Doomwatch: Series 1-3

A seven disc dvd box set containing all the surviving episodes of the early 70's show Doomwatch.Back then, in the days of not nearly as many tv channels as there are now, it was easier for shows to catch the attention and slip into the public consciousness. And Doomwatch did. It's only really remembered now by those old enough to have seen it at the time, but for a while, it's name did slip into the English language, to mark exactly what it said.Which is to say that Doomwatch is the name given to a special government department, who investigate scientific progress and changes to the way of life as we know it, to look out for dangers and report to the Government on it.The show was created by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, well known as the former was heavily into concerns about this kind of thing, and one such result of those was the Cybermen on Doctor Who.Doomwatch is run by Dr. Spencer Quist [John Paul]. A man who worked on the Manhattan project and has let that onto his conscience. He is assisted by, among others, John Ridge [Simon Oates] former spy and ladies man. Fortunately it being the 70's they don't have an HR Department, otherwise Ridge might get in trouble with them on occasion.The first episode also brought in new recruit Toby Wren, played by a young actor called Robert Powell, getting his big break.Stories range from many things, and are always complete in one episode. You have dangerous intelligent rats, dangerous noise levels, danger from a substance that destroys plastic, and many others.Every episode runs for approx. fifty mins.There were thirty eight in total, spread over three seasons. Although as with lots of BBC tv of the time, some of the tapes were wiped after being used and thus not all episodes survive. Of the thirteen episode first and second seasons, five of the first are gone. But all the second survives. But only thee of the twelve episode third still exist. See the listings on IMDB for further details as to what is gone and what hasn't.Doomwatch is a product of it's time. It is not science fiction, and there are no explosions or action scenes. It is science fact based drama. That tries hard to bring real issues to viewers attention, and to make you think about them as well.A lot of the episodes are very good at being thought provoking drama. But that does depend on the subject matter. The subject matter in a handful of them does rather underwhelm a bit. But whilst it's earnest and worthy, it's also very very dry. It is so dry, if it were a forest a single spark would send it up and into a raging inferno in seconds. And it does have the very annoying habit of hammering home the moral point of every episode in the final scene.But even though it has slightly dated because of all this, it still does do what it tries to do very well when it succeeds. So it may just be for fanatical tv viewers, or those who know it from the time of original broadcast, but it is nonetheless worth a look.The picture quality hasn't been restored, but it's still perfectly watchable.The discs have subtitles. English being the only option. And thus that's the only language on them as well.You do get two extras, because the final episode of season three was never actually broadcast at the time after being made - also look on imdb as to why - so this is the first most will have ever managed to see of it.There's also 'the cult of Doomwatch', a half hour feature from a run of documentaries about cult tv shows BBC3 did a few years back now. And this is worth a watch.

Ah Doomwatch. Back in its day (1970–72), Doomwatch was a ratings-busting (13.6 million!) smash hit, the BBC's eco-political-sci-fi drama that had everybody talking, as its perspicacious "it could happen tomorrow!" tales of Science Gone Wrong struck many chords with viewers. Created by the scientist/dramatist team of Kit Pedlar & Gerry Davis who'd already scared the nation's children by inventing the cybermen on Dr Who, Doomwatch now gave the grown-ups something to worry about, be it genetically engineered man-eating rats, plastic-eating mutant bacteria or just plain old lead in air from petrol.However despite its success, in those days the BBC had neither the storage facilities to keep hundreds of thousands of videotapes, nor the cash to pay all the actors' repeat fees if it broadcast them again... so as with many programmes from that era, many of Doomwatch's master tapes were fed into huge mechanical garbage mashers, set fire to, and the ashes buried in landfill :( New programmes were made instead, and Doomwatch drifted slowly into obscurity......until finally, in 2016, Simply Media have dredged up the surviving tapes (some of them salvaged from overseas), shovelled them into this boxset and released them to finally let young scifi anoraks of today see what all the fuss was about.So what's left? About 2/3rds of series 1, all (hooray!) of Series 2, and a paltry three episodes of Series 3. All the rest are destroyed for good, apparently. And I have to warn you, what survives is not in very good shape either! In fact, to be blunt, the picture quality if often frankly TERRIBLE, and the sound is no great shakes either. Simply obviously had no budget for 'remastering' or restoring these episodes, so what you get is garish early 70s video tape full of drop-outs, flashes and glitches, combined with all those Python-esque "this house is surrounded by film" bits where they go outside and the picture quality drops still further (blurry, grainy, hairs and dirt everywhere)... worse still are the episodes that were rescured from North America, as these suffered the additional indignity of being coverted to the lower-resolution NTSC video system. Also, as many others have moaned, they haven't even bothered to put the story titles on the box or the disc menus, making it damned difficult to work out which one of the half a dozen DVDs has which episode.Still, it's the actual programme that matters, though, right? So what's Doomwatch actually like? In those days, drama like this was shot near-live in studio, similar to just pointing video cameras at a stage play. You get good solid character acting from actors trained for the theatre. To a modern audience, used to the slick edits of today's telly, it's a style that takes a bit of getting used to, but I have to day I probably prefer it! Others may find it slow, plodding, hammy...Another thing that will strike a modern audience, particularly in Series 1, is the howling sexism (combined with lurid 70s fashions) Male characters frequently treat female colleagues in ways that would today result in instant dismissal for gross misconduct, and many of the plot lines involve hugely crass stereotypes. These elements are often in severe danger of eclipsing the show's' green politics and science, and creating some kind of 'Carry on Quatermass' monstrosity, with medallion-toting Simon Oate's character often coming across like some sort of cross between Sid James and Bodie from the Professionals.I get the distinct impression that this malarkey was toned down a bit for Series 2, which seems to feature some more budget for decent location work and some quite stellar guest cast, with a lot of famous names popping up from episode to epside and giving great turns (Paul Eddington...Geoffrey Palmer...Bernard Hepton... Glyn Owen... Patrick Troughton... John Savident... June Brown... and many more).By series 3, there's been a few more changes to tone and cast (with rumours of 'creative differences' between the shows creators and its producer) but there's only three eps left from this so its hard to form much of a judgement!In summary, in terms of raw picture quality, production style and content, there's a lot of hurdles for the modern viewers to overcome if Doomwatch is to appeal to current tastes. But if you can get past all that (and I imagine many never would!) there is some solid drama in there... but ultimately what impresses is the validity of its scientific ideas - it's really quite striking how many of these issues are *still* a problem in 2016. Of course, the exact way they've manifested themselves may look a little difference (particularly when computers were involved), but conceptually Kit Pedlar was often spot on. Indeed you could take the view that since 1970, society has done a lot to combat sexist bum-pinching in the work place but very little to tackle many much great ecological threats to our existence!

Doomwatch was way ahead of its time, dealing with issues such as air and noise pollution, dangerous chemicals, and toxic waste dumping. This groundbreaking series had a superb cast, and excellent writers, including Terry Nation (Dr. Who and Blake’s 7). Highly recommended.