THE CHANGES
The text said: “A number of issues are raised. How do people cope when everything they take for granted disappears? How thin is the veneer of civilisation we all accept? Is modern technology a good thing or not? Is a back-to-nature type of existence desirable?”
This might sound like the mission statement of Terry Nation’s famously bleak 1970s post-apocalyptic series Survivors, but was in fact a briefing paper written by Monica Sims, Head of BBC Children’s Programmes, to fend off expected parental complaints following the broadcast of her department’s hard-hitting fantasy serial The Changes.
The better-known Survivors wouldn’t begin until a month after The Changes ended; clearly there was something in the water back then, as ecological questions raised over pollution and self-sufficient living during the flower-power 1960s reached the mainstream.
The central idea of – modern Britons are compelled to smash machinery and technology in a wave of mass hysteria, before reverting to unenlightened superstition – came to Peter Dickinson in a nightmare. A literary reviewer on humour magazine, Dickinson’s dream came while struggling with writer’s block on an abortive detective story.
