Finally, we take a look at one of the seminal pieces of science fiction television: The Quatermass Experiment – Nigel Kneale’s 1953 pioneering original television serial. Logistical problems galore as Simon and Eugene discuss this “lost” classic.
Part One – Contact Has Been Established
The British Experimental Rocket Group and its leader, Professor Bernard Quatermass, are tense. The world’s first manned spacecraft, British, of course, has gone missing for 57 hours. The scientists can only wait, searching the skies, for any kind of a sign of what happened to the missing craft.
When contact is re-established, the craft has been on a wildly elliptical orbit, over 380,000 miles into space – much father than the near-Earth orbit that was planned. There is no response from the crew, but they are able to return the craft with reasonable success by remote control. It comes down in a house in Wimbledon.
The craft is sealed, and when it is finally opened, only one of the three astronauts is still aboard, Victor Carroon. He is unresponsive and collapses when they try to question him.
Part Two – Persons Reported Missing
Carroon is taken to hospital, while Quatermass’ team explore the rocket. Inside two empty spacesuits are found. With a rocket smashed into a home and two men missing, Chief Inspector Lomax of the Yard is on the case. He and his men collect evidence in the form of a spacesuit and, unbeknownst to Quatermass, Carroon’s fingerprints.
Judith, an important member of Quatermass’ team is also Carroon’s wife. She confesses that she and Carroon were unhappy and she was going to get a divorce, but now that Victor has returned, damaged, she won’t leave him – she can’t leave him – despite the fact that she is in love with Gordon Briscoe, the flight surgeon on the team.
Victor is cold all the time and wrong. While obviously he is Victor Carroon, he features are slightly wrong in ways they can’t account for.
Quatermass is incensed when he learns the police fingerprinted Carroon as if he were a suspect. He withdraws Carroon from the hospital and goes to see Lomax. To dispel any future misunderstandings, Quatermass gives Lomax all their personnel files. Lomax, in turn, gives Quatermass something to think about. The spacesuit they took to examine still contained all the attached undergarments inside – as if the occupant had disappeared without taking them off.
The wife of one of the missing astronauts, Mrs. Greene, and Dr. Briscoe return from the launch facility in Australia. Briscoe examines Carroon and suspects there may even be changes to his bone structure. Mrs. Greene tries questioning Carroon and is surprised that he calls her by the nickname her husband used for her, but he says nothing meaningful.
Lomax and his team discover something strange about Carroon’s fingerprints – they don’t correctly match what Quatermass had on record, but they do appear to be an amalgam of the fingerprints of all three astronauts. At no point do they ever communicate this information to Quatermass.
Quatermass shows Carroon the launch footage to see if it jogs his memory, it does slightly, and he starts speaking German – a language Carroon doesn’t know, but the third astronaut, Dr. Ludwig Reichenheim spoke natively.
They are all called to the rocket where Paterson, one of Quatermass’ team, has discovered lots of colloidal goo packed throughout the walls of the rocket.
Part Three – Special Knowledge
Both Briscoe and the Lomax take samples of the goo back to their labs for analysis. It appears to be harmless, but Paterson, who has been examining the rocket, isn’t happy that he’s been exposed. His old grievance that he should have been one of the three astronauts also comes to the fore and he voices his displeasure to Quatermass.
Carroon continues to exhibit strange physiological changes. The texture of his skin is changing, and when they try to give him some tea, he becomes violent smashing the tea to the floor and saying, in German, “not to feed it.”
Judith gets an idea and begins questioning Carroon in German, which he is able to understand and respond in, albeit without making any sense. She begins to realize, as Quatermass has, that they’re all in there – all three in one person.
Lomax is being bothered by unnamed security concerns, and he tries to warn Quatermass, as well as try to stop him from taking Carroon back to the rocket. He fails at both things.
At the rocket site, a bitter and drunk Paterson says some indiscrete things to the gathered international press.
Quatermass has heard the voice recorder data and wants to return Carroon to the ship and play back the recording to see what happens.
In flashback we witness what happened in space. A strange noise and nothing else plagued the ship, but then the sound got into the ship and their heads, first Greene, then Ludwig, and finally Carroon.
Carroon clearly has a reaction to the memories and collapses after the flashback. He’s taken to the remains of the house the rocket crashed into to rest awaiting an ambulance. Here, the press, long-delayed on getting a story, are pressing with questions.
Carroon becomes fascinated with a cactus, which he grabs in his bare hand. When a photojournalist locks him in the kitchen and tries to press for a picture, Carroon kills him. Outside the kitchen, shots are heard and, when Quatermass and Lomax burst in, Carroon is missing, the door has been shot open from outside and a black car speeds away.
Part Four – Believed to Be Suffering
Caroon has been kidnapped by professional agents working for a foreign power. The reporter was one of them, and they even have a decoy car that leads the coppers a merry chase.
Quatermass tries to get ahead of the problem by making a press statement, letting everyone know that Carroon has been abducted, in the hopes that public awareness will help find him. What Quatermass does not say is that he is worried that Carroon is dangerous. The dead reporter seems to have had the life sucked out of him instantly.
Quatermass finally explains to Lomax that he thinks Carroon is going through some form of biochemical change and they need to get him under observation immediately.
The kidnappers run afoul of whatever Carroon is becoming and die and crash and die, in that order. Carroon escapes on foot and hides in a bombed out building.
The post-mortem is finished and it’s a completely new form of death, some form of biological digestion. Quatermass and Judith speculate that some form of life, possibly made only of energy, floating in space, encountered the craft and found them edible and also suitable to adapt for life on Earth. Lomax is having difficulty believing all this.
Meanwhile, Paterson is trying to give reporter James Fullalove a hard-hitting, full-on hatchet piece on his perceived grievances with the way Quatermass has run this project and, most importantly, how he botched the astronaut selection process. Fullalove sees right through this and has no time for hhis nonsense. Fullalove has a nose for news and he’s figured out Carroon is somehow dangerous, and that’s the story onto which he’s latched.
A boy finds Carroon and, guessing that he’s hiding, takes him to see a movie. Carroon leaves id-movie, but the boy is caught and tells the authorities that it was the missing astronaut. The search is back on.
Carroon finds his way to a chemist’s and when the chemist looks at his arm, it is a monstrosity. He faints.
Part Five – An Unidentified Species
In the chemist’s shop, Carroon assembles a concoction of chemicals and drinks it.
Quatermass is questioning the boy who took Carroon to the movies. He’s not much help, but they conclude it was probably Carroon.
In the lab, Briscoe is trying to determine if the chemical digestion process might have led to the substance found in the spaceship. Paterson comes in, he’s quitting. He’s had enough of this fantasy nonsense that Quatermass has fallen into. He seems genuinely disturbed at entertaining the idea that something in space caused the problems.
Later, when the police have learned of the chemist shop incident, they learn that Carroon may have created a substance in an effort to kill himself. Briscoe is not so sure. He thinks it might be a catalyst to complete a biochemical change. Carroon wouldn’t have that technical knowledge, but Greene would.
Carroon is nowhere to be found, and an extensive search for his body is underway,
Fullalove is there and he, unlike the other reporters, has figured out a lot of the story. Quatermass takes him into his confidence, over Lomax’s objections, on the condition that he not publish at this time.
Carroon is not dead, and we see him, further transformed, that night on Duck Island, St. James Park.
The next morning, Paterson’s article is published in another paper, blaming Quatermass for the failure because he picked the wrong astronauts. This bothers Team Quatermass, but that’s quickly forgotten when news of many dead ducks on Duck Island come through. Yes, they’ve been digested by the Thing that was once Carroon. Living samples are found and Briscoe takes one for analysis.
Lomax has a lot of crowd control to deal with during the day because of various events in the area, and he has one report from a drunk that something big and mossy was climbing walls in the area.
Briscoe and Quatermass are able to make their specimen grow and it starts to form sporangia. The creature might be preparing to reproduce via spores.
A tip about some crumbling stonework leads Lomax to Westminster Abbey, where the BBC is doing a live architectural broadcast. He tries to stop the broadcast but, nobody stops the BBC, until their cameras discover a huge growing, moving Thing inside the abbey above Poet’s Corner.
Part Six – State of Emergency
Lomax evacuates the BBC crew in the Abbey but not before live video of the Thing is broadcast to the British public. As Lomax’s people block off the Abbey, the curious public begin to gather in the streets.
In the lab Briscoe and Quatermass have discovered the worst possible news. They have brought their specimen to the point where it releases spores. All organic matter, molds, algae, plants and animals succumb and are absorbed by it within minutes. If the Thing in the Abbey releases spores, indigenous life on Earth will end. They successfully destroy the specimen by burning it, and hope to recreate that success with the Thing in the Abbey.
The crowd is, at first, nothing more than curious, but eventually people listening to officials overhear the name Quatermass, who’s name is much in the news lately, and suddenly they begin to realize the Thing is a space monster, and panic begins.
Lomax has managed to get the powers that be to send in the military, at Quatermass’ recommendation, with lots and lots of flamethrowers. They believe they have less than 90 minutes and Quatermass’ supposition is that they will need to burn the entire Thing, which is growing enormous, all at once to prevent parts of it from sporing as soon as it is attacked, or, it may go on the offensive, preventing success.
Quatermass feels that the only honest thing to do is to inform the worldwide public via live TV of what has happened and tell them that, should this fail, they will all die in a matter of days. His hubris lead to this and he asks their forgiveness.
Paterson arrives. He’s been denying this possibility all along, but now he’s had to come see it for himself. He’s wronged and slandered Quatermass. When Quatermass and the military realize they don’t have any troops in the crypt underneath the Abbey, Quatermass fears that will be an “out” allowing the Thing to survive. Paterson, who was trained to use flamethrowers in Burma, volunteers and heads to the crypt.
Over the portable radio, Paterson reports that he can hear the Thing in crypt, just before it kills him. Quatermass realizes it’s already dug its way underground and the attack cannot succeed, the end of the world is assured.
Fullalove is there and laments the story he cannot publish and waxes about the three astronauts who were pressed into service against their own world. This strikes a note with Quatermass, who slips into the Abbey and addresses the Thing directly – or more specifically, he addresses the three men still inside it.
“Now is the time to fight back”
Judith, outside, realizes what Quatermass is trying. The recording of the flight, and the sound it made, spurred Carroon’s memories back in the lab, perhaps they can do the same now. They play back the tape to augment Quatermass entreaties.
It works, the Thing starts howling out the same sound and then dies. The world has been saved.
A very weary Quatermass emerges and, I’m certain, is very relieved that he’ll never have to save the world from an alien invasion again.
