The Guardians: Part 4 - The Logical Approach
At the start of this episode we see two prison officers in a cell with a young prisoner who has been condemned to the death sentence and the date for his execution by hanging has been set for the next couple of days. Showcasing the magnificent cuisine for which England is justly famed, he is eating apple crumble and telling the prison officers that he is expecting his reprieve to come through before he is actually executed. In reality the apple crumble he is eating is drugged with a sedative and he falls asleep minutes after eating it, a doctor comes in and kills him with an intravenous lethal injection. This really bugs me because in reality medications taken orally take an hour to work, but every film or TV show I've ever seen has got this wrong.
Politically there are a couple of different subjects in this episode which if I'm being critical I would have to say make it perhaps slightly unfocussed.
Perhaps the overriding one is about politics, government policies, or protext actions having a point or whether they are pointless. Naturally it makes the obvious point that if you keep on executing criminals, whatever effect execution may have on the populace it doesn't stop the relevant crimes being committed so is obviously pointless.
This subject of whether things have a point is also applied more generally in a discussion about the things we do, and specifically to the boy's father making a lone protest against corporal punishment. The Prime Minister and others discuss the evidence for the effectiveness and likely effects of a resistance movement to a government.
By contrast a couple of other ethical issues are laid out in the plot but not discussed. The ethics of setting an execution by one method on a particular day but doing it by another method on another day are not discussed. Similarly, the PM tells his son about a prison for political prisoners where they are made happy with camnnabis and don't want to leave, and this is not futher discussed (readers will of course be familiar with how much like The Prisoner this sounds!). The theme of government duplicity runs throughout the episode but is never discussed at all.
If there is no other reason for watching this show one scene would give one. The viewers know that the young man has really already been executed before the date given out to other prisoners and the public for his execution and I have to say the scene of the pretend execution a couple of days later is remarkably effective. It is made with remarkable economy with only two actors (one of them the Prime Minister's son who is in prison) in a cell, joining in a noisy protest as they think the condemned man is actually being executed. We hear the other prisoners but obviously don't see them.
I have two criticisms about this episode. The first is that the episode contains far too many plot things and 'issues', which makes it very complicated. Perhaps the best example of what I mean is that the character of Mr Quarmby is introduced into three different plot strands at once, which makes for a lot of exposition, all of which is rather blown up by the way the episode does actually end with the assassination of the Home Secretary.
My second criticism is related, which is that the show has messed about with the law for plot reasons: reintroducing capital punishment, for example, and since the executed man is referred to as a minor, presumably raising the age of majority back to 21 (it was reduced to 18 in 1969). I realise that the show is intended to depict a fictional England of the future, however, and on reflection I realise I have been very confused by this episode and I'm wondering whether some simplification would have been the thing.
I've been trying to think of how I would resolve these criticisms, but given that the plot includes an execution, assassination, perfidy, protest, sabotage plans, a psychiatrist session, some sex and another shooting, the answer is probably obvious.
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