#Even gets a special guest star billing here. I'd actually forgotten all about John Nolan until he turned up half way thru this one

[thisbluespirit]

#The sight of Robin Chapman's name on the opening was a very pleasant surprise. I didn't know he'd written for Doomwatch and his work is#Always worth a look. He turns in an episode that is once again very topical but that has dated more than some others. The xyy theory was#Already under some pretty heavy scrutiny by this point (not that anyone had told Ken Royce who published the first Spider Scott book in#1970) and I'm glad Chapman came down on the right side of history: the theory of increased criminality in xyy males is now rightly#Dismissed as pseudo scientific rubbish. A strong episode that benefits from one of those great pre credits shock scenes (about the only#Near contemporary i can think of to do that on brit tv was Strange Report) and a top class cast. Always a joy to see Bernard Hepton and he#Even gets a special guest star billing here. I'd actually forgotten all about John Nolan until he turned up half way thru this one#Some good Quist moments too and Jean Trend is settling in nicely (ie. Not taking Ridge's shit). Good stuff.

Being on the right side of history is generally an accomplishment from someone at the time, though, and I do like Quist’s speech you quoted.  :-D

It’s no wonder Olaf Pooley is annoyed.  No one will ever let him do scientific experiments, they keep going on about alternative worlds ending in lava floods and teenage boys’ feelings when all he wants is to blow up the world and destroy people’s lives!  So unreasonable.

Department S also has pre-credits shock sequences, although I had forgotten The Strange Report did (but of course, David Collings died in one of them!  Needlessly and tragically), but then they were both made one after the other by ITC.  I think some other ITC things have them too, but I’m not sure.  (The Protectors later?)  But Department S‘s are an art form of Impossible Stuff Just Happened.  (Indeed most of the eps can’t quite live up to their openers, because they’re just that baffling and great & the explanations are rarely quite as much so by their very nature.)

Doomwatch: By The Pricking Of My Thumbs... (2.5, BBC, 1971)

"The fact remains, that Ensor misled me. I gave him time and space for pure genetic research, not to play God. And the Franklins are the stick that I'll beat him with."

"And the effect it could have on the boy, have you thought about that?"

"Of course I've thought about it. Good God, seventeen's possibly the most impressionable age after the first year. To be told... to be told - that you're different, you're marked, it's eradicable because it's in your blood. How dare anyone say that to another? But Ensor has! And compounds his action by lying to me."