The theory goes that authorities feared Watkins' docudrama might induce a sort of panic among the masses, and Cook tries to prove as much by looking at previously classified Cabinet Office papers, ultimately surmising that "TV censorship of 'The War Game' involved a complex interaction between civil servants in Whitehall, government ministers, including Prime Minister Harold Wilson himself, the Director-General of the BBC and the Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors." The thought of a world blackened by thermonuclear disaster resided in the back of an entire generation's collective consciousness, to the extent that it was at once an unthinkably terrifying prospect and almost a cliché, sapped of much of its actual meaning simply due to the fact it had loomed for so long. Others, such as the University of Sussex's Dr. Alban Webb (via the BBC) argue that the BBC "saw itself as a custodian of the best interests of the nation, which in this case it judged to mean not panicking the public about the hopelessness of our survival in a nuclear war."
Author: staff@slashfilm.com (Joe Roberts)
Published at: 2025-05-17 19:30:00
Still want to read the full version? Full article
