The Omega Factor: The Complete Series

Interesting series.

I never saw this before until I purchased the dvd recently. Very interesting, even more so for seeing the combination of Louise Jameson AKA Leela from Doctor Who, teamed up with what to me is a Tom Baker lookalike, and the fact that his name in this series is _Tom_, seemed kind of funny. Rather like watching an alternative version of Dr Who and Leela, ok, it was maybe mainly the character Tom Crane's hair that made me think of Tom Baker, but I can't believe I'm the only one to have noticed a similarity, and maybe it's just me, but I think the similarity is more than just his hair, his face too bore a look of Tom Baker to a certain degree. Anyhow, that bit of trivia out of the way, I really enjoyed the series for the story too, very thought provoking with it's tales of mind control and secret organisations and not knowing who to trust. A shame they never made another series. Apparently another one looked likely, but the rumour is that Mary Whitehouse and her listener's association complained, (she did the same with Doctor Who, "The Deadly Assassin" story mainly, maybe she had an aversion to curly haired men! Or Tom Baker and any lookalike! LOL) and the series had loose ends that would maybe have been dealt with in a second series. How Mary Whitehouse came to have so much sway over what got shown on tv, is anyone's guess, but Doctor Who had to be 'toned down' on her say so, cuz the makers got fed up with her complaining about it. Nice to see these much loved series getting dvd releases now, this one, along with the Saphire and Steel series, and the complete set of "Timeslip", and now the Armchair Thrillers being put out on dvd too, have been well worth waiting for and praise be to whoever is responsible for them seeing the light of day now. May 17, 2008

An excellent SF show

Sadly, some of the acting and the budgeting constraints limit the show. It never really reached what I would call its true potential. To be fair, within the constraints, the show was magnificent. A superb demonstration of how ideas transcend scriptwriting, which in turn transcends production. Production is important, yes, but a well-produced show with no ideas behind it will never amount to more than a one-hit wonder, but ideas with limited production will be memorable and hang with the audience long after the show has finished. The Omega Factor is a show with ideas. Paranormal themes were not unknown to televsion at the time - Sapphire and Steel, The Tomorrow People, Ace of Wands - and many of these shows used radical twists to the concept, but The Omega Factor is without doubt the darkest and most gothic of all such series. It has been compared to The X-Files, but really should be compared to Edge of Darkness, a nuclear horror story the BBC produced. I would be wary of a television remake today - too much emphasis on special effects and too little on quality scripts - but a radio/audio drama might work. May 4, 2008

ahead of its time and still intriguing!

this is a really good occult/weird phenomena series. wish there was more. i'd suggest re-creating it for a 2008 audience, but i have a feeling that network execs, writers, directors, actors, and especially the viewing public themselves would probably just ruin it.

not every episode is great, but on the whole the series gives us a powerful presence of something beyond us. the late 70's UK era gives it a "vintage" look. if you don't mind that, then you can't go wrong with The Omega Factor.


Venger As'Nas Satanis
Cult of Cthulhu High Priest February 7, 2008

Not as good as I expected... Read on

I ordered this DVD-set because I enjoy UK television SF form the Seventies. I just watched the last of the 10 episodes. I must say that the series was reasonably good and enjoyable. However, given the standards set by a series like Blake's 7 that started in the same year as the Omega Factor it was not as good as I expected it to be.

Outline
Tom Crane, a journalist who appears to have supernatural powers is recruited by a secret governmental organisation who researchers into the unexplained. He works closely with Ann Reynolds and Dr Roy Martindale in an office where both Reynolds and Martindale offer the pretence of working by (respectively) wearing a white overdress and moving papers from one end of his desk to another. Tom Crane gets to do all the hard work by venturing into the Occult.

Setting
The setting is excellent. What better base to explore the supernatural from than the eerie streets and ally's of Edinburgh?

Acting
The main actors do a good job. Ann, Tom Crane and Roy Martindale all play convincing roles. The supporting cast ranges from OK performances (the guy who plays bad guy Drexel) down to a Faulty Towers level (the heavies of the secret organisation).

Storyline
Most Television SF from the Seventies rely primarily on the storyline. However, the major flaws that made me give this series "only" three stars are in the flawed storytelling. The main character's wife is killed and the main character shows no emotion at all and subsequently starts courting every woman he comes into contact with. His brother is turned into a human vegetable (he makes a miraculous recovery later on in the series) by experiments clearly conducted by the department he now works for. However, the main character just continues working for them. At the end of each episode something dramatic happens and in the next episode everyone goes on as if nothing has happened. So, the continuity between the episodes is very bad and the episodes themselves (a phenomenon like hypnosis, out of body experience, etc is researched in each episode) don't cut it as semi-documentary's by themselves.

Extras.
Disc 3 has no subtitling. There's a director's commentary on one episode, a picture gallery and a short documentary in which the directors, writers, etc are interviewed. There's a short booklet in the DVD-set that tells the history of the series.

Conclusion
The quality of the Omega Factor has the shape of a U. It starts out good and promising, gets rather weak halfway and ends with a couple of good episodes. The good ones beat most **** that plaques our TV screens nowadays. August 3, 2007

This is a show that definitely needs to be remade.

I first saw The Omega Factor on my local PBS station years ago. I missed the first episode, but watched the other nine and I was disappointed that it was never rerun or released on video. I finally bought it on DVD and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the whole series for the first time. I especially liked the twists in the last two stories when Martindale was revealed to be a member of the Omega group, but was willing to defy them when it came to Tom Crane.
Unfortunately, the BBC came up against that self-appointed protector of the morals of the British public Mary Whitehouse and they caved in to her demands (they had done it before when they altered the ending of the third episode of the Doctor Who story "The Deadly Assassin") so a second season of Omega Factor was never made, which is a shame because there were many questions left unanswered. I wish the BBC would remake the series from the beginning and bring it to a conclusion.
December 5, 2006

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