Monday 14 November 2011

Other brief British genre shows that could make decent Who plots...

Between Survival and Rose ushering in the Golden Age of post-2005 British genre telly, we were lucky if we got six episodes of something in a year as well as Red Dwarf. And before and since then we've had some misses as well...

Terry Nation's Survivors, and indeed Adrian Hodges's Survivors - a viral apocalypse leaves an empty Britain with a few down-at-heel people trying to rebuild society and rather more not bothering to.

The Last Train by Matthew Graham - another viral apocalypse just about wipes out the country, apart from a few survivors saved by a cryogenics experiment. Like a much more low-key version of The Morrow Project.

(Viral apocalypses are such a thing around here that we had a sitcom about one.)

Bugs
A not-fast-enough Avengers-for-the-90s that pointed the way to where Who would return in the schedules. A useful database for just-about-possible technological threats if nothing else.

Crime Traveller
A time travel show on BBC1, Saturday nights, in 1997? In a parallel world, this slot was taken up by the Eighth Doctor. Hmph. Still, no hard feelings...

Ultraviolet
Vampires trying to take over the government, played absolutely straight, so straight it loops back to be rather funny. Still, good basis for a Secret Invasion, where just about anyone could be tempted to turn.

Invasion: Earth
Pretty ambitious, staging an alien invasion in, er, southern Scotland, with two warring alien species, post-Independence Day dogfighting and, er, a downer ending. It's a good basis for an invasion plot and a misdirection about who's to blame, though.

Outcasts
The newest addition to the list, a future colony with a bit too much mysterious strangeness mixed in with its down-to-earth concerns and grit. Still, lovely approaching/crashing spaceship.

The Uninvited
Aliens taking over human bodies? The head of British Nuclear Power rising from the dead? A conspiracy threatening to take over the country? Plugged as a British X Files it was more a 90s Quatermass II. Novelised by Paul Cornell, who had the Brigadier come in and save the day...

Dark Season
If you can't figure this one out, you're not trying.

4 comments:

  1. I remember reading about Crime Traveler in passing on rec.arts.drwho. The general tone of conversation was a hard done by "it should have been us."

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  2. It may sound insane but when I thought I was going to get a DOCTOR WHO rpg off the ground I planned to take each plot from a movie from MST3k. I still think it could work...

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  3. You're right.

    That does sound insane.

    ;)

    Yeah, in basic plot terms, "revive the dead to attack strategic points" is perfectly viable to pick an obvious example...

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