Quatermass II (1955)

Quatermass II was the first sequel serial to The Quatermass Experiment. Reginald Tate, who had played the title role in the original serial, collapsed and died less than a month before the shooting of the location filming for Quatermass II began, and necessitated the casting of a replacement lead actor at short notice.

As before, episodes were performed live with some pre-filmed inserts. This time, telerecording of each broadcast was successful and there were repeat showings two nights after the first.

Once again, the film rights to the serial were purchased by Hammer Film Productions and Quatermass 2 was released in 1957.

Episode three, "The Food", was repeated on BBC2 in 1991 as part of of programming to commemorate the closure of Lime Grove Studios after 40 years of use by the BBC.

This serial sees Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group being asked to examine strange meteorite showers. His investigations lead to his uncovering a conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British Government. As even some of Quatermass's closest colleagues fall victim to the alien influence, he is forced to use his own unsafe rocket prototype, which recently caused a nuclear disaster at an Australian testing range, to prevent the aliens from taking over mankind.

John Robinson as Professor Quatermass

Main cast

Crew

To A New Wilderness

Television this week sees the return of Professor Bernard Quatermass in a new dramatic serial in six parts. Scriptwriter NIGEL KNEALE recalls here the first 'Experiment' and introduces the sequel, 'Quatermass II,' which begins on Saturday

A MAN-carrying rocket is fired into space, as a limited experiment, to reach a height of 15,000 miles. Something goes wrong. When the rocket is eventually brought back to earth by remote control, only one of the crew is found alive. Unable to give any account of his experience, he starts to undergo a rapid and terrible transformation. It becomes apparent that he is now the helpless carrier of an unknown life-form. As it encounters other earthly orders - vegetable, fungoid, animal - a monstrous amalgam is formed, with the faculty of infinite reproduction. It is destroyed just in time to prevent catastrophe to the world.

This was the theme of The Quatermass Experiment, the television serial which I wrote and Rudolph Cartier produced just over two years ago. Part of the impression it made was perhaps due simply to being the first of its kind - in this country at least. But when reviewers used phrases like horrific fantasy, one was tempted to wonder: just how fantastic.

Since the date of that production, and particularly during the past few months, exploration beyond the earth's atmosphere has become an imminent fact. Artificial satellites are in preparation at this very moment. America, Britain and Russia have announced plans - the latter even of employing a man-carrying rocket. A dividing line has gone: stories of the future have become stories of the present.

Too horrific? The very nature of the official researches now begun - speculative, cautious - emphasises our ignorance of what may be encountered beyond the air. Fifty years ago scientific materialism was ready to declare: 'There is nothing! A dead void.' Could life exist elsewhere in the solar system? 'Impossible!' These confident answers have lost their validity along with the theories on which they were based. Something more is known of the nature of life and energy. Today's scientist, asked the same questions, limits himself to a careful: 'We do not know.'

Man is on the edge of a new wilderness, darker than any unknown continent in an old-time traveller's tale. His kind has conquered desert and tundra, but here he is unfitted by nature to penetrate, He may face subtle destruction by the very emptiness - or encounter energies and forces beyond his power to calculate, and ills that no flesh is heir to.

One thing is certain. Even the preparations for such exploration will be infinitely long and arduous. There will be a record of disappointments, failures, at times the same loss of faith in a particular enterprise that Columbus met. It is such a spell as this-of technical doldrums -that forms the background to Quatermass II.

The time is some years after the first disaster. Professor Bernard Quatermass has continued his work. Prototypes of a second, more powerful nuclear-powered rocket have been built (the Mark II of the title), to form the basis of an ambitious long-term 'Moon Project.' Then, in the early stages of testing, comes a crushing setback. His research is at a standstill, perhaps at an end. As he tries to come to terms with the situation, there is a curious interruption.

The new serial, then, has no direct connection with its predecessor. (In fact I have been at some pains to make the distinction clear, as a film version of the 'Experiment' is to be generally released almost simultaneously with this production, and confusion could arise.) None of the earlier characters has been held over, apart from Quatermass himself. This part is being played by John Robinson, following the tragic death of Reginald Tate, its originator, a few weeks ago. With new production facilities and effects, Rudolph Cartier and I are trying for something different in atmosphere and story. We hope it works.

Episodes

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1: "The Bolts"

Broadcast(s)

The testing of the Quatermass II space rocket ends in disaster. Research stalls, but then Quatermass is called to investigate a strange object.

Army Captain John Dillon defies an official clamp-down and takes the remains of an object from space which crashes on Earth to the British Rocket Group. When Quatermass returns with him to investigate the area of Winnerden Flats, he finds a huge synthetic food plant there, identical to his proposed moonbase.

Quatermass Returns

Monica Grey as Paula, John Robinson as Professor Quatermass, and Hugh Griffith as Dr Pugh

Additional cast

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2: "The Mark"

Broadcast(s)

The shroud of secrecy around the plant alerts Quatermass to something deeply wrong. An MP reveals that there are identical plants around the world.

Dillon is infected by gas from one of the objects from space and bears a scar. He is taken away to the Plant by similarly scarred zombie- like guards. When Quatermass tries to get news of him, he finds local officials very unhelpful.

It seems clear that the ambitious moon project may have to be abandoned, following the disastrous setback in testing the Quatermass II rocket. Quatermass and his staff are adjusting themselves to this situation when a curious interruption occurs.

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3: "The Food"

Broadhead becomes the latest victim of the gas. A civil servant helps Quatermass gain entry to the plant, but tragedy strikes.

Quatermass joins Vincent Broadhead MP at an enquiry into the Plant, to find all the commission members bear scars. Left alone there, Broadhead is affected by the gas. Quatermass, Ward and Fowler get into the Plant where Ward is killed by a foul burning substance in a 'food dome'.

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4: "The Coming"

Broadcast(s)

Convinced that an alien force has compromised the government and plans to terraform the Earth, Quatermass looks for allies among the locals.

Pugh finds that the objects are coming from an asteroid and Quatermass goes with journalist Hugh Conrad to talk to the workforce from the Plant. That night, many objects fall in the area to be collected by the guards.

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5: "The Frenzy"

Broadcast(s)

Quatermass is caught in the crossfire when the locals storm the plant. He must escape the chaos and get back to the Rocket Group.

Quatermass enters the Plant and sees an alien creature in the slime stored in the food domes. The workers, led by Paddy, revolt and occupy the pumping room to stop the gas flow to the domes, pumping in oxygen. The guards retaliate by using human bodies to block the pipeline.

The spreading of

'THE FRENZY'

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6: "The Destroyers"

Broadcast(s)

The Quatermass II races towards the asteroid, Earth's only hope against the invaders. But the alien's reach is closer than the professor thinks.

Quatermass escapes from the Plant as it explodes and returns with Pugh to the Rocket Group where Dillon and the zombies have taken over. Pugh and Quatermass plan to go to the asteroid in the Quatermass II rocket and destroy the alien force.

Additional cast