Doctor Who fans should be interested in hearing that Doomwatch, with several links to Who, is being repeated on Talking Pictures TV.

Talking Pictures TV, I understand, has the honour of being the most popular television station outside of the big names. This family run channel, with its quaint mid-20th century themed cinema presentation, broadcasts classic films and television series that, in many cases, haven’t been seen for decades.

A few obscure US series have been shown – I’ve never heard of The Black Saddle, for example – but the British TV series that it has featured have been largely sourced from ITV. Some notable examples have been Special Branch, Worzel Gummidge (featuring Jon Pertwee), Freewheelers (featuring Wendy Padbury), Shadows, Public Eye, Hazell, Budgie Catweasle, and several Gerry Anderson favourites: Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, and Captain Scarlet. Re-reading that list back, it’s effectively ITV programming from when I was growing up in the 1970s!  

More recently, the channel has started to feature vintage BBC shows, which was a huge surprise as I would have thought licensing anything off the Beeb would have been a bit pricey. Nevertheless, some very vintage shows have appeared; some of which have only been seen since they were broadcast (in-date repeats not withstanding): 1950s Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, Secret Army, The Brothers (featuring Colin Baker), and 1960s Maigret.  

At the time of writing, Talking Pictures TV are showing the BBC classics adaptation of Beau Gest (1982) which was adapted by Terrance Dicks and Alistair Bell, produced by Barry Letts and directed by Who favourite Douglas Camfield, who discussed this adaptation during his appearance at Panopticon V. This adaptation was also made in our favourite Dorset sand pit.  

What is interesting is that Talking Pictures are willing to show series that have missing episodes and may not be in the most pristine condition: early Dixon of Dock Green for example, but as each episode was a standalone story, it’s something that they can get away with. 

With this in mind, Talking Pictures TV is showing, from the 17th January 2025, Doomwatch. Transmitted between 1970 and 1972 on BBC One, Doomwatch was a science fiction/thriller series about a government organisation set up to monitor science which could be harmful to the environment or to mankind. The significance for the DWC is that the series was created by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davies, the creators of the Cybermen. 

The series (initially) stars John Paul as Doctor Quist the head of the organisation; Simon Oats as John Ridge, the action man; and a very young Robert Powell as Toby Wren, a very keen scientist. Also, look out for an appearance by Patrick Troughton in the episode, In the Dark.

The stories tended to have one foot in reality but could deliver a fantastical element. One episode features intelligent rats (Tomorrow the Rat) and the first episode features a virus that attacks plastic (The Plastic Eaters) which, incidentally, was broadcast around a month after Spearhead from Space. Anti-plastic? 

As I alluded to earlier, Doomwatch also suffered from the junking scourge that affected 1960s Doctor Who. Of the thirty-eight episodes made, only twenty-four survive with only series two completely intact.

What will be interesting is whether the episode Sex and Violence, from series three, will be shown as this was never transmitted on the show’s original run and, to my knowledge, has not been broadcast anywhere else. It would be interesting to see what all the fuss was about. 

Doomwatch begat two spin-offs in subsequent years; a feature film in 1972 starring Ian Bannan and Judy Geeson, with original TV cast members reduced to cameo appearances. This concerned the fallout from toxic waste dumping off of a remote island. 

The second was a one-off TV movie – Doomwatch: Winter Angel – starring Trevor Eve (he of Shoestring fame) as original character Neil Tannahil in 1999 on the then-new Channel 5. This featured the creation of an artificial black hole to use as a power source. A rather grim and pessimistic ending to that one, if I recall correctly. 

Clearly, Doomwatch is as relevant today as it was all those years ago and, quite honestly with the constant concerns about the environment, social media, radio/wi-fi waves, and plastic waste, I’m very surprised that there isn’t an equivalent thriller now. The closest we’ve had was Patrick Stewart and Ashley Jensen’s Eleventh Hour, but that was nearly twenty years ago! 

Doomwatch is on Talking Pictures TV from 17th January 2025 as part of Caroline Munroe’s Cellar Club.