User Reviews

The only way to really appreciate the power of this episode was to have watched it at the time, at the height of the Cold War and the reality of nuclear annihilation. A super bunker, miles underground, is constructed by a superpower. It may be "us" it may be "them, we are not told. Level Seven is the deepest part of the complex from where the launch of the nuclear deterrent is controlled. Once admitted, staff are given numbers in place of names and may never leave. It is a self-contained society completely separated from the outside. However, individuals are allowed to form relationships with one another and even get married,with marriage rooms being available for the exercise of conjugal rights. However, the union of two occupants begins to show up the flaws in the setup. Once they fall in love, their commitment to each other begins to take precedence over their duties and allegiance. The sharing of a piece of smuggled chocolate, leads to physical discomfort and disciplinary action. Eventually, the inevitable happens and war breaks out. Missiles are fired and everyone waits. Alarmingly, it is reported that radiation is seeping down the levels one at a time. A final video message from a couple on the surface reveals that the whole Earth has become a wasteland. Nobody has "won". They know they are going to die and are glad. The commanding officer reassures the staff that the radiation will never reach them, but non-one really believes him. Gradually all on Level Seven begin to succumb. The Commander admits he was wrong and suggests those still alive move to an area where flowers are grown hydroponically. The episode closes with our young couple holding each other closely, waiting for the end. I was 15 when I watched this. It was shown fairly late at night and, the air of doomed finality, rather like On The Beach, made me wonder whether it was worth getting up the following morning! Very timely and relevant. Regrettably its message will seem a little less so nowadays. But, Man's underlying selfishness and stupidity is still very much in evidence. I did notice that, rather fortuitously, this episode did survive the wipe. If you can get a copy, watch it.

Out of the Unknown: Level Seven (the IMDb listing is wrong, the on screen title is definitely Level Seven with the word seven rather than the number 7) starts as a batch of military personnel are gathered & taken down to the mysterious Level Seven, the deepest part of an underground nuclear bunker some four & a half thousand feet under the ground. The new recruits are welcomed by the commanding officer General A10 (Anthony Bate), they are told that they will spend the rest of their lives in Level Seven & will each be given a number to identify themselves, proper names, personal belongings or free will are forbidden. A nuclear missile launch computer controller X127 (Keith Buckley) begins to miss humanity & the life he has been forced to leave behind, then when nuclear war becomes a reality & everything on the surface of the Earth is destroyed or killed by radiation it's only a matter of time before it reaches the handful of survivors in Level Seven...

Episode four from season two of the British produced television sci-fi drama series Out of the Unknown this was directed by Rudolph Cartier & is a fairly gripping & bleak look at the horrors of nuclear war, adapted by J.B. Priestely from the book by Mordecai Roshwald this is pretty heavy stuff & ends with the entire world being destroyed by nuclear fall out & it doesn't get much bleaker than that! To say that Level Seven is bleak is an understatement, from the breakdown of humanity to it's ultimate destruction at the hands of machines & nuclear weapons. Level Seven is very anti establishment as the military is seen as uncaring destroyers, uncaring employers who want to turn their staff into mindless robots with no personality or feelings & ultimately the cause of all the problems rather than the solution. Quite gripping & intense it's amazing how a low budget vintage television show can engage & enthrall so vividly. In fact Level Seven is still as relevant today as it was over forty years ago when first made, they way countries stockpile nuclear weapons & the way the world is going Level Seven is as contemporary as it ever was. The character's are good, the dialogue is full of meaning & depth with warnings, moral messages & social commentary in just about every line spoken & their ultimate fate is a bit of a shocker in a very downbeat ending that gives us no hope. An absorbing thought provoking literate sci-fi drama that is well worth tracking down & spending sixty minutes with.

Originally broadcast during October 1966 the videotape for Level Seven, like most Out of the Unknown episodes, was wiped by the BBC & so were all the 16mm film prints that were made. Or so the BBC thought anyway, back in 2006 a foreign television station who had screened it all those years ago returned their copy which should have been junked years previous but luckily survived the cull. Not set in space or in the future Level Seven looks good & has tidy production design but I can't believe those two cheap chairs the main operators have to sit on, the chairs in my canteen at work look more expensive! Nothing looks particularly dated even though admittedly certain electrical equipment does look old. The acting is good from a solid cast, Michele Dotrice went on to become best known as Betty the long suffering wife of Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (1973 - 1978).

Level Seven is high drama that results in the end of the world due to a nuclear war, a gripping piece of television that has a definite impact & you could say is even more relevant now with the advancement of nuclear technology. With a good survival rate so far, ten of the twelve episodes from season one exist while three of the first four exist from season two, this is the point when massive gaps in the archive appear with only one more complete episode from season two currently known to exist.

Very evocative and interesting as a period piece, but makes for tedious viewing as a sermon on the (potential) horrors of the modern world. Pleasingly designed and filmed in black and white, like a very, very bleak Doctor Who episode (which is recommendation enough for me). The fascistic regime in the bunker is well delineated in the first third, if rather heavy handed, the near silent sequences in the hydroponic gardens at the climax are memorable, but on the whole it is too unengaging and detached, with a thuddingly obvious simplistic message that our warlike ways will have us all for the high jump if we don't buck up our ideas. The notion of nuclear war is too remote and couched in SF trappings here. It's admirable that the show touched on the subject at all in such an uncompromising fashion. That's to be applauded, but compared with the nearly contemporary The War Game (which the BBC commisioned but wouldn't show), Level Seven seems trifling indeed. Without the shocking force and versimilitude of that film, and with little in the way of gripping drama in it's place, the end result here is rather stodgy. The War Game placed events in the present or immediate near future. Level Seven takes place in an unspecified but radically different future. The War Game also brought a necessary genuine howl of despairing rage to the party - Level Seven, as with several other nuclear dramas, ends up a rather trite sermon - it brings one of the most pressing issues of our existence down to the level of 'people do bad things - everyone suffers, and the characetrs spend the remainder of the play looking pained & noble until they drop dead'.