Lawrence Oates - in The Media

In The Media

• In the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic, Oates is played by Derek Bond.
• In the 1985 BBC mini-series dramatisation of Roland Huntford’s book, Scott and Amundsen, (1979), entitled The Last Place on Earth, Oates was played by Richard Morant.
• The tragic Antarctic expedition is portrayed in Douglas Stewart's 1941 radio play The Fire on the Snow (first produced 1941, published 1944).
• A biography by Michael Smith, I am Just Going Outside: Captain Oates – Antarctic Tragedy, (Spellmount Publishers 2002) claimed that a 20-year-old Oates fathered a daughter as the result of a brief affair with an 11-year-old Scots girl named Ettie McKendrick.
• Brenda Clough's 2001 Hugo—and Nebula—nominated science fiction novella May Be Some Time has "Titus" Oates transported to the year 2045 where he is healed via advanced medicine. This novella formed the basis for her later novel Revise the World, which also centred on Oates.
• In the episode entitled "White Hole" of the British TV series Red Dwarf, the characters plead with the hologram Rimmer to sacrifice himself by agreeing to be turned off, thus providing the currently-low-on-power ship to sustain them for longer than it could do so if he was still running, comparing the act to that of Oates. Rimmer simply dismisses him as a "prat", suggesting instead that since the only record of Oates' sacrifice was from Scott's journal, it's likely that Scott had eaten Oates to avoid starvation after he had "whacked him over the head with a frozen husky" (which is what Rimmer said he'd do, had he been there), the diary entry simply being made because, in Rimmer's view, it was "better to say 'Oates made the supreme sacrifice' while you're dabbing up his gravy with the last piece of crusty bread".
• British comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Herring made frequent references to "Captain Oates" both in their 1990s television series Fist of Fun and BBC Radio 1 shows. An initial sketch parody implied that Oates only announced his departure in the hope that his colleagues would stop him leaving. Subsequent sketches depicted Oates in other social situations where he would announce his actions in the hope that others would understand the subtext. One such example depicted Oates offering the last potato to someone else at the dinner table when he clearly wanted it for himself. Following these sketches Lee and Herring occasionally referred to people displaying similar behaviour as being "Captain Oates-type figures".
• In Geraldine McCaughrean's 2005 book The White Darkness a teenage girl, Symone Wates has an obsession with Captain Titus Oates; she even creates an imaginary friend of him.
• In Frank Capra's movie Dirigible, depicting an American expedition to the South Pole in the 1930s, a fictional character played by Roscoe Karns incurs injuries similar to those of the real-life Oates, and chooses to sacrifice himself in a manner clearly inspired by the circumstances of Oates' death.
• The 1985 poem Antarctica by Derek Mahon details the last moments and sacrifice of Oates. It repeats the quotation "I am just going outside and may be some time" four times throughout the poem.
• In the episode entitled "Shedding the Load" of the British TV series Are You Being Served?, as the staff are discussing who should leave, Captain Peacock recounts the tale of Scott's Antarctic expedition, and Oates' sacrifice. To which Mr Lucas remarks, "If that happened today, they'd have eaten Captain Scott."
• Terry Pratchett uses Captain Oates' last words at least three times in his Discworld Series in similar situations.
• In Tom Stoppard's 1972 play Jumpers, Stoppard describes two fictional British astronauts named "Oates" and "Captain Scott" whose lunar landing craft is damaged when setting down on the moon, such that the rockets appear to have only enough lift to carry one of the astronauts off the surface. Stoppard has Scott and Oates fight to be the one to get back in the landing craft. Scott wins the fight and closes the hatch to the craft with the words "I am going up now. I may be gone for some time."
• In Margaret Atwood's 2009 novel The Year of the Flood the character Adam One makes reference to "Saint Laurence 'Titus' Oates of the Scott Expedition" in a speech made to the followers of the God's Gardeners eco-fanatic religious group. One of the characters is also named after Oates.
• The Doctor (Tom Baker) quotes Oates' last words as he heads into a deadly alien-filled spacecraft in the Doctor Who serial "Planet of Evil".
• In The O.C., Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) has a toy horse from childhood that plays a significant part in his relationship with Summer, morbidly named Captain Oats.