The Quatermass series looms large over British sci-fi television, from Doctor Who to Bugs and beyond.
If youre in your 30s or 40s, your parents probably remember when the subgenre started existing.
It makes the gaps all the more painful.
There are theDoctor Whoepisodes we can fill in with animated reconstructions and Target novelisations.
Then there isThe Quatermass Experiment.
The Quatermass Experimentwas a six-part drama series filmed and broadcast live in 1953 for a budget of under 4,000.
The Quatermass Experience
The two surviving episodes ofThe Quatermass Experimentmake strange viewing today.
This was a TV serial broadcast when Yuri Gagarins first crewed spaceflight was still science fiction.
Its a simple story a three-man rocket is the first to be launched into orbit.
Mission control loses track of it.
When it returns, there is only one man on board, and he has come back changed.
The opening credits describeThe Quatermass Experimentas a thriller, and that is how it comes across.
In 1953, even the idea of Britain launching a manned space mission didnt seem that ridiculous.
The most surprising part of the story is Bernard Quatermass himself, however (played by Reginald Tate).
For a character whose place in the sci-fi pantheon is obscured, hes extremely low-key.
He is certainly no Doctor Who, no Sherlock Holmes, no eccentric genius.
The Quatermass Xperiment, the 1955 Hammer Horror movie adaptation that survives today, is a very different beast.
This is a 50s monster movie.
This series saw Quatermass investigating strange meteor showers that led him to uncover an alien invasion.
It too quickly received a Hammer Horror adaptation.
We are the Martians.
Quatermass Who?
The agency itself appears in person in The Christmas Invasion.
But the Quatermass/Doctor Whoconnection goes deeper than that.
In short the person who wrote it haddefinitelyseen the Quatermass serials.
ButDoctor Whos enduring love of Nigel Kneales work was destined to be unrequited.
I never really saw myself as writing science fiction anyway.
Doomwatch, which Kneale also reportedly despised, was one of the earliest in 1970.
