Doomwatch: By The Pricking of My Thumbs

In my last post I performed the remarkable feat (to me) of trying to get my head round how best to understand a TV series about the genetic condition XYY Syndrome, with the remarkable layers of the character being wrongly assumed to be criminally-inclined and that that theory is well and truly discredited.

In fact, of course, the idea that the XYY syndrome predisposes the men who have it to crime, had been well and truly discredited well before The XYY Man was broadcast. Probably a current comparison would be with the idea that the MMR vaccine causes autism: the evidence has clearly never been strong enough to say that it does, the original paper was not conclusive, and subsequent follow up has shown no connection. But the misinformation persists. Carrying on misinformation was pretty much what The XYY Man was doing, and in fact the writers didn't need to understand scientific research, merely watching more TV would have shown them they were on the wrong path. Of COURSE prescient series Doomwatch had already waded into the miasma about the XYY syndrome and cut through the nonsense (yes, I know there is some very mixed imagery in this sentence indeed).

The premise of this episode is strong and simple: in a school some boys play around in chemistry and end up blinding someone. The headmaster singles out the tallest and expels him. It turns out that Doomwatch have been doing research on the syndrome and that has involved taking blood samples in various settings including the school. The expelled boy actually does have the XYY syndrome and ultimately his desperate father appeals to Quist because of the injustice he has suffered (although personally if Colin Jeavons played the headmaster of a school my child was at I'd take them out PGQ). Quist, of course, knows full well that there is no connection between XYY and criminality, but it turns out that the scientist doing the research has unethically gained the knowledge because the boy had blood taken at the institution he was at before being adopted by his parents. He didn't even have blood taken in the school where the accident happened; it was all years before.

The entire point of this episode is crappy science, crappy research, a crappy attitude to research ethics, and the simple fact that the only possible outcome from this will be utter nonsense. It's a very straightforward, rather didactic, plot. It does make rather uncomfortable viewing, because it doesn't examine the consequences of unethical and just wrong research, it examines the situation from the point of view of the boy's own life only, without suggesting that there would be any consequences for breaking confidentiality and research ethics. This criticism is probably a personal preference and I wouldn't want you to run away with the idea that these criticisms of the show are terminal: if it wasn't worth watching it wouldn't appear here, and this *is* Doomwatch. Of course what should have happened is that Quist should have applied disciplinary measures. Again the MMR/autism myth is a good comparison because Andrew Wakefield got struck off as a doctor for spreading irresponsible misinformation which would expose people to illness unnecessarily. The plot would have been dramatically improved by including at least some of the aftermath, although I may be expecting too much. I do wonder whether this noteable omission is a result of the veneration in which 'scientists' were held by the TV of this era: perhaps the assumption was that this misconduct would all be taken care of behind the scenes and it was none of our business.

There is another, more major, criticism of this episode, in my opinion. The actor playing Stephen Franklin, the boy with the XYY syndrome, is Barry Stokes, who was born in 1948. This episode aired on January 18th, 1971, so was presumably made the year before which would make Stokes 22 or 23 when it was made, playing the role of a 17 year old. And I'm afraid it shows. He's clearly too old for the role, and while you can get away with this with older actors in his home, it shows up that they've got a grown man in the classroom and it's just wrong. That said, this is a demanding, conflicting role, and I wonder whether they cast an adult because a youngster couldn't portray the range of emotion necessary.

My only other criticism is that there's something wrong with the way everyone treats him, leaving aside his appearance. Stephen is supposed to be seventeen, and people keep referring to him as a child. At the time in the UK seventeen was the age at which you couldn't be brought back if you ran away from him and didn't want to go (currently it's sixteen, and one of these days I'm going to do the 1975 documentary Johnny Go Home but the list of content warnings would take about a paragraph). Stephen is actually above this age, and is clearly not a child, yet keeps being called one and treated as one. Perhaps this criticism should be placed in the context that he is adopted in the series, so it's posssible that he was being treated with kid gloves because he had had difficult experiences previously, and certainly the relationship between his adoptive parents and him is portrayed in a delicate, understanding way which is quite touching. The desperation of his father to get help and the subtleties of his existing relationship with Quist are portrayed very carefully in an excellent, nuanced way.

So this is another excellent episode of Doomwatch, which despite being open to some criticism, is a subtle portrayal of some very complex and weighty ethical and emotional matters. It could have been improved by casting a younger actor, and by us seeing what happens after a researcher is found acting unethically.

(NB Comments are always welcome but I will not give room to ones promoting medical misinformation or disinformation.)

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