We take a single episode of a science fiction TV series and overanalyze it to within an
inch of its life.
This is the Fusion Patrol podcast.
Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we're looking at the Nigel Neal classic TV serial, Quatermass 2.
A radar post observes the arrival of yet another meteor under orders for secrecy.
Captain Dillon goes to investigate.
The meteorite, Broken, is found in a field where a stunned farmer sits.
His wife, in a panic, frantically worrying about her husband.
Dillon and his men are under orders to do nothing about the meteors.
But it's damned curious, and he decides to disobey orders.
He knows a guy that might make sense of it.
Meanwhile, Professor Bernard Quatermass has just suffered a major failure in his professional life.
His new nuclear-powered exploratory rocket model, EquatorMass 2, has gone off like a nuclear bomb in Australia.
Oops, it's a good thing nobody lives in Australia.
His backup ship in Britain has just been checked, and it suffers from the same problem that caused the explosion.
The design will have to be scrapped, and Britain's plans to expand the empire to the moon are now gone.
It is to this dejected and beaten Quatermass that Dylan brings the meteor fragments.
Quatermass and his team are intrigued.
It's an odd shape, and indications are that it broke up after impact.
Assembling the pieces, it's hollow.
Dylan explains that there are lots of these, and that there was a big scare about them about a year ago.
After which, the government ordered the whole thing top secret, to avoid further panic.
Quatermass and Dylan investigate.
First, the farmer, who isn't feeling well and very unfriendly and unhelpful.
They then stop at a local pub and learn that the farmer isn't typically like that,
and weird things are going on.
Ever since, the government tore down an entire village
and built their top-secret research facility at Winterden Flats.
Quatermass and Dylan investigate and, ignoring the keep-out signs,
enter the facility grounds.
A meteor comes down, intact.
Dylan reaches it first, and it cracks open.
For a moment, Quatermass thinks he sees something on Dylan's face.
Guards arrive, force Quatermass to leave, and take Dylan for medical care. Dylan tells Quatermass
to leave him alone and go. Quatermass meets a tramp hiding in the wreckage of the village that
was torn down. He tells him about the goings-on and the new prefab town that was built for the
workers. They're not very friendly, not like the village that was torn down. On the ground, there
are thousands of meteor fragments. In prefab town, Quatermass is given a cold shoulder. The facility
pays them well and asks silence in return. They don't even have local police. It's handled by the
security from the base. Quatermass encounters a young girl who's acting strangely and discovers
she has a strange mark on her hand where she touched one of the meteors when it came down.
He has run off before he can learn more. Back at the rocket base, Quatermass's team have
reconstructed the meteor and it appears to be a small ballistic vessel of some kind. In London,
Quatermass first tries to enlist the police to help him find out what happened to Dylan,
but they are under orders to leave the research facility at Winterton Flats alone,
by orders of Quatermass's own ministry.
Next, he goes to the ministry, and his contact, Fowler,
clearly has some reservations about the project, too.
He introduces him to MP Broadhead, who is also on a tear about the Winterton Flats facility.
The plant is supposedly producing a new synthetic food in a top-secret method
to get a jump on other countries,
but spy satellites have found at least two other identical facilities in Brazil and Siberia.
He takes Quatermass to a hearing, where all the other members are strangely zombie-like
and do not care what Broadhead is saying.
Then Quatermass notices the same mark on one of them.
He tells Broadhead privately, and then he confronts the men with his reconstruction of the meteor ship.
They are agitated, and he is evicted.
Later, the conference room is empty, except for an insensate Broadhead, who now has the mark.
Guards from Winterton Flats arrive and take him away, but not before telling Quatermass and Fowler that his investigation is over and everything is in order.
Fowler then introduces Quatermass to Ward.
Ward is in public relations, and he's been escorting top brass, politicos, and celebrities to Winterton Flats on a regular basis.
Weird drill, though. He just drops them off and never brings them back.
But they do find their way home somehow.
Using Ward's pass, the three of them go to the plant.
The plant appears to be near completion, and the non-infected workers have been given a few days off.
Back at the rocket base, Dr. Leo Pugh is talking to Paula, Quatermass's daughter.
Leo is a brilliant mathematician, the man that does the orbital calculations.
He tells her all about how, in his childhood, his teachers used to make him perform mathematical tricks
and tell him that he was destined for greatness.
It is a rambling, non-sequitur speech that most certainly identifies Leo Pugh for a pivotal death later in this story.
At Winterton Flats, Quatermass and the gang investigate without much resistance or interest from the zombie-like guards and workers.
Quatermass recognizes a facility as being similar to their moon base design.
The domes would be used to recreate an alien atmosphere.
Ward slips off to get into the dome.
He succeeds but is covered in the slime from the dome.
Deadly to humans and certainly not a revolutionary artificial foodstuff.
At least not food for anything from Earth.
Ward dies.
Quatermass gets a sample of a slime and a device Ward handed him.
They get away.
The rocket team have realized that swarms of meteors on such a trajectory
must be coming from somewhere astronomically nearby.
Leo's math powers allow them to find the object,
half a million miles out and approaching Earth.
They calculate that it stays in a special orbital location,
approaching and backing away from the Earth periodically.
At its closest point, they release the meteors.
The composition of the slime leads them to believe the invasion is from the outer planets.
Most likely a moon of Saturn, and the device Ward recovered is a booby trap,
much like the meteors containing an alien primed to take over a person.
Knowing that people are infected and controlled up to very high levels of the government,
and fearing that the final invasion to populate the completed dome is imminent,
Fowler returns to the ministry to do some secret digging.
Quatermass contacts a journalist, Conrad, to break the story.
Quatermass also has his team prepare the Quatermass 2 to fly to the alien asteroid,
knowing that it is, effectively, a nuclear bomb.
Just as Fowler has made an important discovery,
he also discovers one of the booby traps and plays no more part in this story.
Quatermass takes Conrad to the town, tells him the story,
takes him to the local pub where the locals are celebrating.
Quatermass tries to warn them about the danger, but they don't listen.
Just then a meteor smashes into the pub.
Within moments, zombie guards arrive searching for the meteor.
It is broken and they leave without it.
Now, hundreds of the meteors are falling, and the zombie guards are scouring the marsh, recovering them.
Quatermass sends Conrad to break the story, while he must go see the dome.
At the pub, Conrad tries to phone in the story with the locals listening.
He tells his editor that he was infected when the meteor hit the pub, and he's fighting to get the story out before it's too light.
The locals, overhearing the accusation, storm the facility.
When the guards open fire on them, they take up arms and start fighting back.
Looking into the dome, Quatermass sees what he feared.
Inside, a writhing, growing, ammonoid creature.
Quatermass beats up with the revolting workers who have taken the dome control building.
Quatermass explains they can kill the things in the dome by pumping pure oxygen in,
which they start to do.
Increasingly desperate, the facility controllers offer a truce to take them over to the domes and show them.
Some of the workers agree despite Quatermass's urgings to the contrary.
When the oxygen soon stops flowing, they discover the workers, killed and shoved into the pipeline to form a plug with their bodies.
Enraged, the leader of the workers fires a captured bazooka at the dome, destroying it.
Quatermass escapes because he had a gas mask, and he finds Leo outside.
Leo had come to find him, but was nearly killed when the deadly gas escaped from the domes.
Back at the rocket base, preparations for launching the rockets have gone wrong.
Dylan has returned with soldiers and taken control of the rocket's silo.
Quatermass, with Leo's help, seems to reach Dylan and convince him to let the launch go through.
Quatermass and Leo take off for the alien asteroid.
As they reach the asteroid, Quatermass confronts Leo.
He suspects he was overtaken by the aliens outside the facility.
While Quatermass preps the rocket to explode, Leo escapes outside with a gun.
When Quatermass follows, Leo explains that they're going to use the rocket to carry even greater numbers of aliens back to Earth and will now kill Quatermass.
When he fires, the recoil sends Leo hurtling into space.
Quatermass, all the while listening to the sounds of Leo calling for help over the radio,
returns to the rocket, launches the return capsule, and detonates the nuclear motor,
destroying the asteroid.
Dylan and the others are now free of the control and back to normal.
Quatermass has succeeded.
Quatermass looks at Leo's empty chair,
knowing that his friend, tumbling helplessly in space towards his death,
is free of the aliens too.
So Quatermass 2, we previously talked about Quatermass 3, which some people at the BBC have said is the best and finest we've ever done.
And I don't, I'm going to ask you how you feel about it here in a second.
This came before it, obviously.
Quatermass 3, I should say.
Yes.
I quite like the fact that Quatermass 2, which, I mean, it's a bit like, it's one of those kind of odd numbering schemes like Mission Impossible 3 being followed by Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol.
But actually, the Quatermass experiment is about an experiment by Professor Quatermass.
Quatermass and the Pit is about the pit that Quatermass is called to examine.
Quatermass 2 is about a rocket called Quatermass 2.
So it's not as totally barking as it sounds.
Yeah, I don't like numbered names of movies or TV shows.
I know why they do it.
They do it because of name brand recognition.
You've built up one name and then you don't want to lose that.
Well, yes, but you've got the name recognition in the Quatermass experiment.
Right.
So they want to keep it, you know.
Anyway, I had just assumed it was like a lack of imagination.
I mean, I'm not saying it's the most imaginative title ever,
but the fact that the rocket is the Quatermass 2,
which is a kind of common naming scheme for rockets.
The hubris of the man to name it after himself.
Yeah, I guess that's a bit much.
But I guess what I was going to say is I kind of disagree.
I think I like Quatermass 2 better than Quatermass in the Pit.
And Quatermass in the Pit is amazing.
I loved this. I thought this was fantastic.
Wow. I really did.
I mean, yes, it's obviously
a rip-off of Spearhead from Space
and Invisible Enemy
and all those shows that came out
in the 70s.
But
it, you know, just like when we talked about
Quatermass in the Pit, how the
pieces, the episodes flow
from one to the next and
the cliffhangers aren't forced
but they're good. The story
just continues to unfold.
It's so well
structured. It's so much
better than the copies that have come after it.
And I don't mean Quatermass
in the pit now, but I'm talking about things like Spearhead
from Space and all the alien
invasions who take over the people
and you don't know. I mean, it's just
really, really well done.
Nigel Neill deserves what
he's done. Now you're going to tell me you hated it
because I can just tell from the
shock reaction.
But okay, go ahead.
I mean, I've got to agree with some of what you say,
which is it is incredibly well done.
So the caveat is you're watching a Nigel Neill Quatermass story.
It's going to be quality.
But the place where I'm going to disagree with you
is that it's better than Quatermass and the Pit.
To me, this, I mean, Quatermass 2 is that kind of difficult second album thing.
And I absolutely take your point.
It's, you can see how incredibly influential it is in terms of all of the elements in here that are copied.
But they're not necessarily the things that I am particularly fond of.
I mean, funnily enough, I mean, I get where you're saying spearhead from space.
the farmer on almost an identical tractor, I guess.
The whole scene with the meteor tracking station,
it's almost shot for shot copy.
Yes, yes.
At the beginning.
I can see that, but it's not necessarily what...
Homage, sorry, homage.
Yes, well, it's not necessarily what was foremost in my mind.
Maybe in episode one,
although it kind of felt like a sort of second rate unit story.
In fact, that kind of continued as a through line.
So I wouldn't have been...
I like Spearhead from Space.
It's a top-notch unit story.
So I'm thinking more along the lines of Terror of the Autons.
And maybe it was only when Roger Delgado turned up
that I started really thinking about unit.
But, for example, in Quatermass 2,
certainly by the second episode,
Neil has invented the Robomen,
From which is the first story with Robo-Men?
Is it Dalek Invasion of Earth?
Dalek Invasion of Earth, yeah.
Okay.
You know, the Robo-Men are not my all-time...
Dalek Invasion of Earth is actually quite a good story in as much as Dalek stories go.
Neither you nor I are particularly fond of Daleks,
but I think at least they're better than people wearing Alice bands
talking in slightly monotonous voices.
Okay, he hasn't put Alice bands on,
but they are talking in slightly monotonous voices.
It is very obvious that they are supposed to be possessed.
Yeah.
And they're wearing the same kind of clothes, practically.
Yeah, as they would be in a Terry Nation story.
Yeah.
It's better than the subsequent copies.
Yes.
It's a quality serial because it is, you know,
it's Nigel Neill and, you know, Rudolf Cartier.
Yes, it's good.
But that doesn't mean it's without its flaws.
I think there are a lot of things about this story and the production that ended up continuously irritating me.
Okay, well, let's talk about the production for a little bit because that's one of the things that I really noticed.
And I'm not saying it's better or worse.
It's just that when I was watching it, it feels like there is 50, 60 percent of it shot on film in advance.
Yes. And I felt like there was about zero percent in in Quatermass in the pit or very little.
I would agree. I would agree. I can't remember how much was in Quatermass in the pit.
And, you know, one of the things that is inevitably going to kind of influence any judgment based on the actual production values
is the quality of the restoration.
Yeah.
Because, you know, if people are listening
to Fusion Patrol decades in the future,
maybe some miracle restoration will have occurred.
But I just remember being absolutely,
and I think I probably rhapsodised it
for half the podcast discussion we had about the pit,
just how amazingly good quality the images
for that serial are.
looking at it now, 60-whatever years on.
Whereas the quality of this serial is much more like you would expect
for something from 1955 that was basically...
I think I read somewhere that it was the first serial
that was actually repeated, as in normally at the time,
they would simply have...
A repeat would have meant a re-performance.
They'd have just done it again live.
And so it very much was still of the era when they weren't expecting to keep it.
And it's a lot of it is, you know, this heavy vignetting and it's all quite soft.
Yeah.
And it just it shows its age.
I could forgive that.
But I do think part of part of what we part of what makes it so.
Well, first off, part of it is the fact that they're out in an actual field driving around in a car and you know that's not a studio.
right i mean you just yeah yeah well that's not a studio but there is a very clear delineation
between those inserts that were shot on film and and that which is done presumably live to tape
yes and i think part of what we're seeing part of why it's glaring is because there's such a
difference in the quality part of the reason it's such a quality is that's such an early technology
at this point that i think what they're doing is they're playing film into a tv camera and then
they're recording the tv camera as they did yes so we got a two generation down on the film and
so there is a very big jump you've got there's definitely vignetting there um that's more
prevalent on the film uh but not exclusively it varies so some of the some of the film is not
is not at all bad and and the thing that surprised me about it because you expect to see film inserts
for exterior shots but you expect them to be like you I was quite surprised how much there was but
not nearly surprised as when they actually started having dialogue scenes outside yeah and so it's
it's like not you know not only are they playing in these film inserts but they've actually they've
that they've actually got audio recordings for yeah yes it is impressive i really did i i'm with
you i expected when you see the jeep driving across the fields i expect oh that's time for
them to run to their new set while they're playing yes far running they get to the new set and they
you know wipe their hair down get the sweat off their face and like go i'm in front of an
unrealistic tree but it wasn't they would show up in a field with a farmer and you go well wow
it must have needed a really long transition and they start talking you go what really why didn't
they do this in quatermass in the pit why a few years later did they basically completely abandon
that so my my technological advancement i agree it is it is it is a technological advancement and
it's almost like what we get in greater mass 2 is a story that is intended to take advantage of that
technological advancement because you get all of the stuff that's shot in the refinery which i have
to say looks really great and there's there's an awful lot of kind of traveling around you know um
quater mass goes off to the facility and then you've got the scenes with the villagers and the
rioting and this is but you know back and back and forth and you've got characters in london and then
eventually uh i guess we'll come to uh leaving the earth and going into space um which wasn't
on location just to be clear um the thing that struck me most about that was that i felt that
the weakness of this story was that it didn't have that kind that same kind of claustrophobic
sense of urgency that ultimately Quatermass and the pit managed to build up and in in Quatermass
and the pit the the exterior shots the film inserts are much more about creating the atmosphere in
establishing shots before you go into the kind of studio shot stuff and they're almost seamless in
it that they're very because I think you're no longer talking at that point about not because
it's that much later but just because it's that much less ambitious about pushing the limits of
the technology but the that that that kind of limitation that really serves the story whereas
this story I'm not sure I agree that the structure is as good that one episode just kind of leave
leads into another because it doesn't feel like after the first couple of episodes there is a kind
of progression it it feels like some of the strands of the story are almost completely
i mean to take to take one example what happens to fowler obviously taken over and then i think i i
kind of i kind of uh hedged my statement there in the in the recap where i said he plays no further
part in the story i think he's one of the people that was on the phone okay at the end trying to
call i mean once you're taken over you're off the table and i and i in a way i kind of um so we can
compare and contrast fowler and dylan here um you're you're you're compromised by the aliens
and then you're gone we it's a it's almost a you could start it as being a sort of analog for dead
your ally is dead and then they held that back till very very towards the end where suddenly
dylan shows up again and he's full-on working for the for the aliens yes yes which makes that um
And from decades of watching these kinds of shows, of course, I was expecting him far earlier in the story.
I was expecting more people to be taken over and then suddenly working against Quatermass.
But they don't.
They take them off the table and they're gone, just like Conrad.
He's fought long enough.
But after that, that's the end of it.
And when we start hearing from the newspaper, turns out the newspaper is taken over, too.
And to your other point about Quatermass and the Pit being more claustrophobic and the production fits that, I agree that that is a tight drama that takes place in the pit.
And so that is not an issue.
By being able to get out and be anywhere in a country field or in London or whatever, you get more of a feel of just how pervasive this invasion is.
There is no safe, but you can't leave the pit and go be safe,
which in the earlier episodes of Quatermass and the Pit, you can.
Yes, but I also...
But here, it's just a different story.
I think that's one of the things about Quatermass and the Pit,
is the point at which it actually kind of goes global, as it were,
is right at the end.
So it feels like it builds up quite slowly,
but then it starts to get really serious at the end.
Quatermass 2, stuff is, by the end of episode 4, going into episode 5,
stuff is already pretty much globally catastrophic.
And it feels like...
Isn't that the point?
I mean, actually, things are actually globally catastrophic by the time episode 1 started.
And nobody knew it.
Nobody knew it, yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's a coherent story in that sense.
But in terms of the structure, where does that leave you to go?
By the time you get into episode five and episode six, well, six takes you off into space.
That didn't feel like that.
Again, it felt like a diversion.
It didn't feel like a natural climax to the story that we had been exploring, which was very much about the terrestrial threat on Earth.
I'll concede that I did not expect them to go into space.
I never expected them to them personally to leave the Earth.
I expected the Quatermass 2 to be used as a missile.
Yes.
And so when they were getting ready to go into space,
my expectations changed in my head to be,
huh, something's going to stop them from going into space
because they're not going into space.
Quatermass is not going into space.
That's not going to happen.
Well, obviously, we know Quatermass survives.
Right.
That wouldn't have been true of people viewing it at the time.
Yeah, he could have died saving the Earth.
That's reasonable.
It felt to me like the story...
Because Quatermass was the hero,
and you had to have this resolution of the Pew Pew storyline.
They had to be the ones that went off in the rocket,
which felt contrived,
and it also felt like it separated you from where the real action was.
Because, I mean, the thing about these aliens is that they are obviously the kind of...
Without them being able to possess humans, without them being able to take over humans,
there's nothing much to them.
So, you take Quatermass and Pew away from all of that.
And now you've got the Quatermass, the sort of climax to the Pew story,
but that doesn't feel like the climax to the alien invasion story, if that makes any sense.
I don't know. I'm having trouble putting my finger on it.
But for some reason, the structure doesn't quite feel satisfying to me.
It's probably just the really bad special effects in the final sequence.
It's probably put you on.
I mean, I don't mind the special effects too much.
But again, what I would point out with Quatermass and The Pit
is that although the special effects are not very much advanced,
what they do with what they've got is much more effective
because it's not asking that much more than what is possible.
It's working within the limits and, yeah,
maybe doing something that's more impressive than anyone has done before,
but still.
Well, I'm certainly not in any way dissing Quatermass 3.
I just kind of felt I enjoyed this one far better than I expected to, frankly.
Well, I wasn't sure.
Not that I didn't think I would like it.
And I'm sure I must have seen Quatermass 2 or whatever it was called in the theaters in the United States.
I wouldn't have seen it in the theaters, of course, but on television.
And yet I watched a trailer for that the other day.
And I don't recognize any of that either.
I mean, just the visuals.
I feel like I haven't seen it.
But this storyline is so pervasive through so many things since then
that it's really easy to get them confused in your head.
They go, oh, yeah, I remember there was different actors,
but, yeah, it was kind of the same idea, so it must have been the film,
but maybe not.
Because the trailer for Quatermass 2, the movie, looks remarkably like this serial.
You know, from the scenes that I saw.
And I'm looking at that going, well, I know Nigel Neill hated it.
But did he hate it because they ruined the story?
Because they had better ideas?
Or did he hate it because he didn't get paid?
I think he hated all the movies.
I see.
But he did write the second one, didn't he?
For the screenplay?
I didn't think he did.
I thought somebody rewrote it.
afterwards.
I don't know.
He wrote a draft
for the film, was my understanding.
It wasn't that they just
took what he'd done for TV
and did their thing
with it like they did with
Bratermass and the Pit.
It's been a while since I read his biography,
but I thought
he disliked all of them, but I could be wrong.
And I'm sure there's at least one listener
out there, probably in New Zealand,
is going to correct me.
I mean even if he wrote it he's entitled to dislike what they did with it
that's true I don't think he liked the actors either
so right I have a question about that which is another major thing
I mean so I mean I had I knew literally nothing about Quatermass 2
that included the plot it also included the fact that I had no idea
who was going to be in it so when you kind of get Hugh Griffiths
When you see Mark Gatiss's father.
Mark Gatiss's father?
No, I don't know.
I don't think he is.
But every time I saw him, I'm like, that looks like an old Mark Gatiss.
Who?
Guy playing Quatermass.
They're of the same facial structure here in this one, in Quatermass 2.
To me.
That did not occur to me.
What did occur to me was that I didn't like his Quatermass.
So obviously one of the things about these serials is they each have a different Quatermass.
And I mean, I think Andre Morel is the best way to mass.
I don't think that's a particularly original opinion for me to have.
And obviously he was the first one to be offered the part.
But John Robinson just seems a little bit, there's not a lot of sympathy for him.
He's convincingly smart and he gets quite passionate about his project or upset about its potential demise.
But what I don't get so much from him is any sense of warmth from his side of the friendship with Hugh Pugh.
I don't get any kind of real sense of paternity towards Paula.
And I don't really get what makes him tick, to be honest. I mean, other than the fact that we all would think if we knew what a kind of terrible fate was facing the Earth, because that's what he finds out, then we would do everything we can to stop it.
Yeah, I'll agree with that. He is a bit neutral. I mean, I get that he just nuked part of Australia, and I realize that where the Australian test grounds are, they actually have detonated nukes, and so it's not that big of a deal. But there's nobody actually living there except probably aboriginals.
But all the people working on it.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, yes, he's devastated by all that.
Yes, maybe being British, he demonstrates his absolute sorrow
by saying nothing and expressing nothing and keeping stiff upper lip.
But it does mean that you don't get any, I guess, yeah,
I mean, I guess you just don't get a read on how he's reacting to things,
what he thinks for example about what has happened to Dylan I mean he's he's he goes and
remonstrates he says you know my my friend has been taken there I want to but it's not it's not
just that that you're thinking about because clearly what he's done is take the man who his
daughter loves and inadvertently it's true but lead him into a terribly dangerous situation and
And now he's kind of disappeared.
And right up to where he breaks it to her,
it's just you don't get what's going on in his head.
I don't know.
But I was not overwhelmed by John Robinson's performance.
Let's put it that way.
I will agree.
He wouldn't be my first choice.
But then you know how that goes.
Quatermass in the pit, that's my first Quatermass.
And so that's always your favorite.
But yeah.
So a couple of things I'm going to just say before anybody also tries to correct me on this one.
I pulled up some pictures while you were talking, and I was listening, of stills.
And I got to say, in a still, this guy does not trigger my Mark Ennis reaction.
I look at that and I go, huh, don't see it.
But when it's live and watching it on the show, it does.
I was watching that thinking, wow, what a horrible mistake they made when they redid the Quatermass experiment.
And they used Dennis as the opposing scientist instead of using him as equator mass.
Maybe it's the way they move their face.
I don't know.
But something in the motion triggers that in me, and I see it all the time.
Looking at these pictures?
No.
Second, movie?
Yes.
Screenplay and story by Nigel Neill, according to.
Although, Val Guest is also given screenplay credit,
And that, I think, was one of those contentious things.
So maybe it was Quatermass 2 and Val Guest's rewrites that he didn't like.
I don't remember.
But yeah, I'll agree.
The other Quatermass is definitely better.
There's no doubt about that.
So then there's, I mean, I liked some of the Guest cards.
I mean, Hugh Griffiths, fantastic.
Wilford Bramble pops up in one episode.
Roger Delgado pops up in one episode.
It's quite kind of star-studded.
Van Dyke.
It's just not
Roger Delgado without that.
That's the first time I've ever seen him without that
in anything. Yes.
Yes.
Maybe it's the only thing.
I've definitely seen him in other non-Doctor
Who stuff where he had it, so I assume
that is how he normally
groomed himself.
But I've never seen
anything this early. I've never seen any
Roger Delgado stuff from
this early on. So that was
um it was yeah i really didn't have any problems with the cast um except well i would say it's okay
but quick quick quick well i kind of felt like monica gray was there to make quatermass look
animated i oh his daughter so she was yeah uh yeah paula paula quatermass played by monica gray
who i i looked up and it turns out that she wasn't actually the production team's choice
She was the wife of the head of radio drama.
And there's one reviewer who rather cruelly,
but rather entertainingly describes her as not so much an actress
as a finishing school on legs.
And it is kind of quite accurate.
Apparently, though, she had to learn all of Hugh Griffith's lines
in case he didn't manage to.
yes yes um and i i i cute my favorite hugh grift's performance is as um this drunken character in the
titfield thunderbolt and he i mean he is just wonderful in it it must it must be more or less
contemporaneous with this and i've never really seen him interviewed so i don't know what the
actor himself is like but the the the description of him as as someone who's you know struggles with
the technical dialogue struggles with remembering his lines whatever sounds like the character he
plays in the titfield thunderbolt so i'm now imagining him as being exactly like that
yeah i i he came off pretty well but i will say that when he got up and he started and i mentioned
it again in the recap when he got up and he started rambling on about his childhood and
being a mathematical genius and being able to perform the the the plot device plot warning
flags and alarms were just going off in my head at that point like okay that's that's he's gonna
die saving the world i thought he didn't turns out but uh which again kudos to nigel neil he
can lead me down a path where i can spot the obvious hell that this character's pivotal but
I didn't spot how the character would pivot because all the time, think of all the, this
is fascinating.
This is what I really, really appreciated about this story.
I'll have to put a whole bunch of pieces together.
Quater Mass appeared like a complete idiot, not realizing that Conrad had been taken over,
the journalist.
When that happened, everyone is screaming at the TV.
He's been taken over.
Look at the way he's driving.
Look at the way he's acting.
He's been taken over, you big dummy.
I mean, for crying out loud, he reached out at,
and in the meteors, it came down.
He was in its immediate proximity.
You should know this, but Quatermass doesn't appear to know that.
So when we're on the ship and, or when he bumps into Leo,
Leo has been given a plausible, at the factory,
he's been given a plausible explanation as to why he's not right.
He's just been dumped over by poison gas.
So you're in the audience and you're going,
he looks like he's taken over,
but he was just dumped over by poison gas.
And we already kind of know he's going to die in this story.
The poison gas, which transmits the hominids.
Well, but I don't know.
Does the poison gas transmit the hominids?
I don't know.
I didn't think that.
I thought that was just the atmosphere that they lived in escaping.
So I didn't take that from it.
Well, okay, but the hominids were living in it.
Yes, so they're possible.
And if they're exposed to the oxygen, they die.
But obviously, you've got to think if they're freed and there are clouds of this poison,
they are going to survive up until the point where the gas disperses and the oxygen overwhelms them.
But I guess my point being, at that point in time, A, Quatermass still didn't know Conrad had been taken over.
Yeah.
Well, actually, yes, he did, because the people from the pub told him. But Quatermass had been an idiot about that. He's plausibly being an idiot again about it, because we already saw that he couldn't figure it out. Now he's watching it. He might not be figuring it out. We do have an excuse why Leo might be behaving that way. So is the audience kind of maybe on the fence? You know, I think he's probably taken over, but at the same time, surely he's going to be the hero because he was destined for greatness by his math teachers.
And then you also have, you have the thing where we saw that Conrad wasn't overwhelmed immediately.
That Conrad had the ability to fight it and carry on.
And that's, you know, when you're on the ship and Quatermass is still looking like he's an idiot.
And not knowing that Leo's taken over.
Despite the fact that Leo brought the gun on board.
And all of these pieces are in play.
Does Quatermass know or not?
Does Leo, is he really taken over or not?
If he is taken over, is he fighting it and still fighting to save the Earth?
And he's, you know, it's just a matter of time before he succumbs to it.
And then Quatermass reveals that he was smart enough to figure out that Leo was probably taken over.
And all of those pieces, it's like, I just feel like Neil has set those up on the board really, really well.
That you just can't be 100% certain of what's going on there, which is great.
because I hate knowing exactly where everything is.
Well, yes.
I mean, obviously the uncertainty is important to it
and it has to be sustained over quite a long period
because you've got an entire episode
from him being exposed to the gas
to the kind of ultimate, his demise.
So you've got to be kept guessing by it.
The thing that irritates me
is when there is this kind of extreme dramatic irony.
Like, as you say, everyone is shouting at the television.
Except that I thought the way that Delgado played that
and the way that Neil had written it was pretty good
because he gets to explain himself
and it fits with his performance.
When Pew is under the influence,
like you say, it feels like we should...
It feels like Quatermass, there's a little bit more experience there.
You know, fool me once, shame on you, that kind of thing.
To, again, Neil's credit, you have the sequence where the doctor examines him
and they actually discuss the possibility that he's been taken over.
And I quite like that because, obviously, they are expressing what the audience is thinking.
You're also establishing the fact that you don't know or you don't have a way.
They don't have a way.
Quatermass doesn't have a way of knowing for sure because they haven't, you know, they obviously haven't had the time or any opportunity to develop some kind of test of some sort.
I mean, I don't know what it would be, whether it would be a kind of medical test or whether it would be some kind of exercise that you could perform to prove that you're still.
Well, but, you know, how quickly does the mark appear?
Is it the same for everybody?
You know, you don't have that kind of that.
It'd be the first thing I do to base any kind of conclusions.
I'm not sure it would be the first thing you do.
I think what you would probably do would be, first of all, assume the worst.
And then you would start working on the test.
So you would in in in a circumstance like this, you would say there is no way we can we can be sure that he hasn't been infected.
So we must assume he has been.
Oh, in terms of how you play it, sure, you probably should go, you should work on the assumption that the person in your midst might be a spy if there's been an opportunity of them being compromised.
I don't disagree with that.
But, you know, the only thing that we know, the only thing we know that you can spot about them is, A, that they behave a little weirdly, and B, that they end up with a mark, which I will point out in the case of Broadhead showed up very quickly, within an hour or so.
Yes, but we don't know that it happens.
to everyone, but we do know this, that the only thing we know about them that you can tell is if
they have the mark, they have been taken over. So it would make sense that if you suspected someone
and said, I suspect you take your clothes off, we're going to do a body search. And if they say
no, or they submit to it and you cannot find the mark, it doesn't prove that they aren't.
If you do find the mark, it does prove that they were. So it's better than just going, well, I don't know a conclusive test, so why bother trying?
Well, it would be better, although it would have limited value if what you actually need is conclusive proof that they are uninfected because you find the mark or you don't find the mark.
Neither of those is going to prove they're uninfected. So you're not any further on.
The thing that the thing that the other thing that the complaint I have, if you like, is although we have the although we have this sequence with Conrad where he actually describes how he got infected and how foolish it was and then talks about having fought it and he's struggling to get his story through.
what what that makes me think is if you are infected you know you are infected and in some
cases you can struggle against it and if you put those things together why wouldn't someone like
pew if he knows he's infected but has any any kind of vestiges of of his true personality still there
wouldn't the thing that he would say would be i think i'm infected quite possibly quite possibly
Why didn't Conrad do that?
I don't know.
I mean, even in Conrad's case, although you can come up with plausible excuses because there isn't that same bond of trust between him and Quatermass,
the way that he behaves immediately after being infected, which is the kind of the glassy-eyed performance or whatever,
which in dramatic terms is there to show the audience that he's infected.
But in story terms, you kind of think, well, why is he like that then?
And yet later on, when you would expect the infection to have taken hold, he's massively more animated and he's actually, he's fighting it much more vigorously.
And I don't quite understand, you know, there could be an explanation for it, but we're never given it.
It could be part of the reason why they took Dylan off and he was out of the story for a while.
I mean, not just for the dramatic purpose of it, but in other words, there may be a period of time where you're just not stable with the creature in you.
You know, there's a shell shot period and then there's something else.
But we don't get that. So I concur that there's nothing in the story.
If that were the case, if the security guards or whoever would take someone like Dylan off because you're so unstable that it would be obvious that you were infected, well then surely it would be obvious to everyone around Conrad that he was infected.
You know, Quatermass is with him at that time.
And likewise with Pew, wouldn't that be obvious too?
Quatermass spends an entire car journey with him and then he goes through a medical examination all during that kind of post-infection period.
So it feels like there is a dramatic convenience to the way in which the kind of initially infected person is performed.
And there is also a kind of storyline convenience to having people, and it's really just those two, but having people being able to kind of have that struggle between the true selves and the infected self.
But it's never kind of married up.
The justification for the dramatic needs of the story
is never fully explained.
One thing you touched on, I just want to say,
I loved the flight surgeon telling them both
that he wouldn't let them fly.
It's just such a weird piece of drama that they added in there.
Drama is not the right word,
scene that they added in that was completely and utterly unnecessary to the story unless it was
there to have the doctor fob the audience off by asking reminding you that he'd inhaled poisonous
gas uh earlier and was checking them out and that a doctor can't tell that there's anything uh wrong
with uh q in that case but i i just i i was just amused by the fact that it's like i have flight
surgeons that's actually a real thing they're not going to send an old man like that into space
it's just not going to happen in the real world even especially back then but um you know they
might do it for a science experiment now but uh yeah so i i love that um let's see i of course
we've already talked about the fact that this spawns so many tropes the secret alien invasion
the top level government infiltration the mind control the roboman kind of stuff i mean it just
what what what i i mean yes okay it did turn out to be a a secret uh invasion taking over
parts of government but what i quite liked early on um sort of roundabout the episode two mark
episode two the mark um was this conflict that was going on within within whitehall in in effect
that Quatermass was investigating this mystery that appeared to be an extraterrestrial mystery,
leading him to a top secret military establishment that then turned out to be a project run within
his own ministry. And I thought, wow, this is all quite, you know, this is a British X-Files
some almost 40 years before the x-files yeah yeah it it it was i am sure there's been other
government government takeover maybe maybe not of kinds of things but it is neil is good and he was
good uh you know he he was good i i i do love the way that old british tv shows um and movies do this
And I've seen it.
They used to do it in Sherlock Holmes all the time, too.
So it's not just that.
It's in the stories.
I'm sure you recognize the signature when they were talking about whoever had sent the orders over to when Dylan came along.
It's like, so who was it?
Was that the Queen or was that Winston Churchill?
Who would be the top in orders like that?
Five minutes a day.
Okay.
So it's, well, Churchill, I think.
I don't remember when Churchill was out.
In 55.
That's when he ended.
but I don't know when in 50 April of 55 and when was this that's a darn good question I think it's
late in the year so it would be Clement Attlee Attlee would be the next one splendid so but yeah
it's October November yeah no but I I always love it when they do that I can remember those from
look at it and it's like we're not going to tell the name I'm sure there's something to do with
some sort of legal issue there but I don't know what it is I don't think it is a legal issue
Really? I've always had this feeling that they intentionally have left, you don't put any kind of contemporary famous name in that you're just like, we're not, we're gonna, we're gonna gloss over that because it's so...
Well, I think the only issue is that it's a kind of separation of politics from entertainment.
Could be.
And I'm not sure it's entirely legal. I think there's a kind of, there is a cultural thing. This is before Beyond the Fringe, and that was the week that was, and all of the kind of satire boom of the 60s. So there is a kind of extreme deference towards that stuff. And obviously there are, and as there still are, duties on the BBC in terms of impartiality.
But I've seen it in other non-BBC things, too. Like I say, in the actual Sherlock Holmes stories, I'm sure that there's at least one or two instances where they must be referring. Yeah, I think that's one. I think there's another instance where they kind of go, and you're left in doubt as to who it was, but it's obviously someone way up in the government. Way, way, way up.
So, yeah, it just it feels contrived. And it's, you know, because they don't even say, you know, orders from the PM. They say, here are my orders. Do you recognize that signature? Yes, I do. I think it's genuine. I'm not going to say it's the PM. They don't have to name the person. I mean, it's a fictional universe. And yet they don't name.
It's true. And nothing I've said would stop you saying it's the prime minister.
Yeah, I guess you could. But then there's that. It's the contemporary prime minister.
So you are naming them possibly. I don't know.
Yeah, that's a fair point.
So episode four has a warning on it.
Yes.
You shouldn't watch children.
Children and those of you who may have a nervous disposition.
And yet, I don't know whether that's because that's all that got survived, or did all the episodes have that warning, or just episode four?
And there are two questions to that.
One, what was it in episode four that was so bad, because I was watching for it.
I go, ooh, there must be something in this one.
Is that the one where the family was killed?
No, that was in episode three.
You mean the Picnickers, where Quatermass says something like, that accounts for the gunfire.
which was one of those things where I was thinking
hmm, yeah, I don't like this Quatermass very much
It's kind of cold
It was a bit cold
But yeah, I thought that was much more disturbing
than anything I remember seeing in episode 4
What I suspect the reason may be
is that they may have had complaints
and I don't know this
Oh, that's possible
I've not read anything about it
but it would not surprise me
if making that announcement was more reactive than anticipatory.
Okay, that's fair.
That they had had the equivalent of the Mary White House of the day
on the blower saying, you know, how dare you broadcast this stuff.
Now, what I really dislike about that, though, is,
but now that you explain it as a possible reactive, that does make sense,
and I can concur with that.
I would be very, very angry if I'd been a kid
watching the first three episodes of that and episode four came on and that warning came up my
parents said nope to bed and i didn't get to watch it because of that yeah that would that would be
or or you know someone's stick pins in the effigy of mary white house faint disposition i better
leave and and never see what happened that but i must i must say i i did i liked the fact like
like you say it's not it's not entirely clear whether there may have been some other warnings
on other episodes like during the pre-announcement,
so the continuity announcer.
But it's the trappings of what, you know,
the furniture around a TV serial
because we've kind of mentioned just how influential
and therefore essentially timeless Nigel Neill's work itself actually is.
And we still have the six-part serial
and the half-hour drama in some format.
But there are bits of it that look very, very different.
And it's the phrasing of that, you know,
that children and those of you with a nervous disposition.
And the other one I picked up on, which I really, really liked,
was that in the credits of episode two,
where he goes off to prefab town,
the mother in the prefab is played by Hilda Fenmore.
But when it comes up on the credits, it says,
not as advertised, because it's an era.
Well, when first of all, because they're doing it live, if someone is indisposed, you know, as happened in the Mind Robber, for example, if someone is indisposed, then you have to get someone else because you can't wait for them to be well again.
But in the meantime, obviously, Radio Times has gone to print with the cast list in it, because it's not like it was in the can weeks before Radio Times went to press.
Radio Times went to press based on who they were rehearsing with and who they intended would be playing the part on the night.
And so, you know, it's something you would never get anymore.
But in and I don't even think they would care about if they if they did have something alive now and they'd said it would be played by someone and then it was played by someone else.
They wouldn't care about the Radio Times readers who were pouring over the magazine.
Hang on a minute. And then looking at the credits and going, that's not the same.
But, you know, that was that mattered then.
And I loved that.
In the soap opera, US soap opera 60s, Dark Shadows, which was shot, I think, almost live to tape, very similar to this, one a day kind of thing.
There were a few episodes where a regular character, first thing you'd hear as the credits open up would be,
The part of Victoria Winters will be played by Jane Smith today.
And it would be a completely different actress.
You know, she was there yesterday and she's there the day after.
And whatever happened, she wasn't there.
And then just the understudy or somebody came in and read the lines.
And so they just told you.
Because you want to do it.
Yeah.
You know, but usually those are fairly major recurring characters that you're invested in here.
It's only in the episode.
Yeah, I'm impressed at how well.
I mean, obviously the British acting system is so good because that woman came in and she did that part.
And I never for a second, you know, would have thought she was a last minute substitution, like having to do her lines.
The professionalism.
It's not like it.
Well, it's not like she had a huge number of lines to learn.
But what I like is what I like is the.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
You're British and you missed the sarcasm in that comment.
Sorry, go ahead.
Go ahead.
It's the people.
I have no idea who was actually because the credits don't tell you who was slated to play the role.
I'd have to dig out the Radio Times edition for October the Whatever 1955.
But the people who had tuned in to see whoever it was played the role of mother for one episode.
That was the apology for them.
Yeah, it's her family.
Like, oh, she's going to be on a telly.
And then they are all sitting around.
And then it's like, it wasn't her.
Probably writing in nasty letters.
Let's see.
So one of the things I want to point out is that, you know, the spearhead from space connection is obvious.
The fact that John Pertwee's, now we've seen two separate Quatermass stories.
We've seen the one that you could arguably say may have had something to do with the daemons.
We've seen the one that obviously is spearhead from space and other things.
That John Pertwee's era was supposed to be basically Quatermass.
Heard that before.
That's the vibe they were going for when they moved it to the Earth-based thing.
That they were trying to capitalize on that and kind of make it a Quatermass-like version of Doctor Who.
I can see that.
As you say, this is like a proto-unit story.
I mean, I can totally see this.
You watch these two things, and now I'll never look at the Pertwee era again without seeing that sort of,
When they went into it at the start, this is clearly what they were working on.
Government conspiracies, alien invasions coming in,
having the military, being at loggerheads with the military at times.
It's got that vibe.
Obviously, as Pertwee's era evolved on, they started to move away from that
and back to the more original Who format.
But even in Trivia Bit, I don't know if you knew this one,
but for the audience.
And again, I'm sure there's someone who will correct me,
but I know parts of this are back.
Invisible Enemy, which of course has, you know,
an alien taking over the minds of people,
and it's not exactly the same by any stretch of the magic.
In Invisible Enemy, the doctor looks in some tanks
where they're growing the virus,
and they're bubbling and frothing.
That is either test footage
or was part of a failed production to restage Quatermass 2.
And it's very obvious if you look at it.
I mean, it's, yeah, it doesn't quite have the writhing, leafy spinach look,
but, yeah, it's got to be.
It's interesting that someone was doing that at the BBC.
You know, if they were going to redo them, why didn't they redo it?
Why wouldn't they redo the first one instead?
Yeah, yes, which is much better.
Let's see.
Do I have anything else?
Oh, I did look it up.
Yes, there was a proposed color version of Quatermass 2.
I'm reading this off a website.
Oh, it's the BBC.
Okay.
It's the BBC's website that says, and this is the whole quote,
The model shots of the vats of the spawning virus on Titan in the final episode
were not actually created specifically for the invisible enemy.
They had, in fact, been made for a proposed new color version of the classic sci-fi thriller,
The Quatermass Experiment.
However, the project was abandoned and the footage was put to use in this story instead.
except of course obviously it wouldn't be the quatermass experiment because there were no vats
of bubbling alien domes so i could that's an interesting question i would have thought they
would do quatermass in the pit actually to be honest i i would have thought they'd have done
all three well received i would have done all three if i were the bbc because you didn't have
good copies not if you had a bbc budget well yeah well they've done it before they could do it again
just on a Doctor Who budget.
I mean, they're doing Doctor Who.
They were doing maybe Blake 7 by then.
They should have been able to do.
Maybe even the tripods.
That was probably a little bit later on.
Let's see.
Do I have anything else?
I do want to say that it is one of the best deaths ever for Leo.
Not because he just gets rocketed out into space by the recoil,
which, you know, fair enough.
I've seen that in other stories, too.
after this um it was it was the how effective it was with his voice continuing to echo in in
quater mass's helmet and he couldn't shut it off you just have to listen to it coming in the radio
as this guy goes on and on and on um i kind of thought it was interesting that they didn't get
any dialogue from him after he had been freed of the influence but yeah i i i thought that was
just just keep just keep shouting over the dialogue ignore everything that everyone else
is talking you just keep calling for help and uh because you're dying and there's nothing you can
do um i i thought it was very good that was very good yeah um do we have anything to say about the
time on the asteroid the time their time what they did on the asteroid anything that happened
out there any comments on it no yeah kind of just the whole thing was yeah i think one of my probably
my biggest complaint about the rocket sequences was i thought and maybe maybe i missed it i thought
that the flaw with the rocket was in takeoff and so the yes the fact that they were going to launch
this rocket in england just meant it was going to nuke in england and not necessarily because did
Could they take off without firing up the nuclear?
It wasn't in takeoff.
It was with the nuclear motor.
Maybe.
Which I wasn't sure.
I wasn't clear.
And maybe it's because I missed something.
But I wasn't clear that they needed to do that in order to take off.
Okay.
But they were doing it on the launch pad for some reason.
Part of the confusion is that they didn't really explain that.
And then they had to do something about venting the fuel so that they could cause it to explode.
And if they'd done that in Australia, you're like, why were they renting the fuel before they're going to take off?
I don't understand.
All those things didn't quite, that was a little bit, this is awfully convenient that the thing that accidentally is a bomb,
you can now intentionally make a bomb only when you want it to go off.
That part I will grant was not particularly good.
And also the fact that it had a nose cone that could return home.
There was no indication that these guys were ever coming back.
We're going up there and we're going to detonate this thing and we're going to die.
Yes, but that was because it was going to detonate, not because they didn't think the rocket was capable of coming back.
Yeah, but I thought that the rocket was the rocket, not that there was a second escape stage at the front of the rocket.
Because there was no mention of that.
It was kind of like, well, it's a one-way trip.
And they know it's a one-way trip.
They're going up there.
They're going to get the asteroid.
They're going to detonate the rocket.
They're going to die.
And they're going to save the world doing it.
That's the idea.
Yes.
I never got the whole, okay, we're sitting there.
We're setting it up.
Okay, let's go get back to the escape capsule.
It's like, what?
What escape capsule?
And then, I mean, again, one of the reasons why I didn't think Quatermass was going to go into space at all was that that seemed like an absolute guaranteed suicide mission.
And I already knew he was alive for Quatermass 3.
Yes.
So, yeah, that part was a little, perhaps a little.
I do want to watch the movie now.
I do want to watch the movie now and see the liberties that were taken with it.
But, and who knows, maybe it's good.
I think it did good box office.
Have you got anything else on Waitermass 2?
Nope.
Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
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Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf.
This has been a Lone Locust production.
Ooh, the tripods!
Just had an idea for a possible later series for us to do.
I