The BEST episodes of Doomwatch

#1 - Waiting for a Knighthood

Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 6/26/1972

The episode begins with a vicar, the Reverend Frank Simpson giving a sermon to a half full congregation, one of whom is Dr. Anne Tarrant who begins to notice how the man is starting to ramble, and become incoherent. He looks drunk. He comes from the pulpit and starts to wander around... By the time he collapses, a party of school children are being escorted out by their teacher. Anne asks for an ambulance, watched by the vicar's concerned wife...

#2 - The Web of Fear

Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/8/1971

In a sauna, the sweaty body of the Minister of Health, is dictating to the equally sweaty Richard Duncan a set of instructions for a commission to investigate flooding in the Thames Valley but has no intention of setting a date just yet. That won't satisfy Doctor Quist, comments Duncan. 'Blast Doctor Quist! I'm on holiday!' Fed up with being in this sweat box, the Minister tries talking to a third person in the sauna but the man has a fit, and starts convulsing on the floor. Together, Duncan and the Minister try to get the man on to a bed...

#3 - In the Dark

Season 2 - Episode 9 - Aired 2/15/1971

A swimmer, just off shore from the jagged Scottish coastline, swims, unaware, into a mustard coloured substance floating on the sea... It's effect upon him is swift. His skin feels like it is on fire, and he gasps for air as he lungs seize up....

#4 - The Human Time Bomb

Season 2 - Episode 10 - Aired 2/22/1971

By the year 2000 there'll be over eighty million people living in this country. They'll want cars and places to park them. They'll want clothing and feeding and educating and work to do...to say nothing of housing...

#5 - The Inquest

Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired 3/1/1971

Geoff Hardcastle is visiting a laboratory talking to Doctor Henry Fane, who is surprised Doomwatch are taking the allegations seriously. There is an organised vendetta against his work, and him personally. There is a woman in the village called Miss Lincoln, a crank, thinks Fane. He blames her for the slashed tyres, broken windows, and water being put into the fuel for the boilers. She has turned everybody against them, it drives away his assistants. The problem is she is a dog lover. She found out that they had a license to experiment with animals and that was it. 'God knows what she is going to do next.' The shot that rings out, smashing a window seems to be his answer. Furious, Fane goes to phone the police– but then sees Geoff Hardcastle lying on the floor, clutching his arm, very still...

#6 - The Logicians

Season 2 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/15/1971

A plan of a building, its security, the location of a safe, a ventilator grille, a security alarm... and a group of three young teenagers are planning a raid. 'tomorrow's the big day!'

#7 - Public Enemy

Season 2 - Episode 13 - Aired 3/22/1971

A street alongside a tall factory and a young teenager, Jimmy Brookes, is kicking his football along the road when an exceptionally high kick sees it land on the roof of the factory! Borrowing Mr Tom Walsh's ladder, Jimmy climbs onto the roof, and Walsh gets on with his window cleaning. Then he notices the boy is in distress, staggering along the roof, choking, gasping for air. Walsh quickly climbs up the ladder and brings the lad down to the road. ...

#8 - Fire and Brimstone

Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 6/5/1972

#9 - High Mountain

Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 6/12/1972

#10 - Say Knife Fat Man

Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 6/19/1972

#11 - Flight into Yesterday

Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/1/1971

Ten Downing Street, and the Minister is anxiously waiting the arrival of Doctor Quist who is late for an important meeting with the Prime Minister. Duncan blames the traffic, Quist is being driven by car from the airport. The Prime Minister's secretary is also alarmed. Quist suddenly bursts in, he is unsteady on his feet, confused, slurring his speech and looks exhausted. He blames the driver for getting lost. He asks to be briefed on the meeting and is taken into the meeting leaving the Minister in no doubt what is wrong with the man. 'He's drunk! Doctor Quist is drunk...'

#12 - Without the Bomb

Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 7/3/1972

#13 - Hair Trigger

Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 7/10/1972

'Man isn't born free. For him...the dreadful has already happened. He has to live with the nightmare, or rise above it. And natural evolution is too slow. The episode begins with an establishing shot of the outside of Weatheroak Hall Maximum Security Medical Research Unit (Owned by The Department of Health and Social Security). The building is surrounded by a large wall covered in barbed wire and pointed glass shards....

#14 - Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow

Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 7/17/1972

#15 - Enquiry

Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 7/24/1972

#16 - Flood

Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 7/31/1972

#17 - Cause of Death

Season 3 - Episode 10 - Aired 8/7/1972

#18 - The Killer Dolphins

Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 8/14/1972

#19 - Winter Angel

Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 12/16/1999

Astrophysics lecturer Neil Tannahill receives an enigmatic note from Dr. Spencer Quist, former head of Doomwatch, and finds himself drawn into a sinister conspiracy involving Soviet nuclear waste secretly stored at a British nuclear facility.

#20 - The Battery People

Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 4/27/1970

Tough ex-miners in South Wales drinking gin instead of the traditional beer, giving their wives the cold shoulder and secretly turning to cock-fighting. It all sounds wildly out of character to Dr Quist and his team, who investigate despite the fact that all this is taking place in the Minister's own constituency.

#21 - Friday's Child

Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/16/1970

#22 - Burial at Sea

Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/23/1970

#23 - Tomorrow, the Rat

Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 3/2/1970

Genetic engineering? Tampering with nature in a quest to make Superman? The experimentation is still only being carried out on rats, but with dangerous, and deadly results...

#24 - Project Sahara

Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 3/9/1970

The time is fast approaching when a person's entire history - educational, medical, criminal, even financial - may end up as a foot of computer tape in some impenetrable central file. Worse still, a man's future career may depend upon the computer's evaluation. This week the Doomwatch team fall under the baleful eye of a newly established security section.

#25 - Re-Entry Forbidden

Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 3/16/1970

A new, nuclear-powered rocket is being tested, with the first British astronaut aboard. The smallest error could turn it into a flying nuclear bomb spreading radioactive fallout over a wide area of Europe. And an error does occur.