Friday 16 July 2010

Coming soon: the new Doomwatch 2010 story!

Watch this space folks!

13 comments:

Youth of Australia said...

I'll post it here then, shall I?

BTW, your next story is ostensibly "Nest of Doom".

Youth of Australia said...

"WORLDFORCE 5" (and that is how it's spelt) featuring the Disaster Squad Team. Who are the Disaster Squad Team? Well, if Doomwatch fail to stop the catastrophe, if they're not in the area at the time, and if the environmental and human mess needs to be cleared up, the Disaster Squad sort it out. They are the people Doomwatch turn to when things are SERIOUSLY screwed up.

Ahem.

"The world has always had to face disasters of one kind of another, from volcanoes to tidal waves. From the Black Death to the night the Titanic hit the iceberg. In the 1970s however it is not the natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes that we are concerned about; the most terrifying disaster of their future will come from man himself."

The plot, I hear you ask? OK, OK...

Youth of Australia said...

Plot. Right.

Arnold Kramer - 35, astute businessman, political animal, self-made millionaire. Married happily and has a pretty daughter.

One day, his daughter is swimming in the sea off New Jersey and suddenly is poisoned by mercury effluent. She dies.

Devastated, Arnold spends his fortune trying to found out where this lethal pollution comes from. And guess what? HIS OWN FACTORY! As you can imagine, this is not good news. His wife leaves him and he quietly goes mad.

Enter our next character - John Whale, an untidy, unorthodox and very unacademic computer genius and idealist. He approaches Kramer, explaining he needs funding to build a computer more awesome than any other. (This being the 1970s, he also needs a huge place to store the bloody thing as well).

Whale's presence galvanizes Kramer, and together they spend FIVE LONG YEARS completing this computer, with shift work by hundreds of scientists. Finally, the computer is complete. Any kind of disaster, the computer knows how to sort it out. But... what the hell do they do now?

Enter the triumvirate, Kramer's old Danish pal Nils Madsen - the Secrety-General of the UN, a badass feared and respected by everyone, East and West, Russia to Africa. The one terror that unites the world is Madsen quitting, as there's no one to replace him that all sides would accept.

Thus, Madsen sets to work...

Youth of Australia said...

Now that's all the backstory.

The series opens with Worldforce 5, an internationally-renowned organization based in a lakeside chalet in Geneva. Kramer works in New York, an office in the UN building.

The paparazzi follow Worldforce 5's every move, and any kind of emergency they DON'T get called in leads to questions of "why aren't you taking this seriously?"

Thus, though Worldforce 5 is appreciated on the whole, there are plenty of political leaders and international big businesses who hate the damn thing for making them look bad, acting as laws unto themselves and, worse, Kramer doesn't care WHO he upsets.

And there are a lot of them. Worldforce 5 saves the Earth with a ruthlessness many blanch at. The greater good is always their priority, and if there has to be collatoral damage or civilian casualties, well tough!

Youth of Australia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Youth of Australia said...

Only to the proposed episodes. Man, you should get a hotmail account. This would be so much easier.

OK. Episode one.

In France, a munitions train crashes on a high viaduct and starts a fire. Worldforce 5 realizes that, if the train explodes, the nearby village will be destroyed. Thus, our heroes use dynamite on the viaduct, knocking the train into a valley where its explosion can't harm the village.

Alas, everyone trapped on the train dies horribly. Whatever. NEXT!

Episode 2. There's a fire at Kramer's mercury factories - easy! The computer can think up nine ways to handle the situation. Question is, which way to go? The one that's quickest, or the one that kills the least people?

The story arc? Well, Worldforce 5 is getting sick of "curing" and wants to work on "prevention". A veritable spy network of scientists and informers start to tell Worldforce 5 if their locales are likely to suffer imminent disaster. But what's this?

Kramer's sick of going through the official channels. In fact, he's going to lengths of kidnapping, blackmail and even ASSASSINATION to stop "entranced villainy and stupidity".

Of course, everyone's disgusted, but Kramer's already offering to keep certain disasters "secret" if the relevent government makes a very large donation in cash to the Worldforce 5 budget.

Things get more and more extreme, as the Worldforce 5 team have to wonder if their increasingly Nazi-like underhand dealing is justified by the lives saved? Just how deep will Kramer get them into? And can any of them be trusted with all the power and influence they're getting?

Perhaps it's time Doomwatch decided to check out what their "big brother" organization is actually up to...

"Sometimes they win, sometimes they love. Their battlefield is the last freat frontier of our times - the issue at stake is nothing less than our survival."

GD and KP considered renaming the show "Disaster Squad", but TV stations weren't interested as Doomwatch was already on the air and popular to everyone except the series' creators. They abandoned the idea circa 1974 and GD went crawling back to Doctor Who, offering up Cybermen stories.

Youth of Australia said...

Only to the proposed episodes. Man, you should get a hotmail account. This would be so much easier.

OK. Episode one.

In France, a munitions train crashes on a high viaduct and starts a fire. Worldforce 5 realizes that, if the train explodes, the nearby village will be destroyed. Thus, our heroes use dynamite on the viaduct, knocking the train into a valley where its explosion can't harm the village.

Alas, everyone trapped on the train dies horribly. Whatever. NEXT!

Episode 2. There's a fire at Kramer's mercury factories - easy! The computer can think up nine ways to handle the situation. Question is, which way to go? The one that's quickest, or the one that kills the least people?

The story arc? Well, Worldforce 5 is getting sick of "curing" and wants to work on "prevention". A veritable spy network of scientists and informers start to tell Worldforce 5 if their locales are likely to suffer imminent disaster. But what's this?

Kramer's sick of going through the official channels. In fact, he's going to lengths of kidnapping, blackmail and even ASSASSINATION to stop "entranced villainy and stupidity".

Of course, everyone's disgusted, but Kramer's already offering to keep certain disasters "secret" if the relevent government makes a very large donation in cash to the Worldforce 5 budget.

Things get more and more extreme, as the Worldforce 5 team have to wonder if their increasingly Nazi-like underhand dealing is justified by the lives saved? Just how deep will Kramer get them into? And can any of them be trusted with all the power and influence they're getting?

Perhaps it's time Doomwatch decided to check out what their "big brother" organization is actually up to...

"Sometimes they win, sometimes they love. Their battlefield is the last freat frontier of our times - the issue at stake is nothing less than our survival."

GD and KP considered renaming the show "Disaster Squad", but TV stations weren't interested as Doomwatch was already on the air and popular to everyone except the series' creators. They abandoned the idea circa 1974 and GD went crawling back to Doctor Who, offering up Cybermen stories.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to have to find a way to stop your evil schemes man, stop the dark layers from climbing onto people's heads, and don't worry, I will through training. (By the way, this isn't a threat dude, I'm not gonna come find you or kill you or anything like that).

sparacus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
sparacus said...

Interesting info YOA. I still prefer to write for my own characters than this Worldforce lot.

Youth of Australia said...

You, Spara? A nutter magnet?

Perish the thought.

And JPF - for we all know it's you - leave it out. That's what Gallifrey Base is for.

Anonymous said...

Woah, Yoofy dude-o dude-a man man. I never said it wasn't me you know, you're seeing too much into the jumping Hippo of Peat Winks too much. And the colours are taking you over and you can't see and all that Woah shit.

Anonymous said...

Is it Lulu?