Vallance is side-swiped by one of the stampeding horses, and the diversion allows Richard and Pete to regain their mounts and escape again.

Wheeler locates Vallance's abandoned Land Rover, but also spots Bayard's convoy and stealthily moves in to take a look. Vallance and his men return from their abortive hunt for the kids, and he and Bayard leave them on guard of the transmitter truck while they leave to set up and calibrate the other transmitter. Wheeler spots Spencer tied up in the back of the truck and knocks out the guard to free him. They run for it as Vallance returns and shoots at them, but they get back to Wheeler's Land Rover. He gives chase, as do some of the men in another Land Rover and successfully box them in on a narrow road. Wheeler tries to get a message out, but doesn't have enough time to tell the Navy where they are before Vallance immobilises his radio. However, Hatfield gets enough from it to send a search party out working from Vallance's Land Rover as a starting point. What the message does say also puts them straight on how Bayard has been able to get his Doombolt to work; they've only been using a single transmitter, not multiple ones. They need to locate them all, but with no other information it could take forever...

Meanwhile, Pete, Lucy and Richard are leading their mounts away from the sounds of shooting, unaware that Vallance has circled round and when Pete goes to look ahead he is caught by the traitor. All three are taken away by Land Rover to be put with Richard's father and Spencer until the test is over. Bayard agrees to take them to Control, something which Vallance thinks isn't a good idea. However, it's either that or Bayard wants them shot now, and Vallance won't agree to that. They are loaded aboard a wagon while Bayard gives Vallance the bearings for both transmitters to be adjusted to, unaware that Spencer has overheard. Bayard himself is taken by chopper to the main control.

While the Doombolt convoy makes its way, Wheeler, Spencer and the kids compare notes and discover that Fiddick Brae is not, as they thought, a place in Scotland but a new, nuclear powered oil tanker.

Meanwhile, the owner of the ponies has returned to his farm, the ponies themselves trotting back in as he arrives and finds both money and message about the target. He phones it in and Hatfield orders the Fiddick Brae to be contacted and abandoned. However, the watch officer tells him the tanker does not respond; it is being jammed. The only way is to launch a major sea assault against both tanker and Bayard's sonar boat moored in the Navy's zone, now on its way into position.

The convoy arrives at the second position to set up the other transmitter, unaware that Lucy has been working on the ropes securing her hands and is nearly free. Pete tells her that if she does get free to run for it and not to try and free them; she'll only get the one chance. Wheeler asks Vallance to let the kids go, but he refuses both that and the request to make an error on the test so Bayard's Doombolt fails to work; he may have a conscience of sorts, but Vallance knows where his pay check will come from. Fiddick Brae is still the target, and so far there's nothing anyone can do to stop it...

Episode 6 - Assault On Cragfest

Bayard is taken to his control on a small rocky outcrop out at sea, where old fortifications have been converted for his use. There he begins to power up for the tests, vowing to make the test once the chopper returns with Vallance and the hostages.

Meanwhile, Lucy manages to slip her ropes and as the others create a diversion makes a run for it. Vallance instructs one of his men to capture and bring her back, while he continues on for Control with the rest of them. The convoy sets off and rendezvous with the returning chopper. The hostages and Vallance board it and it takes them to the control island. There they see that Bayard has indeed a working system and is capable of carrying out his threats to sink the Fiddick Brae. Wheeler tells him the Navy will locate the island, but Bayard has anticipated that; if they attack, he will blow up the island and everyone on it. This stuns Vallance; he had no knowledge of this. He calls the Admiralty and speaks to Hatfield; Lupin tells the Captain to keep Bayard talking so they can get a fix. He is able to string him along for quite some time as Bayard is keen to crow over his achievements and the failure of the Navy, but Vallance realises the danger and finally gets him to cut the communication.

The Navy is unable to get a fix on the signal and it looks like Bayard will be able to make his demonstration in the next five minutes. However, Lucy manages to get to a phone box and get through with the bearings just before she is caught and grabbed by the pursuing heavy. Hatfield and his men are able to work out that the control island is Cragfest in the centre of the Bristol Channel and puts the waiting assault by Naval helicopters into operation. All they can do now is wait, but Hatfield also send police to the area where Lucy phoned from and Bayard's man is arrested.

Wheeler, Spencer and the boys try to stop the test, but are restrained, though Pete works at sawing through his bonds against a rough pipe. The test looks like it will go ahead, although Vallance's resolve is sorely tested when the Marines land on the island and a pitched battle ensues above the control bunker. Pete frees himself and Wheeler and they overpower the guard before setting themselves on Vallance and Bayard. Bayard manages to get to a gun, but as he tries to take aim on Wheeler who is struggling with Vallance, he hits the vital control circuitry instead and it overloads. Everybody flees before the equipment explodes, including Vallance and Bayard who board a moored midget submarine and get away.

The court martial is of course dropped against Wheeler and he and Pete are given a spot of leave to recover. All of them go out on the Rosie Leigh for a fishing trip, though not before Pete gets a dunking in the harbour from Lucy for moaning about her coming along at all...

Background

Some companies more than others are associated with producing quality children's drama for ITV. Thames was more associated with series for children rather than one-off serials; popular examples included The Tomorrow People and Ace of Wands. Some of the other franchises, including Southern, kept to the same idea, but tended to produce more action-adventure type series which often felt more serial in nature.

Freewheelers was a Southern production which lasted a total of 8 seasons mostly starring Ronald Leigh-Hunt as Colonel Buchan and with an almost constantly changing list of teenage helpers including Doctor Who's Wendy Pafbury and Last of the Summer Wine's Tom Owen. The Doombolt Chase can be said to owe a lot of its style to Freewheelers, although unlike that series which was made in the usual mix of video and film it was made completely on film.

The serial had a good pedigree on the production side to work from. The writer, Don Houghton, was an experienced author having contributed to series including Ace of Wands, Doctor Who, New Scotland Yard and The Professionals before penning this serial. He went on to write for Sapphire and Steel, CATS Eyes and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense as well as creating the Highland soap opera Take The High Road.

Directing chores were split, with the majority of the work falling to Peter Graham Scott while the rest went to Robert Fuest. Scott started out as an assistant director in 1941 and worked his way through the industry continually in various capacities including director, editor and writer. Major successes he worked on, particularly as producer or director include This Man Craig, Dial M for Murder, Redcap, The Avengers, The Troubleshooters/Mogul, Quiller, Children of the Stones, Kidnapped and The Onedin Line. As producer, occasional writer and director on the latter, he was a safe choice for a serial with so much set either on or around the sea. Fuest began his career as a designer, but like others such as Paul Bernard and Ridley Scott he graduated into directing. Some of his first design jobs were on the early studio bound Honor Blackman episodes of The Avengers, a series he would later come back to in a directing capacity for many of the Linda Thorson era. After this, much of his directing work was on films or tv movies such as The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rides Again, though he did also direct episodes of CATS Eyes, The Optimist and fantasy anthology Worlds Beyond. The serial was produced by Patrick Dromgoole, who had joined HTV Programme Controller in 1970. He later admitted that the reason he had produced so much children's drama for the station was because it was far easier to get onto the ITV network with drama for children, the prestigious adult timeslots nearly always taken by the major players Granada, Thames, ATV and London Weekend Television (LWT). Series he is most associated with include Sky, Children of the Stones and Into The Labyrinth, though his adult drama successes would later include the most successful reworking of the Robin Hood legend to date, Robin of Sherwood starring firstly Michael Praed and later Jason Connery.

Between them they assembled a cast for The Doombolt Chase that many a feature film would have given its hind teeth for. Peter Vaughan, possibly best known on tv for his performance as 'Genial' Harry Grout in Porridge, appears as Captain Hatfield, and makes an excellent base commander with his own agenda there for the good of the Navy. His superior, Admiral Lupin, is played by Ewen Solon, veteran supporting actor best known for his role as Lucas opposite Rupert Davies' Inspector Maigret in the Sixties. Commander Vallance, the mole in the service working for Bayard, was played by Frederick Jaeger. Jaeger's acting career begin in 1956 in The Black Tent film and with his German heritage was able to gain work all over the world in both film and tv. Apart from appearances in Sir Francis Drake, Rivera Police, The Avengers, Callan, Department S, Doomwatch, Z-Cars and The Sweeney, he also had a semi-regular role in Special Branch as Commander Fletcher and had worked with Ewen Solon on two Doctor Who stories; in fact, he had just completed work on another as Professor Marius, the original owner of K9, before starting work on The Doombolt Chase.

Commander Wheeler, who initiates the whole series through his actions in ramming the Navy's sonar boat, was played by Donald Burton, best known for his recurring roles through his careers as Julius Karekin in Upstairs, Downstairs, Augustus Trotter, the husband of Louisa, the eponymous Duchess of Duke Street and Commander Mark Nialls in the first two series of the popular Warship, perfect casting for Wheeler. His Lieutenant, Maddox, was played by the then up-and-coming Simon MacCorkindale, who had had various small parts in big series such as Sutherland's Law, I, Claudius, Jesus of Nazareth (as the same character as in I, Claudius, Lucius!) and Beasts. His name wouldn't really begin to gain him attention until after he appeared in the big-budget conclusion to the Quatermass saga starring Sir John Mills in 1979, thereafter he turned his attentions to America and appeared in series such as Manimal, Falcon Crest, The Dukes of Hazzard, Matt Houston and Poltergeist: The Legacy before returning to our shores in this decade as regular character Harry Harper in Casualty and Holby City.

Other notable cast members included George Coulouris as the mad Dr Bayard, best known for his role as Harcourt Brown in the Pathfinders To Mars and Pathfinders To Venus serials, John Woodnutt as the missing inside man Spencer, another veteran supporting actor with many roles including parts in Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School through The Saint, No Hiding Place and Dixon of Dock Green to The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Tomorrow People, Play For Today and Doctor Who, and Gordon Salkilld as Petty Officer Parker charged with bringing the youngsters back to base, who would be best remembered for his role in Terry Nation's Survivors as Jack Wood as well as many supporting sitcom roles.

The three young leads were all relatively inexperienced when it came to television and film. As with so many of his 'adult' co-stars, Richard Willis who played cadet Pete Larabey would soon guest himself in Doctor Who as Varsh, the ill-fated brother of 'boy-genius' companion Adric - as an aside, Willis' co-star Andrew Ashby in The Doombolt Chase bears a striking resemblance to Adric actor Matthew Waterhouse. Prior to making this serial he had appeared with Goons Sellars and Milligan in the film Ghost In The Noonday Sun and starred as 'Soldier' in the thriller Soldier and Me as well as smaller roles in the acclaimed children's drama The Feathered Serpent and Softly, Softly. He would later appear in Diary of a Nobody, Rebecca, The Bill, the remake of Maigret with Michael Gambon and Wycliffe.

The aforementioned Ashby, who played Richard Wheeler, has had only a limited acting career both before and since the serial, with appearances in the low-budget films One Hour To Zero and The Battle of Billy's Pond prior to The Doombolt Chase, the later feature The Last Kids On Earth and more recently an episode of Poirot.

The female lead, Shelley Crowhurst as Lucy, ended her screen acting career with this serial, having only appeared twice before as an actress in the Sixties, in the films The Great Pony Raid and Psyche'59. Although unknown, it is likely that a factor contributing to her casting was her riding ability; obviously there were other young actresses that could bring this attribute to the part, but many had already featured in series such as Follyfoot and The Adventures of Black Beauty and Crowhurst would be a fresh face.

Originally broadcast on the ITV network from 12th March to 16th April 1978, the story was all filmed in around the very area it was set; it was no accident that the Bristol Channel was the Navy and Bayard's area of operations since HTV were based there! Filming took place the previous late summer and early autumn in 1977, with a typical episode taking the usual ten day turnaround though action sequences and especially those set at sea would increase the time taken for set up. All the naval sequences were completed in a short space of time thanks to the Navy's co-operation, as most of it features only in the first episode and is concerned with ramming the sonar boat, a dummy boat made of flimsy wood that would barely stay afloat. Certainly this can be seen from the shot of the frigate bearing down on it from on deck, if not the side-on shot as she is hit. The rest of the material was all shot on location, although much of the naval base material was actually shot in and around a disused factory. Some finance was provided by the German companies Wagner-Hallig Film and R.P.T.P, who had previously contributed assistance to other co-productions such as Star Maidens.

As with previous adventure series of its type, Doombolt... had a solid story running through it with an extrapolation of possible defence ideas as its driving force. This might have been a few years before Ronnie Ray-gun got into the White House, but Doombolt... could easily be a precursor to his 'Star Wars' defence system and the thought of it being hijacked by the opposition was just the sort of plot that writer Houghton would come up with. He is particularly adept at making out for the first few episodes at least that maybe the Navy aren't to be trusted either, let alone the opposition, and it's this sort of intelligent script for youngsters that he was so good at producing.

Never repeated - like so many of the ITV series and serials of its type - it remains in HTV's archives, perhaps to be released along with others on DVD when the time is right. Certainly, another airing for it and so many more like it, such as Freewheelers, is long overdue. Perhaps one day they'll appear - like a (Doom) bolt out of the blue? Time will tell…

article copyright PPS / Martin Hearn 2006