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Quatermass and the Pit

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Television

   Quatermass and the Pit is a British television science-fiction serial,
   the third of four in the famous Quatermass series by writer Nigel
   Kneale. It was originally broadcast by the BBC over the winter of
   1958–59.

   Generally regarded by critics and fans as the most successful of the
   Quatermass serials, it was the last one to be produced by the BBC in
   the 1950s, and the last television outing of the character anywhere for
   twenty years. In this instalment of the series, the eponymous hero
   Professor Bernard Quatermass finds himself becoming involved in the
   discovery of a bizarre object at an archeological dig in Knightsbridge,
   London. As the serial progresses, Quatermass and his allies find that
   the contents of the object have a horrific influence over those who
   come into contact with it, and darker implications for the entire
   nature of mankind.

   In a 2000 poll of industry professionals conducted by the British Film
   Institute, it was voted at number seventy-five in a list of the 100
   Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, where it
   was described as: "Completely gripping, under the guise of genre it
   tackled serious themes of man's hostile nature and the military's
   perversion of science for its own ends." ^

Background

   After the success of the two previous Quatermass serials — The
   Quatermass Experiment (1953) and Quatermass II (1955) — the BBC were
   more than willing for Kneale, now a freelance writer and not on the BBC
   staff, to pen a third instalment in the series. Since Quatermass II
   Kneale had been working mostly in film, writing the screenplay
   adaptations of his own television serials The Creature (as The
   Abominable Snowman) and Quatermass II (as Quatermass 2), and John
   Osborne's play Look Back in Anger. For Quatermass and the Pit, he was
   reunited with director Rudolph Cartier, who had helmed the previous two
   Quatermass serials as well as many other Kneale scripts for the BBC. It
   was to be the final collaboration between the two, who had formed the
   most successful writer/director partnership in British television of
   the 1950s.

   Quatermass and the Pit built on the already popular status of the
   Quatermass character and created a story that enthralled much of the
   television-watching public: for many years it was stated that the final
   episode famously "emptied the pubs" as enthusiastic viewers rushed home
   to watch. In the words of the British Film Institute, "the series, like
   its predecessors, was compulsory viewing" ^. The review of the first
   episode in The Times newspaper praised the production: "The expository
   episode was a brilliant example of Mr Kneale's ability to hold an
   audience with promises alone; smooth, leisurely, and without any
   sensational incident, it was imbued in Mr Rudolph Cartier's production
   with unearthly echoes of horrors to come."^ The serial helped to
   popularise the science-fiction genre on television in the UK, and make
   it a respectable and adult format. The production is also notable for
   the distinctive electronic wailing noise that accompanies alien
   phenomena, which was created by the then newly-formed BBC Radiophonic
   Workshop.

   As with the previous two serials and in common with most other
   television drama of the day, Quatermass and the Pit was transmitted
   live, from the BBC's Riverside Studios in London. However, it also had
   a large amount of pre-filming work carried out on external location
   and, for complex sequences not easily achievable in the confines of a
   live television studio, at Ealing Studios. For these filmed sequences,
   Cartier employed the services of the BBC's experienced film cameraman
   A. A. Englander, who was at the time one of the top film cameramen
   working in the UK. As usual, the pre-filmed sequences would be played
   into the live transmission as and where required.

   The serial was broadcast over six Monday evenings from December 22,
   1958 to January 26, 1959. Although all six episodes — The Halfmen, The
   Ghosts, Imps and Demons, The Enchanted, The Wild Hunt and Hob — were
   written as half-hour instalments, each was given a thirty-five minute
   timeslot due to the overruns most of the episodes of the previous two
   Quatermass serials had gone into. All six episodes were scheduled in an
   8.00–8.35pm timeslot. The production drew very high viewing figures for
   the BBC, with the final episode gaining 11 million viewers, one of the
   highest BBC drama audiences of the decade.

   As each episode was being transmitted it was telerecorded onto 35mm
   film, and these telerecordings proved to be of exceptionally good
   quality. Keen to take an example of what it felt to be an important
   piece of television, the British Film Institute took prints of these
   telerecordings, all of which survive in the BBC's archives. In 1960, an
   edited compilation version was prepared and screened by the BBC,
   broadcast in two instalments as 5 Million Years Old ( January 2, 1960,
   8.40–10.10pm) and Hob ( January 9, 1960, 8.45–10.15pm). This
   compilation version also survives in the BBC's archives, and is very
   important because the scenes originally shot on film were removed from
   it and replaced with the corresponding original film sequences, meaning
   that these pre-filmed inserts survived in excellent quality for the
   re-mastering of the story. The compilation also had a magnetic
   soundtrack, which gave better quality than the optical soundtrack which
   was all that survived on the original episodes.

   In November 1986 episode three, Imps and Demons, was selected by the
   BBC for transmission as part of their fiftieth anniversary of
   television season, although Kneale felt the broadcast of a single
   episode on its own to be a waste of time. He did, however, assist BBC
   Video with the preparation of a 178-minute two-part compilation version
   of the serial, which was released on VHS in 1987. In 1995 this video
   was re-released by independent budget label Revelation, who also put
   out a DVD version of the same compilation in 1999. Fans were
   disappointed that the DVD was taken from the VHS masters and had no
   additional material.

   On April 4, 2005, the BBC issued a fully-remastered DVD box set
   entitled The Quatermass Collection, containing the two surviving
   episodes of The Quatermass Experiment and the whole of Quatermass II
   and Quatermass and the Pit, remastered in their original format from
   the best surviving elements. The DVD also includes behind-the-scenes
   material and a comprehensive booklet giving production and remastering
   information.

Plot

   This synopsis is based on the television version of the story.
   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

   A pre-human skull is discovered while building works are taking place
   in the fictional Hobbs Lane — formerly Hob's Lane, from an old name for
   the Devil. (In the film version the location of the building works is
   moved to the also fictional ' Hobbs End' tube station.) Dr Matthew
   Roney, a palaeontologist, examines the recovered remains, which are
   many thousands of years old, and reconstructs a dwarf-like humanoid
   with an unusually large brain volume, which he believes to be a form of
   primitive man. As further excavation is done on the site, something
   that looks like a missile is unearthed, and further work by Roney's
   group is halted as the military believe it to be an unexploded bomb
   left over from World War II.

   Roney calls in his old friend Professor Bernard Quatermass of the
   British Rocket Group, an expert on matters of unusual scientific
   background, to stop the military from disturbing what he believes to be
   an archeological find. Quatermass and Colonel Breen, who has been
   placed in charge of the Rocket Group over Quatermass's objections,
   become intrigued by the site. More and more of the artifact is
   uncovered, and additional fossils are found inside which Roney dates to
   five million years in age — suggesting that the object is at least that
   old as well. The interior is empty, but a symbol consisting of five
   intersecting circles (which Roney identifies as the occult pentagram)
   is found etched on an inside wall which appears to hide an inner
   chamber.

   The shell of the object is so hard that even diamond drills make no
   impression, and when the attempt is made, strange vibrations cause
   severe distress in the people around the object. Quatermass interviews
   the local residents and discovers that sightings of ghosts and other
   poltergeist activity have been common in the area for decades.
   Meanwhile, a worker is carried out of the object in hysterics — he
   claims to have seen a dwarf-like apparition walk through the wall of
   the artefact, a description which matches a 1927 newspaper account of a
   ghost sighting.

   Somehow, however, a hole has been opened up in the wall which allows
   them to uncover the interior chamber, and they find the remains of
   insect-like aliens resembling giant three-legged locusts, with stubby
   antennae on their heads giving the impression of horns. As Quatermass
   and Roney examine the remains, they theorise that the aliens might have
   come from a nearby planet which was habitable five million years ago —
   Mars.

   Meanwhile, another worker inside the craft triggers off more
   poltergeist activity, which forces him to wander through the streets in
   a dazed panic until he finds sanctuary inside a local church.
   Quatermass and Roney find him there, and he describes visions of the
   insect aliens killing each other. As Quatermass investigates deeper
   into the history of the area, he finds accounts dating back to medieval
   times about devils and ghosts, all tending to be centered on incidents
   where the ground was disturbed. He suspects that somehow a psychic
   projection of these beings has remained behind on the alien ship and is
   being seen by certain people who come in contact with it.

   Quatermass plans to use an invention of Roney's, an
   "optic-encephalogram", to see these visions. The device will record
   impressions from the optical centers of the brain, in effect showing
   whatever the subject is seeing, hallucinatory or not. He wears the
   device and goes into the craft, but it is Roney's assistant, Barbara
   Judd, who is affected most. Placing the device on her, they record what
   she "sees" — a violent, bloody purge of the Martian hive, to root out
   unwanted mutations.

   Quatermass begins to have a working theory on what is going on. He
   believes that in its most primitive phase mankind was visited by this
   race. Some humans were taken away and genetically altered to have
   special abilities like telepathy, telekinesis and other psychic powers.
   They were then brought back to Earth — the buried artefact was one of
   the return ships that had crashed. The idea was that, with their home
   world dying, the aliens had tried to make over our ancestors to have
   minds and abilities like theirs, created in their own mental image, but
   with a bodily form adapted to earth. In effect, we are the Martians.

   However, the plan was a partial failure: the aliens died out before
   completing their work, and as the human race bred and further evolved,
   only a percentage of it maintained these abilities, and even these only
   surfaced sporadically. For centuries, the buried ship itself had been
   occasionally triggering these dormant abilities. This explained the
   reports of poltergeists (people were unknowingly using their own
   telekinesis to move objects around them), the ghost sightings being
   traces of a race memory. It also explained the history of witchcraft
   and why people attributed it to a being they identified as the devil;
   the pentagram would have been the symbol for this alien race.

   The government authorities, and Breen in particular, find this
   explanation preposterous despite being shown the recording of Barbara's
   vision, believing that the craft is actually a Nazi propaganda weapon
   and the alien bodies fakes designed to create exactly the impressions
   that Quatermass has come to. They attribute the vision to an overactive
   imagination, and intend to hold a media event to assuage the rumors
   that are already flitting through the population. However, Quatermass
   realises that if these implanted psychic powers survive in the human
   race, there could also still be ingrained in us a compulsion to enact
   the " Wild Hunt" of a race purge. Quatermass is concerned that the
   memories encoded inside the ship, which have already been picked up by
   sensitive people near it, will trigger that inclination and that those
   affected will begin to slaughter their own.

   Despite his warnings, the media event occurs, and the power cables that
   string into the craft fully activate it for the first time. Glowing and
   humming like a living thing, it starts drawing upon this convenient
   energy source and awakening the ancient racial programming. Those
   people of London in whom the alien admixture remains strong fall under
   the ship's influence; they merge into a group mind and begin a
   telekinetic mass murder of those without the alien genes, an " ethnic
   cleansing" of those that the alien race mind considers impure and weak.

   Breen stands transfixed and is eventually consumed by the energies from
   the craft as it slowly melts away and a holographic image of a Martian
   "devil" floats in the sky above London. Fires and riots spread, and
   even a passing aircraft is affected and crashes into the city.
   Quatermass himself almost succumbs to the mass psychosis, attempting to
   kill Roney, who does not have the alien gene and is immune to the alien
   influence. Roney manages to shake Quatermass out of his trance, and
   together they realise that the floating image is the source of the mass
   psychosis. Even without the craft and electricity, it is now draining
   the combined psychic energy of London.

   Remembering the legends of demons and their aversion to iron and water,
   Roney deduces that a sufficient mass of iron connected to wet earth may
   be enough to short the apparition out. Quatermass gets a length of iron
   chain and tries to reach the "devil" but succumbs to the psychic
   pressure. It is Roney, in the end, who manages to hurl the chain into
   the fiery image and end the madness, but both he and the craft are
   reduced to ashes.

   In the end, Quatermass holds a television broadcast, in which he
   praises Roney's sacrifice, saying that they now are armed with
   knowledge that will allow them to deal with any more Martian artifacts.
   He also warns that now that we are aware of the dark urges implanted
   within us all, we have to be careful about wars, witch-hunts and other
   communal violence — lest we Martians turn the Earth into a second dead
   planet.

Cast and crew

   For the third time in as many serials, the lead role of Professor
   Bernard Quatermass was played by a different actor, this time André
   Morell. The original Quatermass actor, Reginald Tate, had died quite
   suddenly shortly before production of the second serial, necessitating
   a hasty replacement with John Robinson, who neither Cartier nor Kneale
   were ever completely happy with. For Quatermass and the Pit, with more
   time to consider their options, they chose Morell ("a civilised and
   debonair figure" in Kneale's opinion) who had previously appeared as
   O'Brien in their famous 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen
   Eighty-Four.

   Roney was played by Canadian actor Cec Linder, possibly with an eye on
   the potential of selling the serial to the Canadian Broadcasting
   Corporation. Linder later appeared in Lolita (1962), and in the James
   Bond film Goldfinger (1964) as the CIA agent Felix Leiter.

   John Stratton played Captain Potter, Anthony Bushell Colonel Breen and
   Christine Finn appeared as Barbara Judd. For the first time, Kneale
   used a character from a previous serial other than Quatermass himself:
   the journalist James Fullalove from The Quatermass Experiment, although
   like Quatermass he changed actor, with Brian Worth replacing Paul
   Whitsun-Jones.

   Nigel Kneale went on to continue his successful career writing for film
   and television, returning to the Quatermass character a final time with
   Quatermass in 1979 for the BBC's rival, the ITV network. He also penned
   feature films such as The Entertainer (1960 — based on another John
   Osborne play) and The First Men in the Moon (1964, from the novel by
   H.G. Wells).

   Rudolph Cartier continued as an in-house director for the BBC, helming
   many more highly successful productions such as the opera Otello
   (1959), Anna Karenina (1961, starring Sean Connery) and Lee Oswald:
   Assassin (1965). He died in 1994, at the age of ninety.

Film, sequels and DVD

   As with the previous two Quatermass serials, the rights to adapt
   Quatermass and the Pit for the cinema were purchased by Hammer Films,
   although it was not until 1967 that the film was made, possibly because
   Kneale had been unhappy about the previous Hammer versions. Hammer kept
   the original title, although in the United States the film was known as
   Five Million Years to Earth. Kneale adapted his own script, with
   Scottish actor Andrew Keir starring as Quatermass.

   The film, although not particularly commercially successful, is
   regarded as the most faithful Quatermass cinema adaptation, and a very
   good film in its own right. The film was released on Region 2 DVD in
   2004.

   The scripts of Quatermass and the Pit were released by Penguin Books in
   1959, as part of the series with script books of the previous two
   serials. Twenty years later in 1979 these were re-released by Arrow
   Books to coincide with the fourth and final Quatermass serial,
   Quatermass, which was then being transmitted on ITV.

   This final serial starred John Mills, and proved to be the last screen
   outing for the character, bringing his story to a close. However, in
   1996 Kneale penned a radio series entitled The Quatermass Memoirs for
   BBC Radio 3, which mixed a factual account of the character's history
   with a fictional strand of Quatermass writing his memoirs. Quatermass
   was again played by Andrew Keir for this production.

   In April 2005, BBC Worldwide released a boxed set of all their existing
   Quatermass material on DVD, containing digitally restored versions of
   all six episodes of Quatermass and the Pit, as well as the two existing
   episodes of The Quatermass Experiment and all of Quatermass II, along
   with various extra material.

   The 1971 Doctor Who serial The Dæmons features plot elements which bear
   remarkable similarities to Quatermass and the Pit, including an
   extraterrestrial race that was the basis for legends of demons and
   magic being explained as psychokinetic force. In a parallel to Hobbs
   Lane, the setting of The Dæmons is a village named Devil's End.

   Another Doctor Who serial, 1977's Image of the Fendahl, also has a plot
   strongly influenced by Pit, featuring a telepathic creature from the
   "fifth planet" known as the Fendahl. After the destruction of its
   homeworld, the Fendahl came to Earth and influenced the evolution of
   humans to possess psychic powers. When its "skull" (marked with a
   pentagram) is discovered in an archaeological dig, it proceeds to take
   over the descendants of the engineered humans in an effort to colonise
   the Earth.

Parody

   The 1959 Goon Show episode The Scarlet Capsule, written by Spike
   Milligan, is a parody of the BBC serial, complete with the original
   Radiophonic wail.
   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

   Some workmen employed by Government's Dig Up the Roads Plan for
   Congesting Traffic Scheme, while working as an alternative to striking,
   unearth an ancient skull ("Must be a woman...the mouth's open.").
   Professor Ned Quartermess, a.k.a. Neddie Seagoon ( Harry Secombe),
   sceptical of claims that the remains might be unexploded German skulls
   from World War II, discovers a fossilized Irish stew, and then uncovers
   a strange scarlet capsule containing the fossilized remains of three
   serge suits and the bones of a bowler hat. Willium "Mate" Cobblers
   hears a voice saying "Minardor". Several people are struck down by
   flying Irish stews, and Quartermess becomes convinced there is a
   poltergeist at work, and starts evacuating the local population —
   including Peter Sellers as a woman whose seductive voice causes the
   script to be heavily censored.

   Eventually the scheming Hercules Grytpype-Thynne (Sellers) persuades
   Quartermess to blow up the capsule — with his sidekick Count Jim
   Moriarty (Milligan), whose life he has coincidentally insured for a
   large sum, tied up inside. But the blast blows everyone up — at least
   until the next episode — and a BBC announcer ( Andrew Timothy) reports
   that the capsule was actually a London Underground train containing
   three striking Tube workers that had been shunted into a siding and
   forgotten. "The Mystic word 'Minardor' was in fact 'Mind the doors'.^
   Not a very good ending, but at least it's tidy, don't you think?" He is
   then struck down by an Irish stew.

   The series was also parodied by the popular BBC television comedy
   series Hancock's Half Hour, in an episode entitled The Horror Serial,
   transmitted the week following the final episode. In it, Hancock has
   just finished watching Hob on the television, and becomes convinced
   that there is a crashed Martian space ship buried at the end of his
   garden. Sadly, this episode no longer exists in the BBC's archives.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatermass_and_the_Pit"
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