Home > Adults' Programmes > Quatermass
Starred Reginald Tate as Professor Bernard Quatermass
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 Quatermass II (1955)
was a creepy alien invasion story set around a sinsister
chemical plant in a remote part of the country. The
Professor accidentally discovers an alien plan to take
over the world by infiltrating human minds. John Robinson
(left) was Professor Quatermass in this second serial.
Hugh Griffiths, John Stone and Rupert Davies also
appeared.
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The
third series, Quatermass and the Pit
(1959) was a dark, cabalistic tale of the excavation of
an ancient alien-insect capsule in Knightsbridge, London
from which an evil influence still exudes. The
mood-drenched drama excelled in eerie sound and visual
effects. Starred Andre Morell (left) as Quatermass.
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The foundation of British
sci-fi TV, the BBC spent its entire adult drama budget on
commissioning a script from Nigel Kneale, winner of the
1950 Somerset Maugham Prize for Literature. Their return
was The Quatermass Experiment,
(1953) an eerie and sessational story about a
professorial scientist of that surname whose experimental
spaceship returns to earth with its sole surviving
occupant contaminated by an alien virus which
subsequently transmuted him into a 100-foot vegetable. He
is pursued eventually to Westminster Abbey where it takes
its final refuge. 
