Lost Spook's (Non-Spoilery) Guide to Doomwatch
Earlier this year when I watched Manhunt and Doomwatch, I planned to do this sort of primer for both (and for all my old things!), because I like doing them, they hopefully explain the obscure things I'm on about & they may even be useful. And then I did Manhunt, but was slow to screencap Doomwatch and then decided there was no point in posting things like that. Which is just silly, and, in short, here is my best stab at a guide to Doomwatch and why you might even want to watch it, if you don't mind beige TV!
(The fandom_manifesto tag below will take you to the others of these I've done so far, although I see that Photobucket ate the pics from the Enemy at the Door one.)
Anyway, welcome to the future. It probably wants to kill you...
Doomwatch
Doomwatch was a BBC drama series that ran from 1970 to 1972, created and script-edited by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler (who invented Doctor Who's Cybermen) and produced by Terence Dudley.
It focused on the Ministry of Security's Department of Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work, nicknamed 'Doomwatch' (which is what the team also name their computer) as they investigated possible dangerous side-effects of new scientific discoveries from plastic-easting viruses to killer rats to the dangers of DDT and lead in petrol, often having an eerily prophetic tendency to predict the headlines and sparking more than one debate in parliament. According to the Cult of Doomwatch, when Channel 5 tried to revive the series with a modern version, they got some scientists to give them cutting-edge ideas for storylines... and found that all of them had been covered by the original.
Doomwatch was headed up by Nobel prize-winning mathematician and phyisicist, Dr Spencer Quist, backed by Dr John Ridge (a chemist who had worked for MI6), Colin Bradley (the down-to-earth, Northern (TM) computer specialist and general dogbody), young chemist Tobias (Toby) Wren and the secretary, Pat Hunnisett.
So, Our Heroes vs Whitehall and unethical scientists + real issues & science and environmental crusading + an occasional edge of horror = the cult phenomenon that was Doomwatch.
Why should you watch it?
For all its 1970s beigeness, creaky old-telly-ness and the rest of it, it does pull off its brief and it can still pack a punch at times.
The cast are good, the vast majority of the surviving episodes are pretty strong and watchable, even gripping in places (and don't talk to me about killer rats), and too much of it remains uncomfortably relevant, even prophetic. It's very much a YMMV series, in much the same way as Manhunt and Survivors, but, like them, you won't find anything else quite like it and it's worth watching.
The downsides: there's a lot of casual sexism (especially via John Ridge) and lack of a scientific female regular in S1, but this improves a lot once S2 comes around and Dr Fay Chantry arrives. Also it was victim to burnination, which means that 5 episodes of S1 are missing, only 3 survive from S3, and the surviving S2 episodes are complete, but in variable quality via Canadian colour film copies. It's also pretty white, even for the 70s (cf. also Survivors) and, thanks to Dr. Quist and his pullies, it is the very beigest of beige TV ever seen. But I'm not sure that's really a downside.
In warnings, it's worth noting, that it can really does not pull its punches on any front, but details would be spoilery. (Ask if you want them.)
Main Characters
Dr Spencer Quist (John Paul)
"To be told that you're different, that you're marked, it's ineradicable because it's in your blood. How dare anyone say that to another?"
Quist is the mathematician and Nobel Prizewinner who heads up Doomwatch. He still feels perhaps too much guilt for his part in the development of the atomic bomb (but he'll see somebody about that in S2) and he's abrupt, off-hand, grumpy, and doesn't care if you like him or not. He's also got the world's largest collection of beige cardigans & pullies. However, he's also fiercely moral, and willing to admit and deal with his own faults and mistakes and is exactly the nuisance that Whitehall needs. (Surprisingly great, in short, and a strong lead performance from John Paul.)
Dr John Ridge (Simon Oates)
"Pollution... desecration of the environment... despoiling of nature... I really wonder if any of it matters. Maybe it's a hopeless bloody world because it's inhabited by hopeless bloody people. Maybe what's happening's right. Maybe we're creating just the kind of world we deserve. And if it finally destroys us or drives us mad, that'll be what we deserve, too."
Ridge is a chemist and former MI6 officer. He's a classic example of the terrible Seventies Guy, flirting with and borderline sexually harrassing every female in sight, but he does also have an impressive wardrobe of unlikely and colourful 70s clothes, a tendency to throw up when people are experimenting on animals, and gets more upset than anyone else when something happens to any of his colleagues. Aside from flirting, his favourite hobbies are annoying Dr Quist, giving himself lead poisoning, and pinning up posters of Robert Powell on the office wall. YMMV, indeed.
Colin Bradley (Brad) (Joby Blanshard)
"People think of scientists as stockbrokers in white coats. What they really are is a bunch of weirdies, but don't tell any of this lot I told you."
Colin (or "Brad") is the computer expert, usually to be found in the office, running results through the computer (although don't expect him to get moral judgments out of it; that's not a matter of mathematics). He's also a professional Northerner. You need one in every office, and he's one of the best. (Just don't ask him to be your public relations officer.)
Tobias (Toby) Wren (Robert Powell)
"Sir, please can we have some of your new pesticide, so that we can prove it's dangerous - with an open mind, of course!"
Toby Wren is the newest and youngest member of the team - he joins Doomwatch in the first episode (only to nearly unleash a plastic-eating virus on the world). He admires Dr Quist hugely and has a tendency to be S1's regular damsel in distress when he's not getting in a strop over something.
Dr Fay Chantry (Jean Trend)
"I'd forgotten how beautiful chromosomes are. The dance of life?"
Fay Chantry is the much-needed member of the team with a medical background. She's a level-headed divorcee and brilliant scientist who isn't sure at all that she wants to join an organisation like Doomwatch - it's a bit negative, after all, isn't it? (Clearly also she must know Liz Shaw and there should be crossover fic! There isn't, though. Yet.)
Dr Anne Tarrant (Elizabeth Weaver)
The psychiatist Dr Quist turns to for advice over his guilt issues, and who turns up again later in a slightly different context (although she's still a psychiatrist). (I'm avoiding being spoilery here, plus an awful lot of her episodes are missing.)
Pat Hunnisett (Wendy Hall)
S1 secretary. She's very much a lay-person, but (despite what The Cult of Doomwatch may say), she's not stupid; she asks some pertinent questions and gets rightly angry about some of the treatment meted out to her by just about everyone other than Colin. It just depends a lot on who wrote the script that week. She would also prefer not to be a guinea pig thanks and understandably walks out in distress after the S1 finale.
Barbara Mason (Vivien Sherrard)
Doomwatch's second secretary, Barbara is hardier and longer-lasting than the first and super-efficient except when jetlagged, but possibly a moral midget.
Geoff Hardcastle (John Nolan)
The next best thing to Robert Powell, apparently. He likes being made a fuss of after he's been shot in the line of duty, so make sure you bring fruit and flowers to his bedside.
Other recurring characters:
The Minister (John Barron)
Sir Charles Holdroyd is the Minister that Doomwatch answers to. He may be on their side or against them, depending on the political angle, but you shouldn't trust him an inch if he's just got off a plane.
Miss Wills (Jennifer Wilson)
The Minister's capable secretary. (Well, apart from that one time she accidentally caused a plane crash and killed her cousin, but she's usually much more reliable than that. She's not in that much, but she's Jennifer Wilson, and Jennifer Wilson is always a good reason to watch a 1960s/70s thing.)
There's also a new S3 character, Commander Neil Stafford (played by John Bown), but too little of him remains to say other than he seems interesting enough in his brief appearance in what survives of S3. (He seems to be sort of an enemy in their midst but actually on their side.)
But there are only a couple of truly duff episodes out of all those that survive and while it's sometimes very 70s, and questionable, it's also rarely less than interesting and usually still challenging even now. It's simultaneously one of the most Seventies things you could imagine and yet still scarily on the nose about so many of its topics.
The last episode of Doomwatch centred around moral panics (in this case, Mary Whitehouse and various campaigns against sex and violence in the media), taking in (no doubt rather 70s) psychological issues, discussions on moral responsibility - and the inevitable danger of extremist politicians using any such media panics and manipulation. It's an eerily prophetic thing to watch in 2017, despite the very 70s emphasis on sexual repression as the topic in question:
For various reasons, the BBC put this one in a cupboard for 40 years. I don't suppose Britain would have taken the warning to heart and done away with Nigel Farage, though. As Dr Quist says, "No change. No change."
It features a lot of familiar faces, who are either destroying the environment or being destroyed by it, including Paul Eddington and Patrick Troughton among many others. (Michael Keating's is burninated, though, sadly.)
Notable episodes:
1.1 "The Plastic Eaters" : All the plastic will let you down and kill you! It's straight-forward but effective and plastic melts everywhere in BBC 70s SFX goo. I loved it immediately, although Toby Wren is more than a wee bit careless. I'm surprised Dr Quist didn't just fire him.
1.4 "Tomorrow, the Rat" : aka, thanks, Doomwatch, you gave me nightmares all year! Rats will kill us all! It's a pretty impressive achievement for a BBC show from 1970, especially given how fake some of the rats were. (They were super-rats, like in Mrs Frisby, but EVIL. Or, no, just hungry, it's all people's fault, it always is.) Also Penelope Lee gives a really good performance in a tricky role as Dr Mary Bryant. (If you don't like rats, you don't want to watch this. I'm not sure how you'll feel if you like rats, but they are super-rats that have been interfered with by Mary Bryant, because seriously, us humans will do these things and then what do we expect?) Ridge winds up in tears.
1.7 "The Devil's Sweets" : Advertising will kill you! Sweets, too. Dr Quist investigates linked cigarettes and sweets and a dodgy ad campaign, while poor Pat gets used as a guinea pig. Ridge cries again.
1.8 "The Red Sky" : lighthouses will kill you! When Dr Quist tries to go on holiday, he has the same sort of luck as any good detective and basically environmental disaster follows him about, which is even more of a mood-killer than murder. I think this one was all Paul Eddington's fault, but he did apologise afterwards.
1.11 "The Battery People" : Fish will kill you! Or worse, make you impotent. There's some very fishy problems going on in battery farming in Wales. You might as well try and stay down the pit. Ridge gets a bit freaked out about his food.
2.5 "By the Pricking of My Thumbs" : putting dodgy moral interpretations on dodgy research will kill you, or at least make your children very very unhappy. It's all the fault of Olaf Pooley, who was probably still grumpy at not being able to drill through to the centre of the earth in Doctor Who's "Inferno."
2.6 "The Iron Doctor" : Your computer will kill you! It's all James Maxwell's fault: garbage in, garbage out, seriously. When people tell you to check your programming, you should definitely do it. He did at least do penitent brain surgery to try and help Barry Foster. (Both of these are good eps for Fay Chantry.)
2.7 "Flight into Yesterday" : jetlag might will you! Take it seriously, especially if you're a government minister.
2.13 "Public Enemy" : Factories can kill you, but we all knew that. It's a strong ep, but mostly for the show beginning (pretty eloquently) on its determined attack on leaded petrol. John Paul's speech at the end is worth a rec on its own.
3.12 "Sex and Violence" : as I've said above, this one was pretty surprising and thoughtful and weirdly prescient in some aspects. Plus, Bernard Horsfall starts talking about oral sex to vicars, which is one of those sentences that should not exist, but do.
"D'you know what I've learned in the time I've been with Doomwatch? We've got a generation in which to grow up. My generation! Your generation! During our lifetime, that's if we get to three score year and ten. We've got to get rid of warheads buzzing about up there round the clock and in submarines, also cruising round the clock. During our lifetime we've got to control population, to control ionizing radiation. We've got to cleanse the rivers and the seas, we've got to unclog the air. And we've got to have made a bloody good start by the time we're dead or homo sapiens has had it: men perish from the Earth. We've got to start washing underneath the arms and stop sweeping the muck underneath the carpet. We've got to plant more trees than we cut down. We've got to recycle the Earth's resources, even our excrement and urine. We've got to abolish the petrol engine or pay more for it. We've got to pay more for everything. Our money or our life!
Links
Doomwatch at Wiki
Doomwatch IMBD entry
Den of Geek review
DVD release at Simply Media
It's not on YouTube, but you can find:
The Opening credits (DOOM! WATCH!!)
The Cult of Doomwatch (Notalgia documentary, contains spoilers, but is a decent overview, with clips.)
DVD Trailer (Like most old TV trailers, it isn't much of one, but includes the opening intro of the plane crash from ep1 "The Plastic Eaters."
The 1972 film Doomwatch. (Stars Ian Bannen and Judy Geeson, but features the S2 regulars as well, and once it gets going, is pretty much Doomwatch, which is why it isn't rated as a film, I think - it starts looking like a by-the-numbers horror film and then eventually turns it all into science and corruption and sadness not monsters, as Doomwatch must, because we human beings are always the problem! And not necessarily even through evil; we're just so darned incompetent, we'll be extinct before we know it.)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments:
(The fandom_manifesto tag below will take you to the others of these I've done so far, although I see that Photobucket ate the pics from the Enemy at the Door one.)
Anyway, welcome to the future. It probably wants to kill you...
Doomwatch
Doomwatch was a BBC drama series that ran from 1970 to 1972, created and script-edited by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler (who invented Doctor Who's Cybermen) and produced by Terence Dudley.
It focused on the Ministry of Security's Department of Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work, nicknamed 'Doomwatch' (which is what the team also name their computer) as they investigated possible dangerous side-effects of new scientific discoveries from plastic-easting viruses to killer rats to the dangers of DDT and lead in petrol, often having an eerily prophetic tendency to predict the headlines and sparking more than one debate in parliament. According to the Cult of Doomwatch, when Channel 5 tried to revive the series with a modern version, they got some scientists to give them cutting-edge ideas for storylines... and found that all of them had been covered by the original.
Doomwatch was headed up by Nobel prize-winning mathematician and phyisicist, Dr Spencer Quist, backed by Dr John Ridge (a chemist who had worked for MI6), Colin Bradley (the down-to-earth, Northern (TM) computer specialist and general dogbody), young chemist Tobias (Toby) Wren and the secretary, Pat Hunnisett.
So, Our Heroes vs Whitehall and unethical scientists + real issues & science and environmental crusading + an occasional edge of horror = the cult phenomenon that was Doomwatch.
Why should you watch it?
For all its 1970s beigeness, creaky old-telly-ness and the rest of it, it does pull off its brief and it can still pack a punch at times.
The cast are good, the vast majority of the surviving episodes are pretty strong and watchable, even gripping in places (and don't talk to me about killer rats), and too much of it remains uncomfortably relevant, even prophetic. It's very much a YMMV series, in much the same way as Manhunt and Survivors, but, like them, you won't find anything else quite like it and it's worth watching.
The downsides: there's a lot of casual sexism (especially via John Ridge) and lack of a scientific female regular in S1, but this improves a lot once S2 comes around and Dr Fay Chantry arrives. Also it was victim to burnination, which means that 5 episodes of S1 are missing, only 3 survive from S3, and the surviving S2 episodes are complete, but in variable quality via Canadian colour film copies. It's also pretty white, even for the 70s (cf. also Survivors) and, thanks to Dr. Quist and his pullies, it is the very beigest of beige TV ever seen. But I'm not sure that's really a downside.
In warnings, it's worth noting, that it can really does not pull its punches on any front, but details would be spoilery. (Ask if you want them.)
Main Characters
Dr Spencer Quist (John Paul)
"To be told that you're different, that you're marked, it's ineradicable because it's in your blood. How dare anyone say that to another?"
Quist is the mathematician and Nobel Prizewinner who heads up Doomwatch. He still feels perhaps too much guilt for his part in the development of the atomic bomb (but he'll see somebody about that in S2) and he's abrupt, off-hand, grumpy, and doesn't care if you like him or not. He's also got the world's largest collection of beige cardigans & pullies. However, he's also fiercely moral, and willing to admit and deal with his own faults and mistakes and is exactly the nuisance that Whitehall needs. (Surprisingly great, in short, and a strong lead performance from John Paul.)
Dr John Ridge (Simon Oates)
"Pollution... desecration of the environment... despoiling of nature... I really wonder if any of it matters. Maybe it's a hopeless bloody world because it's inhabited by hopeless bloody people. Maybe what's happening's right. Maybe we're creating just the kind of world we deserve. And if it finally destroys us or drives us mad, that'll be what we deserve, too."
Ridge is a chemist and former MI6 officer. He's a classic example of the terrible Seventies Guy, flirting with and borderline sexually harrassing every female in sight, but he does also have an impressive wardrobe of unlikely and colourful 70s clothes, a tendency to throw up when people are experimenting on animals, and gets more upset than anyone else when something happens to any of his colleagues. Aside from flirting, his favourite hobbies are annoying Dr Quist, giving himself lead poisoning, and pinning up posters of Robert Powell on the office wall. YMMV, indeed.
Colin Bradley (Brad) (Joby Blanshard)
"People think of scientists as stockbrokers in white coats. What they really are is a bunch of weirdies, but don't tell any of this lot I told you."
Colin (or "Brad") is the computer expert, usually to be found in the office, running results through the computer (although don't expect him to get moral judgments out of it; that's not a matter of mathematics). He's also a professional Northerner. You need one in every office, and he's one of the best. (Just don't ask him to be your public relations officer.)
Tobias (Toby) Wren (Robert Powell)
"Sir, please can we have some of your new pesticide, so that we can prove it's dangerous - with an open mind, of course!"
Toby Wren is the newest and youngest member of the team - he joins Doomwatch in the first episode (only to nearly unleash a plastic-eating virus on the world). He admires Dr Quist hugely and has a tendency to be S1's regular damsel in distress when he's not getting in a strop over something.
Dr Fay Chantry (Jean Trend)
"I'd forgotten how beautiful chromosomes are. The dance of life?"
Fay Chantry is the much-needed member of the team with a medical background. She's a level-headed divorcee and brilliant scientist who isn't sure at all that she wants to join an organisation like Doomwatch - it's a bit negative, after all, isn't it? (Clearly also she must know Liz Shaw and there should be crossover fic! There isn't, though. Yet.)
Dr Anne Tarrant (Elizabeth Weaver)
The psychiatist Dr Quist turns to for advice over his guilt issues, and who turns up again later in a slightly different context (although she's still a psychiatrist). (I'm avoiding being spoilery here, plus an awful lot of her episodes are missing.)
Pat Hunnisett (Wendy Hall)
S1 secretary. She's very much a lay-person, but (despite what The Cult of Doomwatch may say), she's not stupid; she asks some pertinent questions and gets rightly angry about some of the treatment meted out to her by just about everyone other than Colin. It just depends a lot on who wrote the script that week. She would also prefer not to be a guinea pig thanks and understandably walks out in distress after the S1 finale.
Barbara Mason (Vivien Sherrard)
Doomwatch's second secretary, Barbara is hardier and longer-lasting than the first and super-efficient except when jetlagged, but possibly a moral midget.
Geoff Hardcastle (John Nolan)
The next best thing to Robert Powell, apparently. He likes being made a fuss of after he's been shot in the line of duty, so make sure you bring fruit and flowers to his bedside.
Other recurring characters:
The Minister (John Barron)
Sir Charles Holdroyd is the Minister that Doomwatch answers to. He may be on their side or against them, depending on the political angle, but you shouldn't trust him an inch if he's just got off a plane.
Miss Wills (Jennifer Wilson)
The Minister's capable secretary. (Well, apart from that one time she accidentally caused a plane crash and killed her cousin, but she's usually much more reliable than that. She's not in that much, but she's Jennifer Wilson, and Jennifer Wilson is always a good reason to watch a 1960s/70s thing.)
There's also a new S3 character, Commander Neil Stafford (played by John Bown), but too little of him remains to say other than he seems interesting enough in his brief appearance in what survives of S3. (He seems to be sort of an enemy in their midst but actually on their side.)
But there are only a couple of truly duff episodes out of all those that survive and while it's sometimes very 70s, and questionable, it's also rarely less than interesting and usually still challenging even now. It's simultaneously one of the most Seventies things you could imagine and yet still scarily on the nose about so many of its topics.
The last episode of Doomwatch centred around moral panics (in this case, Mary Whitehouse and various campaigns against sex and violence in the media), taking in (no doubt rather 70s) psychological issues, discussions on moral responsibility - and the inevitable danger of extremist politicians using any such media panics and manipulation. It's an eerily prophetic thing to watch in 2017, despite the very 70s emphasis on sexual repression as the topic in question:
Click to viewFor various reasons, the BBC put this one in a cupboard for 40 years. I don't suppose Britain would have taken the warning to heart and done away with Nigel Farage, though. As Dr Quist says, "No change. No change."
It features a lot of familiar faces, who are either destroying the environment or being destroyed by it, including Paul Eddington and Patrick Troughton among many others. (Michael Keating's is burninated, though, sadly.)
Notable episodes:
1.1 "The Plastic Eaters" : All the plastic will let you down and kill you! It's straight-forward but effective and plastic melts everywhere in BBC 70s SFX goo. I loved it immediately, although Toby Wren is more than a wee bit careless. I'm surprised Dr Quist didn't just fire him.
1.4 "Tomorrow, the Rat" : aka, thanks, Doomwatch, you gave me nightmares all year! Rats will kill us all! It's a pretty impressive achievement for a BBC show from 1970, especially given how fake some of the rats were. (They were super-rats, like in Mrs Frisby, but EVIL. Or, no, just hungry, it's all people's fault, it always is.) Also Penelope Lee gives a really good performance in a tricky role as Dr Mary Bryant. (If you don't like rats, you don't want to watch this. I'm not sure how you'll feel if you like rats, but they are super-rats that have been interfered with by Mary Bryant, because seriously, us humans will do these things and then what do we expect?) Ridge winds up in tears.
1.7 "The Devil's Sweets" : Advertising will kill you! Sweets, too. Dr Quist investigates linked cigarettes and sweets and a dodgy ad campaign, while poor Pat gets used as a guinea pig. Ridge cries again.
1.8 "The Red Sky" : lighthouses will kill you! When Dr Quist tries to go on holiday, he has the same sort of luck as any good detective and basically environmental disaster follows him about, which is even more of a mood-killer than murder. I think this one was all Paul Eddington's fault, but he did apologise afterwards.
1.11 "The Battery People" : Fish will kill you! Or worse, make you impotent. There's some very fishy problems going on in battery farming in Wales. You might as well try and stay down the pit. Ridge gets a bit freaked out about his food.
2.5 "By the Pricking of My Thumbs" : putting dodgy moral interpretations on dodgy research will kill you, or at least make your children very very unhappy. It's all the fault of Olaf Pooley, who was probably still grumpy at not being able to drill through to the centre of the earth in Doctor Who's "Inferno."
2.6 "The Iron Doctor" : Your computer will kill you! It's all James Maxwell's fault: garbage in, garbage out, seriously. When people tell you to check your programming, you should definitely do it. He did at least do penitent brain surgery to try and help Barry Foster. (Both of these are good eps for Fay Chantry.)
2.7 "Flight into Yesterday" : jetlag might will you! Take it seriously, especially if you're a government minister.
2.13 "Public Enemy" : Factories can kill you, but we all knew that. It's a strong ep, but mostly for the show beginning (pretty eloquently) on its determined attack on leaded petrol. John Paul's speech at the end is worth a rec on its own.
3.12 "Sex and Violence" : as I've said above, this one was pretty surprising and thoughtful and weirdly prescient in some aspects. Plus, Bernard Horsfall starts talking about oral sex to vicars, which is one of those sentences that should not exist, but do.
"D'you know what I've learned in the time I've been with Doomwatch? We've got a generation in which to grow up. My generation! Your generation! During our lifetime, that's if we get to three score year and ten. We've got to get rid of warheads buzzing about up there round the clock and in submarines, also cruising round the clock. During our lifetime we've got to control population, to control ionizing radiation. We've got to cleanse the rivers and the seas, we've got to unclog the air. And we've got to have made a bloody good start by the time we're dead or homo sapiens has had it: men perish from the Earth. We've got to start washing underneath the arms and stop sweeping the muck underneath the carpet. We've got to plant more trees than we cut down. We've got to recycle the Earth's resources, even our excrement and urine. We've got to abolish the petrol engine or pay more for it. We've got to pay more for everything. Our money or our life!
Links
Doomwatch at Wiki
Doomwatch IMBD entry
Den of Geek review
DVD release at Simply Media
It's not on YouTube, but you can find:
The Opening credits (DOOM! WATCH!!)
The Cult of Doomwatch (Notalgia documentary, contains spoilers, but is a decent overview, with clips.)
DVD Trailer (Like most old TV trailers, it isn't much of one, but includes the opening intro of the plane crash from ep1 "The Plastic Eaters."
The 1972 film Doomwatch. (Stars Ian Bannen and Judy Geeson, but features the S2 regulars as well, and once it gets going, is pretty much Doomwatch, which is why it isn't rated as a film, I think - it starts looking like a by-the-numbers horror film and then eventually turns it all into science and corruption and sadness not monsters, as Doomwatch must, because we human beings are always the problem! And not necessarily even through evil; we're just so darned incompetent, we'll be extinct before we know it.)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments: