Season 8

1987 · 15 episodes

Episodes

1Claws: A New Kind of DinosaurQ: What's the link between a Plumber and a dinosaur? A: Baryonyx, a giant feat-eating dinosaur, was discovered near Dorking one Weekend in 1983 by a plumber called BILL WALKER , when he dug up its massive fossilised claw. Q : What's the dinosaur's side f the story? A : Watch Q.E.D. tonight.
2The Foolish Wise OnesQueen Victoria died on 22 January 1901. Do you know what day of the week that was? David Kidd does - in fact he'll tell you (as fast as a mini-computer) that it was Tuesday - like 12 March 1996 and even 1 March 2044. But ask him to add eight and seven, and the chances are he'll get it wrong. How come? Because he has an astonishingly low IQ of 65. Like David, Noel Patterson and Stephen Wiltshire are also classified as severely mentally impaired. Yet their musical talent and artistic ability respectively, impressed Antony Hopkins and Sir Hugh Casson. Q.E.D. explores a bizarre psychological phenomenon - Idiots Savants to the 19th-century Frenchman who first identified it - in English 'the foolish wise ones
3Before Your TimeA light-hearted look at the origins of Kenny Everett from 'Big Bang' to birth. Cosmic space-time controller John Westbrook gets a red alert when Kenny tries to grow a human being in his garden tub. John finds our experimenter is no threat to creation, so he transports him around the galaxy through various dimensions, accuses him of being Brigitte Bardot 's husband, throws him out of a balloon and whisks him back to the beginning of time - all to show how a human being really is made.
4A Fall from GraceEveryone makes mistakes. It wouldn't be human not to. Forgetting keys, burning the toast, missing an appointment ... every day, a succession of tiny disruptions to the usual smooth surface of everyday lives; infuriating, yes, but hardly disastrous. But what would happen if the same kind of lapses were made on the flight deck of a jumbo, or at the controls of a nuclear power station?
5Your Biological Guide to AIDSGillian Rice, Graeme Garden and Alan Maryon Davis reveal how much the experts know about AIDS, and what challenges they face in finding a vaccine and a cure. With the help of specially-designed models - of the AIDS virus and of the human skin - the Bodymatters team of qualified doctors guides you through the biological facts clearly and simply so that you can decide for yourselves how likely it is that you personally will be affected by AIDS : the disease that's now killing two Britons every day.
6The World's Longest FlightWe've all made paper aeroplanes; but this one was different. It kept on flying for nine days - right round the world. Q.E.D. was in at the beginning, long before Dick Rutan , Jeana Yeager and their Voyager aircraft flew slowly and bumpily into the record books. It was essentially a grass roots project - a home-built plane paid for by selling t-shirts. And yet their astounding success proved that ordinary people still push the frontiers of technology - when they've a mind to.
7The World's Longest DropOn 18 September 1986, two young stockbrokers leapt from a hot-air balloon 35,000 feet above Norfolk to break the civilian World Freefall Record. They fell over six miles and reached a speed of 350 mph before opening their parachutes: their bodies had to withstand incredible extremes of pressure and temperature. So what made Rory McCarthy and Mark Child risk their lives in The World's Longest Drop?
8The Struggles of the SwanTake the sheer power and versatility of a top athlete. add the strength and endurance of a heavyweight boxer and somehow pack it all into the poised and graceful frame of a prima ballerina. Then you might just have someone who could rehearse and dance Swan Lake without injury. Q.E.D. spent six weeks with the Northern Ballet Theatre to see just how far dancers have to punish their bodies before we can admire their seemingly effortless elegance on stage. With five of the company injured and dancing in considerable pain from the outset, it was going to be a real struggle to open at Glyndebourne on schedule....
9Murder on the Bluebell LineThe evidence: a shattered skull, a broken jaw, faded honeymoon photos and incriminating letters. The motive: revenge, ambition or glory. The suspects: the Pompous solicitor, the French Priest and the man in black. Holmes and Watson stake the reputation of their creator on a journey to a tiny Sussex village, to unearth the truth behind the discovery that astonished Edwardian society and shook British pride to the core. It may have been the greatest April Fool in scientific history, but the death of an early Englishman at Piltdown is a true tale, in which any similarity to events or people long since dead is entirely deliberate.
10Breaking the Pain BarrierYou would hardly expect a hospital to encourage its patients to suffer enormous pain but one in Japan does. It is their way of getting the crippled back on to their feet. Mrs Shinsho and Mrs Ise are confined to wheelchairs with rheumatoid arthritis. Q.E.D. watches their gritty determination over four months as they struggle to walk - even run. With only blasts of deep-frozen air as a temporary anaesthetic, they are made to force their stiffened joints back into action, 12 hours a day, at this remarkable Japanese treatment centre.
11Alpha: How to Succeed Without Really TryingAlaisdair Macbeth likes to go out with girls, but he's frightened to ask. John Gibbons is frustrated when his young son beats him at rifle shooting. Broadcaster Toni Arthur can't stop her hands shaking when she's under pressure. The Alpha Plan, claims psychologist Dr David Lewis , teaches you how to solve your own problems - by relaxing. Can Toni, John and Alaisdair change their own lives in only 12 weeks, using Alpha?
12Eating EarthHave you ever eaten earth or clay and enjoyed it? If so you are not alone. Q.E.D. talks to Joyce from Liverpool who daily licks the soil from potatoes, Joanna from Mississippi who sprinkles dirt from beside the road over ice-cream and Sherry from Ghana who sells a selection of edible clays in the market. Q.E.D. asks the experts about this puzzling habit, why is it that millions of people like eating earth?
13I, Daedalus or David Jones: The MovieWhy not colour sheep a luminous orange so that they can't be lost in snowdrifts? Or improve bus services by giving every passenger a steering wheel? Ideas tested past destruction by DREADCO, the private research corporation imagined by Dr David Jones , writing under the name of DAEDALUS, and converted to reality by Q.E.D. in this all-expense-spared bio-pic. Yet nearly one in five of Daedalus' mind-fusing inventions comes true, one way or another. See David Jones 's amazing perpetual motion machines. Wonder why the boat floats in an empty tank. Discover how Napoleon was poisoned by his own wallpaper. Just what is David Jones up to?
14Four Go Off to Space CampYou too could walk on the moon, eat astronaut food and fly a space shuttle mission; it's all part of the weekly routine in the Huntsville, Alabama, Space Camp. A fantasy comes true for four British youngsters when Marie, Richard, Sally and Matthew, spend a week training to be astronauts and learning all aspects of space travel ready for their final mission when they could be anything from a member of Mission Control to the Shuttle Commander. They find that their hand-on feel of the future produces some thoughtful reactions.
15Jean: A Battle with ObsessionJean has been trapped in her room for 13 years. Her life is dominated by bizarre rituals; she washes her hands 50 times a day and is compelled to check constantly the position of every item of her furniture. Jean's husband Ian and her children Tamara and Toby have no choice but also to live by her tyrannical rules. Q.E.D. follows Jean's voluntary entry into hospital and into a dramatic course of treatment. The question for her, her family and her doctors is can she ever be rescued from her obsession?