dickyadams

Barry Hines wrote Kes and Threads among others things. What a legacy. Two of the most moving films in British history. Both set in fully realised South Yorkshire settings and both in their own ways stories about lack of hope. But while Kes has moments of hope and levity, Threads has none. It's the bleakest film ever made.

It rightly coruscates the politicians and government planning of the time, governments that knew that if a bomb dropped then that was it for hundreds of years as the few survivors clawed their way out of an irradiated Stone Age. Watch this film and know that you will die a very very very brutal death with no hope of escape. If the bomb drops then you and your family are ended. The final scenes leave you at the bottom of an emotional well. No US mawkish hope and sentimentality here. Just pointless horrible death. End of.

Watch it in Oct 24 when the BBC plans to show it.

Absolute masterpiece.

It was when Baker really clicked and story wise it all moved on from the early 70s paternal environmentalism.

The introduction of Davros was genius. It gave the show a whole new mythology that has stood the test of time. Often this show does that and it's a testament to its staying power. More shows should do this but unfortunately they try to be like the pointlessly thick modern scifi novels that labour every point but remain rigidly encased in their desire to be canonical.

The story hinged on the great philosophical monologue and what a monologue. Years later Capaldi delivered one or two that were outstanding but this was the time the Doctor grew up.

I've been a professor, chair, director & partner. Yet I had a phase of reading & enjoying Mills & Boon books and I enjoyed doing so. Watching Apocalypse Tomorrow (Sky Sci-fi) just now, it's fair to say there's a whole genre of TV movie that is as beyond criticism as Mills & Boon is. This film and others like it are the scifi equivalent of Mills & Boon. Formulaic, cheap, predictable, knocked out as a script over a latte at Starbucks. Yet why not? There's room for low art like this.

Criticising these films is as pointless as criticising Mills and Boon as literature. Pretty girls and guys, heroes and villains, mcguffins aplenty and cameos for one vaguely recognisable scifi genre face. Added to the often preposterous plot (one man links the zodiac to world ending events and only he sees it) these films are just the TV equivalent of.fast food. Enjoy the burger and move on.