Apropos of nothing, here’s an episode of Crisis Command: Could You Run The Country? that ran for three episodes on BBC2, kind of a high-concept choose your own adventure crisis simulation. One of the scenarios involved a pandemic which everyone is an expert on. This isn’t that episode though.
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I was a big fan of CBBC’s Crisis Control, as opposed to Command, in 2009. If I’m brutally honest the title sequence was the best thing about it, one of the very best title sequences there has ever been – fantasy doesn’t have to be swords and sorcery – but nevertheless it was a great little one-hit wonder of a series.
Amazing – a second Crisis Command video seems to have landed on Youtube. I’ve never seen this one before
I think this was the one that was rescheduled due to the Kenneth Bigley situation, though I still just about remember seeing the rescheduled show because of something that happens in the middle. Still a terrific watch – my stomach is clenched for virtually the whole hour, helped by very good “sound design”. Although it seems some of the graphical flair of the pilot has been filed off somewhat, particularly the fancy fonts being toned down to Helvetica, and the (admittedly, highly overdesigned) correct/incorrect graphic being replaced by numbers.
Interestingly, some of the pandemic questions are actually featured in the Crisis Command review on this very here site:
https://www.bothersbar.co.uk/reviews/crisiscommand.htm
I don’t particularly remember the plot points of the Flood one either, so I’d like to see that one again too. Given that we’ve got 2 episodes of each scenario, that doubles the chance of finding one!
I have some memories of the flood one’s decision points:
-Whether to let a prison flood and potentially drown prisoners, or set them free with reasonable chance of losing track of some of them, including violent offenders who could well reoffend. The right choice is releasing, because otherwise it’s condemning some of them to death, which would lead to a day in court for the ministers.
-Whether to let outflow from a chemical plant ruin a large-ish conservation area, or divert the flood into a village so it skips the plant (and you’ll have to compensate the villagers). Once diverted there, needing to evacuate everyone, one family refuses, and you have to decide whether to use force (and therefore have to significantly compensate them afterwards for rights violations) or face the costs of cleaning up the ruined conservation area. Those outcomes were meant to be deemed equally financially bad.
-The Thames barrier is still up, but a very large gas tank connected to a building is becoming unmoored. If the water keeps rising, it will disconnect, float for a bit, and make a big explosion. They must choose whether to drop the barrier to prevent the explosion (flooding Central London), or keep it up and allow it. The two teams facing this challenge made opposite choices. Dropping the barrier floods the underground network, causing massive disruption to London, during clear up and for a long time afterwards (e.g. people not being able to get to work (whether essential workers or not), leading to gridlock and recession). Keeping the barrier up causes the explosion, which destroys a couple of tower blocks, but ultimately leading to a lesser loss of life than the consequences of flooding the underground (as far as they explained).