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The Stone Tape, produced for the BBC in 1972, is witty, smart, and well acted, but never very frightening. A surprisingly prescient blend of ghost story and science fiction, the program anticipates the scientific explorations into the fantastic later seen on television programs like The X-Files, and in movies like Poltergeist and The Entity. Also compelling is the underlying theme of the work, that ghosts are essentially recordings of traumatic emotions felt in a certain place, and are somehow engraved into the stones of the structure itself (hence, the title). If these forces can be recorded into the stone, and somehow "replayed" as a ghostly presence, then finding a way to control that presence -- to turn it on and off, as it were -- is the key to a revolutionary new recording medium. So posits Peter Brock (Michael Bryant), the driven main character of The Stone Tape. Of course, its depiction of the hubris of the scientist in exploring realms of the unknown is its most familiar element. There's something predictable about Brock's downfall, but in depicting the routine interactions of the scientific team, the program provides enough humor and human drama to maintain audience interest. It's only at the very end, what should be the payoff, when the invisible beings that are the root cause of all the ghostly torment are made manifest (basically as colored blobs of light) that the bare-bones production hampers the effectiveness of the work.