438 – Doomwatch – By the Pricking of My Thumbs…

Genetic profiling.  Yes…  genetic profiling… this was a thing back in 1971! Simon and Eugene discuss By the Pricking of My Thumbs… Episode Synopsis:  In a secondary school some students sabotage another student’s science experiment, making it so that it will explode. The results go… pretty much exactly how any rational person would expect them to go. The student is burned and has glass lodged in his eye. [expand title=”More…” swaptitle=”Less” tag=”strong”] At Doomwatch, Dr. Chantry is helping visiting scientist, Mr. Ensor, do chromosomal studies. It’s clear Quist isn’t a big fan of this project and believe sEnsor is making too much from his extremely limited data. Ensor is studying the effects of men possessing double-Y chromosomes and how that influences their violent behavior. Chantry is helping him study blood samples taken from prisoners. At the school, the three boys are on the carpet, and while only two of them were actually active in sabotaging the experiment, all three stick together and will not rat on one another. The victim faces the potential loss of his eye and the perpetrators face expulsion. Ensor is there, too, and after the boys leave, he begins expounding on the fruits of his work and that in light of who one of the three students is – Stephen Franklin, an adopted child, it may make sense. Unbeknownst to Ensor or the headmaster, Stephen was the one child who did not actively participate in the prank. When the two culprits are given an essay on “environment versus heredity” as their punishment, but Stephen is expelled from school, Stephen’s father is irate. He pieces together that, somehow, the school is assuming that Stephen has double-Y chromosomes and is, in effect, predisposed to violence and bad behavior and therefore must have been the instigator of the prank. Mr. Franklin also happens to be a journalist, and through the wildest of coincidences, happens to have written several articles popularizing the view that Double-Y chromosomes lead to violent individuals. He takes his plight to Doomwatch. Quist knows of Mr. Franklin, and he does not appreciate a journalist who simplifies scientific data to the point where it is easily misunderstood by the layman, and he has no sympathy for him. Ridge, meanwhile, through his constant sexual activity, has discovered that the blood samples Chantry has been analyzing aren’t from prisoners, but happen to be samples extracted from students at Stephen’s school, where Ensor has been carrying on his research. This angers Chantry, who has been lied to, but softens Quist’s heart – just a little. There’s still one mysterious question: Ensor hasn’t gotten around to taking blood samples from the older students yet. How does he seem to know that Stephen is Double-Y? Quist puts Ridge on the case. Ridge puts Hardcastle on the case – who has apparently been hiding in a broom closet at Doomwatch for the last few weeks. Stephen runs across his father’s articles on Double-Y chromosomes and puts two and two together for himself – he runs away from home and heads to Gatwick, because he’s a bit of a plane enthusiast. Ridge talks with the other two pranksters. One admits that Stephen tried to stop them, and that he even told the headmaster that Stephen wasn’t at fault, but the headmaster dismissed his comments – his mind already made up. Hardcastle tracks the boy down to Gatwick, where he tries to commit suicide on the runway. Ridge and Quist discover that, 10 years ago, Ensor had worked at the care center that Stephen was adopted from and must have collected his chromosome data years ago. Hardcastle saves Stephen, and with Doomwatch’s intervention, he is readmitted to school, and Ensor and the headmaster is given a bit of a talking to by Quist. “We may yet be proved… …to be the sum total of our chemical components, but until that bleak day dawns, I suggest we treat ourselves and our children as responsible, even moral, beings.”[/expand]