#but i think i'll try to watch as close to the uk broadcast time as possible!

[elizabethshaw]

seeing as the new series is starting very soon (i'm so excited!!), just wanted to make it clear that i won't be posting anything about the new episodes until they've been broadcast on tv in the uk for the benefit of those trying to avoid spoilers! and, as usual, i'll tag any posts relating to the new episodes with #dw spoilers until a week or so after first broadcast so feel free to blacklist that if you need to :)

[culttvblog]

The War Game

Content warning: nuclear war, physical injuries, effects of radiation, distress

This post is primarily about Peter Watkins's docudrama The War Game (made for the BBC in 1966 but not broadcast on UK TV for twenty years because of its content) but I'll probably also make nods to Survivors (1975 to 1977) and Threads (1984).

The effects of a disaster have always provided fodder for television. Since 2020 I have sold all my volumes of Survivors, although I have seen Threads since, and have rather avoided these disaster shows because it seemed a bit too close to the bone. This is of course because we now have the disadvantage of watching them in the light of the knowledge of what will actually happen if these things happen. We know that hoarding bog roll will feature very highly and currently a minority of the population will simply refuse to obey the safety strictures imposed on them. They'll run round shouting 'The Titanic can't be sinking!' This knowledge casts these shows into a bit of a shade because of course we should have this sense of dread about what will come.

I'm going to come straight out with it, and it's a huge criticism of The War Game. It's a dramatised documentary (it moves between the two styles) of the effects of a Russian nuclear strike on Britain. It has been widely lauded as a terrifying depiction of what would happen and indeed it is terrifying. But my criticism is that it isn't bad enough. There, said it. The effects and the human behaviour in this show are not nearly as bad as they would be in reality. I think possibly Threads comes closer, and of course Survivors is about a pandemic rather than a nuclear strike. I can't believe I'm saying this about a film depicting a nuclear war but I honestly think the suffering would be much worse than is depicted here. For example there is a scene where a little boy is screaming because he has been blinded and his parents get under the kitchen table with him and his sister, while one single cup falls off the dresser in the impact.

No. I'm lucky enough never to have seen a seven year old boy suddenly experience huge retinal burning in both eyes, but being calm enough to be bundled under a table isn't what I'm predicting that child would be like. Screaming and running and biting and absolutely hysterical while both parents also get injured as a result of trying to contain him and all become unable to continue this and they all die horribly when their house collapses on them if they're lucky. That is more what I'm thinking of and this is what I mean when I say the utter devastation of a nuclear strike is un my opinion played down in this show.

What The War Game does depict perfectly, which I can't remember being featured in Threads is the element of human nature and how it is brought out by a stressor like this. One example is the near total lack of preparation for what is coming. We see this in the commentary towards the beginning where it is very clear that the government and everyone else if nowhere near ready for the coming attack, which when it comes they have less than three minutes to prepare for. Watching The War Game I could feel the closer proximity to the Second World War than the others, and it felt like it would stir memories for lots of viewers. If this is the case I feel like it would be unfortunate because as we know in that conflict the government provided the shelters etc for civilians and of course there was some notice of what was coming. In the scenario in The War Game, not only isn't there time but the government can't and won't.

We see further illustrations of people's behavior changing in that the government suddenly becomes very authoritarian and threatens to imprison people for refusing to take in evacuees, even though the commentary adds of the layers of chaos by indicating that since only women and children were being evacuated they really weren't sure of how many would go at all.

Of course we also see the man who is completely prepared and has a shotgun ready for anyone who might try to get into his shelter with him.

But the people who are shown up worst in this TV film, and honestly it's worth watching for the devastating effect of hearing these things read out loud, are the bishops and nuclear war pundits who are quoted directly saying how we would definitely stop a conflict before it got to nuclear war, how we have to defend ourselves, explaining the just war theology, and other such bollocks. Seriously this whole show is worth watching just to be truly horrified by these actual quotes from actual bishops saying the nuclear weapons are OK. I have criticised the effects shown as not being bad enough: but in these quotes the human stupidity shown is utterly gobsmacking. *This* is the really horrifying thing in this show, in my opinion.

But of course The War Game has also been the subject of raging controversy about censorship. As far as I can tell the government was behind the banning, with the willing consent of the BBC, and the motivation was purely political in terms of destabilising our relations with other countries and so on. I have also read that there was a concern that the complete collapse of society depicted would be demoralising or some such nonsense. How moralised would they expect people to be when their insides are burning up and they're going to die in agony in a matter of months? Seriously?

Given that the show was banned so was obviously of concern to the government of the time, I really have to ask myself what function a show depicting a nuclear war should serve. It is obviously not primarily entertaining, and is clearly intended to horrify. My question would be who it would horrify and whether it would fulfill its apparent aim of making us wary of nuclear war. I have no idea whether there is any evidence of the effects of a documentary such as this on the viewers, and how many people it would make think about nuclear war or make people be against it. I think this is probably another question we can answer better in our age of disinformation and misinformation, that we can be certain that there would be a certain number of viewers who didn't believe it, would not reflect on it, and certainly wouldn't have their opinion changed about nuclear war. Nor would they be swayed by the reflection the show depicts of human inability to see danger in front of them, because those people would have no idea that they are the sort of dunderheads it's aimed at. I'm far from convinced that shows depicting disasters like this actually serve a function beyond reinforcing the views of those who were against nuclear war when they started watching. I would be interested if any viewers know any evidence about this, because I'm not familiar with any.

I would definitely recommend you watch this show, although probably as one of the key TV films of all time because of its warning about nuclear war and its role in the centre of a long-running debate about censorship. Its depiction of the human reactions and failures is also a feature. As I stated above, I do feel it is flawed in not being nearly bad or distressing enough, but then I'm just cynical.

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