Philip Martin's BBC2 Playhouse Drama 'The Unborn' and Intertextuality

Philip Martin wrote two televised Doctor Who serials, 'Vengeance on Varos' (1985) and 'The Trial of a Time Lord' Parts 5 to 8, better known as 'Mindwarp' (1986). However, this article examines his earlier play 'The Unborn' (1980) for BBC2 Playhouse and its very different possible connections to Doctor Who, as well as to other telefantasies and films and to Scripture and Christian writers of literature like John Milton and pastoral poets.

The form of the single play is significant. Whereas much of Philip Martin's work had to fit within the constraints of series drama with established formats, the fact that this was an anthology series freed him to pen what he wanted to with a cast of one-off characters and a new setting (though Doctor Who's format with the TARDIS, a ship that could travel anywhere in time and space, allowed for new settings in each serial). As well as writing theatre plays, Philip Martin's Gangsters (1976) began as a Play for Today before becoming his own series (Smart, May 2021) and Philip Martin did write a play The Remainder Man (1982), also dealing with a nuclear attack and sheltering from this (Smart, April 2021) and earlier a Thirty-Minute Theatre play for television Gun Smoke (1973). 'The Unborn' opens with narration by Philip Martin, acting as the host, common of anthology series.
The drama also has a restricted indoor setting, typical of the BBC anthology series. It is just a drama of ideas rather than of lavish location shooting.

It has already been noted that a key opposition in 'The Unborn' is the opposition between science and magic (the supernatural) (see Greaves 2014). These two poles are represented by the male figure of Colin who works as a nuclear physicist and the clairvoyant character, Madame Roma. But Colin starts to have visions, yet cannot stand mystery, putting these down to a ‘hypnagogic phenomenon’ that occurs between the state of sleeping and waking (Greaves 2014). A few examples of intertextuality will suffice. Such an opposition between science and magic was presented in the Doctor Who serial 'The Daemons' (1971), largely echoing Quatermass and the Pit (1958), as well as in the serial ‘The Time Warrior’ from 1973-74 where the Doctor, a man of science is mistaken for a magician, and in the children’s television series Catweazle (1970-71) where the principal character, a magician from the 11^th century, is transported into the future and mistakes modern scientific technology for magic.

Furthermore, 'The Unborn' concerns the science fiction tropes of children either never being born or as being born deformed due to a nuclear war, as mentioned, for example, in the Blake’s 7 episode ‘Duel’ (1978). In 'The Unborn', Colin is concerned that he may have been contaminated at the nuclear plant at which he works and that this would cause any baby he may father to be born with deformities. This upsets Colin’s wife Diana who fells spurned by him when she announces her pregnancy (Greaves 2014).

In 'The Unborn' the clairvoyant tells Diana, that her child will grow up to start World War III with nuclear weapons (as Ian Greaves notes, ironic as Colin is obsessed with the need of security at the nuclear plant) so has foreknowledge. The baby will grow into a monster just as a literal green alien monster hatches from an egg in the drama, with telefantasy commonly presenting alien monsters to represent the monstrosities in our world. The audience are not here asked to question the existence of the supernatural. The implication is that the clairvoyant believes what she is seeing since, even though she steals from the couple, it is the Devil figure who implants the idea in Diana that the clairvoyant is trying to disillusion Colin because he works in a nuclear power plant, and the closure of the play reaffirms Madame Roma’s visions. In the Doctor Who serial 'Genesis of the Daleks' (1975) there was the analogy between a child who will grow up to be totally evil and destroy millions of lives and the Daleks. The Daleks are like children as this is their genesis and the creatures are in an incubation room and the Doctor has all this foreknowledge (as Davros earlier pointed out in a different context of using the Doctor's knowledge to programme Daleks to avoid defeat). As a time traveller, the Doctor has seen the future and the Daleks destroying countless lives. There is therefore a connection between the Doctor and the clairvoyant even though one is a man of science and the other considered to be a figure of magic.

The clairvoyant tells the father to be, Colin, that the child must be aborted just as the Doctor questioned whether one should kill a child if one knew that the child was to grow up to be a totally Evil dictator. Even though Diana’s views shift between superstition and rationalism (Greaves 2014), there are points to be made about abortion and ethics, the philosophical study of moral phenomena. In these instances we are looking at applied ethics, examining morals in concrete examples. One could argue that the issue (which is not dealt with in the play) is not just whether abortion by itself is ethical but whether knowing that the child would be responsible for Armageddon makes the decision to abort more ethical with, for example, some Christians viewing abortion as against the will of God. By contrast, the Doctor’s query is explicit of whether it is ethical to kill a child to save millions of lives, though in that case the child will have already been born so murder may be less ethical. There are other texts like the novel Rosemary’s Baby (1967), which was turned into a 1968 film, where Rosemary becomes pregnant to Satan and is convinced that her baby is wanted as a sacrifice, and more pertinent here, the film The Omen (1976) which concerns the attempted killing of a baby which is an anti-Christ. As Martin Wiggins notes, ‘Genesis’ also harks back to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880) where universal harmony is created by torturing a child, an idea also picked up in Ursula Le Guin’s Those Who Leave Omelas (1973) and not mentioned by Wiggins.

There are Biblical parallels between 'The Unborn' and 'Genesis of the Daleks'. There is a Devil figure in 'The Unborn', who is clearly not a typical mental patient and who is determined that the baby be born. He puts the number 666 on the mother to be's stomach when she is not conscious. The Devil is at first dressed to resemble a vicar but he ultimately takes his garb off to reveal to the television viewer an inverted pentagram, a symbol of Satanism, on his top. The end of the world is referred to as 'Armageddon'. The Doctor Who serial also played with the Biblical Book of Genesis. But while 'Genesis of the Daleks' deals with the origins of an Evil as did the first Biblical Book of the Old Testament, 'The Unborn' races ahead to Armageddon and the final Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Davros in 'Genesis of the Daleks' is a type of father to the Daleks, partly making them in his image, and the Devil, not the literal father in 'The Unborn', takes the place of God, the Father, with the son also being a perversion of Christ, the Son. The clairvoyant states however that this is not an anti-Christ as the son is not revealed to oppose Christ but is a tool of the Devil’s in bringing about Armageddon. There is, then, a play in 'The Unborn' on the idea that God impregnated the Virgin Mary who gave birth to Christ and that the mother to be Diana gives birth to a perversion of Christ, though, unlike Joseph in Scripture, there is a literal human father. The name that the Devil tells the mother to be to name her child, Vincent, is also significant. The name derives from Latin and means to conquer, to be victorious, and in Christianity several Saints bear the name. In 'The Unborn' Vincent will grow up to be victorious in starting a nuclear war and is not a Saint. The Devil figure, often in the guise of a horned god, says that in the baby He will be well pleased. Interestingly, the father Colin says near the end that he is not religious but there is a religious reading to be made of the drama. Although Armageddon will be brought about, there is no mention of the point that in Revelation there is The Second Coming where Christ saves the virtuous souls.

Furthermore, Philip Martin's play boasts parallels with not only 'Genesis of the Daleks' but also with Milton's Paradise Lost. In Book II of PL, the number of duplicity and of the Devil, an allegorical infernal family is presented which contrasts with the Holy Trinity in Book III. The figure of Sin springs from Satan's mind and, in an incestuous relationship, they are both parents to Death, introduced in line 666, who springs violently forth from Sin. This is allegorical of Satan persuading Eve to sin in the Garden of Eden in Book IX and where her and Adam’s fall introduces death into the world. Similarly to Book II, in 'The Unborn' the Devil figure is intent on the child being born who will bring much death into the world, though not introducing death for the first time as this is a fallen world.

There are also comparisons to be made between 'The Unborn' and other Christian texts as well as again with the Doctor Who serial ‘The Daemons’. In 'The Unborn' the Devil masquerades as a vicar, just as in Christian pastoral texts, based on Scripture, wolves disguise themselves as shepherds and sheep, with the shepherd seen as the head of the congregation modelled on Christ, The Good Shepherd and the sheep as the virtuous followers. In 'The Daemons' the Master masquerades as a vicar until he dons a red Satanic cloak with a labyrinthine design, a maze being a symbol of sinuousness.

Attention has been cast here, then, on a much-forgotten single play. There are numerous intertexts. There is not an ethical speech in 'The Unborn' unlike in 'Genesis of the Daleks' but there are intertexual comparisons between Philip Martin's play and this and other Doctor Who serials, other examples of telefantasy, films, and Christian texts. To date, much attention has been given to metafictionality in Philip Martin's second season of Gangsters (Ferry 2019) and his televised Doctor Who serials (O'Day; Stevens and Moore) but he also wrote plays which deal with the supernatural, which raise ethical issues and which are religious dealing with Christianity. The intertexuality examined in this article is key whether or not Philip Martin was conscious or not of the links.

^References:

^{Doctor Who In Vision 4 Genesis of the Daleks}^{edited by Peter Anghelides and Justin Richards (1986); 'Once Upon a Time in Birmingham: Philip Martin's Gangsters' by Paul Ferry (omnibus.home.blog May 5 2019, accessed February 23 2025; ‘Cheer Up. It Might Never Happen: The Unborn (1980) by Ian Greaves (British Television Drama britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk January 31 2014 accessed February 28 2025); Paradise Lost by John Milton (Barbara Lewalski, ed, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007); 'Whose ideology?: Media manipulation in Doctor Who's Vengeance on Varos' by Andrew O'Day (www.hrvt.org/andrewoday accessed February 23 2025; 'Philip Martin (1938-2020) Part Two: Philip Martin on The Remainder Man (BBC Play for Today, 1982) and The Unborn (1980)' by Billy Smart (Forgotten Television Drama, April 22 2011, http://Forgotten televisiondrama.wordpress.org, accessed February 27 2025; 'Philip Martin (1938-2020) Part Three: Peter Ansorge on script editing Gangsters (BBC, 1976-78) plus contributions from David Edgar and David Ruskin' by Billy Smart (Forgotten Television Drama, http://forgottentelevisiondrama.wordpress.org, accessed February 27 2025); '56 Stupid Things About 'The Trial of a Time Lord'' (And 44 Cool Ones' by Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore (Celestial Toyroom 405/6); Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks Blu-ray Production Notes by Martin Wiggins.}