This July sees the 70th anniversary of the broadcast of The Quatermass Experiment, and with it a revolution in the possibilities of television. Writer Nigel Kneale and producer Rudolph Cartier delivered an enduring SF classic – but it was also the first real example of what we would now describe as event television.
The character of Professor Bernard Quatermass and the three pioneering serials of the 1950s in which he appeared would have a profound and lasting influence, not just on TV but on the wider cultural landscape. The three serials – The Quatermass Experiment (1953), Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1958/59) – each present a different take on the same basic scenario: an alien invasion. They weren’t the first science fiction stories shown by the BBC, either adapted or original, but they were the first to really stretch the boundaries of what could be achieved by the still largely live medium of television. Kneale never really saw the stories as science fiction: for him, they were contemporary thrillers, although painted on a canvas just a bit larger than the familiar planet on which they were set.
The characterthe whole of humanity is out of its depth and Quatermass is the only one with a chance of making a positive difference. Indeed the first serial concludes with him appealing to the latent humanity in the alien creature to destroy itself before it destroys mankind.
