The Quatermass Experiment contains the original scripts to the six-part television serial of the same name.
Script Writer
Nigel Kneale
Television DetailsNigel Kneale
The Quatermass Experiment
6 × 30 Minutes / BBC / Black and White
18/07/53 Episode One: Contact Has Been Established
25/07/53 Episode Two: Persons Reported Missing
08/11/53 Episode Three: Very Special Knowledge
08/08/53 Episode Four: Believed to be Suffering
15/08/53 Episode Five: An Unidentified Species
22/08/53 Episode Six: State of Emergency
Archive Details / DVD Releases
Only the first two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment exist in the BBC archives, both of which were released on Region 2 DVD in the UK in 2005 along with Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com / HMV.com). The disc containing The Quatermass Experiment also included PDF files of the scripts to the four missing episodes.
The Quatermass Experiment was re-made as a ninety-minute drama for BBC Four in April 2005. The production was broadcast live and has since been released on Region 2 DVD in the UK (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com / HMV.com).
The 1955 movie version starring Brian Donlevy has also been released on Region 2 DVD in the UK (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com).
Back cover blurb supplied by
Stephen Barker
Stephen Barker
The Quatermass ExperimentHere is the script of the first of the three Quatermass serials presented on B.B.C. Television. The Quatermass Experiment was produced when space exploration still existed only in the imagination. And no other television serial has had such a tremendous impact. The story concerns the first manned rocket to be sent into space. When finally the rocket is brought back to earth by Professor Bernard Quatermass, there has been a mysterious change which threatens the future of life on our planet.
The horror of the story is intensified by its realistic setting: a cinema in Pimlico, St James's Park, and finally Westminster Abbey. And Nigel Kneale's brilliant imagination holds the reader spellbound, so that the impact of his story is as powerful in print as on the screen.
Publisher Penguin Books Format Paperback Publication Date 1959 Original Price 2/6 Country UK
Edition Notes
- This edition includes eight pages of black and white photographs in the centre.
L'esperimento Quatermass
Magazine Title Il Secondo Libro Della Fantascienza Publication Date 1961 Translator Gerardo Lanceri Country Italy
L'esperimento Quatermass
Magazine Issue Classici-Fantascienza, Issue 19 Publication Date 1978 Translator Gerardo Lanceri Country Italy
The Quatermass ExperimentThe first manned space-rocket plummets back to earth long overdue. Professor Quatermass and his team from the British Experimental Rocket Group wait anxiously for the crew to emerge.
But only one man is left aboard — a man too shocked to tell what happened to his colleagues. It is the beginning of a reign of terror which will hold London in its merciless grip — and threaten the entire world!
Publisher Arrow Books Format Paperback Publication Date 1979 Original Price 95p ISBN 0-09-921360-5 Country UK
Edition Notes
- This edition includes eight pages of black and white photographs in the centre as well as a foreword by Nigel Kneale. It was re-released, along with the script books to Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit, to accompany Arrow Books' novelisation based on the then brand-new Quatermass serial on ITV.
General Notes
- The Quatermass Experiment was the first of the three famous serials written by Nigel Kneale for the BBC during the 1950s, and is widely regarded as a landmark moment in television science fiction.
Prior to this date, UK sci-fi TV productions had largely been based on existing plays and novels, while in the United States things had advanced little beyond the science fiction serials of the 1930s and 1940s, with series such as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, Space Patrol and Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers. The following couple of years saw little change across the Atlantic, with new series of Flash Gordon, Captain Minight and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.
That's not to say that all science fiction in the US was throwaway stuff aimed at children — the 1950s also produced anthologies such as Tales of Tomorrow, Science Fiction Theatre and The Twilight Zone — but, in general, the UK was ahead of the game as far as original science fiction for adults was concerned. - As well as scripting the three Quatermass serials for the BBC in the 1950s, Kneale enhanced his reputation no end by adapting George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four for the BBC in 1954 — luckily this remarkable, and highly controversial, production still exists to this day. Later works included Quatermass for ITV in 1979; the anthology series Beasts for ATV in 1976; the sci-fi sitcom Kinvig in 1981; and numerous one-off plays including The Road, The Stone Tape and The Year of the Sex Olympics — the scripts for which were all published in 1976 under the title The Year of the Sex Olympics and Other TV Plays. In 1989 he scripted a popular adaptation of Susan Hill's ghost novel The Woman in Black for ITV. He died in 2006, aged 84.
- A film version, The Quatermass Xperiment, was produced by Hammer in 1955, and is known in the Unites States under the title The Creeping Unknown. Brian Donlevy, who also played Professor Quatermass in the Quatermass 2 movie, is unique in being the only actor to have played the part on screen more than once. Andrew Keir, who took the part for the Quatermass and the Pit film, did briefly return to the role in 1996 for The Quatermass Memoirs on BBC Radio 3.
- In Italy, the scripts of The Quatermass Experiment were first released as part of a science fiction anthology.
