The Destruction Factor - The Seeds of Creation was a 1978 BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 radio play written by James Follett

James Follett

James Follett is an author and screenwriter, born in 1939 in Tolworth, England.Follett became a full-time fiction writer in 1976, after resigning from contract work as a technical writer for the British Ministry of Defence. He has since written over 20 novels, several television plays, and many...

 and starring T. P. McKenna

T. P. McKenna

Thomas Patrick McKenna , known professionally as T. P. McKenna, was an Irish actor who worked on stage, in film and television in Ireland and the UK from the 1950s.- Film and television :...

, Paul Copley

Paul Copley

Paul Mackriell Copley is an award-winning English actor and voice-over artist.-Early life:Copley was born in Denby Dale, West Yorkshire, and grew up beside a dairy farm there. His father, Harold, was involved with local amateur dramatic productions, as were the rest of his family...

 and Rosalind Adams.

Set in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, the plot revolves around the development of a new plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

 species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 created in a laboratory

Laboratory

A laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories...

 as a means of eliminating famine

Famine

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...

 in the Third World

Third World

The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...

. Unfortunately, the resultant plants have the unanticipated side effect of a vastly-increased oxygen

Oxygen

Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...

 production (a by-product of normal photosynthesis

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is a chemical process that converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight. Photosynthesis occurs in plants, algae, and many species of bacteria, but not in archaea. Photosynthetic organisms are called photoautotrophs, since they can...

). The plants are allowed to get out of the laboratory and enter the ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

, where they cause several accidents involving what is at first thought to be spontaneous human combustion

Spontaneous human combustion

Spontaneous human combustion describes reported cases of the burning of a living human body without an apparent external source of ignition...

.

Cast

• T. P. McKenna
  T. P. McKenna
  Thomas Patrick McKenna , known professionally as T. P. McKenna, was an Irish actor who worked on stage, in film and television in Ireland and the UK from the 1950s.- Film and television :...
  
   - Max Flinders
• Paul Copley
  Paul Copley
  Paul Mackriell Copley is an award-winning English actor and voice-over artist.-Early life:Copley was born in Denby Dale, West Yorkshire, and grew up beside a dairy farm there. His father, Harold, was involved with local amateur dramatic productions, as were the rest of his family...
  
   - Howard Rogers
• Rosalind Adams - Denise Exon