Out of the Unknown The Midas Plague (1965–1971) Online

I remember watching this as a child in the 1960's - and although pitched as a black comedy - made its point very well.

This is an Earth where being poor means you have the most goods to consume. Limitless wealth doesn't go hand in hand with happiness.

Witness 'the poor' having to wear chairs out while the rich can take it easy with their lower quota of goods.

What a pity most of the early episodes of 'Out of the Unknown' are lost for good.

Several - including this one - should be remade as serious thought provoking sci-fi which still has a message for today.

Out of the Unknown: The Midas Plague is set in a future Britain, a future Britain where due to mass robotic automation & a surplus of goods means the lower class have to consume as much as possible, a man named Morrey Anderson (Graham Stark) has no time to do anything other than consume, to drive various cars, to eat & drink vast amounts & wear out countless items of furniture & he is not happy about it. If you defy the Government & refuse to consume then you go to prison or die, Morrey is not allowed to work because robots do everything & robots also act as servants at home, a technical engineer Morrey develops a satisfaction circuit which allows robots to feel human emotions & Morrey fits one inside his servant Henry (Anthony Dawes) to help out with his never ending task of consumerism, Morrey then discovers that the robots themselves control society in order that they will always be needed but growing public unrest threatens the regime...

The twelfth & final episode from season one of the British produced sci-fi drama television series Out of the Unknown this was directed by Peter Sasdy & is easily the most comical & light hearted episode of the first season, while most of the episodes relied on solid drama to tell a relevant story The Midas Plague presents us with a really bizarre vision of the future that I just couldn't get my head around. Adapted by Troy Kennedy-Martin based on a story by Hugo award winning author Frederik Pohl there are one or two cute ideas here, the sight of seeing people deliberately move around in chairs in order to wear them out, the idea that they have to drive at least a hundred miles in several different cars or the idea that a burglar now breaks into a house & actually leave new items there rather than take anything because the poor are so desperate to get rid of their rations which they are forced to 'consume' or the cool sounding idea that the poor are only allowed to work a day a week (I could definitely go for that). The Midas Plague is an ambitious black comedy warning of mass consumerism, over production & the social message about the sinister motives behind it. At sixty minutes long The Midas Plague doesn't have that much to say, it verges on just plain ridiculous at times with drunk robots & comic court cases & because I just couldn't take any of it seriously the social commentary is lost & diluted somewhat while an ending in which Morrey looks at & talks directly into the camera ends things on a surreal note.

Originally broadcast a few days before Christmas during December 1965 like a lot of Out of the Unknown this has dated badly, while the stories are usually solid here the dated & sometimes unintentionally funny production design & effects just makes the whole thing even sillier & harder to take any serious message from. The robots look terrible, I'm sorry but they do. The acting is alright, I can't say I recognised anyone though or that anyone stood out as one suspects no-one involved was taking it too seriously.

The Midas Plague is a strange & silly way to end the first season of Out of the Unknown, while the series may not appeal to modern audiences I thought the majority of the stories were strong & the production team did a decent job on what must have been a low budget with a few episodes rising above normality & emerging as rather good & surprisingly relevant even when watched today in 2010.

After being blown away by the holy grail of lost DOCTOR WHO stories The Web Of Fear I decided to track down some more obscure BBC science fiction in the shape of OUT OF THE UNKNOWN which is a totally forgotten SF anthology show . Now to set my stall out I went in to this show knowing that it wasn't going to some sort of high concept pulpy horror show often associated with DOCTOR WHO because that's not really what the genre is about . In fact you have to remember when OOTU was produced in 1965 not even DOCTOR WHO had evolved in to the show it's best remembered for as " The show that had children hiding behind the sofa " and at this point in television only Nigel Kneale had really tried to merge horror with science fiction , something he excelled at . So I went in to OOTU with a very open mind but even then that didn't stop me feeling very disappointed at this show

The major problem with the show is the painfully dated feel that is part of television production in those days . You have to be very forgiving as to how this plays out and television today is closer to cinema where as in 1965 television was closer to filmed theatre and would remain so well in to the 1980s but even so this is no excuse to how staid and static everything appears here . DOCTOR WHO may be perceived as a children's TV show but compare that show to the episodes here and you'll notice at least DOCTOR WHO does have an imagination and ambition behind it unlike OOTU

What makes this even more unforgivable is the fact that the show has many different writers , directors and designers working on it and yet there seems to a lack of sharp contrast between the episodes . If a story is set in the future then invariably everyone must wear a bleached blonde wig and implausibly futuristic looking clothes . You might like to know one episode Some Lapse In Time has an unknown BBC employee called Ridley Scott as set designer and yet all his sets look like every other one used in the show that resemble basic plywood boards

The storytelling itself is equally uninspired and is composed of actors sitting or standing around a very limited small number of sets talking , talking and talking . You could claim I'm missing the point of drama but it should be remembered that before the apocalyptic climax QUATERMASS AND THE PIT spent five episodes of actors standing around talking and that remains the telefantasy masterwork that has never been surpassed . Talkative scenes should be compelling and here they aren't . You have to also bare in mind some of the greatest writers of sci-fi are having their work adapted such as Wyndham , Asimov , Ballard and Pohl so it's difficult to excuse the unengaging nature of the storytelling . It should be pointed out that running for 60 minutes each and every episode would have greatly benefited from having at least a quarter of its running time cut out at first draft script stage . As it stands The Counterfeit Man featuring an intriguing premise of alien infiltration aboard a spaceship is the best of a very mediocre bunch

In summary OUT OF THE UNKNOWN is an attempt to bring literary science fiction to the general British public but television isn't a good medium to do so especially in the primitive way television was produced in the 1960s . The storytelling lacks incisive brevity and the idea driven concepts lacking incidence complete with a bland staid look make this show something of a chore to sit through