I know this isn't Doctor Who, but those of us of a certain vintage will recall being scared shutless by Day of the Triffids. It gave me nightmares and I wasn't allowed to watch more than about two episodes.

It's being repeated on BBC4 starting this weekend.

Anyone who enjoys C20th DW should give it a go. Nobody does post-apocalyptic drama like the Beeb.

There are a few DW faces (Maurice Colbourne, Stephen Yardley, Edmund Pegge, etc), some visual effects that look iffy now, and a wonderful sense of dank doom. Also, the theme music is terrifying.

Chuff's TV Recommendation Of The Week!

It really is scary - the 'Walking Dead' of its day. Will definitely watch!

Hear hear. Super creepy - and not just because of the triffids. One of the best BBC serials. The Beeb really knew their post-apocalyptic onions back then. What with Triffids, original Survivors,Threads and Eastenders Episode 1.

Thanks for the heads up Chuff. Much appreciated.
I've not seen this since 1980, and I remember it as being pretty damn scary back then.

While we are sort of on the subject of scary BBC drama vaguely related to Doctor Who - who else remembers The Nightmare Man? Some sort of insane cybernetically enhanced man loose on a remote Scottish island. Directed, I think, by the wonderful Douglas Camfield and written by Robert Holmes (adapted from a book I think) this was nerve-shredding stuff to me. Must've been around 1980.

Or The Omega Factor? - starring Louise Jameson soon after she'd left Who. It was, from memory, a sort of proto X Files with Louise and her co-star (he looked like Blake from Blake's 7 - who was he?) investigating the paranormal. Cyril (The White Guardian) Luckham played a sort of psychic evil genius and I remember it as being creepy as hell.

I imagine these are all available on DVD - must see if I can get hold of them.

Be very careful if you're planning on getting The Nightmare Man from Amazon.

It went out of print following the big Enfield warehouse fire during the London riots a few years back, and the version available now, with a December 2011 release date, is on a crappy DVD-R disc. Read the listings carefully.

Sure they're available.

James Hazeldine starred in The Omega Factor. Good actor who died far too young. It certainly gave me the creeps as a kid, as did The Nightmare Man. Compelled to watch, though. Like with Sapphire & Steel which I found haunting and creepy and brilliant.

Going back even further, I think The Changes from the mid-seventies was the first series that freaked me out. Breakdown of civilisation, Electricity pylons emitting unearthly sounds....woah. Recently released on DVD so will get around to buying that.

Will be checking out Day of the Triffids on BBC 4 so ta for the heads up Chuff. Ages since I saw it and vivedly remember the noise of the Triffids sting.

It was a great era for spooky telefantasy!

You're right: 70s/80s was a golden era for telefantasy. And for drama in general, actualy.

I have Nightmare Man on DVD, and it's great fun. Celia Imrie's first big TV role: she autographed it for me last year and we had a chat about her memory of making it. I must confess I found Omega Factor a bit dull, and bailed out after two or three episodes. Sapphire & Steel I've seen bits of and might get round to watch t sooner or later. The Changes is fantastic: very very similar to the original (unbeatable) Survivors, but scaled back a bit for its younger audience.

There's a sequence in Day of the Triffids with It gave me nightmares when I was approx. 7yrs old, and it spooked me when I saw it on DVD a couple of years back.

The Ghost Stories for Christmas are also well worth a punt on DVD. Nothing beats the Bergerac Christmas special "Fires in the Fall" ...

TV that terrified a generation. Fantastic. Nothing is comparable now.

Yeah, that version the John Wyndham classic is great.

The opening sequence with "our hero" in hospital in particular is quite eerie and creepy.

I always thought the ending of the series was a bit odd though. It felt to me like there should have been a bit more.

I've started watching the original Survivors on DVD.
Got through 2 episodes so far.
Its one of the most relentlessly depressing, yet brilliant programmes I've ever seen. No constant fancy dramatic music, no rushing through plot lines just to make it 'exciting' Just the sheer horror of watching a society gradually (at first) then rapidly disintegrate , and the different ways people adapt to survive (both good and bad). Its utterly compelling.

Edit: It's also rather frightening, and topical, with Ebola constantly in the news

That opening was also used at the start of 28 Days Later

I've actually just reread John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids. It's classic apocalyptic fiction, from one of the genre masters.

In a Doctor Who context though, it does amuse to wonder how a certain strident section of the Doctor Who fanbase would react to the female characters. If you think Moffat is 'sexist' God knows what you'll make of the female lead in Wyndham's book

The original Survivors is occasionally brilliant, occasionally rubbish. The downfall of society is well represented though: it's so damp, cold and desperate. The recent remake was no good at all and I gave up after about three episodes. The new version was too obsessed with everything being a government conspiracy (isn't everything these days), and I remember a scene where they were keeping chickens and one of he chickens had made a mess on someone's bed. There was lots of hearty laughter about chicken poo, and no-one seemed to have to go down to a river and bash the sheets against some rocks to get them clean. It was all very suburban and well-scrubbed. The original is just bleak (as is Day of the Triffids).

The Audiobook is on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCucx43O0H4

Also has Morris Barry (director of Tomb of the Cybermen and others) as one of the crowd of people attacking the car at the end of episode 2.

Morris Barry was an actor, too, and is briefly in Creature from the Pit. Also among the car attackers is Mrs Van Meyer from Tenko!

Anyone remember "Doomwatch"? I don't remember much, but one story concerned a bacteria that escaped from a lab that ate plastic. The vivid memory I have is a sequence showing a pilot in the cockpit of an airliner. He pulls his hand away from the controls, dripping with black goo - the bacteria have eaten the plastic!

Presumably, the plane then crashes...

I have an "unofficial" copy of the surviving episodes of Doomwatch. The Plastic Eaters is fantastic (the molten plane scenes are very memorable), and there's a fantastic episode about killer rats. Some of it is a bit dull, though (a bit like Survivors).

Seen 4 episodes that were released on VHS years ago. The Plastic Eaters, the first episode, and yep, the plane was a gonna, Tomorrow, the Rat which is brilliant, Robert Powell pretending to be attacked by a fake rat and all, You Killed Something Something which is also superb (don't know how to do spoilers so it's not really 'Something something!) and The Red Sky which is pretty good.

Well worth seeking out. Simon Oates is particularly good as John Ridge.

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Loved it (I was 12).

Such a pity the more recent production was awful, as I was anticipating it.

Way-hay. Cheers Granny. You live and learn.

You are very welcome.

(I'm afraid I can seldom resist an opportunity to instruct )

The excellent episode of Doomwatch I was being unnecessarily fey about naming up thread was, big spoiler from the early Seventies......



(Ooh, it's like having a new toy, Granny! )

Looks like the existing episodes haven't been 'box-setted' which quite suprises me. Guess what little the BBC released didn't sell enough? Shame.

There's a bit of a problem with releasing Doomwatch - only 10 of the 24 episodes that still exist are in their original format. The others are all NTSC copies returned from Canada, so any DVD release is going to look pretty sub-standard without some expensive restoration.

Black and white 16mm telerecordings exist of at least the 12 affected episodes from Season 2, so they could potentially go down the Doctor Who restoration route - re-colour using the chroma signal from the NTSC copies and VidFIRE them - but realistically that's just not going to happen for something as niche as Doomwatch.