Terry Nation's Survivors (1975 - 1977) is a grim and unrelenting British science fiction TV series concerning a global pandemic.
A new disease -- born in a laboratory in the Far East -- wipes out modern civilization and modern technology, leaving a few rag-tag survivors to re-learn all the old trades in an attempt to build a new world.
Survivors is thus set in a new Dark Age of sorts, a span which promises not only the chance for man to get things right in terms of the law, morality, and equal rights...but the opportunity to get things dreadfully wrong as well, in terms of war and injustice.
The series began airing in April of 1975, and originally starred gorgeous and talented Carolyn Seymour as Abby Grant, an average middle-class house-wife living in London when the outbreak hits England. In the first episode, "The Fourth Horseman," her husband falls ill, succumbing to the new plague.
Given the series' subject matter, the opening or introductory montage to Survivors is downright chilling. It reveals, in short order, how a disease is (accidentally...) released that will, very quickly, destroy the modern world.
Our first image in the montage is of a very stern-looking Asian man peering down at us.
We can see little of his face, because his eyes are bracketed by dark, heavy glasses, and his mouth is occluded by a white surgical mask. He is clearly a scientist.
The camera pulls back quickly away from the scientist's face, and we recognize that he is standing inside a plastic bubble of sorts, and that his body and hands appear to be behind protective clothing too.
We gaze at him from a low-angle, so that he appears large and menacing to us.
His hands reach out -- towards us -- and...suddenly...
...he knocks over a flask containing some unknown but hazardous substance. Again, it is important to note that when the flask falls, it falls towards the camera -- towards us -- and it shatters.
Out of the spilled (presumably dangerous...) substance comes the series title: SURVIVORS. At this point, we understand that the disease which destroys the world is created by two things: human arrogance, and human error.
Next, we follow the same scientist -- not yet sick apparently -- as he begins his travels to other countries, taking the infection or virus along with him.
The first shot in this sequence shows the scientist in a kind of uneven "circle" surrounded by blackness, an image that suggests we are looking at him as we might look at a germ underneath a microscope. He is patient zero, or ground zero for infection.
Next, we get a view of his plane taking off for his journeys, and the image once more seems surrounded by irregularly shaped lines...like a spreading stain, almost.
Next, a passport stamps reveals that the man -- an inadvertent carrier for the disease -- has arrived at his destination: Moscow.
After landing at his next destination, the same man falls ill. He feels his head in pain, and then collapses. We see his hand hit the ground...a gesture that indicates his death.
The next group of shots expresses the exact nature of the pandemic's spread.
The (now-dead) infected scientist has passed his terminal illness on to other passengers on the plane that he traveled aboard.
Those passengers promptly head to other destinations, and we see those destinations delineated on screen, again, as passport stamps.
Major cities are impacted: Berlin, New York, Rome, Madrid...
Finally, the last passport stamp is revealed: London.
Importantly, this is the location of the series going forward, as well as its protagonist Abby.
Frighteningly, a huge orange stain -- large and growing larger -- blots out the stamp reading London's name.
This stain or blot represents the disease, wiping out life, wiping out modern London.
In short order then, Survivors' introductory montage reveals the genesis of a deadly disease, and its rapid, unchecked stop throughout the civilized world. In under a minute then, Survivors has charted the progress of a global pandemic.
Below, the montage in all its chilling glory:
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