dreaming of prizes.


By 1975, Disney were interested inmaking a film from the book andoptioned it. Nothing would come of this, in much the same way as TheDynostar Menace never became afilm despite a script being written.



After the huge success of the firstseries of Doomwatch, Pedler and

Davis were besieged by book and filmoffers,and wrote their first noveltogether over the autumn and winterof 1970/71 having cut their ties withDoomwatch. Pedler, still working atthe Institute of Ophthalmology, hopedit would be lucrative, a much neededsource of funds to set up a realDoomwatch unit. By now he waslooking for a way out, having found hisstance on animal experimentation,and his populist approach causing him

great problems at work. Gerry Daviswas now script editing the policeseries Softly, Softly, working out hiscontract with the BBC in order to gofreelance. Their publishers wereconfident that it would be a worldwidebest-seller. It was published inFebruary 1972 in hardback by Souvenirpress for the princely sum of £1.80..The New Scientist reviewed it, felt thattoday’s sci-fi was suffering from about of gloom. ‘The authors may betrying to tell us that we have got to bea bit more responsible in ourscientific research (the hero neverlets up telling us how responsible heis) but they mostly manage to provehow much society depends uponplastics. At least they have got away

like Kraken or some uncontrollablenatural catastrophe. Man is morelikely to bring doom upon himself. Andthe conjunction of two divergentscientific discoveries presented hereoffers Pedler and Davis theopportunity to work out theirscientific detective story in a detailedand readable novel.’

The American edition reprinted theLiterary Guild Magazine review that itwas ‘the most riveting novel of speculative fiction since TheAndromeda Strain... an edge of the

seat thriller.’ The back had the words‘London is melting!’ across the blurb,whilst the French went with theoriginal title of The Death of Plastic –or La Mort du Plastique.

The Guardian promoted thepaperback edition with a rareinterview with both Pedler and Davis,where the origins of the story wasdiscussed. “‘Mutant 59 is based on anidea being worked on at a BritishUniversity which Kit refuses to name.Their concept was of a biodegradableplastic which would breakdown underultra-violet light. It may seem unlikelythat as the first biodegradable milkbottle goes on sale in their novel thatanother scientist working in the samearea of self-destruct plastic should

ever thought the Americans wouldaccidentally drop a nuclear warheadin Texas.”.

“The fact that we can read such abook and then toddle off to bed for apeaceful night’s sleep is a smallexample of our conditioning whichscientists like Kit Pedler would like tochange. Kit believes that one of theproblems of the environmental issueis that people are saturated withhorror stories. If energy sources aredrying up, says Kit, it is no use sayingto people that they have been wicked

and raping the earth for too long. Youmust say that, but you must alsosuggest what they can do.”

It was published as a paperback byPan, price 40p in the last week of December, 1973. It re-used the ratherwonderful cover for the Radio Timespromotion of the original series of Doomwatch.

The Daily Express, in a featurewhere Kit Pedler describes his workon constructing an eco-friendlyhouse, called the book a chilling story‘in which plastic eating germs,originally intended as a cheap way of disposing of old plastic bottles runwild.’ Gerry Davis described it moreaccurately as ‘topical and ironic. It’san illustration of what can happen

He continued his experiments at home and succeeded –and died at the same time from a brain haemorrhage, and hisplastic eating bacterium, the fifty-ninth variant was accidentallyspilled down a sink – and into the sewers. This is a lovely coupleof pages; no over-dramatization, almost a series of scientificexplanations detailing what was killing him. Now the bacteriadied off, starved of food, but spores remained, and the yearspassed until the biodegradable bottle began to be washed downinto the sewers, and the spores woke up and fed. Shades ofTomorrow, the Rat with unwise experiments at home.

Twelvep145 More adventures underground, this time underneath

the Horseguards’ Parade – an underground city in times ofemergency. Here, the powers that be discuss their plan to sealoff the city and how they will fight the menace. A ColonelSethbridge is in control of the south sector perimeter. Just a letteraway from Doctor Who’s Colonel Lethbridge (later Stewart – anaddition made by the director of his first appearance,) who wasplayed by actor Nicholas Courtney, became a very good friend ofGerry Davis. This chapter also introduces Harry Menzelos, aformer company sergeant major, now head of a band of jewellthieves! On the side, he paid income tax on his shoe shops and aclub.

Thirteen

We see more effects of the bacteria as extends its reach: itconsumes a hanging drip during an operation, affects air trafficcontrol at Heathrow, silences Scotland Yard’s radio car controlcentre, and causes a cyanide spill from a long distance vehiclecarrying the stuff.

p174 We see how the variant is creeping into people’s homesand how the authorities come into decontaminate the place. Thesergeant in one home is quite sympathetic to a couple whosekitchen is practically melted! They’ll get compensated, make amint probably. They came from the Chemical defence unit,Beeston – a cheery connection to the original episode ofDoomwatch from whence the original Variant 14 came from.

SixteenWhat could have been a re-run of The Plastic Eaters sees

Kramer en route for New York on Flight 1224 and the virus is on-board! The dried bacteria is on Kramer’s metal pen, and the sweatfrom the man’s fingers woke it up. He then spread the bacteria tothe plastic arm rest. Here, it is explained that Ainslie’s bacteriahas no stationary or decline phase. ‘Once again they prepared fortheir only task, to live, to feed, and to divide.’ Pedler enjoysanalysis and breaks down technological and biological machinesinto their component parts. He once broke down a fruit machine

to discover just what it was made from. Here, the airplane isbroken down into its parts as the background for thebacteriological attack. It is described almost clinically.

SeventeenThe first few pages deals with Anne Kramer’s emotional

response to her husband’s death, and her feelings about hisalleged affair with Gerrard’s ex-wife.

p219 Menzelos’s greed catches up with him as he is killedwhen variant fifty nine escapes from his smuggled jewells. Hislast action is to try and reach out as a jewel bag races past as theboat sinks.

EighteenIt’s the 1970s, and how can a fashion designer not be a very

camp homosexual of the Mr Humprhries line? The soldiers make

their feelings quite clear after invited upstairs for a drink. ‘Nottonight, Josephine.’

NineteenHere, Gerrard’s speech about how the consultancy should

proceed is pure Kit Pedler. Anne Kramer’s view is that herhusband ran the group as an autocracy and that their ideals wereblinded. Wright and Scanlon represent the commercial pressuresof science; a useless product in order to make a profit with long oreven short term dangers that are not recognised. Needless to say,their unwillingness to face the facts leads to their comeuppance –well, Wright at least. We end on Mars, another beautiful passagewith the sting in the tale... Mars is now contaminated.

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Doomwatch Fanzine Issue 3

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