Doomwatch: Public Enemy
High time I blogged about Doomwatch again, since I haven't posted about it for about five years, to my surprise. Briefly to recap the history: Doomwatch (1970 to 1972) was a science fiction show about the titular agency, which investigated various scientific and environmental dangers. The show gained a reputation at the time for being able to predict the future because of its depiction of things which then happened. I hope it played a role in educating the public to the reality that you can predict what will happen and this is only what bookies do on a daily basis.
The premise is that a company called Carlingham Alloys are not managing their chemicals and emissions properly, and this has resulted in a hugely raised death rate from pulmonary disease in the area and a child's death resulting from climbing on the roof of the factory to rescue a ball. The episode represents Doomwatch's investigation into this situation, demanded by the local councillor.
The episode is essentially about a moral quandary, to my mind, although there is a scientific aura given to this debate by the fact that Carlingham are working on a new substance which will revolutionise everything, pretty much. We are therefore already in the familiar 1960s TV territory of the wonders of technology and what happens when these new developments go wrong.
Doomwatch tell Carlingham that they need to get on top of what we would now call Control of Substances Hazardous to Health, and need to take action which will cost more than they are prepared to pay. Carlingham react by announcing that they are therefore going to pull out of Carlingham completely and concentrate all their work in Leicester, which would mean closing essentially the only employer in the town, and this is what causes the moral quandary.
The alderman who demanded Doomwatch's intervention was elected (obviously by the townspeople) on a platform of tidying up the town, and in fact we see residents commenting that it's like the entire environment is poisoned and there is obviously some public opinion that something has to be done.
On the other hand, when Carlingham announce that they are leaving, the employees of the factory of course don't want to lose their jobs or relocate elsewhere and suddenly there is a groundswell of opinion that they would rather chance it and risk that they won't be the ones who get the pulmonary disease. This gives rise to one of those scenes which feel like they occur so frequently in Doomwatch, where the public are up in arms about safety precautions intended for their own safety.
Despite Doomwatch's magical repute for predicting things that were going to happen in the future, I think the series was as good at paying attention to what was going on in the world and presenting issues like this one in a dramatic form that the public would take to. In fact I think this is a very good example of the show presenting these issues. The matter of health and safety must have been in discussion in the UK at this time in preparation for the passing of the Health and Safety at Work Act in 1974, which unified and simplified a lot of previous regulations for individual industries. This episode must essentially be based on the discussions going on in Westminster and trade journals in the years before that act.
If I have perhaps made it sound a bit didactic, I should stress that the episode doesn't at all feel like a textbook of ethics or health and safety, while still being guaranteed to get you arguing about it if you were the sort of family that discuss the telly as you go along. My personal opinion is that you take a risk by living in an area with really only one employer because if they move or go bust this is exactly the sort of situation that happens, and also that the parent company which decides to close the factory are clearly terrible employers, whose only interest is their own profit and not the health of their employees.
I just have a couple of criticisms: one is that Dr Lewis in the factory is played by Trevor Bannister, an actor who I'm afraid I can never take seriously in a straight role. He is however perfect as the voice of the anti-health and safety brigade. My other criticism is that the show depicts no trade union activity at all in a factory which is such a death trap that it is a caricature, and I wonder whether this is credible for the time.
This episode is a solid example of Doomwatch taking an issue of the day, expounding the issues involved, and plugging in to how things would develop in the near future.
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