The Big Pull Part Two
Something came back to Earth with astronaut Mike Sklorski and killed him. So why can he be seen in a newspaper photograph and where is the man who saw him die? Read on!
The Big Pull Part Two
By Robert Gould and directed by Terence Dudley.
Illustration by Robert Hammond.
The photo of dead astronaut Mike Sklorski is on top of a pile of papers on Inspector Maxwell’s desk. He receives a phone call from Dr Tullis who is at the nursing home where Mrs Weatherfield is a patient. What did she see in the newspaper which upset her so much. (Sedated, Mrs Weatherfield can see Sklorski in her mind’s eye.) Maxwell wants a record kept of anything she says. He then instructs a constable to find the newspaper in question - the Evening Graphic and then return Sklorski’s file to records.1
Recovering, Mrs Weatherfield tells Tullis that she wants to go back home to America and see her children.
In his office at the radio telescope, Sir Robert Nailer is reading another newspaper which has the headline ‘A Message from Space? Giant ‘Scope makes no comment.’ His secretary Pam buzzes him over the intercom: Mr Ilson from the Daily Globe is here. Nailer walks over to the window and studies the enormous dish bowl structure outside.2 Ilson enters. He is representing his colleagues and demands to know why Nailer will not agree to a press conference, nor confirm that some sort of signal is being received on the new equipment. A phone call interrupts the questioning. It is Tullis reporting that Mrs Weatherfield still won’t say what upset her. Nailer only confirms to Ilson, who overheard, that the police are being ‘cagey’ about Weatherfield’s disappearance. If he has defected then that becomes a matter for Scotland Yard. Nailer decides to give Ilson a tour of the new equipment and arranges for an A2 pass to be prepared.
Nailer escorts the journalist towards control room A.3
Inside, Anderson is working at a control panel. The screeching noise is present, registering as a crazy line on an oscilloscope. Ilson asks Nailer if he did not like the word ‘signal’ because it implied a message? Nailer agrees but will not be pressed any further if this noise is a message.
Young Janet Nailer is coming home from school, unaware at first that she is being watched. We only see a part of the observer, mainly the hand. When she does notice him, she is more puzzled than frightened. Once safely inside, Janet asks her mother for the name of the dead astronaut in the programme her daddy was in. Because if he is dead, why is he outside? By the time Lady Nailer goes to the window, the man is walking away. Despite an interruption by their house-keeper Mrs Stone, Janet is adamant she recognised Sklorski.
Mrs Weatherfield is pleased to learn that her flight home has been arranged for Thursday. Her smile vanishes when Tullis gently tackles her once again about what is bothering her.
Night time. Anderson enters the changing room as Bruton gets ready to begin his shift, annoyed his colleague is late. Anderson takes out pencils and cigarettes from his coat pocket and hangs his coat and sweater in his locker. He begins a monologue about how tired he is getting in the service of science, sitting from 5 o’clock in the morning for six solid hours ‘in an antiseptic control room listening to a screaming noise getting louder and louder…’ Bruton tells him to think of the money. Anderson admits he had been offered fifty quid for information by a journalist in a pub last night. He has just seen the security officer, which is why he is late. A loudspeaker announcement commands their presence to the control room. Bruton points out they are due to replace two other monitors.
Merridale and Kemble4 are annoyed at having been kept waiting by Bruton and Anderson and refuse to bring them both a cup of coffee. However, while the relieved technicians have their coffee, Kemble decides to take a cup up to Anderson. The boot might well be on the other foot one day.
Kemble walks down the corridor and enters the control room.
Absolute silence. Anderson is slumped in his swivel chair - dead. Bruton is nowhere to be seen. Anderson’s body falls to the floor. The sound suddenly begins again, which terrifies Kemble. He looks at the oscilloscope as the sound gets louder and louder.
Nailer is briefed by the security officer. Anderson’s body is under guard, but there is no trace of Bruton. He must be found, says Nailer as he pulls on his jacket.
Outside Jodrell Bank’s central building, Anderson’s covered body is taken into an ambulance. Two police cars are parked nearby.5
Kemble tells Nailer how he discovered Anderson’s body and the security officer confirms Bruton has vanished, but his effects remain inside his locker. The cause of death has yet to be established.
A nurse helps a doctor remove his gloves. He has been conducting the post mortem on Anderson. He now has a report to write – but only if he can think of an appropriate phrase. Anderson simply stopped living. On the death certificate, it is written ‘No known cause’.6
Tullis is studying the space station model in Nailer’s London office. Nailer enters carries a spool of tape and wants his dictation typed up in duplicate by Pam. The papers have reported Anderson’s sudden death and connect it to Sklorski and Weatherfield: one man dead and another one disappears. Nailer believes Sklorski brought back with him some contamination and passed it onto Weatherfield. Nailer agrees with Tullis that the signal got louder after Anderson died suggesting a building up process. Bruton, like Weatherfield, is part of the building up process. The two men must be found but discreetly in order to prevent a major panic. Nailer hopes his theory is wrong.
London airport and Tullis fetches some cheroots for Mrs Weatherfield. An accompanying nurse offers to find her cheroots in the luggage. Alone, a newspaper reading man who had been opposite her now sits down next to her. It is Anderson. ‘His eyes have a fixed look about them.’ He calls himself Bruton and tells her that her husband wishes her to know that what has happened was inevitable and must be accepted. As he leaves, a hysterical Mrs Weatherfield demands for him to be stopped! She begins to swoon.
Back in hospital, Dr Tullis shows Mrs Weatherfield a photograph of Bruton: was this the man? No, he had a beard. Tullis brings in Nailer and Maxwell as she finally admits that the photograph in the paper was Sklorski. She was worried she was going out of her mind.7
Nailer, Tullis, Maxwell, and Superintendent Stroud are joined by a Home Office representative called Rex Walton. Nailer wants the Home Secretary to appoint a special committee to investigate these strange occurrences. There are two dead people are walking around, and two men have vanished. Nailer believes that the missing men are the wrong ones to be looking for: the dead men have had their identities absorbed by the missing men. As photographs are passed round, Stroud makes a joke about Nelson’s column absorbing Cleopatra’s Needle. Tullis agrees with Nailer: find either of the missing men and they’ll will discover he is right, incomprehensible though it is. Nailer is serious: this contagion is spreading, and they have to stop it.
Photographs of Sklorski and Anderson appear on the front pages of the newspapers.
Lady Nailor tells her husband what Janet thought she saw last Tuesday. Nailer is aghast – his theory is correct. Something ‘up there’ has combined the two men. But whatever has caused this ‘fusion’ has not been able to eliminate the emotional character, at least not altogether. Dr Weatherfield has tried to contact him; perhaps to warn him of something.
Ilson from the Globe is on the phone, fuming that despite printing the photos no one is prepared to make a statement.
A different and pompous Home Office official called Matthews tells Nailer that he has been asked to discuss the matter, but despite the urgency he is unable to take a decision. Patiently, Nailer explains they are up against something that is expanding as it develops. Matthews dismisses this as theories with no evidence, but Nailer says he has some. Weatherfield disappeared 26 days after Sklorski’s death: 28 days for the contamination to claim its first victim. From Weatherfield it spread to Bruton and Anderson – and that took 14 days. This explains why the breaking down of character took a long time. The second breakdown must have occurred after a matter of seconds. Nailer is exasperated that the absent Home Secretary is confident this is a police matter: it is not a question of confidence but understanding – this process will become uncontrollable unless the right decisions are taken now. It will become a matter of life and death for all. Shaken, Matthews feels that perhaps the Home Secretary ought to hear his case.8
Tullis is pleased that Mrs Weatherfield has decided for her husband’s sake to remain in the country and stay with the American ambassador at Newhurst. Tullis hopes she will take with her her police ‘bodyguard’. Mrs Weatherfield admits being alone scares her.
Lady Nailer and Jenny are watching the television news which is reporting on a storm during which nearly an inch of rain fell in fifty minutes. Her tired husband returns home, needing a drink. The news reports that after recent speculation, a special committee has been set up to investigate the deaths and disappearances. She is pleased for him, and he toasts his success. But Lady Nailer wonders if Janet could have been in any danger from Sklorski? He doesn’t know.9
Night time again. Merridale and Kemble are taking over from Enders and Currell in the control room. The sound is loud, but the pitch is varying more frequently.10
A police constable nods affably at the departing technicians outside. They pass Sergeant O’Keefe who is patrolling the stairs and corridor. More police constables are guarding each floor. O’Keefe enters a gantry over-looking the central control area which contains the ‘heart of the equipment’. The gantry wall contains ‘a mass of dials and switches’ and they are monitored by two more technicians – Wilson and Grant. O’Keefe asks them if they are alright, and they reply with the thumbs up. On the floor level below, there are three more technicians (9, 10 and 11). The sergeant leaves the gantry. Suddenly, the floor technicians hear a throaty scream and look up. Wilson lurches towards the gantry rail and topples over it. We hear the impact of his body on concrete. Technician 11 reaches the body, while Technician 10 activates the alarm.11
Anxious police constables exchange glances as O’Keefe bolts down the stairs. He picks up a phone and asks what’s happened. He bolts back up the stairs and into the gantry. He can see there is a body below but where is the other chap? Hurtling back down the corridor, he shouts at the police to check the control rooms. He finds another phone and orders the alarm to be switched off.
In the control room, Kemble is lying on the floor, dead. Merridale has vanished.
In the corridor, the sergeant demands to know where the other man is? All the constable can do is shake his head.
The noise gets louder in the control room as the image on the oscilloscope gets larger and larger…
A picture of Sklorski looms over the telescope.12
Cast in order of appearance
Felix Fenter (Mike Sklorski), John Martin (Inspector Maxwell), Helen Horton (Mrs Weatherfield), John Barrett (PC in Maxwell’s office), William Dexter (Nailer), Julie Paul (Pam), Ray Roberts (Dr Tullis), John Moore (Ilson), Carole Ward (Nurse), Michael Browning (Bruton), Frederick Treves (Anderson), Susan Purdis (Janet), June Tobin (Lady Nailer) Joan Frank (Mrs Stone), Ian Hughes (Merridale), Robert Fyfe (Kemble), Lee Richardson (Security Officer and voice O/V), John Beerbohm (Rex Walton), Philip Stone (Doctor), Julie Paul (Post Mortem Nurse), Pam (Laura Graham), George Street (Superintendent Stroud), Frank Shelley (Mathews), Newscaster (Alex Macintosh), John Colin (Enders), Lewis Teesdale (Currell), Edwin Brown (Sergeant O’Keefe), Geoffrey Hibbert (Technician), Tex Fuller (Wilson on gantry), Monty Warren, Eric Hagan, Stephen Mann (Other Technicians), John Lawrence and Rex Robinson (Policemen at radio telescope).
No attempt has been made to infringe on the copyright of Robert Gould.
NEXT TIME ON THE BIG PULL… More deaths at the telescope. Can mankind understand the forces that are waiting to be unleashed? Is there anything they can do?
COMING SOON: ‘After the news, a change to the advertised programming.’
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This episode was recorded in Lime Grove Studio D between 8.45pm and 9.30pm and transmitted two days later on Saturday 16 June 1962 at 6.31pm.
This is a brief film sequence.
All corridor scenes were filmed on location.
They are Technicians 3 and 4 in the script, only identified later in the dialogue.
Jodrell Bank is referred to in the script but never in the dialogue.
The writing of the note was pre-filmed.
Tullis is directed to look down into the camera which is pointing up at the ceiling, in other word’s Mrs Weatherfield’s point of view.
The Home Office official is not named in the script but by process of elimination he is Mathews from the script cast list.
The TV newscaster on the Nailer television was film of the genuine article Alex Macintosh who Doctor Who fans will immediately associate with the 1972 story ‘Day of the Daleks’.
Technician 6 is identified as Currell. Enders is technician 5 but is named in the cast list, but appears on both film and in the studio so this is him.
Wilson and Grant (7 and 8) are only identified by dialogue in later episodes. Wilson is likely to be played by Tex Fuller who has some stunt experience and likely performed the gantry fall.
The film effort this week was very slight until the final scenes at the telescope. Otherwise it was establishing shots of Scotland Yard, newspapers, the signing of the death certificate, the removal of Anderson’s body, and the business outside Nailer’s house.