The Omega Factor: The Undiscovered Country
Imagine my shock, when checking the single post I thought I had made about this show preparatory to starting through the entire series for the first time, to find that I had already posted about each episode. I think the set and setting (as the sixties drug culture had it) influenced by recollection here: I wrote the single post about the whole series when I was off work after first being diagnosed with arthritis in 2018 but went through the whole series in 2017. I suppose my arthritis diagnosis had put me in a different midset and made that post more memorable. However I am still going to have a go at going through the whole show again (I think I omitted some episodes last time) so apologies if you remember the last series of posts distinctly.
The Omega Factor is Britain’s (well, Scotland’s really) predecessor to The X-Files about Tom Crane, a journalist with psychic agilities who is drafted in to Department 7, a secret government agency investigating psychic ability and stuff like that.
The episode begins with Crane being bothered by a repeat dream about a white room. We see this: we see a man in a white room. Crane is writing about psychic ability, and is directed to go to Edinburgh to find a famous magician called Drexel, now retired and running a second hand bookshop. Drexel invites him to return another time for a demonstration of psychic ability. Crane thinks he sees his wife driving in a car in Edinburgh even though she isn’t there. Drexel changes his mind about this but on being prodded says that he can put fear into Crane, who is chased home by something and ends up crouched in a phone box. During the experience he sees various things including the name of an Edinburgh street and various mysterious clues, one of which is an omega. He and his friend Anne (played by Louise Jameson who I thought was familiar and then realised even I can only place her without clothes on) go to the street and see the things he has seen. They follow them and find the body of the woman who has disappeared. Crane returns to Drexel’s bookshop only to find it completely abandoned. He goes to collect his wife from the station, but as they are dricing Crane starts seeing things, ultimately swerving to avoid a woman he can see in the road. The car crashes, which kills his wife. He looks around but there is no woman there. We then see Crane’s wife’s funeral, and a woman who was in Drexel’s bookshop is lurking in the graveyard. As he is preparing to get away to another country a man from Department 7 calls at Crane’s door and tells him that the reason he has been having the dreams about the white room is his own brother has been setting him up for these dreams, in a white room in Edinburgh, and they have been telepathic. His wife also worked for Department 7. It is clear that Crane has to agree to the work Department 7 want to do on his psychic abilities.
Something I’m really noticing this time which I didn’t before is the series isn’t afraid just to introduce a plot element without feeling the need to explain it. For example the story of the missing woman is just suddenly produced for no apparent reason. Crane’s wife suddenly announces that she is coming up to see him. And of course the man from Department 7 appears unannounced. All of these plot threads are tied together at the end. It is a superlatively well planned drama.
It also has a significant difference from so many typical plots about psychic ability. Crane is adamant to everyone that he doesn’t have psychic ability, despite many of the characters telling him that he clearly does throughout the episode. It means that he is putting up more resistance to his own fate rather than the sort of plot where the alleged psychic has always thought they could see things. Crane decides though that he finds the dead woman through his own ability and that Drexel is frightened of his ability. Drexel is supposed to have been killing people through his psychic ability, which of course wouldn’t leave evidence for a conviction, so we end the episode with Crane having made a powerful and really scary enemy.
He blames himself for his wife’s death, naturally. One of the features of the show is the question of motivation and Crane is set up very much as a rather ambivalent character. He is of course the lead and the, as it were, ‘psychic lead’ but everyone has been at the psychic ability without telling him, he has no awareness of this, and in fact often has to be guided and supported by other characters.
There are just a couple of problems with the plot, which do not destroy this excellent drama. One is that Crane has discovered the dead body of a woman who has been in the news after her mysterious disappearance, but this discovery isn’t allowed to hold up the plot with the time that you would normally spend being questioned by the police. The other is about the car crash, which is head on into a tree and kills his wife. The problem is that Crane can just get out of the car after this and look around, and honestly you wouldn’t be able to.
I’m looking forward to going through this series again, and hope I don’t get distracted before I can finish it!
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