491 – Doomwatch – Winter Angel

Doomwatch is due for a revival.  Is this attempted pilot for a new series up to the task? Simon and Eugene discuss the Winter Angel. Movie Synopsis: A man named Sam is spying on the movements of some shipping containers.  He makes a report, via telephone box, to the answering machine of an unknown confederate detailing that more containers have arrived and that one of them is “hot.”  Before he can finish, his car has been backed up against the phone booth and a killer gases him to death, destroying his photographic evidence at the same time. [expand title=”More…” swaptitle=”Less” tag=”strong”] On a cow farm, Ewan is the man who received the answerphone message from Sam.  Ewan, in turn, calls and leaves an answerphone message for Dr. Spencer Quist, alerting him to the situation.  Ewan goes out to gather more info. Dr. Neil Tannerhill is a theoretical physicist at a major university in England, leading expert on black holes, protégée of Dr. Quist, and a man who’s about to move, along with his medical doctor wife, Meg and children to work at MIT in the United States.  He’s been receiving cryptic postcards from Quist, another of which arrives today, containing equations.  Unable to figure out what the equations mean, nor how to operate a telephone to call and ask Quist what they mean, Tannerhill poses them to his post-grads to see if they can figure them out. They are unable to completely solve them, but posit that two have to do with black holes and 1 may be about pollution. A team from Special Branch and Military Intelligence search the farm where Ewan lives.  They discover he knows about the latest containers and has been in contact with Quist.  Special Branch warns MI that Quist is too high profile,  a national institution – they’ll need higher clearance to do anything about him. Ewan is camped out recording the arrival and offloading of the containers in a pouring rain.  One of the containers breaks free, falls and wedges sideways in the loading chute and starting a fire.  The workman use another container like a hammer to try to unjam it in.  This second container breaks open dropping highly-radioactive fuel rods and causing a huge explosion and release of blue radiation. On the base, MI take over the search for Ewan, and Ewan just escapes with his camera as they close in on his hide.  He evades them till morning, when he encounters the farmer from the farm where he lives and works.  He passes the camera off to the farmer, then sets off leading them away.  He is captured by MI and taken on a one-way helicopter ride out to sea. Next we meet Luke Godwin and Dr. Terry Reilly, members of the Animal Nation Warriors.  Luke has received a fax ostensibly from Ewan asking for help, but it appears to be the wrong handwriting, but that will have to wait.  They’ve got something big planned tonight, and it’s not just sex on top of a building. That night, Quist meets up with Tannerhill and his wife at an awards ceremony held by Autogene, a private research firm.  At the event, Quist tries to convince Tannerhill that his research can be used for military or evil purposes.  Tannerhill denies that.  His work is theoretical and about black holes, which have no practical purpose.  Quist also tells him that Tannerhill’s work may be taken up by the Pandora corp and they’ve been taking in nuclear waste at a disused nuclear plant.  Tannerhill is introduced to Hugo Cox, computer genius with intel on Pandora. During a speech, Luke hacks a video of animal cruelty to play on the screens while Terry interrupts on behalf of the Animal Nation Warriors, who storm in protesting.  Quist cheers them on.  They escape to the roof where… I think they may have had sex. Quist is detained by “the authorities” and held without questioning all night by MI. When special branch find out, they release him and suggest he should file a complaint. Zeist, boss of Pandora, arrives at the nuclear plant and demands a status from Toby Ross, chief scientist.  Ross starts to enumerate the casualties, but Zeist twirls his mustachio and cuts him off, “No, no, I don’t give a damn about that.  What about the plant?” It’s bad, our black hole is oscillating and it’s going to bust things up and destroy the UK if we don’t give it more power from the electrical grid.  “Nope, can’t do that, PR disaster, and people would find out.  Find some other way.” Terry and Luke follow up on Ewan’s fax the next day.  It was the farmer who faxed them.  He lost his daughter to radiation and called in Ewan’s people to investigate.  He turns over the recorder to them and they are horrified at what they see. Terry tries to get the tape to Quist, while Luke decides to break into the plant and gather evidence.  Luke scales the building just as Hugo hacks into the plants security cameras.  He watches him enter an airlock and then approach the black hole containment area.  The intense gravity pulls him to his death. MI is following Terry, with plans to kill her making it look like an overdose, she evades them and gets to Quist’s home, but he is not there.  She leaves the tape in his mail box, but then calls and leaves an answerphone message for him.  Unfortunately, his lines are tapped and MI are onto it. Quist has gone to see Tannerhill.  He must take up the mantle of Doomwatch, there is no one else. Toby Ross was Quist’s other protégée and he is working for Pandora.  Pandora is privately owned but staffed entirely by military nuclear experts.  They’ve collected over 2400 tons of nuclear waste from the Ukraine, some of it weapons grade, and there is no oversight or accountability on them at all. If Ross’ black hole experiment fails, there are but two outcomes.  Vaporizing the UK or a China syndrome meltdown resulting in the total destruction of the earth in just 1,230 years.  Either would not be a good result. Quist returns home, finds the tape in his letterbox, but, exhausted, falls asleep in the chair without listening to his answerphone.  He doesn’t hear a call from Hugo, either.  Hugo is trying to tell him about Luke, and when he can’t reach Quist, he tries Tannerhill, who is at church and also doesn’t get the call. MI breaks into Quist’s home and rigs the gas to explode, killing Quist and destroying to only copies of the full Doomwatch master tapes, thus completing a job that the BBC only aspired to. Hugo and Tannerhill receive Quist’s legacy – digital copies of the Doomwatch files.  The torch now passes onto them. At the funeral Ross is there and Tannerhill quietly confronts him.  Ross confides that there’s a problem and Tannerhill demands he get him in to see it.  He agrees. Later, as Tannerhill prepares to go in, Hugo provides him with insurance. A classic “if I don’t return in a few hours, this story will be plastered all over the news tonight.” Terry, unaware that Luke is dead, breaks into the plant to find him.  Hugo spots her on the hacked security cameras and warns her to get out.  She doesn’t heed his warning, even when she sees that MI have spotted her and are in pursuit.  With Hugo’s help, they are tricked into the airlock and then through the door that lead to Luke’s death.  Like night follows day, the bad boys from MI meet the same fate as Luke. Tannerhill immediately assesses the situation and concludes they need to throw more power at it.  Zeist objects, but Tannerhill’s force of personality overcomes all and, after blacking out the entirety of the UK, the black hole is brought under control.  But black holes are forever and this one, once created, will never go away, nor will the potential it will destroy the world. They must be ever-vigilant. [/expand]