The Quatermass Experiment is a British science fiction serial written by Nigel Kneale and broadcast by BBC Television during the summer of 1953. It was 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 crewed flight into space, supervised by Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group.
When the spaceship that carries the first successful crew returns to Earth, two of the three astronauts are missing, and the third – Victor Carroon – is behaving strangely. It eventually becomes apparent that an alien presence entered the rocket during its flight, and Quatermass and his associates must prevent the alien from destroying the world.
Originally comprising six half-hour episodes, it was the first science fiction production to be written especially for a British adult television audience. The serial was the first of four Quatermass productions to be screened on British television between 1953 and 1979. It was transmitted live from the BBC's original television studios at Alexandra Palace in north London, one of the final productions before BBC television drama moved to west London.
Only two episodes survive in the archives, as the other four were not recorded during their live broadcast. In addition to spawning various remakes and sequels, The Quatermass Experiment inspired much of the television science fiction that succeeded it, particularly in the United Kingdom, where it influenced successful series such as Doctor Who and Sapphire and Steel. It also influenced successful Hollywood films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Alien (1979).
Plot The three crewmen of a new rocketship have become the first humans to travel into space. On Earth, Professor Bernard Quatermass and his laboratory assistants anxiously await the travelers' return. The rocket had overshot its orbit and had been feared to have been lost. Eventually, it was detected by radar. The ship returns to Earth and crash-lands in Wimbledon, London.
Quatermass and his team, led by chief assistant Paterson (played by Hugh Kelly), reach the rocket crash site and open the vehicle. They see only one crewmember, Victor Carroon. The other two space suits are empty. The spaceship's door was unopened during the flight. No one knows that an alien now inhabits the body of Carroon and has physically absorbed the other two crew members.
Carroon is gravely ill. Rocket Group doctor Briscoe (John Glen) and Carroon's wife Judith (Isabel Dean) are lovers. Journalist James Fullalove (Paul Whitsun-Jones) and Scotland Yard's Inspector Lomax (Ian Colin) want to find the details. Gangsters kidnap Carroon, to ransom him back to the British Rocket Group. He kills them and escapes; his body is mutating into a plant-like alien organism.
Carroon rapidly transforms. The police chase him across London. Quatermass analyses samples in a lab and realises that the alien's spores will consume all life on Earth. A television crew at work in Westminster Abbey sees the creature. Quatermass and British Army troops rush to destroy it. The creature is too strong for the army's weapons and one hour remains until the creature brings doomsday. Quatermass persuades the three human minds who reside within the creature to sacrifice themselves to destroy the alien and save mankind.
Cast and crew Following the success of The Quatermass Experiment, Nigel Kneale became one of the best-regarded screenwriters in the history of British television. In addition to the various Quatermass spin-offs and sequels, he wrote acclaimed productions such as Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954) and The Stone Tape (1972). A tribute article by writer and admirer Mark Gatiss, published on the BBC News Online website shortly after Kneale's death in 2006, praised his contribution to British television history: "He is amongst the greats—he is absolutely as important as Dennis Potter, as David Mercer, as Alan Bleasdale, as Alan Bennett".
Kneale's actions were represented on screen in the final episode of The Quatermass Experiment. He manipulated the monster seen in Westminster Abbey at the climax, with his hands stuck through a photographic blow-up of the interior of the Abbey. The monster actually consisted of gloves covered in various plant and other materials, prepared by Kneale and his girlfriend (and future wife) Judith Kerr. The couple kept the gloves as a memento, and still owned them fifty years later, when Kneale wore them again in a television documentary about his career.
Rudolph Cartier had emigrated from Germany in the 1930s to escape its Nazi regime, and joined the staff of the BBC the year before The Quatermass Experiment was made. He collaborated with Kneale on several further productions, and became a major figure in the British television industry. He directed important productions such as Kneale's Nineteen Eighty-Four adaptation, the two further BBC Quatermass serials, and one-off plays such as Cross of Iron (1961) and Lee Oswald: Assassin (1966). His 1994 obituary in The Times praised his contribution to 1950s television drama: "At a time when studio productions were usually as static as the conventional theatre, he was widely respected for a creative contribution to British television drama which gave it a new dimension". The same piece also named The Quatermass Experiment as a high point in his career, calling the serial "a landmark in British television drama as much for its visual imagination as for its ability to shock and disturb".
Quatermass was played by the experienced Reginald Tate, who had appeared in various films, including The Way Ahead (1944). He died two years later, while preparing to take the role of the Professor again in Quatermass II. Tate was the second choice for the part; Cartier had previously offered it to André Morell, who declined the role. Morell did later play Quatermass in the third instalment of the series, Quatermass and the Pit. Victor Carroon was played by Scottish actor Duncan Lamont, who later appeared in the film Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), and as a different character in the film adaptation of Quatermass and the Pit (1967). He enjoyed working on The Quatermass Experiment so much that, although he was not required for the final episode, he went to Alexandra Palace to lend moral support. While there, he helped Kneale and Kerr to prepare their 'monster' prop.
Appearing in a small role as a drunk was Wilfrid Brambell, who later appeared as a tramp in Quatermass II. Brambell, who also appeared in Cartier and Kneale's production of Nineteen Eighty-Four, later became widely known for his roles in the sitcom Steptoe and Son (1962–74) and the film A Hard Day's Night (1964). The 74-year-old actress Katie Johnson played a supporting part; she later became well known and won a British Film Award for her role as the landlady Mrs. Louisa Wilberforce in the film The Ladykillers (1955).
Episodes
Production The serial was written by BBC television drama writer Nigel Kneale, who had been an actor and an award-winning fiction writer before joining the BBC. The BBC's Head of Television Drama, Michael Barry, had committed most of his original script budget for the year to employing Kneale. An interest in science, particularly the idea of 'science going bad', led Kneale to write The Quatermass Experiment. The project originated when a gap formed in the BBC's schedules for a six-week serial to run on Saturday nights during the summer of 1953, and Kneale's idea was to fill it with "a mystifying, rather than horrific" storyline.
Rudolph Cartier, one of the BBC's best-regarded directors, directed the serial. He and Kneale had collaborated on the play Arrow to the Heart, and worked closely on the initial storyline to make it suit the television production methods of the time. Kneale claimed to have picked his leading character's unusual last name at random from a London telephone directory. He chose the character's first name, Bernard, in honour of astronomer Bernard Lovell. The working titles for the production were The Unbegotten and Bring Something Back...!, the latter a line of dialogue spoken in the second episode. Kneale had not finished scripting the serial's final two episodes before the first episode was broadcast. The production had an overall budget of just under £4000.Equivalent to approximately £100,000 , according to the Bank of England inflation calculator tool . By comparison, the BBC's drama commissioning notes for independent producers, , specify a budget of £500,000 – £800,000 per hour for a drama airing at 9pm on BBC One, five to eight times more than the amount spent on the whole of The Quatermass Experiment. The theme music used was the BBC Symphony Orchestra's 1945 recording of "Mars, Bringer of War" from Gustav Holst's The Planets, conducted by Adrian Boult.
Each episode was rehearsed from Monday to Friday at the Student Movement House on Gower Street in London, with camera rehearsals taking place all day on Saturday before transmission. The episodes were then transmitted live—with a few pre-filmed 35mm film inserts shot before and during the rehearsal period—from Studio A of the BBC's original television studios at Alexandra Palace in London. It was one of the last major dramas to be broadcast from the Palace, as the majority of television production was soon to transfer to Lime Grove Studios, and it was made using the BBC's oldest television cameras, the Emitrons, installed with the opening of the Alexandra Palace studios in 1936. These cameras gave a (by modern standards) poor-quality picture, with areas of black and white shading across portions of the image.
The Quatermass Experiment was transmitted weekly on Saturday night from 18 July to 22 August 1953. Episode one ("Contact Has Been Established") was scheduled from 8.15 to 8.45 p.m.; episode two ("Persons Reported Missing"), 8.25–8.55 p.m.; episodes three and four ("Very Special Knowledge" and "Believed to be Suffering"), 8.45–9.15 p.m.; and the final two episodes ("An Unidentified Species" and "State of Emergency") from 9.00 to 9.30 p.m. Due to the live performances, each episode overran its slot slightly, from two minutes (episode four) to six (episode six). The long overrun of the final episode was caused by a temporary break in transmission to replace a failing microphone. Kneale later claimed that the BBC's transmission controllers had threatened to take them off the air during one significant overrun, to which Cartier replied, "Just let them try!" Some BBC documentation suggests that at least one transmitter region did cut short the broadcast of the final episode.
The BBC intended that each episode be telerecorded onto 35mm film, a relatively new process that allowed for the preservation of live television broadcasts. Sale of the serial had been provisionally agreed upon with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Cartier wanted the material available to use for trailers and recaps. Only poor-quality copies of the first two episodes were recorded before the idea was abandoned, although the first of these was later shown in Canada. During the telerecording of the second episode, an insect landed on the screen being filmed, and can be seen on the image for several minutes. It is highly unlikely that material from the third to sixth episodes of the serial will ever be recovered to the BBC's archives. The two existing episodes are the oldest surviving examples of a multi-episodic British drama production, and some of the earliest existing examples of British television drama at all, with only a few earlier one-off plays surviving.