The Manxman Thomas Nigel Kneale (not to be confused with The Manxman the 1929 Alfred Hitchcock film) - known by his middle name professionally and Tom Kneale to his friends - will, despite a prolific screenwriting output including such seminal screen stuff as the momentous 1954 "questions asked in Parliament" rendition of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1968's prophetic The Year of the Sex Olympics, 1972's "tell me you're doing a Ghost Story for Christmas without calling A Ghost Story for Christmas (even though you're an eerie ghost story broadcast on Christmas)" The Stone Tape and the chilling 1989 adaptation of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, forever be associated with the name of 'Quatermass'.
The groundbreaking - perhaps epoch-making - 1953 BBC TV serial The Quatermass Experiment aired a full decade before Doctor Who's debut. Episode 1 'Contact Has Been Established' was broadcast - live, as it's performed, as was the style at the time - on Saturday the 18th of July, '53, its theme tune a rousing rendition of Holst's 'Mars, the Bringer of War' that sets the scene tonally as we witness the return to Terra of an experimental rocket - this is more than a decade and a half before Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon, let's remember - launched from Woomera in Australia and supervised by Professor Bernard Quatermass (here portrayed in his original incarnation by the avuncular Reginald Tate). The rocket's return is tracked to Britain, of course, where it crashes into a residential home and the Prof and his team along with the emergency services attempt to extract the three man crew, only to find a sole survivor in the mutating form of Victor Caroon (Duncan Lamont) - the other two astronauts Reichenheim and Green being the titular 'Persons Reported Missing' of the second episode's title.
The consciousness of the other two astronauts have been subsumed within Caroon - Quatermass must appeal to them and reawaken their humanity inside the inhuman monster that he (Caroon) has become. Caroon's final form after his Protean shapeshifting is an amorphous vegetable mass akin to The Avengers' Man Eater of Surrey Green and Doctor Who's Krynoid. A solipstistic polyp? Played by gloves covered in rubber and tripe poking through a photographic blow-up of Westminster Abbey. Arguably the genesis of modern television, communally watched by millions: roughly one out of three people in the country tuning in.
Quatermass II debuted on Saturday 22nd October 1955. Same format as the first serial: 6x30 min episodes. There was a rushed recasting of the lead role due to Reginald Tate suffering from a slight case of death a month prior. Replacement John Robinson worried about both living up to Tate's iconic portrayal and learning/memorising the scientific technobabble. Nigel Kneale's last assignment as a BBC staff writer after a five year stint. Pre-filmed location footage interpolated with the live studio broadcast certainly gives a more expansive feel to proceedings around the Winnerden Flats facility (atmospheric filming took place at the Shell Haven oil refinery). Thick with an aura of post-war paranoia, government conspiracies; fear of enemy infiltration - the 'Reds under the bed' scare that informed US sci-fi/horror cinema such as Invaders From Mars (Red Planet, y' see?), Invasion of the Body Snatchers et al.
Quatermass and the Pit went out on Monday nights, as opposed to the Saturday evenings of the preceding two serials. Monday the 22nd of December 1958 to Monday 26th January 1959. Fear for the festive season. Timely, with the Soviets launching Sputnik the previous year. Andre Morell's definitive Quatermass is a more believable successor to Tate, the way I feel that Mark Ruffalo is a believable follow-up to Eric Bana but Edward Norton wasn't, making Norton the John Robinson of Gamma-irradiated titans.
Quatermass's third adventure sees him getting involved with the archaeological discovery of what seem to be early hominin skellingtons 'neath London's Hobbs' Lane by Dr Matthew Roney (Canadian actor Cec Linder, Felix Leiter to Sean Connery's Bond in Goldfinger) which has also unearthed what is first thought of as an unexploded World War II bomb but turns out to be a prehistoric spaceship proving that the chances of anything coming from Mars at least used to be a lot lower than a million to one. Psychic and other preternatural phenomena ensue as the occult influence of the seemingly extinct alien race spreads and we discover that unlike the aforementioned US cinematic offerings, we are the Martians. The mania of the Wild Hunt, a Red Hour style herd-thinning frenzy inspired by the '58 Notting Hill race riots is a chilling reminder that sometimes mankind is the most monstrous of creatures.
Quatermass was the belated mononymic eponymous 1979 follow-up, after years of televisual hibernation while Quatermass's adventures continued on the silver screen courtesy of Hammer Films. This four part serial came courtesy of ITV rather than BBC - it feels different this time. Starring John Mills as an elderly, embittered and more subdued Quatermass in an alternate-universe (dis-)United Kingdom ravaged by internecine warfare. A concept perhaps unthinkable in the late 1970s, despite the Winter of Discontent (British streets run with rats due to unemptied bins? Incontheivable!) but a British Civil War - and now I've got the song by the Clash stuck in my head - might just be a wee tad more plausible in the Space Year 2026, a couple of years on from the Twitter conspiracy-stoked Farage Riots. It sort of feels like the dystopian near future of the '90s Doctor Who New Adventures novels 'Cat's Cradle: Warhead' (and its sequels 'Warlock' and 'Warchild') and 'Iceberg', if you're the kind of person who likes to mentally squint and try to see multiple different and disparate franchises as part of the same glorious continuity. I am.
Also starring Manimal himself, Simon McCorkindale (sadly not popping his knuckles and sprouting panther fur but sporting a ridiculous moustache like a young Judge Reinhold), and Jadis the White Witch of Narnia, Barbara Kellerman (who I certainly found enchanting as a child - then again as I recall I had a bit of a thing for T-Bag too, so maybe children's TV sorceresses were my jam at the time).
After the main Quatermass quadrilogy - tetralogy is a better word, but a lot less 'lliterative - there were a couple of concomitant corollary codas.
The Quatermass Experiment went out - once again, "live, as it's performed" in the deathless words of Harfynn Teuport - on the evening of April 2nd 2005 at 20.20 hours, the night before my 26th birthday and also the very evening that Pope John Paul II decided to depart this Earth - causing the transmission to be hijacked by a dead Pope just like the transmission of 'Horror of Fang Rock' was hijacked by 'Max Headroom' (if you're unaware of this phenomenal occurrence, see here and be baffled. Be not afraid).
It plays out as a hyper-condensed version of the original, with Jason Flemyng sporting a natty braces and raincoat look as a younger and more dynamic Professor Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group or B.E.R.G. awaiting the return of the rocket along with the wonderful Indira Varma as Judith Carroon and Mark Gatiss, constantly rubbing his nose presumably as a character tic but possibly in the words of university acquaintance and purveyor of rare substances Big Dave "sniffed up to fuck" but let's assume that's an acting choice for legal reasons if nothing else, as shifty technician John Paterson. We also have soon to be Time Lord David Tennant (Flemyng slightly altering his greeting line to say "Good to have you back, Doctor!") as Briscoe, Andrew Tiernan (Gaveston in Jarman's Edward II) as the mutating Victor Carron and a reimagined for the present day Inspector Lomax played by everyone's favourite alternative universe Bail Organa, your fella from Line of Duty Adrian Dunbar with leather jacket sound effects.
It's a well-mounted production, certainly for a live run-though, though my abiding memory - deceased pontiffs aside - is of a scene between Adrian Bower as dauntless reporter James Fullalove and Paul Broughton as his editor where at least one of the actors either dried completely or spectacularly blew his line. Sadly, the version easily available today seems to have replaced the scene with an alternate safety take (presumably from the run through). Cowards. Though a couple of slips stayed in, such as Tennant literally slipping over running down the corridor and Dunbar muffing a line down by the river ("Anything else anyone... Anything else untoward?"). No actual on screen monster at the end, either, which feels like a bit of a swizz. Could the budget not stretch to a pair of gardening gloves and some tripe? Still, it goes for a more metaphysical approach to the climax - now relocated to the Tate Modern's turbine hall instead of Westminster Abbey, so a temple of art rather than religion - that's just as valid so long as one isn't determined to actually see the creeping unknown.
Remakes aside, after a gap of seventeen years the Professor made one final original appearance with 1996's The Quatermass Memoirs. Chronologically occurring many years after the events of Quatermass and the Pit and shortly before the eponymous 1979 serial, this BBC Radio 3 programme was broadcast in five episodes between Monday the 4th and Wednesday the 6th of March as part of R3's 'Fifties season' and comprised a mixture of Kneale himself recounting the genesis and history of Bernard Quatermass and his adventures, and a dramatic section detailing the efforts of a journalist named Mandy (played by Emma Gregory, who had voiced Bond's late wife Tracy in the 1990 Radio 4 production of You Only Live Twice) tracking down and interviewing the retired Quatermass, voiced by Andrew Keir; the three original BBC Quatermasses having long since departed this dimension and John Mills presumably disinterested or otherwise unavailable. I haven't actually heard this - despite vividly recalling it being announced in the cult press of the day such as TV Zone magazine, Dreamwatch et al I spent 1996 pretty intensely focused on the impending return of Doctor Who in the form of the Paul McGann TV Movie (Kneale would have doubtless hated that, and also in an interview about the Memoirs which he was asked about current [i.e. mid-'90s] Star Trek he opined that it "is for small children and feeble-minded fans who can't appreciate style or quality. It really is rubbish"; cantankerous old goat to the end) - and so I can't review it as a story. But I think it merits noting as not only Kneale's final Quatermass contribution but also, bar an episode of John Thaw vehicle Kavanagh Q.C. the following year, his final work.
