by Wyatt Newman
Doctor shows have always been popular, people seemingly fascinated by tense operating room scenes and persons with life-threatening diseases or injuries. Everyone like a hero, and doctors are natural heroes--if we define a hero as one who saves a life or makes another one's life more pleasant.
When else would doctors really be challenged and desperately needed then after a nuclear attack? Would they fail under such circumstances, being too overwhelmed with cases and so serious that they wouldn't know how to deal with it because the nuclear effects on would be too massive?
The 1950s was, at least in our lifetime, without a doubt the scariest of our sixty decades of existence, (and going on seventy). The BOMB! Living in Spokane near an Air Force bomber base made us a target. One of the first reality shows was an episode on "Medic," the first doctor show, beginning a parade of many others to follow. Craggy-face Richard Boone was the The Medic. He became more TV famous in his later "Have Gun, Will Travel," Western series...still craggy-faced, which fit that role better, but his cragginess made him seem like a man who took his job seriously, unlike the warm and fatherly Doctor Welby, MD, of later
years. .
I don't recall the whole plot of the nuclear attack episode on Medic. It was shown when we were in the 7th grade, as I recall. I do know it was terrifying, a disaster that seemed too real, raising my fear of such a thing ever happening to us. It ended without any happy ending that all would be well--a real doomsday show. Was it a warning-message show? I'm a bit surprised it was even shown, particularly in that period of so much emphasis on civil defense and the Eisenhower policy of massive retaliation, as espoused by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. But maybe that's why it was shown. Remember, that's when we had air-raid siren tests every Wednesday at noon. Remember, that's when we had the duck and cover drills. I particularly remember when there was a city-wide air raid drill, the downtown offices were emptied and people filed to the nearest shelter area, and leaflets were dropped over Spokane, little five by seven pieces of white paper with a big black bomb on it and a message about what to do on a drill. My mom, who worked in the Paulsen Medical Dental Building, told me what they had to do and brought the leaflet home.
My wife, Nancy, remembers that Medic bomb episode very well and its impact on her. She was so terrified she had nightmares, so disturbing to her that her parents banned Medic from being shown in the McGee home. To this day, she still avoids disaster movies.
Fifty years later, the threat of nuclear attacks or disasters is still with us, even more so. Will there be a movie or program of a terrorist nuclear explosion, of a suitcase bomb going off near the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower in Chicago? Can we take such a drama, a horror show of possibly too realistic? A movie on the 911 disaster was quite controversial, and most people didn't want to see such a thing.
Television serves two basic purposes: entertainment or education. Which was the Medic's bomb episode? Why might such a movie/program be shown now? Personally, I wouldn't watch. Watching the movie, "Fail Safe," is as far as I want to go on nuclear disaster. I don't need to be educated on nuclear threats. And that's just not my type of entertainment. The only horror movies suitable for entertainment are those with monsters or space aliens.
-- Wyatt Newman