Quatermass II

QUATERMASS II

On Sunday the sixth of November 1955, there was possibly the first recorded sighting of a phrase which in years to come would form a vital piece of a TV reviewer's armoury. In the Sunday Times, Maurice Wiggins remarked that television was already old enough for nostalgia and the new Quatermass series, while effective was not as good as the original! The first story, he went on, was a genuine groundbreaker in drama while Quatermass II (QII) for all the fuss and money, was "less gripping"; it was the difference between a prototype and the production-line model. Since spaceflight was now a reality, he mused, it must be hard for SF writers to compete with real life fact. He concluded that "The mechanism is impressive but the human predicament is out of focus." Watching the serial now I beg to differ.

"Dillon! There's something on your face!"

Quatermass returned to the screens as part of the BBC's offensive against its brash new rival ITV. When Nigel Kneale was asked to come up with another six part story he drew his inspiration from the changing landscape of Great Britain. The Cold War was a pertinent fact of modern life. Mysterious government establishments had been set up all over the country, centres for radar, germ warfare and other military research, though some existed only as rumour and journalists' dark suspicions. Science was also on the public's mind thanks to the Festival of Britain with its parade of gimmicks and innovations. Just as today there was always space for a news item about the latest labour-saving wonder. With the Space Age seemingly just around the corner, folk were watching the skies and seeing flying saucers everywhere, the name having been coined in 1947 by a pilot named Kenneth Arnold after he saw a line of objects moving in front of his plane, "like a saucer skimming across a lake". Although people feared the Bomb (at least the enemy's) there was a great deal of innocent awe for technology. The scientist was mankind's friend. Another product of this age of mechanisation were the 'new towns', pre-fab estates errected to house a swelling population. They normally grew around major industrial sites such as car factories; just as a century ago; mill-towns had developed during the Industrial Revolution.
Socially, fifties Britain was an austere time. There may have been rock n' roll and teddy-boys but if you'll forgive a horrendous generalisation, the great British public stayed on the straight and narrow; showing respect to politicians, doctors and the police; in short it was an age of conformity for the majority. It was aspects of all of this that Kneale both drew from and commented upon, believing that the best chills came from basing horrors in contemporary settings. "I always feel that the most interesting 'strange' thing has to have an ordinary setting." he said once in Starburst Magazine.
QII's plot concerned a covert invasion of Earth by amoeboid aliens who land encased in small 'meteorites'. They are able to parasiticly take over any human who comes in contact with them. Captain Dillon, a young soldier who is going out with Professor Quatermass's daughter Paula, asks the Professor for advice about them. The scientist discovers that a secret plant, officially manufacturing synthetic food, is in fact a bridgehead for the invaders. Not only that but the creatures have spread into the British establishment. He leads the factory's construction workers in an attack which ultimately succeeds in destroying the nest, though at a great cost. Knowing that he has only stopped one part of their project; he and fellow scientist Leo Pugh travel in the unstable nuclear rocket "Quatermass II" to the alien's orbiting base which is obliterated, though at the cost of the now possessed Leo's life.

"Far too much secrecy there's been, just for the love of it."

Kneale was unable to come up with a better title for the sequel than QII which he justified by linking it to the troublesome rocket that the Professor is working on at the beginning of the story. Looking back at the series years later, Kneale said that he was concerned with "the evil of secrecy". QII depicts how easier is it is for the invaders to establish themselves in governments and industries because so much of those organisations' efforts are put into preventing information from even passing between departments, let alone to outsiders. People who try to break down the barriers are regarded as unpatriotic. As the local committee member remarks, "We're ask to cooperate by keeping our traps shut, same as in the war." Later on in the same episode we learn that Vincent Broadhead MP has been allowed to stage a cursory one man investigation into the refinery. It has taken all his determination to obtain even that meagre right. "We must break this conspiracy of silence!" cries the Professor in despair at one point.
The other major advantage for the conspiracy is people's shortsighted self-interest. An early example of tunnel vision is the mother of a possessed girl. When Quatermass tries to question the girl about the meteorite the woman become angry and defensive, accusing him of calling her a neglectful mother. By dealing with the problem in her small, personalised way; she and others like her cannot see the full, sinister picture. The government doesn't wish to hear any disturbing stories because the refinery promises wealth, prestige and the chance to steal a march over other countries. Workers at the complex are enjoying good wages and other perks, so it is in their interest not to ask questions about anything unusual that is occurring around them. When they close ranks against the Professor and Hugh Conrad, a journalist, it is frustrating because we can see how their stubbornness is only aiding the enemy. They have built up their own picture of the project, merely nick-naming the possessed humans as 'zombies' and complaining that they are unsociable. When our heroes try to change the accepted version of the facts, the workers react violently and certainly would have driven them out if a meteorite had not struck their club at that moment.
In addition, most of the characters that the Professor meets, trust their superiors to an extent that seems almost servile to a cynical nineties viewer. When the Professor and Captain Dillon learn that a village has been levelled and an installation built in its place, the landlord in the pub says, "It's been turned into a security area. I expect there's some good reason for it". The workers on the project have a similar respect for the management of the refinery. If the management say the peculiar rocks that keep falling are "just overshoots" which are "something to do with the process", then that is all right by them. It is an approach that infuriates the Professor, "It's been explained! Give it a meaningless name..." Such passive acceptance of authority is proved to be a dangerous attitude by Kneale.

"Listen to it! And there's men lyin' dead out there... Let'em set this to music!"

QII is an excellent example of the way producer Rudolph Cartier brought a big screen sweep to TV drama. There is a real sense of scale to the story with its huge refinery, a spaceflight, a conspiracy that is already encircling the world and a large scale battle. With the first series having been a popular success, the BBC were more prepared to put money into the programme and QII benefits from extensive location filming and ambitious modelwork (even if some of it is terribly creaky). Shell UK made a superb stand-in for the fictional refinery, just as it would again for the film version. It was a unearthly sight in its own right and filming there was apparently an eerie experience because the cast and crew saw hardly anyone working there during their visit. The night sequences are superb with pure film noir lighting that illustrates the raw feelings of the workers as they storm the factory. Stephen Taylor designed some good looking designs, the split level control room where the rioting workers barricade themselves is an excellent, exciting-looking set that looks as though it could really work. They could even afford an alien surface, the only time one has appeared in the Quatermass saga. True it is not particularly impressive but the atmosphere is helped immeasurably by a weird soundtrack of clanking metallic echos that seem to emanate from the asteroid's surface.
Bernard Wilkie and Jack Kline's modelwork is a mixture of the inspired and the poor. Into the first camp goes the refinery, both the scene setting model and its later destruction. The usual method of destroying a model is high speed photography, frequently used to good effect in Doctor Who. But that was too expensive so they came up with the ingenious idea of filming the explosion within a fish tank, which would reduce the motion. The clouds of gas which billow out from the destroyed dome and spread over the complex were a mixture of milk, paint and whitewash. The overall effect is very dramatic, assisted by fading to a close up studio shot of a 'zombie' emerging through the mist, blasting away with his machine gun.

"That is the human being of the future. Ready to die - for them.

Probably the most famous moment of QII is the climax to episode four when the Professor finally sees just what lives within the dome. The squirming, heaving, evolving creatures are a magical image. In reality they were a combination of dynamold chippings, gunge, water and a rubber glove, animated by Jack Kline's hand. But even when this is known the effect still works and the scene has left its influence on future programmes. The Doctor Who story "The Invisible Enemy" contains a scene where the Doctor looks inside a fuel tank which has been turned into a breeding ground for aliens. Sounds familiar? The sequence has nowhere near the power of its predecessor but oddly it was thought for many years afterwards that the model sequence was actually test footage for a proposed remake of QII. This however was a fallacy. In fact Ian Scoones who worked on that story, did create an exact replica of the dome's interior for a 1970 programme called Those Were the Days. With this model, the famous scene was refilmed with such accuracy that it was indistinguishable from the actual footage. He was aided by Jack Kline who explained how the original had been executed.
After the problems of turning a man into a giant fungus in the first serial, make-up were probably relieved that all they had to produce was a mysterious mark, the clue that would reveal someone as infected. Nevertheless they were tripped up at first by using a mark that, while visible in the studio, was practically invisible on TV. The second version was much more grotesque, looking more like a third degree burn. While it was practical, it did strain credibility that nobody before the Professor ever thought anything odd of a group of severely scarred men moving around Westminster or Winnerden Flats. Make-up produced a classic moment of their own to rival the aliens in their dome, the sight of PR man Ward stumbling down the steps of the dome covered in corrosive slime. It is a horrifying scene and Ward looks barely human as he collapses, leaving a trail of slime behind him.
The weakest special effects are those of the rocket flight. When the 24 inch "Quatermass II" takes off, the rod supporting it can be clearly seen. Later shots of it in space are decidedly wobbly and the final shot of the nose section sputtering off into the distance at the conclusion is a poor note on which to end. However the scenes where the amoeboids ooze over the landed spaceship are effective, helped by the menacing tones of "Mars - Bringer of War".
That piece of music is one of the mainstays of the serial, serving as title music, most of the incidentals and background to the opening story-so-far compilation. Two other pieces of stock music are heard, a menacing Drumnastics rhythm and an upbeat, romantic piece for the end credits of episode 6. In one amusing moment, a dramatic chord is played too early in a scene. Instead of emphasising a statement of Pugh's, it highlights the Professor drinking his cup of tea!
Incidentally, Kline and Wilkie make an unscheduled cameo in episode 6 as a pair of technicians helping the Professor with his spacesuit. This was for practical reasons as the rubber suit was so heavy, John Robinson couldn't make it across the studio fast enough for his next line so they had to carry him.

"These questions must not be asked!"

Away from the major special effect sequences there are several chilling scenes which are purely dramatic. The conference room where Broadhead and the Professor face the possessed refinery officials is highly unnerving, though little overtly wrong happens until afterwards. The harsh, guttural voice of the chairman; the silent, staring men who react almost hungrily when the replica meteorite is produced. Finally the cliffhanger moment when the mark of posession is revealed and the full extent of the aliens' infiltration is understood. The other moment which incites a shudder in the viewer occurs when blood trickles thickly out of the dome's supply pipe; for the aliens have stuffed it with human pulp to preserve their atmosphere. It is a horribly physical act from an enemy that before had been more of an intellectual threat; an action which is all the worse because those humans had gone to the dome under a flag of truce. Quite what happened within the dome is left to the viewers imagination; all that happens on-screen is one of the workers remarking that he thought he heard screaming.

Professor Bernard Quatermass has undergone a subtle change since The Quatermass Experiment. For a start he is much more physically heroic in QII. He constantly challenges authority; he investigates the aliens' plans more in the manner of a journalist pursuing a story; he infiltrates the refinery in disguise; leads the workers in their fight and finally roars off into space to go mano a mano with the invaders on their home territory. The Reginald Tate version was certainly not sedentary but I feel he would have delegated the more active side of the fight to concentrate on the scientific factors, a role which Leo Pugh takes over in this story. To some extent this more interventionist part is thrust upon the Professor because he can no longer rely on the authorities as he did during his first unearthly contact. This time we get to see him as a father as well. It is a role he fills reasonably successfully, he and Paula seem to get on and she has followed him into rocket science. But occasionally the more business like, distant side of him can make him insensitive. During episode four he theorises darkly about the fate of people who have been taken over by the aliens, forgetting that one of them is his daughter's love and so frightening her more. The other interesting change is that the Professor seems to have become more of a public figure since the events of the first experiment. When Dillon mentions his name to a sergeant, the man responds "The rocket man?". Kneale always wanted to depict the Professor as a man of integrity, sensitive to his responsibilities and to the repercussions of his work for others. Having said that he seems to have a habit of leading men to their deaths, once they are allied to him. John Robinson gives a strong performance as the Professor, bringing him more down to earth as opposed to Reginald Tate's more academic air. It is all the more impressive considering he stepped into the part at very short notice, following Tate's sudden death a bare few weeks previously. This leads an uncomfortable first episode as there are several moments when it is is clear he is reading from cue cards but in later episodes he is excellent.

"Do you mean that... in that case he must... of course not, silly me!"

After the Professor there are several well played characters but before we reach them, mention should be given to Paula Quatermass. Monica Grey is totally wooden from beginning to end. In fact she is so stiff she makes some of the zombies seem positively gregarious by comparison. Admittedly her scenes with her boyfriend John Dillon have a touch of animation about them but they are still hideously twee by today's standards. Unlike Judith Caroon, who was well written for in QE, Kneale just doesn't know what to do with the girl and she ends up as a board for her Father and Leo to bounce their ideas off. But when the script requires emotion, such as saying goodbye to her father before he embarks on a probable suicide flight, she just does not seem capable of any real depth of feeling. Quite a few of her lines should have been spoken by a technician character who was merged with her role in the final draft. As a result she varies between being very knowledgeable and somewhat ignorant, sometimes asking questions and then answering herself. Imagine a female version of the Mr Chumberly-Warner character and you have pretty much summed up her performance, except this time we are meant to take it seriously. She is one of the few principle Quatermass characters to be so unsatisfactory.
Leo Pugh is a nebulous character but the way High Griffith plays him, this seems not so much a deficit of writing but a quality of a man who is better with figures than he is with people. He is the Professor's right-hand man, a colleague of similar age and background in whom he can trust. But he is also carrying regrets about his past. He feels that his life should have meant more because he started life as a child prodigy, a mathematical genius. He tells Paula in episode two that when he was a boy his teacher had predicted that in him was a power to benefit mankind; but technology has robbed him of that destiny. Computers can perform calculations even faster than he can, reducing his gift to little more than a party piece. "But now... I've learned to press these little buttons!" Such nostalgia for a simpler age seems odd in a scientist. Perhaps this melancholy, combined with his wonderfully logical mind, is what makes his eventual takeover so complete.
QII has a particularly good cast of supporting characters, demonstrating Kneale's skill at depicting someone's personality within a few well chosen lines. Vincent Broadhead, a politician who has cast himself as a man of the people, is well played by Rupert Davis. He is not interested in the threat of an alien invasion but is prepared to use the Professor to score a few points in the committee room. Rupert Ward, the shallow PR man who has never looked below the surface is an nevertheless a likeable character and his horrific death is all the more effective for it. Both of these and the journalist Hugh Conrad are middle class professionals but it is interesting that when it comes to the working class, Kneale once again slides towards stereotypes as he did in QE. Apart from the emotional refinery workers, mention must be made of a family of day-trippers. From the moment they appear we know we are looking at three victims; their humourous banter meant to contrast with the brutality of their deaths; but it is a corny scene. However the later shot of their car being towed into the refinery with an arm hanging limply from the window is very eerie, making the shot of the demolished picnic gratuitous.

"It became a plague spot, protected by the victims themselves."

For episode one the Radio Times carried a half-page introduction written by Kneale in which he explained that he and Randolph Cartier were "trying for something different". He also looked at the background of the series, about artificial satellites being made and the growing understanding by scientists that there is a great deal that is unknown about space, "a new wilderness". On a practical point he was also at pains to point out that there was no direct connection between the new serial and the film version of The Quatermass Experiment which had been released around the same time. (A film incidentally that Kneale loathed.) The article was accompanied by a photo of the Professor gazing at a model of his new rocket. On the programme page there was a similar picture, this time with Leo and Paula by his side. Episode Two featured a photo of the Professor in a refinery uniform but the next two issues had no extra embellishments to the credits. Then episode five had an illustration of the Professor running out of the factory gates while bodies lie around him, with the caption, "The spreading of THE FRENZY". Again there were no pictures for episode six.
QII was transmitted on Saturdays at 8pm. Unlike the first serial, the episodes were all telerecorded and repeated the following Monday at 10:15pm. The audience response once again was overwhelmingly positive.
As with QE, the only piece of merchandise associated with QII is the script book. It is an excellent publication containing eight pages of photographs form the serial as well as the full text of episodes. It is interesting to read how Kneale envisaged classic scenes such as the interior of the dome or the amoeboids appearing on the faces of their victims. The Penguin edition is in the traditional orange format with a moody illustration on the front of the refinery with men tumbling away from it. However the later Arrow reprint used the wrong reference photos and its cover features an eerie face that could be a 'zombie' or the slime-covered Ward but is very clearly Richard Wordsworth from the Hammer film adaption of QE.
Although QII has been regarded as the least known of the four stories; the refinery scenes and in particular the episode four cliffhanger have been used to represent Quatermass several times. They have appeared on The Late Show, The BBC News and the BBC Fiftieth Anniversary special, TV50. During the latter Ringo Starr and Cliff Richard shared their memories of QII. When Lime Grove celebrated its history in 1991, the third episode "The Food" was shown, together with a jokey compilation of clips to explain how the story ended. Bizarrely, for this repeat the episode was ordered to be cut by three minutes in order to fit a half-hour slot. Perhaps the most extensive tribute to QII though was the Doctor Who story "Spearhead from Space" which borrowed freely from the earlier story. In fact its opening scene set in a radar listening post is virtually interchangeable. Quatermass II remains an intelligent SF thriller and a definite evolution of the television drama.

Quatermass II


Transmitted on Saturday evenings between 22/10/55 and 26/11/55.
Repeated on Monday evenings.

Episode One: The Bolts.
Episode Two: The Mark.
Episode Three: The Food.
Episode Four: The Coming.
Episode Five: The Frenzy.
Episode Six: The Destroyers.

Professor Quatermass: John Robinson
Paula Quatermass: Monica Grey
Dr Leo Pugh: Hugh Griffith
John Dillon: John Stone
Vincent Broadhead: Rupert Davies
Hugh Conrad: Roger Delgado
Rupert Ward: Derek Aylward

Designer: Stephen Taylor
Producer: Rudolph Cartier

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