Quatermass

Written and created by Nigel Kneale, the four Quatermass serials following the exploits of Professor Bernard Quatermass have long been singled out as being amongst the finest science fiction dramas ever to be produced in the UK.

The first six-part story, The Quatermass Experiment, was broadcast on the BBC from 18 July 1953, and involved the launching of the first manned rocket, designed by Quatermass himself, and the strange disappearance of two of the three crew members while in space. Like the two subsequent BBC serials, The Quatermass Experiment was broadcast live, and on this occasion the lead role was taken by Reginald Tate.

A movie version was subsequently filmed by Hammer in 1955 as The Quatermass Xperiment, with Canadian actor Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. Readers from the United States may be more familiar with the movie under the alternate title The Creeping Unknown.

The second six-part serial, Quatermass II, appeared in 1955, a year after Nigel Kneale and producer Rudolph Cartier had collaborated on a controversial and highly successful adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and just a month after The Quatermass Xperiment had debuted in UK cinemas. This new production saw John Robinson step into the lead role at short notice after the sudden death of Reginald Tate, and involved another alien invasion, this time via a mysterious chemical plant, which had been built to the same design as a planned moonbase, and a hail of apparently toxic meteorites. The series concluded with Quatermass launching the Quatermass II rocket and travelling to a nearby asteroid — the source of the alien invasion.

A movie adapatation of Quatermass II was to follow from Hammer under the title Quatermass 2, and the 1957 production would see Brian Donlevy reprise his role as Quatermass — the only time a screen actor would ever play the role on more than one occasion. Having been unhappy at the earlier movie, Nigel Kneale himself would share scripting duties with Val Guest, who would once again be in the director's chair. A change of title would once again be required for the American market, and it was eventually released as Enemy from Space.

The third and final of the BBC's Quatermass stories, Quatermass and the Pit, was broadcast live in late 1958 and early 1959, and yet again there would be a new lead actor in the form of André Morell, who had appeared as O'Brien in Kneale's adaptation of Nineteen Eighteen-Four some four years previously. This final black and white production involved the excavation of an alien craft at a derelict bomb site and ultimately results in an unusual discovery about mankind's ancestry

All of the existing episodes from the three BBC serials were released as a DVD box set during 2005 to great acclaim, having been extensively restored from the original archived materials.

Yet again Hammer would produce a film version, although the colour production of Quatermass and the Pit wasn't to be released until 1967, this time with Scottish actor Andrew Keir as Quatermass. As with the two earlier black and white adaptations, a change of title was deemed necessary for American audiences, and it was released across the Atlantic as Five Million Years to Earth. Keir would later get the chance to reprise the role, albeit on radio, for BBC Radio Three's The Quatermass Memoirs in 1996.

The success of the Quatermass and the Pit movie prompted Hammer to consider making an original production, but their plans would fall through — not the first time this has happened. An earlier attempt to film an original Quatermass story had been mooted back in the 1950s between the two Donlevy movies, but after Kneale had turned down Hammer's request to film an original story, it would be re-written and eventually released under the title X the Unknown.

By the early 1970s the BBC felt the time was right for Quatermass to return to television and a brand-new story was commissioned from Nigel Kneale. Sadly, excalating costs forced the serial to be abandoned, although some modelwork was completed before the plug was pulled.

Several years later and the unproduced BBC serial would be picked up by Euston Films, the film making arm of Thames Television. Starring Sir John Mills, Quatermass would show a civilisation on the verge of collapse, with a now elderly Quatermass searching for his missing granddaughter whilst battling against an alien force that, for unknown reasons, is harvesting the younger members of the population.

Fittingly, Professor Bernard Quatermass finally met his end as a nuclear bomb was detonated to destroy the alien menace...

The big-budget, four-part story was broadcast in the October and November of 1979 and was essentially used to re-launch ITV after the epic eleven-week strike which had crippled the network from mid-August onwards. An edited version, re-titled The Quatermass Conclusion, was given a cinema release outside the UK, and included some alternative footage to the original television version.

But although Quatermass had been killed off by Kneale, several further items of interest featuring the character would be produced over the following decades.

A five-part story on BBC Radio 3 in 1996, titled The Quatermass Memoirs, provided a look back at his early adventures and featured Andrew Keir in the lead role, re-recording dialogue extracts from the 1950s BBC serials where necessary.

Back on television, a ninety-minute production of The Quatermass Experiment was produced for BBC Four in April 2005, and in an extremely bold move was broadcast live — the first BBC drama made in such a way in over twenty years. Despite a number of minor hiccups, it proved to be extremely popular, with the lead role being played by Jason Flemying.

Sadly, Kneale died in October 2006 at the age of 84, but he left behind a legacy as one of the finest fantasy television dramatists the world has seen. 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 — fortunately, this remarkable and highly controversial production still exists to this day. Later works included the anthology series Beasts for ATV in 1976 and the sci-fi sitcom Kinvig in 1981. Not forgetting 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. His final fantasy work would be in 1989, when he scripted an adaptation of Susan Hill's novel The Woman in Black for ITV. The latter is, arguably, one of the best supernatural stories ever to be broadcast on television.

Anyone wishing to learn more about Nigel Kneale's life and career would be well advised to track down a copy of Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale, a 2006 biography by Andy Murray.