The Quatermass Experiment
THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT
There are times when I believe in synchronicity, the theory that coincidences are in fact part of a grand pattern. Here I am about to write an article on QUATERMASS and I hear the news that Hammer Films are about to be ressurrected and that their first production will be a remake of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT. Then I open the Dreamwatch Magazine and find an article on guess what? THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT or QE as I'll refer to it from now. Spooky eh? This is the first of several articles in which I'll be examining one of British TV's most enduring drama serials. The longevity of Professor Quatermass is all the more remarkable considering that he appears in only four stories, three of which were made in the fifties, and has had no real merchandising or major overseas sales as DOCTOR WHO and THE AVENGERS have enjoyed. What QE and its sequels did have though, was thumping good stories, ingenious ideas and talented programme makers. But let us return to the
beginning, July 1953.
"I have brought upon the Earth what appears to be the most frightful thing ever known!"
In 1953 BBC television was still in its infancy. Although telecine
was available, allowing filmed sequences to be incorporated into a
production, all programmes were still transmitted live and would be
for some years to come. The corporation was almost a branch of the
Civil Service in character and within its corridors seethed internal
feuds and extreme conservatism. Although not quite as patronising and
snobbish as it had been before the Second World War, it was still an unlikely place for a SF chiller to emerge from. In fact it was always described as a thriller. Surprisingly, QE was commissioned without seeing a single word of the script. The BBC discovered a gap in their schedules that required six half-hours of material so they turned to
one of their staff writers, a young Manxman called Nigel Kneale. Kneale had begun his career as an actor but soon turned to writing as his true calling. His book "Tomato Cain and Other Stories" had won the 1950 Somerset Maugham Award and before QE he had been writing a varied selection of comedies, drama and documentaries as he moved around the
BBC's departments. With QE he had to come up with the goods very rapidly; in fact he was still writing the fifth episode when the first instalment was transmitted and had only a vague idea as to how it would end. Considering such pressure, the quality of the characters and situations are even more impressive.
The other man equally responsible for QE's success was its producer,
Rudolph Cartier, a flamboyant character who applied an adventurous,
cinematic quality to his TV productions. Whilst other programmes
behaved like filmed theatre, he was using tracking shots, filmed
inserts and tackling epic subjects such as ANNA KARENNIA and operas.
Without his input it is doubtful that QE would have been half as effective
as it was.
"Try to fight against it! Oh God, it's tearing me apart!"
The plot of QE is well known to most SF fans thanks in part to the
Hammer film version but I'll briefly summarise for completeness. The
first manned spaceflight returns to Earth with only one occupant,
though three men started out. It is soon apparent that the survivor,
Victor Caroon, is far than normal. He escapes from hospital with the
misguided help of his wife and begins mutating into a fungoid-like
creature. Quatermass deduces that the rocket must have encountered
some alien lifeforce that has combined the three men into one body
whilst trying to become corporeal. The creature nests in Westminster
Abbey and is about to spread its spores across the globe but the
professor appeals to the last vestiges of humanity within it and it
commits suicide. The above description does not really do justice to
the strength of the scripts but I'll cover them in more detail later
on.
Sadly only episodes one and two survive to this day. Ironically the loss of the four later episodes was inspired by the very process that should have preserved them, telerecording. Telerecording involved filming a TV screen with a cine camera to obtain a permanent record. QE was to have been the first drama to be recorded but the BBC technicians went on strike over their payments for it. Although the programme makers could overcome the loss with a simple story-so-far narration, QE was denied to future generations. The first two episodes are almost equal in production standards to the early Hartnells, quite an achievement considering the ten years difference between them. Although they are slow in development; the rocket's landing takes up episode one; the
initial reactions to the state of its crew are the subject of the
second; the quality of the scripts makes them work. Kneale understood
that good dialogue is the heart of TV drama, especially when the
technical resources limited. Thus the personalities in QE, while very
'British', are realistic and believable.
Professor Quatermass is a brilliant scientist with an academic
manner. Although passionate about his British Rocket Group, he places
the lives of his people above it in importance. From the start it is
clear that he is basically a good man. Fullalove makes the
observation, "I'm troubled when I see an eminently truthful man driven
to petty evasions." He is obviously a compassionate man, at the
opening of the story he more worried about the crew than the success
of the mission which is a far cry from many scientists in fiction.
Neither is he supremely confident in his abilities, he is very aware
of the huge gaps in his knowledge and sometimes admits that he does
not have the answer. For example, in conversation with the police
inspector inside the crashed rocket he says, "Nothing's infallible,
the past few days have taught us that, Inspector". Realisticly he is
not an expert in all fields like Doctor Who but more of a coordinator,
marshalling the data given him by the various experts under him.
However one attitude that he shares with many other scientists is that
the police and officialdom can get in the way of scientific endeavour.
Early on he is irritated by the need to break away from the control
room to explain the situation to a visiting minister, especially when
the minister's priorities are political damage limitation for his
department. When he learns that the police have begun a criminal
investigation into the disappearance of the two astronauts he is very
annoyed and barges into Inspector Lomax's office to demand an
explanation. Yet like real-life scientists he is used to haggling and
stating his case before official bodies in order to obtain funding.
He is equally comfortable talking with the media; to judge from his radio
interview and his conversations with the journalists at the crash
site. It is only as the mystery deepens and the questions grow more
complex that he gets out of his depth. Reginald Tate is authoritive
and convincing as the Professor, bringing out the character's
intelligence, vision and integrity.
"Lomax, I've never wished so desperately to find myself
wrong - or been so sure I was right. I've been haunted
by this, ever since the rocket came down. I've destroyed
my friends. Now I have to take away their moment of glory."
The other character who really comes across out of these two episodes
is James Fullalove, a well-known Fleet Street journalist. His
behaviour is a curious mix of investigative toughness and compassion,
not to mention a certain flambouyance. He is certainly hard to miss in
the dandified figure of Paul Whitsun-Jones, wearing a flower in his
lapel and a cane in his hand. When he is introduced he appears to be
quite cynical and waspish. "I need something to denounce!" he tells
his editor. Initially he takes up the story on that basis but once
there he seems to move over to the Professor's side. At the crash
site he quickly establishes himself as the spokesman of the reporters.
When Caroon stumbles out of the ship, Fullalove holds the others back
with the dry comment, "If you don't mind, this happens to be news!"
Later on he reprimands one of his compatriots when they snidely ask if
the two missing astronauts will be arriving on the next plane from
Australia. However when they meet again at the airport Fullalove's
behaviour becomes sharper as he demonstrates his newshound skills and
pumps the Professor for facts. It is a pity that Whitsun-Jones could
not play the character again when he returned in THE PIT because he is
likeable.
The other journalists are the traditional, nosey, loud-mouthed pack;
making insensitive comments and generally getting in the way. Special
mention should go to Pat McGrath as the unctuous BBC interviewer at
the crash site who cheerily interviews various characters. His
questions and comments are irritatingly shallow. For example when
talking about the crew he is mainly concerned about their marital
status and he stresses that the rocket is a product of "British brains
and muscle!". He is an entertaining charicature.
"I'm convinced now that Caroon's started some kind of
...biochemical change."
Judith Caroon speaks the Queen's english and generally behaves
terribly properly but Kneale does not let her become a stereotypical
'woman who waits'. She reveals that her marriage with Victor was on
the rocks and she was about to leave him for Gordon Briscoe, one of
the other technicians. Her anguish therefore is doubled when Victor
returns like a zombie since she feels that somehow her unfaithfulness
is responsible for the accident. Her very personal dilemma is a good
counterpoint to the SF predicaments, making her decision to stand by
him in the resulting events even more courageous. Isabel Dean's
performance is very good, despite her aformentioned BBC accent.
If there is a complaint about Kneale's characters it is that virtually
all his everyday folk tend to be comic relief. In episode one the
Eastenders are all played as a bit daft. Mrs Matthews says one of my
favourite lines, "It's on of them things! They finally dropped one!"
Later on the characters in the cinema all talk like sitcom cockneys.
It is a trend sadly that reappears in the later Quatermass serials as well.
Kneale once said in an interview that he wrote the Quatermass serials
as a send-up of SF rather than straight SF but I find that hard to
believe. Perhaps he was being modest. In fact in QE he is at pains
to point out the difference between the events in the story and SF
movies of the time. 1953 saw the debut of two classic movie entries, WAR OF THE WORLDS and IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
but it mostly saw dross such as CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON and ROBOT MONSTER. As the
police inspector examines the rocket's interior, he talks about a
movie he has seen in which astronauts floated outside their ship. In fact he bases his initial theory about the disappearance of the astronauts on the events of this film, a simplification that the Professor is happy to encourage to give himself time. More
explicitly, in episode four the mutating Caroon takes refuge in a cinema which is showing 'PLANET OF THE DRAGONS...IN 3D!'. This allows Kneale to write an enjoyable parody of the SF films of the day. On the cinema screen are a 'Space Lieutenant' and his 'Space Girl', both wearing impractical spacesuits. Their dialogue is amusingly daft. During an embrace the Lieutenant says, "I guess that's as close as we can get right now. If we opened our pressurized Zeider-helmets we'd lose conciousness in a few seconds." To which the girl huskily declares, "I'm unconcious now..." This is contrasted with the very
real alien horror of Caroon's condition and an audience which is
unaware of the real alien in their midst. Kneale's monster is no simple
beast, he emphasises that it is made up of three intelligences melded
with some fourth, alien quality. He is also at pains to place his
horrors in recognisable surroundings such as Westminster Abbey, a chemists in Pimlico and St James's Park.
"This is the way the world ends. Hardly even a whimper. Just like a missed appointment. No time for courage or sacrifice, nothing grand like that. Not even for a propor booze-up..."
Technically it is an triumph that the programme looks as effective
as it does. The TV cameras were the oldest in the world, dating from
the origin of the BBC in 1936. These ungainly beasts required the
camera to view a picture that was upside down and in reverse. Since
the show was transmitted live the cameramen needed to be thoroughly
rehearsed in order that cuts between cameras would be smooth even so
sometimes the second camera would be off target and have to be hastily
panned into the right position. Even more trouble were the special
effects, which had to work right first time. At that time there was no
such establishment as the Visual Effects Department. Instead technicians Bernard
Wilkie and Jack Kline had to work from the ground upwards, relying on
their ingenuity to satisfy the script's requests. However it was upon
their achievements with Quatermass that the BBC' special effects
department would be built.
The creature itself required several approaches. When Caroon begins to mutate the effect was confined to make-up blotches and gluing twigs and leaves to his right arm. In his
next appearance the foliage was applied to his face and shoulders as
well to give the appearance of a man-shaped heap of moss and undergrowth. At first it appears to be just that but then blank eyes snap open within its leaves. Kneale describes the creature at this point as being not unlike "the Green Man of myth". For the climatic manifestation at Westminster Abbey, Nigel Kneale himself played the
monster. Or at least his hand did, wearing an industrial glove covered in leaves and stuck through an enlarged photo of Poet's Corner. It may sound crummy but the existing photo actually reveals it to be a very effective image and it was used as the cliffhanger of episode five. Incidentally Kneale still owns that glove. Originally the team
had intended to film at the abbey, which Kneale had chosen because it had recently been used for the Coronation and therefore would be in the viewers' minds. But tourists made this impractical so part of the interior was recreated in the studio and then filled with piles of bushes and branches to represent the full sized monster. This heap was animated by stagehands hiding underneath and rustling it menacingly. It is hard to tell from the existing photo how effective this was but given the lower resolution television screens of the day, it might well have seemed eerie.
"Victor Caroon, Ludwig Reichenheim, Charles Greene - you are resisting this thing. Now go further, go further! With all your power and mine joined to yours...you must dissever from it...send it out of earthly existence! You, as men, must die!"
Whilst researching this piece I tried to find some reviews of QE in
the national papers of the time. What I found was that unlike today,
no paper had a regular review column for television. In fact some
titles didn't even list the day's programmes and those that did
squashed the information into a column inch. The best I could find
was, "The Quatermass Experiment - Drama serial with Reginald Tate and
Isabel Dean". The Radio Times was more forthcoming, but there was no
accompanying article for the series. Its emphasis was still on the
radio service with little detail about televison except for two pages
per day. However QE did merit a photograph every week bar
episode two. These were all taken from the first episode, except for
episode one which featured a small, stylised artwork showing an
astronaut and the rocket. Episode three was accompanied by a worried
looking Professor inside the rocket; episode four by Judith Caroon
sitting at a console; episode five by the Professor questioning Victor
Caroon outside the rocket and finally a crowd of characters at the
crash site, gathered around the radio operator.
However reviews did appear and according to Kneale, virtually all the
critics poured scorn on the series. "This dreary programme started last
night..." began one. However the public loved it, much to the relief
of the BBC which had been uncomfortable about transmitting a 'disturbing' programme.
"I think...it's dead."
Since it would be years before BBC Enterprises got off the ground and
considering the adult nature of the programme, there is virtually no
merchandise associated with QE. But well worth a mention is the
script book, published by Penguin Books in 1959. This is a
valuable record of the missing episodes, especially since it includes
eight pages of stills from the production. Nigel Kneale revised the
script to remove the technical terms and make the scripts more
readable but it is still practically verbatim. The cover is the
traditional orange Penguin design with the title enclosed in a TV
screen-shaped box. Although the Penguin edition is quite rare; Arrow
Books republished it in 1979 to tie in with the novelisation of ITV's
QUATERMASS. This edition features Victor Caroon on the cover and is a
little easier to get hold of.
Looking back at the serial Kneale says it was scarier than the film
version in his opinion. It is certainly a more complex and deeper
production than Hammer's but then it could afford to be as it was
longer in length. Its influence on the shape of British Telefantasy
is undeniable since it demonstrated that SF was popular with the viewing public
when it was well made and written. Encouraged by its success, Rudolph
Cartier and Nigel Kneale went on to make 1984 and THE CREATURE before
returning to the Professor in QUATERMASS II. What happened that time?
I'll be back to tell you.
Gareth Preston
The Quatermass Experiment
Transmitted on Saturday evenings between 18/7/53 and 22/8/53.
Episode One: Contact Has Been Established
Episode Two: Persons Reported Missing
Episode Three: Special Knowledge
Episode Four: Believed To Be Suffering
Episode Five: An Unidentified Species
Episode Six: State of Emergency
Professor Quatermass: Reginald Tate
Janet Caroon: Isabel Dean
Victor Caroon: Duncan Lamont
James Fullalove: Paul Whitsun-Jones
John Paterson: Hugh Kelly
Chief Inspector Lomax: Ian Colin
Designers: Richard Greenough & Stewart Marshall
Producer: Rudolph Cartier
Back to the Quatermass Page.