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Quatermass (TV serial)
Encyclopedia
Quatermass is a British
television science fiction
serial produced by Euston Films
for Thames Television
and broadcast on the ITV
network in October and November 1979. Like its three predecessors, Quatermass was written by Nigel Kneale
. It is the fourth and final television serial to feature the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass
.
Influenced by the social and geopolitical
situation of the early nineteen-seventies and the hippie
youth movement of the late nineteen-sixties, Quatermass is set in a near future in which large numbers of young people are joining a cult
, the “Planet People”, and gathering at prehistoric sites, believing they will be transported to a better life on another planet. The series begins with Professor Quatermass arriving in London to look for his granddaugher, Hettie Carlson, and witnessing the destruction of two spacecraft and the disappearance of a group of Planet People at a stone circle by an unknown force. He investigates this force, believing that Hettie may be in danger. As the series progresses, it becomes apparent that the Planet People are being harvested by an alien force. Professor Quatermass must devise a way to destroy the aliens before many more people die.
Quatermass was originally conceived as a BBC
production, but after they lost faith in the project, due to spiralling costs, production was halted. The scripts were taken by Euston Films and Kneale, now working for independent television
, was commissioned to rewrite the scripts into two versions: a four-part television serial and The Quatermass Conclusion, a 100-minute film, intended for international theatrical release.
was created by Manx
writer Nigel Kneale
in 1953 for the serial The Quatermass Experiment
. Its success led to two sequels, Quatermass II
(1955) and Quatermass and the Pit
(1958). These three Quatermass serials are seen today as seminal nineteen-fifties television productions. Kneale, however, became disenchanted with the BBC and went freelance in the late nineteen-fifties, producing scripts for Hammer Films and Associated Television
.
The notion of bringing Professor Quatermass back for a fourth adventure dated back to at least 1965 when producer Irene Shubik
asked Kneale to contribute a new Quatermass story for the first season of her science fiction anthology series
, Out of the Unknown
. Nothing came of this but the prospect of Quatermass making a reappearance arose again when, following the success of the film version
of Quatermass and the Pit in 1967, Hammer announced they were in discussions with Kneale for a new Quatermass adventure. Again, this did not progress beyond the initial negotiation stage. In the meantime, Kneale had been coaxed back to the BBC, writing plays such as The Year of the Sex Olympics
(1968), Wine of India (1970) and The Stone Tape
(1972). Following completion of The Stone Tape, Kneale was commissioned on 21 November 1972 by BBC Head of Drama Serials, Ronnie Marsh, to write a new four-part Quatermass serial.
Kneale began writing the scripts, working to a delivery deadline of February 1973. Much of the setting for the story was influenced by contemporary political events such as strike
s, power cuts
, the Oil Crisis
and developments in the Space Race
, especially the planned Apollo-Soyuz
missions and Skylab
. Writing in the listings magazine TV Times
to promote the serial, Kneale said, “Quatermass is a story of the future – but perhaps only a few years from now. There are some clues already in the most obvious places: the streets. Pavements littered with rubbish. Walls painted with angry graffiti. Belfast
black with smoke and rage. Worst of all, the mindless violence”. Concerns about the state of society, especially the “dropout” culture of the youth movement, had been a theme of Kneale's writing for some time, as seen in such works as The Big, Big Giggle, an unmade play about a teenage suicide cult; The Year of the Sex Olympics, about the consequences of a world with no censorship or inhibitions; and Bam! Pow! Zap! (1969), about teenage delinquents, all of which fed into the world depicted in the new Quatermass serial. Kneale said, “I looked at the alarming aspects of contemporary trends. Since then, we'd seen 'flower power
' and hippies, so all I did was bring them into the story. It was written in 1972 and it was about the sixties really”. Another theme that had crept into Kneale's writing at this time, as seen in Wine of India, about compulsory euthanasia
for the elderly, and, later, the Beasts
episode “During Barty's Party”, about an elderly couple terrorised by rats, was the consequences of growing old. Kneale later recalled, “The theme I was trying to get to was the old redressing the balance with the young, saving the young, which I thought a nice, paradoxical, ironic idea after the youth-oriented 60s”.
Assigned to produce the serial was Dixon of Dock Green
producer Joe Waters. Preliminary filming on Quatermass began in June 1973 at Ealing Studios
where special effects designer Jack Wilkie and his assistant, Ian Scoones, shot model footage, for part one of the serial, of a space station
with astronaut
s working on its hull. However, at this point the BBC got cold feet about the project; they had become concerned about the cost of mounting the production and had been refused permission to film at Stonehenge
, one of the locations that Kneale had envisaged the Planet People would gather at to be reaped by the alien force. Kneale recalled that Stonehenge “had become Big Business and the place was like a factory with tourists there from dawn to dusk... they weren't going to let anyone go near it”. Kneale also felt that the BBC were unhappy with the script believing it “didn't suit their image at that time; it was too gloomy”. In the end, it was decided during Summer 1973 that, for financial reasons, the BBC would not proceed with the production. However, the BBC had an option on the script until 1975 which they held onto until it expired.
At this stage, Kneale was working primarily in Independent Television
, having written the play Murrain (1975) and the anthology series Beasts (1976) for ATV. However, Star Wars
was beginning to make an impact and interest in science fiction projects among film and television studios began to rise. In May 1977, Euston Films
, a subsidiary of Thames Television
best known for The Sweeney
(1975–1978), announced that they had picked up Kneale's unmade Quatermass scripts. This new production, known either as Quatermass or Quatermass IV, would consist of a four part serial to be broadcast by ITV which would be recut as a 100-minute film, titled The Quatermass Conclusion, for release in North America and Europe. Kneale was dubious about having to craft both a television serial and film version of his story feeling that “in the end we had two versions, neither of which was the right length for the story”. During the rewrites, Kneale transplanted the action at the conclusion of part three from Stonehenge to the more easily available Wembley Stadium. When asked about what differences there were between the Euston Films version and the version originally envisaged for the BBC, Kneale remarked that “the BBC version would have been much more in the studio, whereas the Euston Films version was entirely shot on 35mm film with a great deal of it outside. Much more lavish than either the BBC or I had contemplated”.
Filming took place between 26 August 1978 and 23 December 1978 at locations around Middlesex
and Hertfordshire
as well as London, including Wembley Stadium. The budget was £1.25 million, making it one of the most expensive undertakings Euston had attempted at that time. Production designer Arnold Chapkis constructed several large and elaborate sets including those for the megalithic standing stone
s at Ringstone Round, the Kapps' radio telescope
and observatory
and the decaying urban landscape of London; Kneale quipped about the radio telescope set that “it probably would have worked if they'd just aimed it properly!”. Associate producer Norton Knatchbull noted that the serial “was the first 'art department' picture Euston has ever been involved in, in the sense that major sets had to be built on location”. This led Euston executive Johnny Goodman to joke, “Our biggest problem was finding someone who wanted the two giant telescope dishes after we finished filming. There's not much demand for such things”. One aspect where the budget was less than generous was with the model sequences made by Clearwater Films; Johnny Goodman remarked that the cost was less than James Bond
producer Cubby Broccoli “would spend on cigars in a week”. Post production was completed in mid-February 1979. Unlike the original BBC Quatermass serials, which had used stock music tracks, the new serial had a specially composed soundtrack by Marc Wilkinson and Nic Rowley which made particular use of the nursery rhyme
“Huffity, Puffity, Ringstone Round” devised by Kneale in his scripts.
: Ringstone Round
Quatermass (John Mills
), now living in retirement in Scotland, travels to London
in search of his granddaughter, Hettie Carlson (Rebecca Saire
), who has gone missing. He is shocked by the scale of the urban collapse that has struck the city – law and order has broken down and marauding gangs terrorise the litter strewn, decaying streets. Appearing as a guest on a television programme covering the "Hands in Space" project, a joint space mission between the United States and Russia, Quatermass is horrified when the two spacecraft are destroyed by some unknown force. Astronomer Joe Kapp (Simon MacCorkindale
), another guest on the programme, invites Quatermass to join him at his home in the country where he has constructed a radio telescope. At the radio telescope, Kapp's colleagues report that they detected a powerful signal at the exact time of the incident in space. Quatermass is intrigued by the behaviour of a group of hippie-like youngsters known as the 'Planet People' who are travelling to various Neolithic
sites where they believe they will be transported to a better life on another planet. Quatermass suspects Hettie has joined them. Along with Kapp's wife, Claire (Barbara Kellerman
), Quatermass and Kapp follow a group of Planet People to a stone circle
of megaliths; 'Ringstone Round'. As they watch, the Planet People assembled inside the circle are bathed in a bright light and disappear, leaving only a residue of white dust.
Chapter Two: Lovely Lightning
The Planet People's leader, Kickalong (Ralph Arliss
), believes that the Planet People gathered at Ringstone Round have been transported, as promised, to the planet but it is clear to Quatermass and Kapp that they have been reduced to ashes. One survivor – a girl called Isabel (Annabelle Lanyon) who deliriously talks about "lovely lightning" – is found and is brought back to the Kapps' cottage. Making contact with NASA
scientist Chuck Marshall (Tony Sibbald), they learn that thousands of young people have disappeared in similar incidents all around the world. Quatermass, aided by District Commissioner Annie Morgan (Margaret Tyzack
), decides to bring Isabel to London for tests. As they make their journey, Quatermass speculates as to whether there is any connection between recent events and the decline in society. Reaching London, they are attacked by a gang. Quatermass is yanked from the car but Annie and Isabel manage to escape. Meanwhile, a large number of Planet People arrive at the radio telescope, congregating at the stone circle on its grounds. Working at a perimeter building, Kapp is horrified to see the light strike the area around his home – rushing home he finds it has killed Claire, his dog and his children.
Chapter Three: What Lies Beneath
Quatermass is rescued by a group of elderly people living in a scrap yard. At the hospital, the doctors are shocked when Isabel levitates off her bed and explodes in a cloud of dust. Elsewhere, the devastated Kapp is left alone in the ruins of his cottage and observatory. More and more young people are joining the Planet People, including the gangs that have been terrorising the cities and the soldiers assigned to keep them away from the Megalithic sites. Contact is restored with Chuck Marshall and with the Russians in the form of Gurov (Brewster Mason). Quatermass theorises that this is not the first time this has happened; Megalithic sites such as prehistoric stone circles are in fact markers where beacons have been left by the alien force for its next visit. Quatermass believes the force is a sphere of energy surrounding the Earth. The Russians and the Americans send a space shuttle
, commanded by Marshall, to make contact with the force. Quatermass is sceptical; he believes they are dealing not with an intelligence but with a machine constructed to harvest human protein
. The space shuttle is destroyed but not before Marshall reports a giant beam of light stretching in all directions. Meanwhile, the Planet People are gathering at Wembley Stadium in the tens of thousands. Annie and Quatermass travel to the stadium but are powerless to prevent the Planet People from gathering. When they are attacked, Annie drives their car into the underground car park beneath the stadium where she crashes the vehicle and is killed. The lightning strikes the stadium.
Chapter Four: An Endangered Species
Quatermass emerges from the car park to find the stadium empty. So many have now been harvested that the particles of dust in the air have turned the sky green. Quatermass, aided by Gurov, who has travelled to London from Moscow
, assembles a team of scientists to find a solution. He deliberately selects old people for the task as they are immune to the effects of the alien force. Quatermass decides to set a trap. He plans to fake the presence of a large gathering of Planet People at Kapp's observatory and, when the force comes, to detonate a nuclear weapon
. Quatermass does not believe this will be sufficient to destroy the alien machine but he hopes that it will damage it enough to make it go away. Kapp volunteers to stay behind with Quatermass to help detonate the bomb. The pair set up the trap and wait. Suddenly, Kickalong appears with a group of Planet People, including Quatermass' granddaughter, Hettie. Kapp tries to warn them away but is shot by Kickalong. The light appears, indicating that the alien force has arrived, but the shock of seeing his granddaughter among the Planet People causes Quatermass to suffer a heart attack
. However, aided by Hettie, he is able to detonate the bomb. Later, according to Gurov, "The message was taken. It has not come again. We pray it will never come again".
Chosen to play Quatermass was the distinguished actor John Mills
, who had appeared in significant roles in many high profile British films, including The Way to the Stars
(1945), Great Expectations
(1946), and Ice Cold in Alex (1958), and had won an Academy Award for his role in Ryan's Daughter
(1970). Mills, whose only previous television credit at the time was The Zoo Gang
(1974), was reluctant to take the part but was convinced by his wife who liked the script. Following Quatermass he appeared in Gandhi
(1982), Martin Chuzzlewit
(1994) and Hamlet
(1997), working right up to his death in 2005.
Joe Kapp was played by Simon MacCorkindale
, who had previously appeared in "Baby", one of the episodes of Nigel Kneale's Beasts series. MacCorkindale was delighted with the part of Joe Kapp, finding it a break from the typecast
romantic roles he was used to playing. Following Quatermass, MacCorkindale moved to the United States and, after playing a few guest roles on television, he secured a part in Jaws 3 (1983) and the lead in the short-lived series Manimal
(1983). He was then a series regular in Falcon Crest
(1984–86), Counterstrike (1990–93) and Poltergeist: The Legacy
(1999). He then returned to the United Kingdom, where he played the character of Harry Harper
in Casualty
between 2002 and 2008. MacCorkindale died in 2010
Barbara Kellerman
, who played Claire Kapp, had previously had a regular role in 1990
(1977–78) and would later portray the White Witch
in the BBC adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (1988).
Quatermass also featured many familiar faces from British television and film in supporting roles including Margaret Tyzack
, Bruce Purchase
, Brenda Fricker
, David Yip
, Kevin Stoney
, Gretchen Franklin
, Brian Croucher
, and Chris Quinten as well as the singer (and later television presenter) Toyah Willcox
.
, who was the great-grand nephew of author H. Rider Haggard
, had been directing since the nineteen-sixties. Prior to Quatermass, he had directed the acclaimed Dennis Potter
drama serial Pennies from Heaven (1978). Commenting on the script, Haggard described it as “a tremendous re-assertion of the importance of people, ordinary people, and how necessary they are in fighting evil”. Following Quatermass, he directed The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu
(1980) and the Disney Channel TV series Return to Treasure Island
(1985).
Executive producer Verity Lambert
had first made her mark as producer of the first two years of Doctor Who
(1963–1989; 1996; 2005–present) and had since carved out an impressive career, first at the BBC with programmes such as Adam Adamant Lives!
(1966–67) and The Newcomers
(1965–69) and then at Thames Television with productions such as The Naked Civil Servant
(TV film; 1975) and the series Rumpole of the Bailey
(1978–92). In 1979 she became Chief Executive of Euston Films and Quatermass was one of the first productions she oversaw in the role, seeing it as a project to make her mark on the company. In 1965, she had clashed with Nigel Kneale on the BBC arts programme Late Night Line-Up
when he attacked her for making Doctor Who too frightening for children. Despite this, however, she held Kneale in high esteem, describing him as “a fantastic writer... hugely imaginative... considering the impact his work has had, I think he's undervalued”. Following Quatermass she produced such shows as Danger UXB
(1979), Minder
(1979–85; 1988–94) and Widows
(1983) for Euston before forming her own production company, Cinema Verity, in 1985, overseeing programmes including G.B.H. (1991), Eldorado (1992–93) and Jonathan Creek
(1997–2004). She was awarded the OBE
in 2002. She died in 2007.
Producer Ted Childs
had begun his career with Euston on Special Branch
(1969–74) and had produced episodes of The Sweeney and its film spin-offs Sweeney! (1977) and Sweeney 2 (1978). Childs saw Quatermass as a big gamble for Euston, out of step with the company's usual fare. Childs later remarked that Verity Lambert “didn't want to come in and just do the same old routine – the kick bollock and scramble action adventure stuff that made the early name of the company”. He continues to be one of British television's top producers, responsible for such shows as Chancer
(1991), Inspector Morse
(1987–2000), Sharpe
(1993–2006), Kavanagh QC
(1995–2001) and Lewis
(2006–present).
Script editor Linda Agran has since acted as producer of such series as Widows, Agatha Christie's Poirot
(1989–present) and The Vanishing Man (1996).
Following Quatermass, writer Nigel Kneale developed the sitcom Kinvig (1981) for London Weekend Television
. During the nineteen-eighties he was courted for scripts by admiring Hollywood directors and producers such as John Carpenter
, John Landis
and Joe Dante
but with limited success. Returning to television, he adapted Susan Hill
's novel The Woman in Black
(1989) and wrote episodes of Sharpe and Kavanagh QC. He died in 2006.
began at ITV on 3 August 1979 and escalated into a full scale blackout from 10 August 1979 leaving the channel – and Quatermass – off the air for eleven weeks. Transmissions were finally restored on Wednesday, 24 October 1979 and the first episode of Quatermass was duly broadcast that night at 9 pm. Episode two was promoted in the TV Times with a full page article by Kneale introducing the new series and looking back on the original nineteen-fifties serials as well as a lifestyle piece with Barbara Kellerman moving house while episode four was promoted with a full page profile of John Mills. Ratings, averaging eleven million viewers over the four week run, were below expectations; the serial failed to crack the Top Twenty programmes in the weeks it was broadcast.
Quatermass met with a generally unenthusiastic critical response. Sean Day-Lewis wrote, “Although Piers Haggard's direction achieves much verisimilitude and the story is certainly enough to command some addiction; I did not feel exactly grabbed; the genre has moved some way since the 1950s and the Professor moves a little slowly for the 1970s”. The reviewer in The Daily Telegraph
found Professor Quatermass “far too unheroic and unresourceful to carry much interest” while The Times
found the serial to be “a so-so affair”. More positive was the Daily Mail
who thought the serial was “not the best of Nigel Kneale but it equalled any of his earliest Quatermass stories”. John Brosnan
, writing in Starburst
magazine, found the serial to be “a bitter reaction by a member of an older generation to the younger generation whose apparently irrational behaviour makes them appear to belong to a totally different species. Naturally in the traditions of sf, these failings are exaggerated to the nth degree. Thus muggers and juvenile delinquents become armed gangs and the hippy movement with its emphasis on mysticism, becomes the Planet Church. It's very much a story of Age versus Youth and significantly it's the older people who are impervious to the malign alien influence”. This view is echoed by filmmaker John Carpenter who said, “Nigel was very embittered about the way of the world, as was shown, I think, in The Quatermass Conclusion”.
Reflecting on the serial, Nigel Kneale said, “Frankly, I was never happy with the whole idea in the first place. The central idea was too ordinary”. Although Kneale was pleased with the high production values, he was dissatisfied with the casting, believing that John Mills “didn't have the authority for Quatermass”. He was similarly unimpressed with Simon MacCorkindale noting that, “We had him in Beasts playing an idiot and he was very good at that”. Kneale was also disappointed with the Planet People, feeling that they should have been portrayed not as hippies but as angry punk
s. Producer Ted Childs thinks that “the primary problems with it were (a) it was perhaps too depressing a story for a popular television audience and (b) the punters were used to a fairly high standard of technical presentation from American television... And we just couldn't afford that”. Executive producer Verity Lambert's opinion is that it “didn't have the staying power of the originals, but then that's almost inevitable when you try to bring something back in a slightly different form”.
From the outset, Euston intended to create two versions of the story; a four-part serial for broadcast on UK television and a 100-minute film, The Quatermass Conclusion, for distribution abroad. While writing the scripts, Kneale was “careful not to pad, because I knew that was the obvious thing, but to write in material which can be removed”. There is one major deviation between the two versions; in the film version, the scenes where Quatermass, separated from Annie Morgan while transporting Isabel to London, encounters a band of elderly people living in a scrapyard is completely absent; this meant that two versions of the hospital scene where Isabel dies were shot – one with Quatermass present (the film version) and one without (the television version). There was little interest among film distributors in The Quatermass Conclusion and it received only a limited theatrical release.
The story was novelised by Nigel Kneale, his first book since his Somerset Maugham Award
winning short story
collection Tomato Cain was published in 1949. The novelisation expanded on the backgrounds of many of the characters seen in the story and added a deeper, more physical, relationship between Quatermass and Annie Morgan. It was this version of the story that Kneale was most pleased with.
The Quatermass Conclusion was released on VHS
videotape
in 1985 while the complete four-part Quatermass serial was released in 1994. Quatermass, along with The Quatermass Conclusion was released on region 2 DVD
in 2003 by Clearvision in a three disc boxset; extras included a Sci-Fi Channel
interview with Nigel Kneale and extensive production notes. A two disc region 1 DVD, released by A&E
in 2005, also contained both the television and film versions as well as a History Channel documentary about Stonehenge
.
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...
television science fiction
Science fiction on television
Science fiction first appeared on a television program during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary world not limited by the constraints of reality; this makes television an excellent medium...
serial produced by Euston Films
Euston Films
Euston Films was a British film and television production company. It was a subsidiary company of Thames Television, and operated from the 1970s to the 1990s, producing various series for Thames, which were screened nationally on the ITV network...
for Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
and broadcast on the ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
network in October and November 1979. Like its three predecessors, Quatermass was written by Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...
. It is the fourth and final television serial to feature the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass
Bernard Quatermass
Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group...
.
Influenced by the social and geopolitical
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
situation of the early nineteen-seventies and the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
youth movement of the late nineteen-sixties, Quatermass is set in a near future in which large numbers of young people are joining a cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
, the “Planet People”, and gathering at prehistoric sites, believing they will be transported to a better life on another planet. The series begins with Professor Quatermass arriving in London to look for his granddaugher, Hettie Carlson, and witnessing the destruction of two spacecraft and the disappearance of a group of Planet People at a stone circle by an unknown force. He investigates this force, believing that Hettie may be in danger. As the series progresses, it becomes apparent that the Planet People are being harvested by an alien force. Professor Quatermass must devise a way to destroy the aliens before many more people die.
Quatermass was originally conceived as a 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...
production, but after they lost faith in the project, due to spiralling costs, production was halted. The scripts were taken by Euston Films and Kneale, now working for independent television
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
, was commissioned to rewrite the scripts into two versions: a four-part television serial and The Quatermass Conclusion, a 100-minute film, intended for international theatrical release.
Production
Professor Bernard QuatermassBernard Quatermass
Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group...
was created by Manx
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
writer Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...
in 1953 for the serial The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science-fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television in the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first manned flight into space, overseen by...
. Its success led to two sequels, Quatermass II
Quatermass II
Quatermass II is a British science-fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the Quatermass series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the first of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives...
(1955) and Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit is a British television science-fiction serial, originally transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. It was the third and last of the BBC's Quatermass serials, although the character would reappear in a 1979 ITV production simply entitled Quatermass...
(1958). These three Quatermass serials are seen today as seminal nineteen-fifties television productions. Kneale, however, became disenchanted with the BBC and went freelance in the late nineteen-fifties, producing scripts for Hammer Films and Associated Television
Associated TeleVision
Associated Television, often referred to as ATV, was a British television company, holder of various licences to broadcast on the ITV network from 24 September 1955 until 00:34 on 1 January 1982...
.
The notion of bringing Professor Quatermass back for a fourth adventure dated back to at least 1965 when producer Irene Shubik
Irene Shubik
Irene Shubik is a British television producer, notable for her contribution to the development of the single play in British television drama. Beginning her television career at ABC Television, she worked on Armchair Theatre as a story editor where she devised the science fiction anthology series...
asked Kneale to contribute a new Quatermass story for the first season of her science fiction anthology series
Anthology television series
An anthology series is a radio or television series that presents a different story and a different set of characters in each episode. These usually have a different cast each week, but several series in the past, such as Four Star Playhouse, employed a permanent troupe of character actors who...
, Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was an independent dramatisation of a separate science fiction short story...
. Nothing came of this but the prospect of Quatermass making a reappearance arose again when, following the success of the film version
Quatermass and the Pit (film)
Quatermass and the Pit is a 1967 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions it is a sequel to the earlier Hammer films The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. Like its predecessors it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass and the Pit – written by Nigel Kneale...
of Quatermass and the Pit in 1967, Hammer announced they were in discussions with Kneale for a new Quatermass adventure. Again, this did not progress beyond the initial negotiation stage. In the meantime, Kneale had been coaxed back to the BBC, writing plays such as The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics is a 1968 television play made by the BBC and first broadcast on BBC2 as part of Theatre 625. It stars Leonard Rossiter, Tony Vogel, Suzanne Neve and Brian Cox. It was directed by Michael Elliot...
(1968), Wine of India (1970) and The Stone Tape
The Stone Tape
The Stone Tape is a television play directed by Peter Sasdy and starring Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, Michael Bates and Iain Cuthbertson. It was broadcast on BBC Two as a Christmas ghost story in 1972...
(1972). Following completion of The Stone Tape, Kneale was commissioned on 21 November 1972 by BBC Head of Drama Serials, Ronnie Marsh, to write a new four-part Quatermass serial.
Kneale began writing the scripts, working to a delivery deadline of February 1973. Much of the setting for the story was influenced by contemporary political events such as strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
s, power cuts
Three-Day Week
The Three-Day Week was one of several measures introduced in the United Kingdom by the Conservative Government 1970–1974 to conserve electricity, the production of which was severely limited due to industrial action by coal miners...
, the Oil Crisis
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
and developments in the Space Race
Space Race
The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...
, especially the planned Apollo-Soyuz
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
-Backup crew:-Crew notes:Jack Swigert had originally been assigned as the command module pilot for the ASTP prime crew, but prior to the official announcement he was removed as punishment for his involvement in the Apollo 15 postage stamp scandal.-Soyuz crew:...
missions and Skylab
Skylab
Skylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA, the space agency of the United States. Skylab orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979, and included a workshop, a solar observatory, and other systems. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, with a mass of...
. Writing in the listings magazine TV Times
TV Times
TVTimes is a television listings magazine published in the United Kingdom by IPC Media, a subsidiary of Time Warner. It is known for its access to television actors and their programmes. In 2006 it was refreshed for a more modern look, increasing its emphasis on big star interviews and soaps...
to promote the serial, Kneale said, “Quatermass is a story of the future – but perhaps only a few years from now. There are some clues already in the most obvious places: the streets. Pavements littered with rubbish. Walls painted with angry graffiti. Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
black with smoke and rage. Worst of all, the mindless violence”. Concerns about the state of society, especially the “dropout” culture of the youth movement, had been a theme of Kneale's writing for some time, as seen in such works as The Big, Big Giggle, an unmade play about a teenage suicide cult; The Year of the Sex Olympics, about the consequences of a world with no censorship or inhibitions; and Bam! Pow! Zap! (1969), about teenage delinquents, all of which fed into the world depicted in the new Quatermass serial. Kneale said, “I looked at the alarming aspects of contemporary trends. Since then, we'd seen 'flower power
Flower power
Flower power is a slogan used by the American counterculture movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a symbol of passive resistance and non-violence ideology. It is rooted in the opposition movement to the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in...
' and hippies, so all I did was bring them into the story. It was written in 1972 and it was about the sixties really”. Another theme that had crept into Kneale's writing at this time, as seen in Wine of India, about compulsory euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
for the elderly, and, later, the Beasts
Beasts (TV series)
Beasts is a series of six television plays by Manx writer Nigel Kneale, unconnected but for a bestial horror theme, made by ATV for ITV in the United Kingdom and broadcast in 1976.-Episodes:-External links:* at the BFI's Screenonline...
episode “During Barty's Party”, about an elderly couple terrorised by rats, was the consequences of growing old. Kneale later recalled, “The theme I was trying to get to was the old redressing the balance with the young, saving the young, which I thought a nice, paradoxical, ironic idea after the youth-oriented 60s”.
Assigned to produce the serial was Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green was a popular BBC television series that ran from 1955 to 1976, and later a radio series. Despite being a drama series, it was initially produced by the BBC's light entertainment department.-Overview:...
producer Joe Waters. Preliminary filming on Quatermass began in June 1973 at Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever since...
where special effects designer Jack Wilkie and his assistant, Ian Scoones, shot model footage, for part one of the serial, of a space station
Space station
A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a crew which is designed to remain in space for an extended period of time, and to which other spacecraft can dock. A space station is distinguished from other spacecraft used for human spaceflight by its lack of major propulsion or landing...
with astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
s working on its hull. However, at this point the BBC got cold feet about the project; they had become concerned about the cost of mounting the production and had been refused permission to film at Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
, one of the locations that Kneale had envisaged the Planet People would gather at to be reaped by the alien force. Kneale recalled that Stonehenge “had become Big Business and the place was like a factory with tourists there from dawn to dusk... they weren't going to let anyone go near it”. Kneale also felt that the BBC were unhappy with the script believing it “didn't suit their image at that time; it was too gloomy”. In the end, it was decided during Summer 1973 that, for financial reasons, the BBC would not proceed with the production. However, the BBC had an option on the script until 1975 which they held onto until it expired.
At this stage, Kneale was working primarily in Independent Television
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
, having written the play Murrain (1975) and the anthology series Beasts (1976) for ATV. However, Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
was beginning to make an impact and interest in science fiction projects among film and television studios began to rise. In May 1977, Euston Films
Euston Films
Euston Films was a British film and television production company. It was a subsidiary company of Thames Television, and operated from the 1970s to the 1990s, producing various series for Thames, which were screened nationally on the ITV network...
, a subsidiary of Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
best known for The Sweeney
The Sweeney
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London...
(1975–1978), announced that they had picked up Kneale's unmade Quatermass scripts. This new production, known either as Quatermass or Quatermass IV, would consist of a four part serial to be broadcast by ITV which would be recut as a 100-minute film, titled The Quatermass Conclusion, for release in North America and Europe. Kneale was dubious about having to craft both a television serial and film version of his story feeling that “in the end we had two versions, neither of which was the right length for the story”. During the rewrites, Kneale transplanted the action at the conclusion of part three from Stonehenge to the more easily available Wembley Stadium. When asked about what differences there were between the Euston Films version and the version originally envisaged for the BBC, Kneale remarked that “the BBC version would have been much more in the studio, whereas the Euston Films version was entirely shot on 35mm film with a great deal of it outside. Much more lavish than either the BBC or I had contemplated”.
Filming took place between 26 August 1978 and 23 December 1978 at locations around Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...
and Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
as well as London, including Wembley Stadium. The budget was £1.25 million, making it one of the most expensive undertakings Euston had attempted at that time. Production designer Arnold Chapkis constructed several large and elaborate sets including those for the megalithic standing stone
Standing stone
Standing stones, orthostats, liths, or more commonly megaliths are solitary stones set vertically in the ground and come in many different varieties....
s at Ringstone Round, the Kapps' radio telescope
Radio telescope
A radio telescope is a form of directional radio antenna used in radio astronomy. The same types of antennas are also used in tracking and collecting data from satellites and space probes...
and observatory
Observatory
An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed...
and the decaying urban landscape of London; Kneale quipped about the radio telescope set that “it probably would have worked if they'd just aimed it properly!”. Associate producer Norton Knatchbull noted that the serial “was the first 'art department' picture Euston has ever been involved in, in the sense that major sets had to be built on location”. This led Euston executive Johnny Goodman to joke, “Our biggest problem was finding someone who wanted the two giant telescope dishes after we finished filming. There's not much demand for such things”. One aspect where the budget was less than generous was with the model sequences made by Clearwater Films; Johnny Goodman remarked that the cost was less than James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
producer Cubby Broccoli “would spend on cigars in a week”. Post production was completed in mid-February 1979. Unlike the original BBC Quatermass serials, which had used stock music tracks, the new serial had a specially composed soundtrack by Marc Wilkinson and Nic Rowley which made particular use of the nursery rhyme
Nursery rhyme
The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...
“Huffity, Puffity, Ringstone Round” devised by Kneale in his scripts.
Plot
Chapter OneQuatermass (John Mills
John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...
), now living in retirement in Scotland, travels to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in search of his granddaughter, Hettie Carlson (Rebecca Saire
Rebecca Saire
Rebecca Saire is a British actress and writer who achieved early notability when, at the age of fourteen, she played Juliet for the BBC Television Shakespeare series.- Personal life :...
), who has gone missing. He is shocked by the scale of the urban collapse that has struck the city – law and order has broken down and marauding gangs terrorise the litter strewn, decaying streets. Appearing as a guest on a television programme covering the "Hands in Space" project, a joint space mission between the United States and Russia, Quatermass is horrified when the two spacecraft are destroyed by some unknown force. Astronomer Joe Kapp (Simon MacCorkindale
Simon MacCorkindale
Simon Charles Pendered MacCorkindale was a British actor, film director, writer and producer. MacCorkindale spent much of his childhood moving around due to his father's commission with the Royal Air Force. Poor eyesight prevented him from following a similar career in the RAF, so he instead...
), another guest on the programme, invites Quatermass to join him at his home in the country where he has constructed a radio telescope. At the radio telescope, Kapp's colleagues report that they detected a powerful signal at the exact time of the incident in space. Quatermass is intrigued by the behaviour of a group of hippie-like youngsters known as the 'Planet People' who are travelling to various Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
sites where they believe they will be transported to a better life on another planet. Quatermass suspects Hettie has joined them. Along with Kapp's wife, Claire (Barbara Kellerman
Barbara Kellerman
Barbara R. Kellerman is an English actress, noted for her film and television roles. She trained at Rose Bruford College. Kellerman's Jewish parents had fled Nazi Germany and settled in Leeds, briefly living in Manchester before returning to Leeds by 1952...
), Quatermass and Kapp follow a group of Planet People to a stone circle
Stone circle
A stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons....
of megaliths; 'Ringstone Round'. As they watch, the Planet People assembled inside the circle are bathed in a bright light and disappear, leaving only a residue of white dust.
Chapter Two
The Planet People's leader, Kickalong (Ralph Arliss
Ralph Arliss
Ralph Arliss is a British actor.His television credits include: Doctor Who , Z Cars, The Sweeney, Survivors, Return of the Saint, Secret Army, Love for Lydia, Shoestring, Airline, The Jewel in the Crown, Dempsey & Makepeace, Call Me Mister, Boon, Prime Suspect, Casualty and The...
), believes that the Planet People gathered at Ringstone Round have been transported, as promised, to the planet but it is clear to Quatermass and Kapp that they have been reduced to ashes. One survivor – a girl called Isabel (Annabelle Lanyon) who deliriously talks about "lovely lightning" – is found and is brought back to the Kapps' cottage. Making contact with NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
scientist Chuck Marshall (Tony Sibbald), they learn that thousands of young people have disappeared in similar incidents all around the world. Quatermass, aided by District Commissioner Annie Morgan (Margaret Tyzack
Margaret Tyzack
Margaret Maud Tyzack, CBE was a British actress.-Early life:Tyzack was born in Essex, England, the daughter of Doris and Thomas Edward Tyzack. She grew up in West Ham...
), decides to bring Isabel to London for tests. As they make their journey, Quatermass speculates as to whether there is any connection between recent events and the decline in society. Reaching London, they are attacked by a gang. Quatermass is yanked from the car but Annie and Isabel manage to escape. Meanwhile, a large number of Planet People arrive at the radio telescope, congregating at the stone circle on its grounds. Working at a perimeter building, Kapp is horrified to see the light strike the area around his home – rushing home he finds it has killed Claire, his dog and his children.
Chapter Three
Quatermass is rescued by a group of elderly people living in a scrap yard. At the hospital, the doctors are shocked when Isabel levitates off her bed and explodes in a cloud of dust. Elsewhere, the devastated Kapp is left alone in the ruins of his cottage and observatory. More and more young people are joining the Planet People, including the gangs that have been terrorising the cities and the soldiers assigned to keep them away from the Megalithic sites. Contact is restored with Chuck Marshall and with the Russians in the form of Gurov (Brewster Mason). Quatermass theorises that this is not the first time this has happened; Megalithic sites such as prehistoric stone circles are in fact markers where beacons have been left by the alien force for its next visit. Quatermass believes the force is a sphere of energy surrounding the Earth. The Russians and the Americans send a space shuttle
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
, commanded by Marshall, to make contact with the force. Quatermass is sceptical; he believes they are dealing not with an intelligence but with a machine constructed to harvest human protein
Protein
Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
. The space shuttle is destroyed but not before Marshall reports a giant beam of light stretching in all directions. Meanwhile, the Planet People are gathering at Wembley Stadium in the tens of thousands. Annie and Quatermass travel to the stadium but are powerless to prevent the Planet People from gathering. When they are attacked, Annie drives their car into the underground car park beneath the stadium where she crashes the vehicle and is killed. The lightning strikes the stadium.
Chapter Four
Quatermass emerges from the car park to find the stadium empty. So many have now been harvested that the particles of dust in the air have turned the sky green. Quatermass, aided by Gurov, who has travelled to London from Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, assembles a team of scientists to find a solution. He deliberately selects old people for the task as they are immune to the effects of the alien force. Quatermass decides to set a trap. He plans to fake the presence of a large gathering of Planet People at Kapp's observatory and, when the force comes, to detonate a nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
. Quatermass does not believe this will be sufficient to destroy the alien machine but he hopes that it will damage it enough to make it go away. Kapp volunteers to stay behind with Quatermass to help detonate the bomb. The pair set up the trap and wait. Suddenly, Kickalong appears with a group of Planet People, including Quatermass' granddaughter, Hettie. Kapp tries to warn them away but is shot by Kickalong. The light appears, indicating that the alien force has arrived, but the shock of seeing his granddaughter among the Planet People causes Quatermass to suffer a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
. However, aided by Hettie, he is able to detonate the bomb. Later, according to Gurov, "The message was taken. It has not come again. We pray it will never come again".
Cast
John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...
, who had appeared in significant roles in many high profile British films, including The Way to the Stars
The Way to the Stars
The Way to the Stars, also known as Johnny in the Clouds, is a 1945 British war drama film made by Two Cities Films and released by United Artists. It was produced by Anatole de Grunwald and directed by Anthony Asquith...
(1945), Great Expectations
Great Expectations (1946 film)
Great Expectations is a 1946 British film which won two Academy Awards and was nominated for three others...
(1946), and Ice Cold in Alex (1958), and had won an Academy Award for his role in Ryan's Daughter
Ryan's Daughter
Ryan's Daughter is a 1970 film directed by David Lean. The film, set in 1916, tells the story of a married Irish woman who has an affair with a British officer during World War I, despite opposition from her nationalist neighbours...
(1970). Mills, whose only previous television credit at the time was The Zoo Gang
The Zoo Gang
The Zoo Gang was a 1974 ITC Entertainment drama series that ran for six one-hour colour episodes, based on the 1971 book of the same name by Paul Gallico....
(1974), was reluctant to take the part but was convinced by his wife who liked the script. Following Quatermass he appeared in Gandhi
Gandhi (film)
Gandhi is a 1982 biographical film based on the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who led the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century. The film was directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. They both...
(1982), Martin Chuzzlewit
Martin Chuzzlewit (TV series)
Martin Chuzzlewit was a 1994 TV mini series produced by the BBC. It is based on the novel by Charles Dickens, with a screenplay by David Lodge. The music was composed by Geoffrey Burgon...
(1994) and Hamlet
Hamlet (1996 film)
Hamlet is a 1996 film version of William Shakespeare's classic play of the same name, adapted and directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars in the title role as Prince Hamlet...
(1997), working right up to his death in 2005.
Joe Kapp was played by Simon MacCorkindale
Simon MacCorkindale
Simon Charles Pendered MacCorkindale was a British actor, film director, writer and producer. MacCorkindale spent much of his childhood moving around due to his father's commission with the Royal Air Force. Poor eyesight prevented him from following a similar career in the RAF, so he instead...
, who had previously appeared in "Baby", one of the episodes of Nigel Kneale's Beasts series. MacCorkindale was delighted with the part of Joe Kapp, finding it a break from the typecast
Typecasting (acting)
In TV, film, and theatre, typecasting is the process by which a particular actor becomes strongly identified with a specific character; one or more particular roles; or, characters having the same traits or coming from the same social or ethnic groups...
romantic roles he was used to playing. Following Quatermass, MacCorkindale moved to the United States and, after playing a few guest roles on television, he secured a part in Jaws 3 (1983) and the lead in the short-lived series Manimal
Manimal
Manimal is an American action–adventure series that ran from September 30 to December 17, 1983 on NBC. The show centers on the character Dr Jonathan Chase , a shape-shifting man who possessed the ability to turn himself into any animal he chose...
(1983). He was then a series regular in Falcon Crest
Falcon Crest
Falcon Crest is an American primetime television soap opera which aired on the CBS network for nine seasons, from December 4, 1981 to May 17, 1990. A total of 227 episodes were produced....
(1984–86), Counterstrike (1990–93) and Poltergeist: The Legacy
Poltergeist: The Legacy
Poltergeist: The Legacy is a Canadian horror television series which ran from 1996 to 1999. The series tells the story of the members of a secret society known as the Legacy, and their efforts to protect humankind from occult dangers...
(1999). He then returned to the United Kingdom, where he played the character of Harry Harper
Harry Harper (fictional character)
Harry Harper is a fictional character from the BBC One medical drama Casualty, portrayed by actor Simon MacCorkindale. He made his first appearance in the series sixteen episode "Denial", broadcast on 8 June 2002. He ran Holby City Hospital's emergency department for five years, before being...
in Casualty
Casualty (TV series)
Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...
between 2002 and 2008. MacCorkindale died in 2010
Barbara Kellerman
Barbara Kellerman
Barbara R. Kellerman is an English actress, noted for her film and television roles. She trained at Rose Bruford College. Kellerman's Jewish parents had fled Nazi Germany and settled in Leeds, briefly living in Manchester before returning to Leeds by 1952...
, who played Claire Kapp, had previously had a regular role in 1990
1990 (TV series)
1990 is a British then-futuristic political drama television series produced by the BBC and shown in 1977 and 1978.- Plot :The series is set in a dystopian future in which Britain is under the grip of the Home Office's Department of Public Control , a tyrannically oppressive bureaucracy riding...
(1977–78) and would later portray the White Witch
White Witch
Jadis is the main antagonist of The Magician's Nephew and of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in C.S. Lewis' series, The Chronicles of Narnia...
in the BBC adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (1988).
Quatermass also featured many familiar faces from British television and film in supporting roles including Margaret Tyzack
Margaret Tyzack
Margaret Maud Tyzack, CBE was a British actress.-Early life:Tyzack was born in Essex, England, the daughter of Doris and Thomas Edward Tyzack. She grew up in West Ham...
, Bruce Purchase
Bruce Purchase
Bruce Purchase was a New Zealand-born actor known for his roles on stage and television. Born in Thames, New Zealand, he won a scholarship to study acting in England, training at RADA, and went on to become a founding actor-member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre...
, Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker is an Irish actress of theatre, film and television. She had appeared in more than 30 films and television roles...
, David Yip
David Yip
David Yip is an English actor.Yip, of Asian and English descent, was born in Liverpool and trained at East 15 Acting School, London...
, Kevin Stoney
Kevin Stoney
Kevin Stoney was an English actor, best known for his television roles.During World War II, Stoney served with the Royal Air Force....
, Gretchen Franklin
Gretchen Franklin
Gretchen Franklin was an English actress with a career in showbusiness that spanned over eighty years.She was born in Covent Garden, west London, a cousin of the actor Clive Dunn. She was best known for playing the character of Ethel Skinner in the long running BBC One, soap opera, EastEnders...
, Brian Croucher
Brian Croucher
Brian Croucher is an English actor and director perhaps best known for his role as Ted Hills, which he played from 1995 to 1997, in the soap opera EastEnders....
, and Chris Quinten as well as the singer (and later television presenter) Toyah Willcox
Toyah Willcox
Toyah Ann Willcox is an English actress and singer. In a career spanning more than thirty years Toyah has had 13 top 40 singles, released 22 studio albums, written two books, appeared in over forty stage plays and ten feature films, as well as voicing and presenting numerous television shows...
.
Crew
Director Piers HaggardPiers Haggard
Piers Inigo Haggard is a British film and television director, although he has worked mostly in the latter medium.He is the great grandnephew of H...
, who was the great-grand nephew of author H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...
, had been directing since the nineteen-sixties. Prior to Quatermass, he had directed the acclaimed Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
drama serial Pennies from Heaven (1978). Commenting on the script, Haggard described it as “a tremendous re-assertion of the importance of people, ordinary people, and how necessary they are in fighting evil”. Following Quatermass, he directed The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu is a 1980 comedy film, notable as the final film of Peter Sellers, David Tomlinson and John Le Mesurier. Pre-production began with Richard Quine as director. By the time the film entered production, Piers Haggard had replaced him. Peter Sellers handled the...
(1980) and the Disney Channel TV series Return to Treasure Island
Return to Treasure Island
Return to Treasure Island is a Disney mini-series, starring Brian Blessed as Long John Silver.Disney Channel contracted the UK ITV broadcaster HTV Wales to actually produce the series, and it was shot in Wales, Spain and Jamaica...
(1985).
Executive producer Verity Lambert
Verity Lambert
Verity Ann Lambert, OBE was an English television and film producer. She is best known as the founding producer of the science-fiction series Doctor Who, a programme which has become a part of British popular culture, and for her association with Thames Television...
had first made her mark as producer of the first two years of Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
(1963–1989; 1996; 2005–present) and had since carved out an impressive career, first at the BBC with programmes such as Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant Lives! is a British television series which ran from 1966 to 1967 on the BBC. Proposing that an adventurer born in 1867 had been revived from hibernation in 1966, the show was a comedy adventure that took a satirical look at life in the 1960s through the eyes of an Edwardian .- Character...
(1966–67) and The Newcomers
The Newcomers (TV series)
The Newcomers was a late 1960s BBC soap opera which dealt with the subject of a London family, the Coopers, who moved to a housing estate in the fictional country town of Angleton. It was broadcast in bi-weekly half hour episodes from 5 October 1965 until 28 November 1969...
(1965–69) and then at Thames Television with productions such as The Naked Civil Servant
The Naked Civil Servant
The Naked Civil Servant is the title of two biographical works, both based on the life of Quentin Crisp:*The Naked Civil Servant is Crisp's 1968 autobiographical book...
(TV film; 1975) and the series Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients...
(1978–92). In 1979 she became Chief Executive of Euston Films and Quatermass was one of the first productions she oversaw in the role, seeing it as a project to make her mark on the company. In 1965, she had clashed with Nigel Kneale on the BBC arts programme Late Night Line-Up
Late Night Line-Up
Late Night Line-Up was a pioneering British television discussion programme broadcast on BBC2 between 1964 and 1972. Late Night Line-Up returned for a special one-off edition on BBC Parliament in 2008.-Background:...
when he attacked her for making Doctor Who too frightening for children. Despite this, however, she held Kneale in high esteem, describing him as “a fantastic writer... hugely imaginative... considering the impact his work has had, I think he's undervalued”. Following Quatermass she produced such shows as Danger UXB
Danger UXB
Danger UXB is a 1979 British ITV television series developed by John Hawkesworth and starring Anthony Andrews as Lieutenant Brian Ash, a new direct commission officer in World War II....
(1979), Minder
Minder (TV series)
Minder is a British comedy-drama about the London criminal underworld. Initially produced by Verity Lambert, it was made by Euston Films, a subsidiary of Thames Television and shown on ITV...
(1979–85; 1988–94) and Widows
Widows (TV series)
Widows was a British primetime television serial aired in 1983, produced by Euston Films for Thames Television and aired on the ITV network....
(1983) for Euston before forming her own production company, Cinema Verity, in 1985, overseeing programmes including G.B.H. (1991), Eldorado (1992–93) and Jonathan Creek
Jonathan Creek
Jonathan Creek is a British mystery series produced by the BBC and written by David Renwick. Primarily a crime drama, the show is also peppered with broadly comic touches...
(1997–2004). She was awarded the OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
in 2002. She died in 2007.
Producer Ted Childs
Ted Childs
Edward Samuel "Ted" Childs is a British television producer, screenwriter and director, whose notable works include The Sweeney, Kavanagh QC, Soldier Soldier, Making Waves, Inspector Morse and its spin-off Lewis...
had begun his career with Euston on Special Branch
Special Branch (TV series)
Special Branch is a British television series made by Thames Television for ITV and shown between 1969 and 1974. A police drama series, the action was centred on members of the Special Branch anti-espionage and anti-terrorist department of the London Metropolitan Police.The first two series were...
(1969–74) and had produced episodes of The Sweeney and its film spin-offs Sweeney! (1977) and Sweeney 2 (1978). Childs saw Quatermass as a big gamble for Euston, out of step with the company's usual fare. Childs later remarked that Verity Lambert “didn't want to come in and just do the same old routine – the kick bollock and scramble action adventure stuff that made the early name of the company”. He continues to be one of British television's top producers, responsible for such shows as Chancer
Chancer
Chancer is a British television serial produced by Central Television for ITV. It tells the story of a likable conman and rogue at the end of the yuppie eighties...
(1991), Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse (TV series)
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis. Dexter makes a cameo appearance in all but three of the episodes....
(1987–2000), Sharpe
Sharpe (TV series)
Sharpe is a British series of television dramas starring Sean Bean about Richard Sharpe, a fictional British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Sharpe is the hero of a number of novels by Bernard Cornwell; most, though not all, of the episodes are based on the books...
(1993–2006), Kavanagh QC
Kavanagh QC
Kavanagh QC is a British television series made by Carlton Television for ITV between 1995 and 2001. It has been shown on ITV3 as recently as August 2011; series 1–6 are available on Region 2 DVDs....
(1995–2001) and Lewis
Lewis
Lewis is the northern part of Lewis and Harris, the largest island of the Western Isles or Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The total area of Lewis is ....
(2006–present).
Script editor Linda Agran has since acted as producer of such series as Widows, Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
(1989–present) and The Vanishing Man (1996).
Following Quatermass, writer Nigel Kneale developed the sitcom Kinvig (1981) for London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
. During the nineteen-eighties he was courted for scripts by admiring Hollywood directors and producers such as John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
, John Landis
John Landis
John David Landis is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.-Early life and career:...
and Joe Dante
Joe Dante
Joseph "Joe" Dante, Jr. is an American film director and producer of films generally with humorous and science fiction content....
but with limited success. Returning to television, he adapted Susan Hill
Susan Hill
Susan Hill is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels include The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror and I'm the King of the Castle for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971....
's novel The Woman in Black
The Woman in Black
The Woman in Black is a 1983 thriller fiction novel by Susan Hill about a menacing spectre that haunts a small English town.It was adapted into a stage play by Stephen Mallatratt...
(1989) and wrote episodes of Sharpe and Kavanagh QC. He died in 2006.
Broadcast and critical reception
ITV intended Quatermass to air in September 1979 as the flagship of its autumn season; advertising posters announced, “Earth's dark ancestral forces awaken to a summons from beyond the stars. The legend returns on ITV – Wednesdays at 9 pm throughout September”. However, industrial actionIndustrial action
Industrial action or job action refers collectively to any measure taken by trade unions or other organised labour meant to reduce productivity in a workplace. Quite often it is used and interpreted as a euphemism for strike, but the scope is much wider...
began at ITV on 3 August 1979 and escalated into a full scale blackout from 10 August 1979 leaving the channel – and Quatermass – off the air for eleven weeks. Transmissions were finally restored on Wednesday, 24 October 1979 and the first episode of Quatermass was duly broadcast that night at 9 pm. Episode two was promoted in the TV Times with a full page article by Kneale introducing the new series and looking back on the original nineteen-fifties serials as well as a lifestyle piece with Barbara Kellerman moving house while episode four was promoted with a full page profile of John Mills. Ratings, averaging eleven million viewers over the four week run, were below expectations; the serial failed to crack the Top Twenty programmes in the weeks it was broadcast.
Quatermass met with a generally unenthusiastic critical response. Sean Day-Lewis wrote, “Although Piers Haggard's direction achieves much verisimilitude and the story is certainly enough to command some addiction; I did not feel exactly grabbed; the genre has moved some way since the 1950s and the Professor moves a little slowly for the 1970s”. The reviewer in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
found Professor Quatermass “far too unheroic and unresourceful to carry much interest” while The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
found the serial to be “a so-so affair”. More positive was the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
who thought the serial was “not the best of Nigel Kneale but it equalled any of his earliest Quatermass stories”. John Brosnan
John Brosnan
John Raymond Brosnan was an Australian writer of both fiction and non-fiction works based around the fantasy and science fiction genres. He was born in Perth, Western Australia, and died in South Harrow, London, from acute pancreatitis...
, writing in Starburst
Starburst (magazine)
Starburst is a British science fiction online magazine published by Starburst Magazine Limited. The magazine is published every month on the 14th, with news and reviews being published daily.-History:...
magazine, found the serial to be “a bitter reaction by a member of an older generation to the younger generation whose apparently irrational behaviour makes them appear to belong to a totally different species. Naturally in the traditions of sf, these failings are exaggerated to the nth degree. Thus muggers and juvenile delinquents become armed gangs and the hippy movement with its emphasis on mysticism, becomes the Planet Church. It's very much a story of Age versus Youth and significantly it's the older people who are impervious to the malign alien influence”. This view is echoed by filmmaker John Carpenter who said, “Nigel was very embittered about the way of the world, as was shown, I think, in The Quatermass Conclusion”.
Reflecting on the serial, Nigel Kneale said, “Frankly, I was never happy with the whole idea in the first place. The central idea was too ordinary”. Although Kneale was pleased with the high production values, he was dissatisfied with the casting, believing that John Mills “didn't have the authority for Quatermass”. He was similarly unimpressed with Simon MacCorkindale noting that, “We had him in Beasts playing an idiot and he was very good at that”. Kneale was also disappointed with the Planet People, feeling that they should have been portrayed not as hippies but as angry punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
s. Producer Ted Childs thinks that “the primary problems with it were (a) it was perhaps too depressing a story for a popular television audience and (b) the punters were used to a fairly high standard of technical presentation from American television... And we just couldn't afford that”. Executive producer Verity Lambert's opinion is that it “didn't have the staying power of the originals, but then that's almost inevitable when you try to bring something back in a slightly different form”.
Other media
The story was novelised by Nigel Kneale, his first book since his Somerset Maugham Award
Somerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
winning short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
collection Tomato Cain was published in 1949. The novelisation expanded on the backgrounds of many of the characters seen in the story and added a deeper, more physical, relationship between Quatermass and Annie Morgan. It was this version of the story that Kneale was most pleased with.
The Quatermass Conclusion was released on VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
in 1985 while the complete four-part Quatermass serial was released in 1994. Quatermass, along with The Quatermass Conclusion was released on region 2 DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in 2003 by Clearvision in a three disc boxset; extras included a Sci-Fi Channel
Sci Fi channel (United Kingdom)
Syfy is a television channel service specialising in science fiction, fantasy and horror shows and movies. It is available via digital cable, IPTV, satellite television and Top Up TV platforms. The channel launched in 1995 in the UK a sister channel to the US Sci Fi Channel , with a similar...
interview with Nigel Kneale and extensive production notes. A two disc region 1 DVD, released by A&E
A&E Television Networks
A&E Television Networks is a U.S. media company that owns a group of television channels available via cable & satellite in the US and abroad...
in 2005, also contained both the television and film versions as well as a History Channel documentary about Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
.