Quatermass II is a British science fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the Quatermass series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the oldest of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives.
The 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.
Although sometimes compared unfavourably to the first and third Quatermass serials, Quatermass II was praised for its allegorical concerns of the damaging effects of industrialisation and the corruption of governments by big business. It is described on the British Film Institute's Screenonline website as "compulsive viewing".
Casting and crew
Reginald Tate, who had played the title role in The Quatermass Experiment, collapsed and died on 23 August 1955, aged 58. This was 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; John Robinson was chosen to fill the part. Robinson was an experienced actor from a range of different films and television programmes since the 1930s, but was uncomfortable about taking over from Tate, and had difficulty in learning some of the technical dialogue he was required to deliver. but gained his highest profile roles after Quatermass II; he went on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as Sheikh Ilderim in Ben-Hur (1959). He also appeared in Lucky Jim (1957) and Oliver! (1968). she was chosen by BBC management rather than the production team, as she was the wife of the BBC's head of radio drama, Val Gielgud. Dillon was played by John Stone; Stone too had a long career as a supporting actor in a range of British television series, and in 1956 had a small role in the film X the Unknown, which Hammer Film Productions had intended as a sequel to their version of The Quatermass Experiment, until Kneale denied them the rights to use the character.
Four actors who each became well known for a particular role on British television had supporting parts in Quatermass II. Rupert Davies who played MP Vincent Broadhead would go on to find fame as Sûreté detective Commissaire Jules Maigret, the title character of 1960s TV series Maigret, based on Georges Simenon's novels. Roger Delgado, who originated the role of the Master in Doctor Who (1971–73), played a journalist who helps Quatermass before falling victim to "the mark" in episode four. and Melvyn Hayes, who played the small role of Frankie, later worked in several films with Cliff Richard and starred in the BBC sitcom "It Ain't Half Hot Mum".
Nigel Kneale not only wrote the serial but, previously an actor, had two speaking parts. He played the voice heard over the factory loudspeaker system in episode five, and narrated the recaps at the beginning of episodes two, three, four and six.
Kneale credited the director Rudolph Cartier with bringing to the screen in Quatermass II, with its ambitious location filming, an expansive style that had not been seen in British television drama beforehand. He continued directing for television until the 1970s. The new network's creation had been established by the Television Act 1954, and the BBC had known in advance that it would need programmes to combat the new rival for television audiences. Referring to the 1953 science-fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment in a memo written in 1954, BBC Television's Controller of Programmes, Cecil McGivern, noted that: "Had competitive television been in existence then, we would have killed it every Saturday night while [The Quatermass Experiment] lasted. We are going to need many more 'Quatermass Experiment' programmes".
Having recently signed a two-year extension to his BBC staff writer's contract, Nigel Kneale was specifically commissioned to write a sequel to The Quatermass Experiment in early 1955 to challenge the new ITV network. Kneale was inspired by contemporary fears over secret UK Ministry of Defence research establishments such as Porton Down, and also by being required, as a BBC staff member, to sign the Official Secrets Act. Since the first Quatermass serial, the two men had collaborated on the literary adaptations Wuthering Heights (1953) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954), and on Kneale's abominable snowman play The Creature (1955).
Quatermass II comprised six half-hour episodes, transmitted live from Studio G at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios in London. The episodes – individually subtitled "The Bolts", "The Mark", "The Food", "The Coming", "The Frenzy" and "The Destroyers" – were shown every Saturday night at 8 p.m. from 22 October to 26 November 1955; because of the live nature of the performances, most of the episodes overran their allotted half-hour slots slightly. Each episode was rehearsed on the Monday to Friday before transmission at Mansergh Woodall Boys Club in St John's Wood, London, and then camera rehearsed in studio for most of the day on the Saturday.
Not every scene was performed live; because of the increased budget – £7,552 was spent on the serial, nearly double the amount spent on The Quatermass Experiment – Cartier was able to include a larger proportion of pre-filmed inserts on 35 mm film, which were included during the live transmissions of each episode. Most of the pre-filmed material was shot on location at the Shell Haven oil refinery in Stanford-le-Hope, doubling for the factory where the alien creature is being grown on Earth. Owing to either technical or artistic problems, Cartier had some scenes re-performed by the cast immediately following the live performance on the Saturday evening, and these were telerecorded and used to replace the live versions in the Monday night repeats.
Reception and influence
The available British television audience had doubled since The Quatermass Experiment had been shown in 1953, and the viewing figures for Quatermass II were accordingly higher. The serial gained an audience of 7.9 million viewers for its first three episodes, rising to 8.3 million for the fourth and fifth and concluding with 9 million. A BBC audience research report commissioned after Quatermass II had finished found that 90% of those questioned in the sample had watched at least five episodes of the production. The serial was also criticised internally at the BBC by Cecil McGivern, who felt it to be not as good as the original. Following episode six, some viewers wrote in to the BBC concerned at Quatermass's survival, as he had not been seen to definitely return to Earth in the experimental rocket ship. However, this interpretation of the serial is not widespread, and is undermined in episode five where an Irish immigrant helps Quatermass sabotage the aliens' food supply system. In any case, it is in direct contrast with Kneale's deliberate attack on racial intolerance in Quatermass and the Pit.
Speaking in a 2003 television documentary about Nigel Kneale's career, the writer and critic Kim Newman praised the underlying themes of Quatermass II, and their particular relevance to the British way of life: "Quatermass II is the British Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing... What Quatermass II does is take that metaphor and apply it to the specific conditions of Britain in the 1950s; not just the Cold War paranoia, but the traditional British grumbling resentment of bureaucracy as represented by the council, or in this case big business". The British Film Institute's "Screenonline" website also offers praise in its analysis of the serial:<blockquote>"With its tale of an invasion by an invisible enemy indistinguishable from ourselves, Kneale's story tapped into contemporary fears about the 'red' (i.e. communist) threat, although in a less direct way than the American science fiction films of the 1950s, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers. At the same time, it reflected the widespread anxiety of the nuclear age – the story begins with a failed test of a nuclear-powered rocket in Australia (at a time when the country was in reality a site for a series of British nuclear weapons tests). In short, Quatermass II was the perfect cold-war drama". Kneale was invited to write for The X-Files during the 1990s, but declined the offer.
Other genre productions that have been compared with the serial include the 1970 Doctor Who story Spearhead from Space.
Other media
As with The Quatermass Experiment, the film rights to the serial were purchased by Hammer Film Productions – in this case after they had only read the scripts, before the serial was even made. In the United States, the film was released under the title Enemy from Space.
Quatermass returned to the BBC in 1958 when Kneale's third serial, Quatermass and the Pit, began transmission. That was the last television appearance of the character for 20 years, until Kneale brought Quatermass back for a final time in the 1979 serial Quatermass, this time produced for Thames Television.
A serialised novelisation of Quatermass II, written by Kneale, ran in the Daily Express newspaper in the UK from 5 to 20 December 1955, although Kneale was forced to draw the storyline to a premature conclusion as the paper lost interest in the project. The television scripts were released by Penguin Books in 1960, with a selection of stills from the production also included. The book was re-released in 1979, with a new introduction by Kneale, to coincide with the transmission of the Thames Television serial.
In April 2005 BBC Worldwide released a DVD box set of all its existing Quatermass material.