Whenever the BBC has a SF hit on its hands it decides not only to hand out film rights but to hand out film rights where their series will be remade as inferior products like the films based on the QUATERMASS serials or the first two DOCTOR WHO stories to have featured the Daleks , or most disappointingly of all an original screenplay based on the classic DOOMWATCH series .
The problem with this screenplay is that it pushes all the regular characters from the show like Dr Ridge into the background while the action revolves around Dr Shaw , a character who never appeared in the series . The story itself - and the budget too for that matter - would have been adequate for a 50 minute episode of the show but seems somewhat stretched out . Ironically if the producers had decided to adapt one of the original BBC scripts like TOMORROW THE RAT instead of having an original screenplay this film might have been a classic
The problem with this screenplay is that it pushes all the regular characters from the show like Dr Ridge into the background while the action revolves around Dr Shaw , a character who never appeared in the series . The story itself - and the budget too for that matter - would have been adequate for a 50 minute episode of the show but seems somewhat stretched out . Ironically if the producers had decided to adapt one of the original BBC scripts like TOMORROW THE RAT instead of having an original screenplay this film might have been a classic