Eleventh Hour

[lizwilliams]

I watched the first half hour of this and then I got fed up with it and finished a short story instead. Patrick Stewart is always watchable and he's a good actor (although the avuncular Yorkshireman act got the series re-christened the 'Eee, bah 'ecks Files' by a sarcastic reviewer), but the dialogue just grated on me. I just can't see a government advisor walking into a police investigation, taking over their evidence tent and introducing himself as 'whatever-it-was, scientist.' If I went into the local cop shop and introduced myself as 'Liz Williams, writer' they'd probably be laughing yet.

And he has a special branch bodyguard because WHO is out to get him? I'm presuming the female cop was being sarcastic when she mentioned Greenpeace. After Rainbow Warrior, it's more likely to be the other way round. I can buy that he might need protection from the animal rights brigade, whose guerilla exhumations have recently caused a fuss in the UK, but Greenpeace? And possible assassination by 'oil companies' is stretching it unless he's working in Lagos.

An old friend of mine advises the House of Lords on medical and scientific ethics. He's a philosopher of science - used to be professor at Manchester and now works more or less freelance. A lot of the people who get onto ethics committees have a philosophical, rather than a directly scientific, background, so I'm not even sure that Stewart's character, as a physicist, would be involved in these sorts of cases.

Did anyone else see it? What did you think?

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Its sitting on my hard drive awaiting my return. But what you say here has not enthused me...

Having him as a physicist is a direct steal from Doomwatch, whose head, Quist, was an alumnus of the Manhattan Project.

I suspect having animal rights after him would be too controversial, but it is a touch I'd've liked.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

>Having him as a physicist is a direct steal from Doomwatch, whose head, Quist, was an alumnus of the Manhattan Project.

It's described as a DOOMWATCH type show, so that makes sense.

They may feature animal rights in a future ep - it's a hot topic at the moment as activists become increasingly extreme.

[ahforgetit.livejournal.com]

Yes, I watched it. I wasn't impressed with the first few minutes and I don't think that it started the series with a bang at all. It didn't show any kind of rationale for the prof to have a bodyguard, it didn't show any kind of background to where his authority comes from, It didn't show him as being anything really except an interfering do-gooder with a sarcastic gun-toting sidekick. Next week's episode is going to be about a haemorrhagic virus, much more like it.

There were some nice character bits in it; the brush-off that the cop gave the guy who tried to pick her up, how they got the caretaker to talk, other things. It had a fairly clear view about what human cloning really does, what it's good for and what it can't do. IANA biologist (more about that below) but the science and the ethics seemed reasonably sound. I liked what happened when the bullying boyfriend ran into someone truly bad. I also liked the fact that when the cop shot at the bad guy there were immediately forms to be filled in.

So, a bit of a curate's egg; I'm going to reserve judgement until next week.

As for him being a physicist, I am a physicist and so is my boss and what we do is environmental and human rights ethics, consulting to (very large) companies and government agencies. I used to work for the police, my boss was in the nuclear industry. I don't have a gun-toting sidekick and neither does my boss.