'Who said you could activate the stem cell heart?'

Although the above phrase appears to have come straight from some American B-movie involving hammy scientists running around a deserted lab in a thunderstorm, it is in fact taken from a recent ITV drama. Which involved scientists running around a deserted lab in a thunderstorm.
Yes, I made the mistake of watching the ITV 're-modelling' of Frankenstein on Wednesday night. 'Oo goody!' thought I, 'A modern update of one of my favourite stories, with the added bonus of genetic engineering thrown in!'. My only concern was that it would show science acheiving things it could never do in a way that would make less, englightened, members of the viewing public even more against genetic engineering and scientists in general than they already are*.

Oh, if only I'd known how unfounded my fears were. Anyone who believed that the programme showed an accurate portrayal of science today is defying evolution themselves by having managed to live this long. Scientists ran about in some abandoned mill, storms raging overhead and various body parts lying around the lab with an apparent disregard of health and safety regulations. This is forgivable- it IS a horror story - but worse was to come. Every experiment appeared to have to take place in what appeared to be a flotation tank full of blood, and the only equipment shown to be used were the kind of pipettes you might measure medicine for a household pet in, rather than the fancy looking things you see on news reports**. (I suppose it might have been NHS funded research...)

We were expected to believe that by squirting a pipette full of what I assume was DNA solution (but may as well have been fairy dust for all the sense the plot made) into what appeared to be one of these blood filled tanks some kind of mutated fetus could appear in 24 hours, and then escape and grow to be 8 foot tall the next day. Said mutant then went on a killing spree, was captured and in potentially the least subtle homage to the previous incarnations imaginable (only relevant to the three people watching who didn't think ITV created the idea) attach 'bolts' to it's neck that control it via some kind of bluetooth/infrared. Interestingly, ITV chose not to explore the idea that the monster could there by be controlled by mobile phones, and would have a hell of a time on public transport.

The mutant was created from the DNA of leading scientists son who had died of an unanmed disease that involved all his organs failing at once despite looking perfectly healthy in flashbacks to the recent past. Interestingly, once he was dead no one really ever mentioned him again, and there appeared to be some kind of champagne fueled party attended by the parents shortly afterwards. Oviously, the monster loved it's 'parent' and a nice bond was created, until it got out again and ran around on the roof in a completley incomprehensible scene that then switched to everyone on some kinf of seaside holiday. Becoming dafter by the minute, the father was shot for no apparent reason and we end up with our mother and 'son' in a research lab being observed by a Shady Government Scientist (TM). In a move clearly designed to show just how clever the programme really was, the closing lines ask whether the monster will love or hate it's creator when it finds how much fear he himself inspires. Sadly, I had stopped caring.

I actually found some ideas raised within the programme truly interesting - the monster clothed itself as soon as it escaped, siuggesting it was ashamed if it's nudity. It also recognized it's 'mother': is this a suggestion that children are born with innate ideas, or that it inherited memories along with the dead boy's DNA? Sadly, I can't help but think these were byproducts of a poorly developed plot rather than an attempt to inspire genuine philosphical debate.

The metro review called it a sensitive drama bringing up interesting questions about the morals of genetics engineering, which in my view is about as accurate as calling the metro a newspaper.

* I'm not being unfair here. I have been asked, at various points in my scientific career, when DNA was invented and if I cloned sheep in my lab sessions. The answer to these questions are quite clearly: James Watson invented DNA in 1873 and we didn't clone sheep in our lab sessions, we had to use squirrels as they are easier to handle.

** A friend's lab was recently filmed for the regional news and after filming him pipetting, using PCR machines and so on for a while, the crew asked him to pour water from one beaker to another. This got used in the news report, apparently looking more like science than science does. All I could think of was the episode of the Simpsons in which the techies on a film set explain that horses don't look like horses on tv, you have to tape a bunch of cats together...