WEBVTT

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We take a single episode of a science fiction TV series and overanalyze it to within an

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inch of its life.

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This is the Fusion Patrol podcast.

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Welcome to the discussion.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.

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And I'm Simon.

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And tonight we're looking at the Nigel Neal classic TV serial, Quatermass 2.

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A radar post observes the arrival of yet another meteor under orders for secrecy.

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Captain Dillon goes to investigate.

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The meteorite, Broken, is found in a field where a stunned farmer sits.

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His wife, in a panic, frantically worrying about her husband.

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Dillon and his men are under orders to do nothing about the meteors.

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But it's damned curious, and he decides to disobey orders.

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He knows a guy that might make sense of it.

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Meanwhile, Professor Bernard Quatermass has just suffered a major failure in his professional life.

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His new nuclear-powered exploratory rocket model, EquatorMass 2, has gone off like a nuclear bomb in Australia.

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Oops, it's a good thing nobody lives in Australia.

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His backup ship in Britain has just been checked, and it suffers from the same problem that caused the explosion.

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The design will have to be scrapped, and Britain's plans to expand the empire to the moon are now gone.

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It is to this dejected and beaten Quatermass that Dylan brings the meteor fragments.

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Quatermass and his team are intrigued.

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It's an odd shape, and indications are that it broke up after impact.

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Assembling the pieces, it's hollow.

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Dylan explains that there are lots of these, and that there was a big scare about them about a year ago.

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After which, the government ordered the whole thing top secret, to avoid further panic.

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Quatermass and Dylan investigate.

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First, the farmer, who isn't feeling well and very unfriendly and unhelpful.

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They then stop at a local pub and learn that the farmer isn't typically like that,

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and weird things are going on.

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Ever since, the government tore down an entire village

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and built their top-secret research facility at Winterden Flats.

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Quatermass and Dylan investigate and, ignoring the keep-out signs,

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enter the facility grounds.

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A meteor comes down, intact.

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Dylan reaches it first, and it cracks open.

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For a moment, Quatermass thinks he sees something on Dylan's face.

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Guards arrive, force Quatermass to leave, and take Dylan for medical care. Dylan tells Quatermass

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to leave him alone and go. Quatermass meets a tramp hiding in the wreckage of the village that

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was torn down. He tells him about the goings-on and the new prefab town that was built for the

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workers. They're not very friendly, not like the village that was torn down. On the ground, there

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are thousands of meteor fragments. In prefab town, Quatermass is given a cold shoulder. The facility

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pays them well and asks silence in return. They don't even have local police. It's handled by the

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security from the base. Quatermass encounters a young girl who's acting strangely and discovers

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she has a strange mark on her hand where she touched one of the meteors when it came down.

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He has run off before he can learn more. Back at the rocket base, Quatermass's team have

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reconstructed the meteor and it appears to be a small ballistic vessel of some kind. In London,

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Quatermass first tries to enlist the police to help him find out what happened to Dylan,

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but they are under orders to leave the research facility at Winterton Flats alone,

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by orders of Quatermass's own ministry.

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Next, he goes to the ministry, and his contact, Fowler,

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clearly has some reservations about the project, too.

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He introduces him to MP Broadhead, who is also on a tear about the Winterton Flats facility.

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The plant is supposedly producing a new synthetic food in a top-secret method

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to get a jump on other countries,

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but spy satellites have found at least two other identical facilities in Brazil and Siberia.

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He takes Quatermass to a hearing, where all the other members are strangely zombie-like

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and do not care what Broadhead is saying.

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Then Quatermass notices the same mark on one of them.

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He tells Broadhead privately, and then he confronts the men with his reconstruction of the meteor ship.

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They are agitated, and he is evicted.

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Later, the conference room is empty, except for an insensate Broadhead, who now has the mark.

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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.

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Fowler then introduces Quatermass to Ward.

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Ward is in public relations, and he's been escorting top brass, politicos, and celebrities to Winterton Flats on a regular basis.

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Weird drill, though. He just drops them off and never brings them back.

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But they do find their way home somehow.

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Using Ward's pass, the three of them go to the plant.

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The plant appears to be near completion, and the non-infected workers have been given a few days off.

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Back at the rocket base, Dr. Leo Pugh is talking to Paula, Quatermass's daughter.

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Leo is a brilliant mathematician, the man that does the orbital calculations.

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He tells her all about how, in his childhood, his teachers used to make him perform mathematical tricks

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and tell him that he was destined for greatness.

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It is a rambling, non-sequitur speech that most certainly identifies Leo Pugh for a pivotal death later in this story.

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At Winterton Flats, Quatermass and the gang investigate without much resistance or interest from the zombie-like guards and workers.

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Quatermass recognizes a facility as being similar to their moon base design.

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The domes would be used to recreate an alien atmosphere.

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Ward slips off to get into the dome.

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He succeeds but is covered in the slime from the dome.

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Deadly to humans and certainly not a revolutionary artificial foodstuff.

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At least not food for anything from Earth.

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Ward dies.

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Quatermass gets a sample of a slime and a device Ward handed him.

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They get away.

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The rocket team have realized that swarms of meteors on such a trajectory

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must be coming from somewhere astronomically nearby.

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Leo's math powers allow them to find the object,

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half a million miles out and approaching Earth.

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They calculate that it stays in a special orbital location,

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approaching and backing away from the Earth periodically.

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At its closest point, they release the meteors.

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The composition of the slime leads them to believe the invasion is from the outer planets.

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Most likely a moon of Saturn, and the device Ward recovered is a booby trap,

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much like the meteors containing an alien primed to take over a person.

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Knowing that people are infected and controlled up to very high levels of the government,

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and fearing that the final invasion to populate the completed dome is imminent,

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Fowler returns to the ministry to do some secret digging.

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Quatermass contacts a journalist, Conrad, to break the story.

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Quatermass also has his team prepare the Quatermass 2 to fly to the alien asteroid,

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knowing that it is, effectively, a nuclear bomb.

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Just as Fowler has made an important discovery,

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he also discovers one of the booby traps and plays no more part in this story.

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Quatermass takes Conrad to the town, tells him the story,

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takes him to the local pub where the locals are celebrating.

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Quatermass tries to warn them about the danger, but they don't listen.

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Just then a meteor smashes into the pub.

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Within moments, zombie guards arrive searching for the meteor.

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It is broken and they leave without it.

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Now, hundreds of the meteors are falling, and the zombie guards are scouring the marsh, recovering them.

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Quatermass sends Conrad to break the story, while he must go see the dome.

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At the pub, Conrad tries to phone in the story with the locals listening.

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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.

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The locals, overhearing the accusation, storm the facility.

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When the guards open fire on them, they take up arms and start fighting back.

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Looking into the dome, Quatermass sees what he feared.

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Inside, a writhing, growing, ammonoid creature.

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Quatermass beats up with the revolting workers who have taken the dome control building.

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Quatermass explains they can kill the things in the dome by pumping pure oxygen in,

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which they start to do.

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Increasingly desperate, the facility controllers offer a truce to take them over to the domes and show them.

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Some of the workers agree despite Quatermass's urgings to the contrary.

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When the oxygen soon stops flowing, they discover the workers, killed and shoved into the pipeline to form a plug with their bodies.

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Enraged, the leader of the workers fires a captured bazooka at the dome, destroying it.

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Quatermass escapes because he had a gas mask, and he finds Leo outside.

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Leo had come to find him, but was nearly killed when the deadly gas escaped from the domes.

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Back at the rocket base, preparations for launching the rockets have gone wrong.

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Dylan has returned with soldiers and taken control of the rocket's silo.

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Quatermass, with Leo's help, seems to reach Dylan and convince him to let the launch go through.

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Quatermass and Leo take off for the alien asteroid.

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As they reach the asteroid, Quatermass confronts Leo.

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He suspects he was overtaken by the aliens outside the facility.

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While Quatermass preps the rocket to explode, Leo escapes outside with a gun.

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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.

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When he fires, the recoil sends Leo hurtling into space.

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Quatermass, all the while listening to the sounds of Leo calling for help over the radio,

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returns to the rocket, launches the return capsule, and detonates the nuclear motor,

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destroying the asteroid.

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Dylan and the others are now free of the control and back to normal.

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Quatermass has succeeded.

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Quatermass looks at Leo's empty chair,

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knowing that his friend, tumbling helplessly in space towards his death,

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is free of the aliens too.

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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.

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And I don't, I'm going to ask you how you feel about it here in a second.

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This came before it, obviously.

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Quatermass 3, I should say.

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Yes.

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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.

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But actually, the Quatermass experiment is about an experiment by Professor Quatermass.

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Quatermass and the Pit is about the pit that Quatermass is called to examine.

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Quatermass 2 is about a rocket called Quatermass 2.

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So it's not as totally barking as it sounds.

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Yeah, I don't like numbered names of movies or TV shows.

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I know why they do it.

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They do it because of name brand recognition.

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You've built up one name and then you don't want to lose that.

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Well, yes, but you've got the name recognition in the Quatermass experiment.

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Right.

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So they want to keep it, you know.

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Anyway, I had just assumed it was like a lack of imagination.

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I mean, I'm not saying it's the most imaginative title ever,

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but the fact that the rocket is the Quatermass 2,

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which is a kind of common naming scheme for rockets.

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The hubris of the man to name it after himself.

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Yeah, I guess that's a bit much.

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But I guess what I was going to say is I kind of disagree.

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I think I like Quatermass 2 better than Quatermass in the Pit.

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And Quatermass in the Pit is amazing.

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I loved this. I thought this was fantastic.

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Wow. I really did.

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I mean, yes, it's obviously

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a rip-off of Spearhead from Space

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and Invisible Enemy

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and all those shows that came out

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in the 70s.

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But

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it, you know, just like when we talked about

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Quatermass in the Pit, how the

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pieces, the episodes flow

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from one to the next and

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the cliffhangers aren't forced

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but they're good. The story

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just continues to unfold.

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It's so well

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structured. It's so much

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better than the copies that have come after it.

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And I don't mean Quatermass

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in the pit now, but I'm talking about things like Spearhead

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from Space and all the alien

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invasions who take over the people

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and you don't know. I mean, it's just

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really, really well done.

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Nigel Neill deserves what

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he's done. Now you're going to tell me you hated it

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because I can just tell from the

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shock reaction.

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But okay, go ahead.

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I mean, I've got to agree with some of what you say,

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which is it is incredibly well done.

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So the caveat is you're watching a Nigel Neill Quatermass story.

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It's going to be quality.

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But the place where I'm going to disagree with you

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is that it's better than Quatermass and the Pit.

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To me, this, I mean, Quatermass 2 is that kind of difficult second album thing.

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And I absolutely take your point.

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It's, you can see how incredibly influential it is in terms of all of the elements in here that are copied.

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But they're not necessarily the things that I am particularly fond of.

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I mean, funnily enough, I mean, I get where you're saying spearhead from space.

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the farmer on almost an identical tractor, I guess.

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The whole scene with the meteor tracking station,

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it's almost shot for shot copy.

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Yes, yes.

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At the beginning.

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I can see that, but it's not necessarily what...

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Homage, sorry, homage.

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Yes, well, it's not necessarily what was foremost in my mind.

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Maybe in episode one,

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although it kind of felt like a sort of second rate unit story.

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In fact, that kind of continued as a through line.

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So I wouldn't have been...

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I like Spearhead from Space.

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It's a top-notch unit story.

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So I'm thinking more along the lines of Terror of the Autons.

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And maybe it was only when Roger Delgado turned up

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that I started really thinking about unit.

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But, for example, in Quatermass 2,

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certainly by the second episode,

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Neil has invented the Robomen,

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From which is the first story with Robo-Men?

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Is it Dalek Invasion of Earth?

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Dalek Invasion of Earth, yeah.

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Okay.

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You know, the Robo-Men are not my all-time...

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Dalek Invasion of Earth is actually quite a good story in as much as Dalek stories go.

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Neither you nor I are particularly fond of Daleks,

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but I think at least they're better than people wearing Alice bands

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talking in slightly monotonous voices.

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Okay, he hasn't put Alice bands on,

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but they are talking in slightly monotonous voices.

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It is very obvious that they are supposed to be possessed.

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Yeah.

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And they're wearing the same kind of clothes, practically.

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Yeah, as they would be in a Terry Nation story.

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Yeah.

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It's better than the subsequent copies.

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Yes.

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It's a quality serial because it is, you know,

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it's Nigel Neill and, you know, Rudolf Cartier.

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Yes, it's good.

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But that doesn't mean it's without its flaws.

00:15:13.130 --> 00:15:22.060
I think there are a lot of things about this story and the production that ended up continuously irritating me.

00:15:22.300 --> 00:15:27.440
Okay, well, let's talk about the production for a little bit because that's one of the things that I really noticed.

00:15:27.940 --> 00:15:29.920
And I'm not saying it's better or worse.

00:15:30.160 --> 00:15:38.940
It's just that when I was watching it, it feels like there is 50, 60 percent of it shot on film in advance.

00:15:39.520 --> 00:15:46.400
Yes. And I felt like there was about zero percent in in Quatermass in the pit or very little.

00:15:47.540 --> 00:15:52.300
I would agree. I would agree. I can't remember how much was in Quatermass in the pit.

00:15:52.560 --> 00:15:59.079
And, you know, one of the things that is inevitably going to kind of influence any judgment based on the actual production values

00:15:59.080 --> 00:16:00.840
is the quality of the restoration.

00:16:01.380 --> 00:16:01.600
Yeah.

00:16:01.780 --> 00:16:04.940
Because, you know, if people are listening

00:16:05.120 --> 00:16:07.900
to Fusion Patrol decades in the future,

00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:12.020
maybe some miracle restoration will have occurred.

00:16:12.100 --> 00:16:15.400
But I just remember being absolutely,

00:16:15.480 --> 00:16:17.700
and I think I probably rhapsodised it

00:16:17.960 --> 00:16:20.940
for half the podcast discussion we had about the pit,

00:16:21.500 --> 00:16:25.660
just how amazingly good quality the images

00:16:26.140 --> 00:16:27.720
for that serial are.

00:16:28.020 --> 00:16:31.260
looking at it now, 60-whatever years on.

00:16:31.960 --> 00:16:38.020
Whereas the quality of this serial is much more like you would expect

00:16:38.370 --> 00:16:42.040
for something from 1955 that was basically...

00:16:43.399 --> 00:16:46.099
I think I read somewhere that it was the first serial

00:16:46.670 --> 00:16:51.460
that was actually repeated, as in normally at the time,

00:16:51.670 --> 00:16:52.980
they would simply have...

00:16:53.280 --> 00:16:54.920
A repeat would have meant a re-performance.

00:16:55.580 --> 00:16:56.820
They'd have just done it again live.

00:16:57.260 --> 00:17:03.300
And so it very much was still of the era when they weren't expecting to keep it.

00:17:03.440 --> 00:17:10.640
And it's a lot of it is, you know, this heavy vignetting and it's all quite soft.

00:17:11.060 --> 00:17:11.220
Yeah.

00:17:11.360 --> 00:17:14.040
And it just it shows its age.

00:17:14.620 --> 00:17:15.780
I could forgive that.

00:17:15.819 --> 00:17:19.839
But I do think part of part of what we part of what makes it so.

00:17:20.339 --> 00:17:26.660
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.

00:17:27.220 --> 00:17:31.560
right i mean you just yeah yeah well that's not a studio but there is a very clear delineation

00:17:31.760 --> 00:17:38.820
between those inserts that were shot on film and and that which is done presumably live to tape

00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:45.440
yes and i think part of what we're seeing part of why it's glaring is because there's such a

00:17:45.500 --> 00:17:49.619
difference in the quality part of the reason it's such a quality is that's such an early technology

00:17:49.640 --> 00:17:57.100
at this point that i think what they're doing is they're playing film into a tv camera and then

00:17:57.220 --> 00:18:03.900
they're recording the tv camera as they did yes so we got a two generation down on the film and

00:18:04.260 --> 00:18:09.400
so there is a very big jump you've got there's definitely vignetting there um that's more

00:18:09.580 --> 00:18:15.759
prevalent on the film uh but not exclusively it varies so some of the some of the film is not

00:18:15.880 --> 00:18:22.260
is not at all bad and and the thing that surprised me about it because you expect to see film inserts

00:18:22.500 --> 00:18:29.220
for exterior shots but you expect them to be like you I was quite surprised how much there was but

00:18:29.300 --> 00:18:35.900
not nearly surprised as when they actually started having dialogue scenes outside yeah and so it's

00:18:36.060 --> 00:18:40.679
it's like not you know not only are they playing in these film inserts but they've actually they've

00:18:40.700 --> 00:18:47.020
that they've actually got audio recordings for yeah yes it is impressive i really did i i'm with

00:18:47.060 --> 00:18:51.860
you i expected when you see the jeep driving across the fields i expect oh that's time for

00:18:51.860 --> 00:18:56.460
them to run to their new set while they're playing yes far running they get to the new set and they

00:18:56.720 --> 00:19:00.780
you know wipe their hair down get the sweat off their face and like go i'm in front of an

00:19:00.980 --> 00:19:07.919
unrealistic tree but it wasn't they would show up in a field with a farmer and you go well wow

00:19:07.940 --> 00:19:14.540
it must have needed a really long transition and they start talking you go what really why didn't

00:19:14.540 --> 00:19:20.400
they do this in quatermass in the pit why a few years later did they basically completely abandon

00:19:20.600 --> 00:19:28.000
that so my my technological advancement i agree it is it is it is a technological advancement and

00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:36.639
it's almost like what we get in greater mass 2 is a story that is intended to take advantage of that

00:19:36.660 --> 00:19:41.900
technological advancement because you get all of the stuff that's shot in the refinery which i have

00:19:41.900 --> 00:19:49.240
to say looks really great and there's there's an awful lot of kind of traveling around you know um

00:19:50.140 --> 00:19:54.260
quater mass goes off to the facility and then you've got the scenes with the villagers and the

00:19:54.500 --> 00:19:59.399
rioting and this is but you know back and back and forth and you've got characters in london and then

00:19:59.800 --> 00:20:07.860
eventually uh i guess we'll come to uh leaving the earth and going into space um which wasn't

00:20:07.860 --> 00:20:17.380
on location just to be clear um the thing that struck me most about that was that i felt that

00:20:17.640 --> 00:20:24.639
the weakness of this story was that it didn't have that kind that same kind of claustrophobic

00:20:24.660 --> 00:20:31.260
sense of urgency that ultimately Quatermass and the pit managed to build up and in in Quatermass

00:20:31.300 --> 00:20:40.840
and the pit the the exterior shots the film inserts are much more about creating the atmosphere in

00:20:41.060 --> 00:20:47.000
establishing shots before you go into the kind of studio shot stuff and they're almost seamless in

00:20:47.060 --> 00:20:53.659
it that they're very because I think you're no longer talking at that point about not because

00:20:53.680 --> 00:20:57.860
it's that much later but just because it's that much less ambitious about pushing the limits of

00:20:57.860 --> 00:21:05.800
the technology but the that that that kind of limitation that really serves the story whereas

00:21:06.520 --> 00:21:13.980
this story I'm not sure I agree that the structure is as good that one episode just kind of leave

00:21:14.220 --> 00:21:20.779
leads into another because it doesn't feel like after the first couple of episodes there is a kind

00:21:20.800 --> 00:21:26.460
of progression it it feels like some of the strands of the story are almost completely

00:21:26.940 --> 00:21:32.620
i mean to take to take one example what happens to fowler obviously taken over and then i think i i

00:21:32.940 --> 00:21:39.380
kind of i kind of uh hedged my statement there in the in the recap where i said he plays no further

00:21:39.540 --> 00:21:43.480
part in the story i think he's one of the people that was on the phone okay at the end trying to

00:21:43.600 --> 00:21:49.859
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

00:21:49.880 --> 00:21:56.880
compare and contrast fowler and dylan here um you're you're you're compromised by the aliens

00:21:57.500 --> 00:22:03.440
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

00:22:03.600 --> 00:22:10.620
your ally is dead and then they held that back till very very towards the end where suddenly

00:22:11.080 --> 00:22:17.659
dylan shows up again and he's full-on working for the for the aliens yes yes which makes that um

00:22:18.420 --> 00:22:25.240
And from decades of watching these kinds of shows, of course, I was expecting him far earlier in the story.

00:22:25.240 --> 00:22:30.100
I was expecting more people to be taken over and then suddenly working against Quatermass.

00:22:30.260 --> 00:22:31.140
But they don't.

00:22:31.160 --> 00:22:33.900
They take them off the table and they're gone, just like Conrad.

00:22:34.500 --> 00:22:35.960
He's fought long enough.

00:22:36.160 --> 00:22:37.940
But after that, that's the end of it.

00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:42.440
And when we start hearing from the newspaper, turns out the newspaper is taken over, too.

00:22:44.540 --> 00:22:55.180
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.

00:22:55.340 --> 00:22:57.160
And so that is not an issue.

00:22:57.380 --> 00:23:08.820
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.

00:23:09.140 --> 00:23:12.700
There is no safe, but you can't leave the pit and go be safe,

00:23:13.130 --> 00:23:15.560
which in the earlier episodes of Quatermass and the Pit, you can.

00:23:15.880 --> 00:23:16.880
Yes, but I also...

00:23:16.880 --> 00:23:19.680
But here, it's just a different story.

00:23:19.750 --> 00:23:21.540
I think that's one of the things about Quatermass and the Pit,

00:23:21.660 --> 00:23:27.640
is the point at which it actually kind of goes global, as it were,

00:23:28.080 --> 00:23:29.700
is right at the end.

00:23:30.180 --> 00:23:34.140
So it feels like it builds up quite slowly,

00:23:34.320 --> 00:23:36.700
but then it starts to get really serious at the end.

00:23:37.060 --> 00:23:42.740
Quatermass 2, stuff is, by the end of episode 4, going into episode 5,

00:23:43.300 --> 00:23:46.020
stuff is already pretty much globally catastrophic.

00:23:46.760 --> 00:23:48.300
And it feels like...

00:23:48.820 --> 00:23:49.680
Isn't that the point?

00:23:49.900 --> 00:23:54.540
I mean, actually, things are actually globally catastrophic by the time episode 1 started.

00:23:54.920 --> 00:23:55.840
And nobody knew it.

00:23:56.140 --> 00:23:56.920
Nobody knew it, yeah.

00:23:57.220 --> 00:24:02.440
Well, yeah, I mean, it's a coherent story in that sense.

00:24:02.860 --> 00:24:05.980
But in terms of the structure, where does that leave you to go?

00:24:06.200 --> 00:24:12.000
By the time you get into episode five and episode six, well, six takes you off into space.

00:24:12.980 --> 00:24:14.680
That didn't feel like that.

00:24:15.120 --> 00:24:17.420
Again, it felt like a diversion.

00:24:17.920 --> 00:24:26.440
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.

00:24:26.620 --> 00:24:29.460
I'll concede that I did not expect them to go into space.

00:24:29.960 --> 00:24:33.880
I never expected them to them personally to leave the Earth.

00:24:34.260 --> 00:24:38.380
I expected the Quatermass 2 to be used as a missile.

00:24:39.000 --> 00:24:39.140
Yes.

00:24:39.340 --> 00:24:43.580
And so when they were getting ready to go into space,

00:24:44.180 --> 00:24:47.280
my expectations changed in my head to be,

00:24:47.640 --> 00:24:50.360
huh, something's going to stop them from going into space

00:24:51.480 --> 00:24:53.220
because they're not going into space.

00:24:53.780 --> 00:24:55.840
Quatermass is not going into space.

00:24:56.360 --> 00:24:57.540
That's not going to happen.

00:24:57.540 --> 00:25:00.080
Well, obviously, we know Quatermass survives.

00:25:00.760 --> 00:25:00.900
Right.

00:25:01.640 --> 00:25:04.200
That wouldn't have been true of people viewing it at the time.

00:25:05.380 --> 00:25:07.200
Yeah, he could have died saving the Earth.

00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:08.660
That's reasonable.

00:25:08.980 --> 00:25:11.699
It felt to me like the story...

00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:14.480
Because Quatermass was the hero,

00:25:14.900 --> 00:25:18.620
and you had to have this resolution of the Pew Pew storyline.

00:25:19.180 --> 00:25:22.080
They had to be the ones that went off in the rocket,

00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:24.680
which felt contrived,

00:25:24.860 --> 00:25:30.320
and it also felt like it separated you from where the real action was.

00:25:30.500 --> 00:25:37.320
Because, I mean, the thing about these aliens is that they are obviously the kind of...

00:25:38.360 --> 00:25:43.040
Without them being able to possess humans, without them being able to take over humans,

00:25:43.560 --> 00:25:45.200
there's nothing much to them.

00:25:45.900 --> 00:25:53.580
So, you take Quatermass and Pew away from all of that.

00:25:54.280 --> 00:26:01.660
And now you've got the Quatermass, the sort of climax to the Pew story,

00:26:02.040 --> 00:26:11.620
but that doesn't feel like the climax to the alien invasion story, if that makes any sense.

00:26:11.860 --> 00:26:13.960
I don't know. I'm having trouble putting my finger on it.

00:26:13.960 --> 00:26:17.980
But for some reason, the structure doesn't quite feel satisfying to me.

00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:22.520
It's probably just the really bad special effects in the final sequence.

00:26:22.900 --> 00:26:23.780
It's probably put you on.

00:26:25.480 --> 00:26:27.060
I mean, I don't mind the special effects too much.

00:26:27.220 --> 00:26:29.900
But again, what I would point out with Quatermass and The Pit

00:26:30.100 --> 00:26:33.920
is that although the special effects are not very much advanced,

00:26:34.220 --> 00:26:38.120
what they do with what they've got is much more effective

00:26:38.640 --> 00:26:43.420
because it's not asking that much more than what is possible.

00:26:43.800 --> 00:26:46.400
It's working within the limits and, yeah,

00:26:46.600 --> 00:26:50.100
maybe doing something that's more impressive than anyone has done before,

00:26:50.420 --> 00:26:50.820
but still.

00:26:52.600 --> 00:26:57.200
Well, I'm certainly not in any way dissing Quatermass 3.

00:26:57.360 --> 00:27:02.340
I just kind of felt I enjoyed this one far better than I expected to, frankly.

00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:04.220
Well, I wasn't sure.

00:27:04.680 --> 00:27:06.720
Not that I didn't think I would like it.

00:27:06.940 --> 00:27:13.420
And I'm sure I must have seen Quatermass 2 or whatever it was called in the theaters in the United States.

00:27:13.700 --> 00:27:16.480
I wouldn't have seen it in the theaters, of course, but on television.

00:27:17.280 --> 00:27:20.380
And yet I watched a trailer for that the other day.

00:27:20.800 --> 00:27:23.680
And I don't recognize any of that either.

00:27:24.100 --> 00:27:25.260
I mean, just the visuals.

00:27:25.780 --> 00:27:27.400
I feel like I haven't seen it.

00:27:29.480 --> 00:27:35.240
But this storyline is so pervasive through so many things since then

00:27:35.580 --> 00:27:39.880
that it's really easy to get them confused in your head.

00:27:40.100 --> 00:27:42.920
They go, oh, yeah, I remember there was different actors,

00:27:43.060 --> 00:27:46.060
but, yeah, it was kind of the same idea, so it must have been the film,

00:27:46.140 --> 00:27:46.840
but maybe not.

00:27:47.100 --> 00:27:54.500
Because the trailer for Quatermass 2, the movie, looks remarkably like this serial.

00:27:54.960 --> 00:27:57.020
You know, from the scenes that I saw.

00:27:57.640 --> 00:28:00.940
And I'm looking at that going, well, I know Nigel Neill hated it.

00:28:01.260 --> 00:28:03.480
But did he hate it because they ruined the story?

00:28:03.630 --> 00:28:05.180
Because they had better ideas?

00:28:05.650 --> 00:28:08.020
Or did he hate it because he didn't get paid?

00:28:08.300 --> 00:28:09.800
I think he hated all the movies.

00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:10.660
I see.

00:28:11.010 --> 00:28:13.400
But he did write the second one, didn't he?

00:28:13.700 --> 00:28:14.500
For the screenplay?

00:28:14.730 --> 00:28:15.500
I didn't think he did.

00:28:15.730 --> 00:28:16.820
I thought somebody rewrote it.

00:28:17.380 --> 00:28:17.780
afterwards.

00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:19.400
I don't know.

00:28:19.660 --> 00:28:22.720
He wrote a draft

00:28:23.320 --> 00:28:25.000
for the film, was my understanding.

00:28:25.650 --> 00:28:26.580
It wasn't that they just

00:28:27.330 --> 00:28:28.600
took what he'd done for TV

00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:30.980
and did their thing

00:28:31.120 --> 00:28:32.400
with it like they did with

00:28:32.540 --> 00:28:33.260
Bratermass and the Pit.

00:28:33.340 --> 00:28:35.700
It's been a while since I read his biography,

00:28:35.810 --> 00:28:37.980
but I thought

00:28:38.490 --> 00:28:40.380
he disliked all of them, but I could be wrong.

00:28:40.820 --> 00:28:42.600
And I'm sure there's at least one listener

00:28:42.730 --> 00:28:44.260
out there, probably in New Zealand,

00:28:44.510 --> 00:28:45.620
is going to correct me.

00:28:47.320 --> 00:28:50.900
I mean even if he wrote it he's entitled to dislike what they did with it

00:28:51.260 --> 00:28:53.320
that's true I don't think he liked the actors either

00:28:54.320 --> 00:29:00.580
so right I have a question about that which is another major thing

00:29:01.140 --> 00:29:05.260
I mean so I mean I had I knew literally nothing about Quatermass 2

00:29:05.320 --> 00:29:09.460
that included the plot it also included the fact that I had no idea

00:29:09.520 --> 00:29:12.939
who was going to be in it so when you kind of get Hugh Griffiths

00:29:13.040 --> 00:29:14.760
When you see Mark Gatiss's father.

00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:16.240
Mark Gatiss's father?

00:29:16.660 --> 00:29:17.420
No, I don't know.

00:29:17.460 --> 00:29:18.360
I don't think he is.

00:29:18.420 --> 00:29:21.380
But every time I saw him, I'm like, that looks like an old Mark Gatiss.

00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:22.320
Who?

00:29:22.660 --> 00:29:23.520
Guy playing Quatermass.

00:29:23.980 --> 00:29:29.660
They're of the same facial structure here in this one, in Quatermass 2.

00:29:30.380 --> 00:29:30.560
To me.

00:29:31.140 --> 00:29:32.780
That did not occur to me.

00:29:33.080 --> 00:29:36.120
What did occur to me was that I didn't like his Quatermass.

00:29:36.560 --> 00:29:41.260
So obviously one of the things about these serials is they each have a different Quatermass.

00:29:41.980 --> 00:29:47.060
And I mean, I think Andre Morel is the best way to mass.

00:29:47.800 --> 00:29:51.140
I don't think that's a particularly original opinion for me to have.

00:29:51.340 --> 00:29:55.080
And obviously he was the first one to be offered the part.

00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:03.360
But John Robinson just seems a little bit, there's not a lot of sympathy for him.

00:30:05.420 --> 00:30:17.520
He's convincingly smart and he gets quite passionate about his project or upset about its potential demise.

00:30:18.140 --> 00:30:26.900
But what I don't get so much from him is any sense of warmth from his side of the friendship with Hugh Pugh.

00:30:27.320 --> 00:30:32.720
I don't get any kind of real sense of paternity towards Paula.

00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:50.220
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.

00:30:50.920 --> 00:31:11.120
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.

00:31:13.060 --> 00:31:15.360
But all the people working on it.

00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:16.200
Yeah, yeah.

00:31:16.320 --> 00:31:19.500
I mean, yes, he's devastated by all that.

00:31:19.820 --> 00:31:26.020
Yes, maybe being British, he demonstrates his absolute sorrow

00:31:26.660 --> 00:31:30.880
by saying nothing and expressing nothing and keeping stiff upper lip.

00:31:31.480 --> 00:31:34.800
But it does mean that you don't get any, I guess, yeah,

00:31:35.020 --> 00:31:39.900
I mean, I guess you just don't get a read on how he's reacting to things,

00:31:40.020 --> 00:31:47.980
what he thinks for example about what has happened to Dylan I mean he's he's he goes and

00:31:48.360 --> 00:31:53.540
remonstrates he says you know my my friend has been taken there I want to but it's not it's not

00:31:53.860 --> 00:31:59.620
just that that you're thinking about because clearly what he's done is take the man who his

00:31:59.820 --> 00:32:06.399
daughter loves and inadvertently it's true but lead him into a terribly dangerous situation and

00:32:06.420 --> 00:32:07.980
And now he's kind of disappeared.

00:32:08.480 --> 00:32:12.320
And right up to where he breaks it to her,

00:32:12.440 --> 00:32:14.860
it's just you don't get what's going on in his head.

00:32:15.860 --> 00:32:16.820
I don't know.

00:32:17.010 --> 00:32:17.420
I don't know.

00:32:17.470 --> 00:32:22.080
But I was not overwhelmed by John Robinson's performance.

00:32:22.340 --> 00:32:23.360
Let's put it that way.

00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:25.580
I will agree.

00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:27.460
He wouldn't be my first choice.

00:32:27.680 --> 00:32:28.680
But then you know how that goes.

00:32:29.060 --> 00:32:31.640
Quatermass in the pit, that's my first Quatermass.

00:32:32.100 --> 00:32:34.220
And so that's always your favorite.

00:32:34.620 --> 00:32:35.000
But yeah.

00:32:35.480 --> 00:32:39.420
So a couple of things I'm going to just say before anybody also tries to correct me on this one.

00:32:39.840 --> 00:32:44.800
I pulled up some pictures while you were talking, and I was listening, of stills.

00:32:45.180 --> 00:32:50.760
And I got to say, in a still, this guy does not trigger my Mark Ennis reaction.

00:32:51.090 --> 00:32:52.920
I look at that and I go, huh, don't see it.

00:32:53.240 --> 00:32:57.020
But when it's live and watching it on the show, it does.

00:32:57.420 --> 00:33:03.320
I was watching that thinking, wow, what a horrible mistake they made when they redid the Quatermass experiment.

00:33:03.660 --> 00:33:09.420
And they used Dennis as the opposing scientist instead of using him as equator mass.

00:33:09.860 --> 00:33:12.240
Maybe it's the way they move their face.

00:33:12.450 --> 00:33:13.320
I don't know.

00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:18.040
But something in the motion triggers that in me, and I see it all the time.

00:33:18.280 --> 00:33:19.120
Looking at these pictures?

00:33:19.570 --> 00:33:19.760
No.

00:33:20.180 --> 00:33:20.940
Second, movie?

00:33:21.380 --> 00:33:21.660
Yes.

00:33:22.040 --> 00:33:26.660
Screenplay and story by Nigel Neill, according to.

00:33:26.960 --> 00:33:31.120
Although, Val Guest is also given screenplay credit,

00:33:31.480 --> 00:33:35.160
And that, I think, was one of those contentious things.

00:33:35.460 --> 00:33:39.380
So maybe it was Quatermass 2 and Val Guest's rewrites that he didn't like.

00:33:39.460 --> 00:33:40.340
I don't remember.

00:33:40.720 --> 00:33:42.600
But yeah, I'll agree.

00:33:42.700 --> 00:33:44.000
The other Quatermass is definitely better.

00:33:44.260 --> 00:33:45.380
There's no doubt about that.

00:33:46.060 --> 00:33:50.920
So then there's, I mean, I liked some of the Guest cards.

00:33:50.950 --> 00:33:52.860
I mean, Hugh Griffiths, fantastic.

00:33:53.400 --> 00:33:56.060
Wilford Bramble pops up in one episode.

00:33:56.580 --> 00:33:58.700
Roger Delgado pops up in one episode.

00:33:59.080 --> 00:34:01.020
It's quite kind of star-studded.

00:34:01.120 --> 00:34:01.780
Van Dyke.

00:34:03.320 --> 00:34:04.140
It's just not

00:34:05.420 --> 00:34:06.800
Roger Delgado without that.

00:34:07.100 --> 00:34:08.980
That's the first time I've ever seen him without that

00:34:09.260 --> 00:34:10.280
in anything. Yes.

00:34:10.659 --> 00:34:10.840
Yes.

00:34:13.460 --> 00:34:14.800
Maybe it's the only thing.

00:34:15.080 --> 00:34:16.980
I've definitely seen him in other non-Doctor

00:34:17.080 --> 00:34:18.919
Who stuff where he had it, so I assume

00:34:19.060 --> 00:34:20.820
that is how he normally

00:34:21.419 --> 00:34:21.899
groomed himself.

00:34:22.980 --> 00:34:24.139
But I've never seen

00:34:24.960 --> 00:34:26.879
anything this early. I've never seen any

00:34:27.080 --> 00:34:28.700
Roger Delgado stuff from

00:34:28.980 --> 00:34:31.080
this early on. So that was

00:34:31.100 --> 00:34:38.080
um it was yeah i really didn't have any problems with the cast um except well i would say it's okay

00:34:38.340 --> 00:34:43.659
but quick quick quick well i kind of felt like monica gray was there to make quatermass look

00:34:43.860 --> 00:34:51.480
animated i oh his daughter so she was yeah uh yeah paula paula quatermass played by monica gray

00:34:51.919 --> 00:34:57.400
who i i looked up and it turns out that she wasn't actually the production team's choice

00:34:57.760 --> 00:35:01.300
She was the wife of the head of radio drama.

00:35:05.280 --> 00:35:09.060
And there's one reviewer who rather cruelly,

00:35:09.220 --> 00:35:12.320
but rather entertainingly describes her as not so much an actress

00:35:12.370 --> 00:35:13.880
as a finishing school on legs.

00:35:14.390 --> 00:35:18.120
And it is kind of quite accurate.

00:35:19.080 --> 00:35:22.980
Apparently, though, she had to learn all of Hugh Griffith's lines

00:35:23.640 --> 00:35:26.660
in case he didn't manage to.

00:35:26.680 --> 00:35:35.200
yes yes um and i i i cute my favorite hugh grift's performance is as um this drunken character in the

00:35:35.240 --> 00:35:41.440
titfield thunderbolt and he i mean he is just wonderful in it it must it must be more or less

00:35:41.680 --> 00:35:46.280
contemporaneous with this and i've never really seen him interviewed so i don't know what the

00:35:46.510 --> 00:35:52.880
actor himself is like but the the the description of him as as someone who's you know struggles with

00:35:52.900 --> 00:35:57.560
the technical dialogue struggles with remembering his lines whatever sounds like the character he

00:35:57.660 --> 00:36:02.320
plays in the titfield thunderbolt so i'm now imagining him as being exactly like that

00:36:03.600 --> 00:36:10.920
yeah i i he came off pretty well but i will say that when he got up and he started and i mentioned

00:36:10.920 --> 00:36:14.540
it again in the recap when he got up and he started rambling on about his childhood and

00:36:14.540 --> 00:36:21.400
being a mathematical genius and being able to perform the the the plot device plot warning

00:36:21.420 --> 00:36:29.440
flags and alarms were just going off in my head at that point like okay that's that's he's gonna

00:36:29.620 --> 00:36:38.540
die saving the world i thought he didn't turns out but uh which again kudos to nigel neil he

00:36:38.540 --> 00:36:44.880
can lead me down a path where i can spot the obvious hell that this character's pivotal but

00:36:44.920 --> 00:36:52.200
I didn't spot how the character would pivot because all the time, think of all the, this

00:36:52.400 --> 00:36:53.660
is fascinating.

00:36:54.280 --> 00:36:57.080
This is what I really, really appreciated about this story.

00:36:57.840 --> 00:36:59.640
I'll have to put a whole bunch of pieces together.

00:37:00.040 --> 00:37:05.200
Quater Mass appeared like a complete idiot, not realizing that Conrad had been taken over,

00:37:05.460 --> 00:37:05.960
the journalist.

00:37:07.080 --> 00:37:10.800
When that happened, everyone is screaming at the TV.

00:37:11.340 --> 00:37:12.800
He's been taken over.

00:37:13.020 --> 00:37:14.400
Look at the way he's driving.

00:37:14.720 --> 00:37:16.460
Look at the way he's acting.

00:37:16.840 --> 00:37:19.840
He's been taken over, you big dummy.

00:37:20.240 --> 00:37:22.420
I mean, for crying out loud, he reached out at,

00:37:22.800 --> 00:37:24.020
and in the meteors, it came down.

00:37:24.020 --> 00:37:25.260
He was in its immediate proximity.

00:37:25.820 --> 00:37:30.540
You should know this, but Quatermass doesn't appear to know that.

00:37:31.200 --> 00:37:35.700
So when we're on the ship and, or when he bumps into Leo,

00:37:36.280 --> 00:37:38.980
Leo has been given a plausible, at the factory,

00:37:39.140 --> 00:37:42.380
he's been given a plausible explanation as to why he's not right.

00:37:42.520 --> 00:37:44.640
He's just been dumped over by poison gas.

00:37:45.420 --> 00:37:47.360
So you're in the audience and you're going,

00:37:47.500 --> 00:37:48.680
he looks like he's taken over,

00:37:48.860 --> 00:37:51.080
but he was just dumped over by poison gas.

00:37:51.820 --> 00:37:54.540
And we already kind of know he's going to die in this story.

00:37:54.540 --> 00:37:56.940
The poison gas, which transmits the hominids.

00:37:56.960 --> 00:37:57.920
Well, but I don't know.

00:37:58.120 --> 00:38:00.060
Does the poison gas transmit the hominids?

00:38:01.200 --> 00:38:01.600
I don't know.

00:38:01.920 --> 00:38:02.740
I didn't think that.

00:38:02.800 --> 00:38:05.700
I thought that was just the atmosphere that they lived in escaping.

00:38:06.160 --> 00:38:08.440
So I didn't take that from it.

00:38:08.680 --> 00:38:12.220
Well, okay, but the hominids were living in it.

00:38:12.420 --> 00:38:13.740
Yes, so they're possible.

00:38:14.280 --> 00:38:18.640
And if they're exposed to the oxygen, they die.

00:38:19.100 --> 00:38:26.060
But obviously, you've got to think if they're freed and there are clouds of this poison,

00:38:26.960 --> 00:38:33.400
they are going to survive up until the point where the gas disperses and the oxygen overwhelms them.

00:38:33.600 --> 00:38:40.140
But I guess my point being, at that point in time, A, Quatermass still didn't know Conrad had been taken over.

00:38:40.480 --> 00:38:40.560
Yeah.

00:38:40.680 --> 00:39:09.800
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.

00:39:10.440 --> 00:39:18.620
And then you also have, you have the thing where we saw that Conrad wasn't overwhelmed immediately.

00:39:18.940 --> 00:39:21.880
That Conrad had the ability to fight it and carry on.

00:39:22.300 --> 00:39:27.060
And that's, you know, when you're on the ship and Quatermass is still looking like he's an idiot.

00:39:27.580 --> 00:39:29.180
And not knowing that Leo's taken over.

00:39:29.600 --> 00:39:31.440
Despite the fact that Leo brought the gun on board.

00:39:31.860 --> 00:39:33.760
And all of these pieces are in play.

00:39:34.060 --> 00:39:35.380
Does Quatermass know or not?

00:39:35.660 --> 00:39:38.240
Does Leo, is he really taken over or not?

00:39:38.480 --> 00:39:42.300
If he is taken over, is he fighting it and still fighting to save the Earth?

00:39:42.310 --> 00:39:45.720
And he's, you know, it's just a matter of time before he succumbs to it.

00:39:46.140 --> 00:39:52.600
And then Quatermass reveals that he was smart enough to figure out that Leo was probably taken over.

00:39:53.100 --> 00:39:59.680
And all of those pieces, it's like, I just feel like Neil has set those up on the board really, really well.

00:40:00.180 --> 00:40:05.400
That you just can't be 100% certain of what's going on there, which is great.

00:40:05.560 --> 00:40:08.620
because I hate knowing exactly where everything is.

00:40:09.430 --> 00:40:10.200
Well, yes.

00:40:11.640 --> 00:40:15.100
I mean, obviously the uncertainty is important to it

00:40:15.520 --> 00:40:18.700
and it has to be sustained over quite a long period

00:40:19.240 --> 00:40:20.920
because you've got an entire episode

00:40:21.680 --> 00:40:24.040
from him being exposed to the gas

00:40:24.960 --> 00:40:28.500
to the kind of ultimate, his demise.

00:40:29.100 --> 00:40:32.680
So you've got to be kept guessing by it.

00:40:32.860 --> 00:40:34.440
The thing that irritates me

00:40:34.500 --> 00:40:38.460
is when there is this kind of extreme dramatic irony.

00:40:38.700 --> 00:40:40.980
Like, as you say, everyone is shouting at the television.

00:40:41.640 --> 00:40:45.220
Except that I thought the way that Delgado played that

00:40:45.840 --> 00:40:48.640
and the way that Neil had written it was pretty good

00:40:48.920 --> 00:40:52.860
because he gets to explain himself

00:40:53.260 --> 00:40:56.380
and it fits with his performance.

00:40:57.020 --> 00:40:59.480
When Pew is under the influence,

00:41:00.300 --> 00:41:03.440
like you say, it feels like we should...

00:41:04.140 --> 00:41:07.920
It feels like Quatermass, there's a little bit more experience there.

00:41:08.280 --> 00:41:11.920
You know, fool me once, shame on you, that kind of thing.

00:41:12.320 --> 00:41:16.940
To, again, Neil's credit, you have the sequence where the doctor examines him

00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:20.360
and they actually discuss the possibility that he's been taken over.

00:41:20.600 --> 00:41:25.480
And I quite like that because, obviously, they are expressing what the audience is thinking.

00:41:26.100 --> 00:41:30.660
You're also establishing the fact that you don't know or you don't have a way.

00:41:31.020 --> 00:41:31.800
They don't have a way.

00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:41.940
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.

00:41:42.210 --> 00:41:52.140
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.

00:41:52.390 --> 00:41:57.100
Well, but, you know, how quickly does the mark appear?

00:41:57.760 --> 00:41:59.940
Is it the same for everybody?

00:42:00.360 --> 00:42:03.440
You know, you don't have that kind of that.

00:42:04.240 --> 00:42:06.940
It'd be the first thing I do to base any kind of conclusions.

00:42:07.860 --> 00:42:09.540
I'm not sure it would be the first thing you do.

00:42:09.800 --> 00:42:16.100
I think what you would probably do would be, first of all, assume the worst.

00:42:16.540 --> 00:42:18.460
And then you would start working on the test.

00:42:18.500 --> 00:42:27.240
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.

00:42:27.800 --> 00:42:29.320
So we must assume he has been.

00:42:29.780 --> 00:42:41.260
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.

00:42:41.680 --> 00:42:43.120
I don't disagree with that.

00:42:43.740 --> 00:42:57.480
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.

00:42:57.480 --> 00:42:59.560
Yes, but we don't know that it happens.

00:42:59.680 --> 00:43:06.000
to everyone, but we do know this, that the only thing we know about them that you can tell is if

00:43:06.140 --> 00:43:11.560
they have the mark, they have been taken over. So it would make sense that if you suspected someone

00:43:12.010 --> 00:43:17.960
and said, I suspect you take your clothes off, we're going to do a body search. And if they say

00:43:18.560 --> 00:43:25.500
no, or they submit to it and you cannot find the mark, it doesn't prove that they aren't.

00:43:25.560 --> 00:43:33.040
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?

00:43:33.960 --> 00:43:45.340
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.

00:43:46.460 --> 00:43:50.700
Neither of those is going to prove they're uninfected. So you're not any further on.

00:43:50.760 --> 00:44:12.940
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.

00:44:13.740 --> 00:44:20.940
what what that makes me think is if you are infected you know you are infected and in some

00:44:21.100 --> 00:44:27.720
cases you can struggle against it and if you put those things together why wouldn't someone like

00:44:27.940 --> 00:44:36.660
pew if he knows he's infected but has any any kind of vestiges of of his true personality still there

00:44:37.020 --> 00:44:41.980
wouldn't the thing that he would say would be i think i'm infected quite possibly quite possibly

00:44:42.140 --> 00:44:44.000
Why didn't Conrad do that?

00:44:44.380 --> 00:44:45.320
I don't know.

00:44:45.580 --> 00:44:53.320
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,

00:44:53.540 --> 00:45:03.540
the way that he behaves immediately after being infected, which is the kind of the glassy-eyed performance or whatever,

00:45:04.100 --> 00:45:07.840
which in dramatic terms is there to show the audience that he's infected.

00:45:08.040 --> 00:45:12.420
But in story terms, you kind of think, well, why is he like that then?

00:45:12.830 --> 00:45:25.100
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.

00:45:25.840 --> 00:45:30.680
And I don't quite understand, you know, there could be an explanation for it, but we're never given it.

00:45:30.820 --> 00:45:38.340
It could be part of the reason why they took Dylan off and he was out of the story for a while.

00:45:38.580 --> 00:45:45.960
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.

00:45:46.380 --> 00:45:48.780
You know, there's a shell shot period and then there's something else.

00:45:48.980 --> 00:45:52.200
But we don't get that. So I concur that there's nothing in the story.

00:45:52.480 --> 00:46:08.020
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.

00:46:08.390 --> 00:46:10.740
You know, Quatermass is with him at that time.

00:46:11.240 --> 00:46:14.140
And likewise with Pew, wouldn't that be obvious too?

00:46:14.320 --> 00:46:21.740
Quatermass spends an entire car journey with him and then he goes through a medical examination all during that kind of post-infection period.

00:46:22.200 --> 00:46:34.660
So it feels like there is a dramatic convenience to the way in which the kind of initially infected person is performed.

00:46:35.300 --> 00:46:49.760
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.

00:46:50.380 --> 00:46:54.620
But it's never kind of married up.

00:46:55.790 --> 00:47:00.760
The justification for the dramatic needs of the story

00:47:01.520 --> 00:47:02.880
is never fully explained.

00:47:04.920 --> 00:47:06.760
One thing you touched on, I just want to say,

00:47:06.820 --> 00:47:09.500
I loved the flight surgeon telling them both

00:47:09.780 --> 00:47:11.200
that he wouldn't let them fly.

00:47:12.020 --> 00:47:17.380
It's just such a weird piece of drama that they added in there.

00:47:17.460 --> 00:47:18.320
Drama is not the right word,

00:47:18.540 --> 00:47:24.540
scene that they added in that was completely and utterly unnecessary to the story unless it was

00:47:24.640 --> 00:47:31.520
there to have the doctor fob the audience off by asking reminding you that he'd inhaled poisonous

00:47:31.840 --> 00:47:38.760
gas uh earlier and was checking them out and that a doctor can't tell that there's anything uh wrong

00:47:39.320 --> 00:47:45.600
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

00:47:45.620 --> 00:47:49.480
surgeons that's actually a real thing they're not going to send an old man like that into space

00:47:49.700 --> 00:47:54.000
it's just not going to happen in the real world even especially back then but um you know they

00:47:54.100 --> 00:48:02.760
might do it for a science experiment now but uh yeah so i i love that um let's see i of course

00:48:02.860 --> 00:48:07.300
we've already talked about the fact that this spawns so many tropes the secret alien invasion

00:48:07.460 --> 00:48:13.140
the top level government infiltration the mind control the roboman kind of stuff i mean it just

00:48:13.160 --> 00:48:22.480
what what what i i mean yes okay it did turn out to be a a secret uh invasion taking over

00:48:22.960 --> 00:48:28.960
parts of government but what i quite liked early on um sort of roundabout the episode two mark

00:48:29.380 --> 00:48:37.900
episode two the mark um was this conflict that was going on within within whitehall in in effect

00:48:37.920 --> 00:48:44.240
that Quatermass was investigating this mystery that appeared to be an extraterrestrial mystery,

00:48:44.820 --> 00:48:54.240
leading him to a top secret military establishment that then turned out to be a project run within

00:48:54.800 --> 00:49:02.180
his own ministry. And I thought, wow, this is all quite, you know, this is a British X-Files

00:49:02.180 --> 00:49:10.540
some almost 40 years before the x-files yeah yeah it it it was i am sure there's been other

00:49:10.860 --> 00:49:18.780
government government takeover maybe maybe not of kinds of things but it is neil is good and he was

00:49:18.880 --> 00:49:28.300
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

00:49:28.580 --> 00:49:29.360
And I've seen it.

00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:31.500
They used to do it in Sherlock Holmes all the time, too.

00:49:31.560 --> 00:49:32.240
So it's not just that.

00:49:32.340 --> 00:49:32.960
It's in the stories.

00:49:33.920 --> 00:49:42.300
I'm sure you recognize the signature when they were talking about whoever had sent the orders over to when Dylan came along.

00:49:42.680 --> 00:49:43.620
It's like, so who was it?

00:49:43.900 --> 00:49:46.040
Was that the Queen or was that Winston Churchill?

00:49:47.520 --> 00:49:50.520
Who would be the top in orders like that?

00:49:50.720 --> 00:49:51.400
Five minutes a day.

00:49:51.680 --> 00:49:51.800
Okay.

00:49:51.980 --> 00:49:54.220
So it's, well, Churchill, I think.

00:49:54.380 --> 00:49:55.760
I don't remember when Churchill was out.

00:49:55.880 --> 00:49:56.240
In 55.

00:49:56.820 --> 00:49:57.860
That's when he ended.

00:49:57.900 --> 00:50:04.680
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

00:50:04.780 --> 00:50:11.540
late in the year so it would be Clement Attlee Attlee would be the next one splendid so but yeah

00:50:11.940 --> 00:50:17.460
it's October November yeah no but I I always love it when they do that I can remember those from

00:50:17.940 --> 00:50:21.440
look at it and it's like we're not going to tell the name I'm sure there's something to do with

00:50:21.580 --> 00:50:25.900
some sort of legal issue there but I don't know what it is I don't think it is a legal issue

00:50:26.060 --> 00:50:38.440
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...

00:50:38.440 --> 00:50:46.260
Well, I think the only issue is that it's a kind of separation of politics from entertainment.

00:50:46.920 --> 00:50:47.200
Could be.

00:50:47.360 --> 00:51:10.500
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.

00:51:11.160 --> 00:51:36.160
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.

00:51:37.480 --> 00:51:59.000
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.

00:51:59.380 --> 00:52:03.360
It's true. And nothing I've said would stop you saying it's the prime minister.

00:52:03.740 --> 00:52:08.420
Yeah, I guess you could. But then there's that. It's the contemporary prime minister.

00:52:08.560 --> 00:52:10.780
So you are naming them possibly. I don't know.

00:52:11.360 --> 00:52:13.260
Yeah, that's a fair point.

00:52:14.980 --> 00:52:18.280
So episode four has a warning on it.

00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:19.240
Yes.

00:52:19.490 --> 00:52:20.560
You shouldn't watch children.

00:52:20.660 --> 00:52:22.940
Children and those of you who may have a nervous disposition.

00:52:23.320 --> 00:52:30.920
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?

00:52:31.520 --> 00:52:33.300
And there are two questions to that.

00:52:33.700 --> 00:52:39.140
One, what was it in episode four that was so bad, because I was watching for it.

00:52:39.140 --> 00:52:40.940
I go, ooh, there must be something in this one.

00:52:41.280 --> 00:52:42.920
Is that the one where the family was killed?

00:52:43.240 --> 00:52:44.980
No, that was in episode three.

00:52:45.940 --> 00:52:52.420
You mean the Picnickers, where Quatermass says something like, that accounts for the gunfire.

00:52:52.820 --> 00:52:55.120
which was one of those things where I was thinking

00:52:55.500 --> 00:52:58.000
hmm, yeah, I don't like this Quatermass very much

00:52:59.700 --> 00:53:00.680
It's kind of cold

00:53:00.920 --> 00:53:01.860
It was a bit cold

00:53:03.480 --> 00:53:06.140
But yeah, I thought that was much more disturbing

00:53:06.660 --> 00:53:08.440
than anything I remember seeing in episode 4

00:53:08.860 --> 00:53:11.400
What I suspect the reason may be

00:53:11.620 --> 00:53:13.360
is that they may have had complaints

00:53:13.940 --> 00:53:14.860
and I don't know this

00:53:14.900 --> 00:53:15.620
Oh, that's possible

00:53:16.340 --> 00:53:18.040
I've not read anything about it

00:53:18.260 --> 00:53:20.280
but it would not surprise me

00:53:20.320 --> 00:53:24.440
if making that announcement was more reactive than anticipatory.

00:53:24.780 --> 00:53:25.680
Okay, that's fair.

00:53:25.960 --> 00:53:29.560
That they had had the equivalent of the Mary White House of the day

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.060
on the blower saying, you know, how dare you broadcast this stuff.

00:53:34.240 --> 00:53:38.600
Now, what I really dislike about that, though, is,

00:53:39.020 --> 00:53:42.360
but now that you explain it as a possible reactive, that does make sense,

00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:43.720
and I can concur with that.

00:53:44.100 --> 00:53:47.680
I would be very, very angry if I'd been a kid

00:53:47.700 --> 00:53:52.800
watching the first three episodes of that and episode four came on and that warning came up my

00:53:52.920 --> 00:53:57.980
parents said nope to bed and i didn't get to watch it because of that yeah that would that would be

00:53:58.340 --> 00:54:04.040
or or you know someone's stick pins in the effigy of mary white house faint disposition i better

00:54:04.240 --> 00:54:12.360
leave and and never see what happened that but i must i must say i i did i liked the fact like

00:54:12.360 --> 00:54:16.800
like you say it's not it's not entirely clear whether there may have been some other warnings

00:54:16.820 --> 00:54:20.860
on other episodes like during the pre-announcement,

00:54:21.220 --> 00:54:22.480
so the continuity announcer.

00:54:22.920 --> 00:54:25.820
But it's the trappings of what, you know,

00:54:25.820 --> 00:54:28.200
the furniture around a TV serial

00:54:28.460 --> 00:54:32.200
because we've kind of mentioned just how influential

00:54:32.520 --> 00:54:37.640
and therefore essentially timeless Nigel Neill's work itself actually is.

00:54:37.720 --> 00:54:39.920
And we still have the six-part serial

00:54:40.180 --> 00:54:42.740
and the half-hour drama in some format.

00:54:43.080 --> 00:54:45.920
But there are bits of it that look very, very different.

00:54:46.260 --> 00:54:49.180
And it's the phrasing of that, you know,

00:54:49.360 --> 00:54:51.460
that children and those of you with a nervous disposition.

00:54:51.970 --> 00:54:55.300
And the other one I picked up on, which I really, really liked,

00:54:55.660 --> 00:54:58.600
was that in the credits of episode two,

00:54:59.200 --> 00:55:02.000
where he goes off to prefab town,

00:55:03.900 --> 00:55:08.760
the mother in the prefab is played by Hilda Fenmore.

00:55:09.580 --> 00:55:11.560
But when it comes up on the credits, it says,

00:55:12.020 --> 00:55:16.040
not as advertised, because it's an era.

00:55:16.140 --> 00:55:34.200
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.

00:55:34.600 --> 00:55:46.760
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.

00:55:47.310 --> 00:55:54.400
Radio Times went to press based on who they were rehearsing with and who they intended would be playing the part on the night.

00:55:54.640 --> 00:55:58.020
And so, you know, it's something you would never get anymore.

00:55:58.460 --> 00:56:07.560
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.

00:56:07.680 --> 00:56:12.520
They wouldn't care about the Radio Times readers who were pouring over the magazine.

00:56:12.760 --> 00:56:16.260
Hang on a minute. And then looking at the credits and going, that's not the same.

00:56:16.460 --> 00:56:19.300
But, you know, that was that mattered then.

00:56:19.460 --> 00:56:20.240
And I loved that.

00:56:20.300 --> 00:56:33.560
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.

00:56:35.180 --> 00:56:42.280
There were a few episodes where a regular character, first thing you'd hear as the credits open up would be,

00:56:42.450 --> 00:56:45.600
The part of Victoria Winters will be played by Jane Smith today.

00:56:46.060 --> 00:56:47.640
And it would be a completely different actress.

00:56:48.200 --> 00:56:50.160
You know, she was there yesterday and she's there the day after.

00:56:50.440 --> 00:56:52.220
And whatever happened, she wasn't there.

00:56:52.270 --> 00:56:55.280
And then just the understudy or somebody came in and read the lines.

00:56:55.800 --> 00:56:57.540
And so they just told you.

00:56:57.660 --> 00:56:58.300
Because you want to do it.

00:56:58.580 --> 00:56:58.660
Yeah.

00:56:59.400 --> 00:57:04.400
You know, but usually those are fairly major recurring characters that you're invested in here.

00:57:04.530 --> 00:57:05.340
It's only in the episode.

00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:07.280
Yeah, I'm impressed at how well.

00:57:07.590 --> 00:57:12.540
I mean, obviously the British acting system is so good because that woman came in and she did that part.

00:57:12.800 --> 00:57:18.200
And I never for a second, you know, would have thought she was a last minute substitution, like having to do her lines.

00:57:18.320 --> 00:57:19.960
The professionalism.

00:57:20.220 --> 00:57:21.060
It's not like it.

00:57:21.800 --> 00:57:24.080
Well, it's not like she had a huge number of lines to learn.

00:57:24.180 --> 00:57:27.000
But what I like is what I like is the.

00:57:27.400 --> 00:57:28.500
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:57:28.880 --> 00:57:30.980
You're British and you missed the sarcasm in that comment.

00:57:31.580 --> 00:57:32.040
Sorry, go ahead.

00:57:32.480 --> 00:57:32.720
Go ahead.

00:57:33.660 --> 00:57:34.500
It's the people.

00:57:34.840 --> 00:57:35.340
It's the people.

00:57:35.670 --> 00:57:41.360
I have no idea who was actually because the credits don't tell you who was slated to play the role.

00:57:41.740 --> 00:57:47.360
I'd have to dig out the Radio Times edition for October the Whatever 1955.

00:57:48.300 --> 00:57:55.700
But the people who had tuned in to see whoever it was played the role of mother for one episode.

00:57:56.160 --> 00:57:57.540
That was the apology for them.

00:57:57.840 --> 00:57:58.600
Yeah, it's her family.

00:58:00.540 --> 00:58:02.240
Like, oh, she's going to be on a telly.

00:58:02.510 --> 00:58:03.780
And then they are all sitting around.

00:58:03.870 --> 00:58:05.220
And then it's like, it wasn't her.

00:58:06.080 --> 00:58:07.780
Probably writing in nasty letters.

00:58:10.220 --> 00:58:10.940
Let's see.

00:58:11.340 --> 00:58:18.160
So one of the things I want to point out is that, you know, the spearhead from space connection is obvious.

00:58:19.880 --> 00:58:24.800
The fact that John Pertwee's, now we've seen two separate Quatermass stories.

00:58:25.020 --> 00:58:29.340
We've seen the one that you could arguably say may have had something to do with the daemons.

00:58:29.720 --> 00:58:33.040
We've seen the one that obviously is spearhead from space and other things.

00:58:34.220 --> 00:58:38.640
That John Pertwee's era was supposed to be basically Quatermass.

00:58:39.040 --> 00:58:39.840
Heard that before.

00:58:40.640 --> 00:58:45.340
That's the vibe they were going for when they moved it to the Earth-based thing.

00:58:46.720 --> 00:58:53.820
That they were trying to capitalize on that and kind of make it a Quatermass-like version of Doctor Who.

00:58:54.720 --> 00:58:55.680
I can see that.

00:58:56.760 --> 00:58:58.600
As you say, this is like a proto-unit story.

00:58:59.020 --> 00:59:00.340
I mean, I can totally see this.

00:59:01.680 --> 00:59:09.520
You watch these two things, and now I'll never look at the Pertwee era again without seeing that sort of,

00:59:09.960 --> 00:59:14.360
When they went into it at the start, this is clearly what they were working on.

00:59:14.720 --> 00:59:17.860
Government conspiracies, alien invasions coming in,

00:59:19.220 --> 00:59:23.240
having the military, being at loggerheads with the military at times.

00:59:26.140 --> 00:59:27.940
It's got that vibe.

00:59:28.200 --> 00:59:32.680
Obviously, as Pertwee's era evolved on, they started to move away from that

00:59:32.820 --> 00:59:35.300
and back to the more original Who format.

00:59:35.780 --> 00:59:39.360
But even in Trivia Bit, I don't know if you knew this one,

00:59:39.480 --> 00:59:40.160
but for the audience.

00:59:40.760 --> 00:59:42.700
And again, I'm sure there's someone who will correct me,

00:59:43.080 --> 00:59:44.800
but I know parts of this are back.

00:59:45.040 --> 00:59:47.400
Invisible Enemy, which of course has, you know,

00:59:48.020 --> 00:59:50.300
an alien taking over the minds of people,

00:59:50.560 --> 00:59:52.700
and it's not exactly the same by any stretch of the magic.

00:59:53.060 --> 00:59:56.860
In Invisible Enemy, the doctor looks in some tanks

00:59:57.440 --> 00:59:58.480
where they're growing the virus,

00:59:59.620 --> 01:00:01.140
and they're bubbling and frothing.

01:00:01.900 --> 01:00:03.540
That is either test footage

01:00:04.540 --> 01:00:08.260
or was part of a failed production to restage Quatermass 2.

01:00:08.600 --> 01:00:11.240
And it's very obvious if you look at it.

01:00:11.410 --> 01:00:16.340
I mean, it's, yeah, it doesn't quite have the writhing, leafy spinach look,

01:00:16.740 --> 01:00:20.080
but, yeah, it's got to be.

01:00:21.080 --> 01:00:24.900
It's interesting that someone was doing that at the BBC.

01:00:25.780 --> 01:00:27.680
You know, if they were going to redo them, why didn't they redo it?

01:00:28.440 --> 01:00:30.760
Why wouldn't they redo the first one instead?

01:00:30.760 --> 01:00:33.000
Yeah, yes, which is much better.

01:00:34.520 --> 01:00:34.940
Let's see.

01:00:35.170 --> 01:00:36.180
Do I have anything else?

01:00:36.250 --> 01:00:36.980
Oh, I did look it up.

01:00:37.120 --> 01:00:41.280
Yes, there was a proposed color version of Quatermass 2.

01:00:41.720 --> 01:00:43.040
I'm reading this off a website.

01:00:43.110 --> 01:00:43.820
Oh, it's the BBC.

01:00:44.150 --> 01:00:44.260
Okay.

01:00:44.620 --> 01:00:47.940
It's the BBC's website that says, and this is the whole quote,

01:00:48.000 --> 01:00:51.860
The model shots of the vats of the spawning virus on Titan in the final episode

01:00:51.970 --> 01:00:54.500
were not actually created specifically for the invisible enemy.

01:00:54.860 --> 01:00:59.160
They had, in fact, been made for a proposed new color version of the classic sci-fi thriller,

01:00:59.230 --> 01:01:00.620
The Quatermass Experiment.

01:01:01.080 --> 01:01:06.680
However, the project was abandoned and the footage was put to use in this story instead.

01:01:06.760 --> 01:01:12.040
except of course obviously it wouldn't be the quatermass experiment because there were no vats

01:01:12.260 --> 01:01:19.060
of bubbling alien domes so i could that's an interesting question i would have thought they

01:01:19.140 --> 01:01:23.260
would do quatermass in the pit actually to be honest i i would have thought they'd have done

01:01:23.620 --> 01:01:29.580
all three well received i would have done all three if i were the bbc because you didn't have

01:01:29.590 --> 01:01:35.119
good copies not if you had a bbc budget well yeah well they've done it before they could do it again

01:01:35.440 --> 01:01:37.100
just on a Doctor Who budget.

01:01:37.480 --> 01:01:39.060
I mean, they're doing Doctor Who.

01:01:39.500 --> 01:01:41.880
They were doing maybe Blake 7 by then.

01:01:41.960 --> 01:01:43.000
They should have been able to do.

01:01:44.460 --> 01:01:45.340
Maybe even the tripods.

01:01:45.420 --> 01:01:46.480
That was probably a little bit later on.

01:01:46.760 --> 01:01:47.020
Let's see.

01:01:47.020 --> 01:01:49.420
Do I have anything else?

01:01:49.700 --> 01:01:57.480
I do want to say that it is one of the best deaths ever for Leo.

01:01:58.080 --> 01:02:01.880
Not because he just gets rocketed out into space by the recoil,

01:02:02.060 --> 01:02:03.240
which, you know, fair enough.

01:02:03.400 --> 01:02:04.920
I've seen that in other stories, too.

01:02:05.340 --> 01:02:15.280
after this um it was it was the how effective it was with his voice continuing to echo in in

01:02:15.540 --> 01:02:20.420
quater mass's helmet and he couldn't shut it off you just have to listen to it coming in the radio

01:02:20.680 --> 01:02:28.100
as this guy goes on and on and on um i kind of thought it was interesting that they didn't get

01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:34.460
any dialogue from him after he had been freed of the influence but yeah i i i thought that was

01:02:35.000 --> 01:02:39.780
just just keep just keep shouting over the dialogue ignore everything that everyone else

01:02:39.820 --> 01:02:45.040
is talking you just keep calling for help and uh because you're dying and there's nothing you can

01:02:45.040 --> 01:02:50.100
do um i i thought it was very good that was very good yeah um do we have anything to say about the

01:02:50.160 --> 01:02:55.220
time on the asteroid the time their time what they did on the asteroid anything that happened

01:02:55.240 --> 01:03:04.260
out there any comments on it no yeah kind of just the whole thing was yeah i think one of my probably

01:03:04.260 --> 01:03:12.860
my biggest complaint about the rocket sequences was i thought and maybe maybe i missed it i thought

01:03:12.860 --> 01:03:19.140
that the flaw with the rocket was in takeoff and so the yes the fact that they were going to launch

01:03:19.140 --> 01:03:25.200
this rocket in england just meant it was going to nuke in england and not necessarily because did

01:03:25.220 --> 01:03:27.420
Could they take off without firing up the nuclear?

01:03:28.020 --> 01:03:29.480
It wasn't in takeoff.

01:03:29.500 --> 01:03:31.420
It was with the nuclear motor.

01:03:31.940 --> 01:03:32.160
Maybe.

01:03:32.400 --> 01:03:33.260
Which I wasn't sure.

01:03:33.340 --> 01:03:34.180
I wasn't clear.

01:03:34.700 --> 01:03:36.880
And maybe it's because I missed something.

01:03:36.960 --> 01:03:40.060
But I wasn't clear that they needed to do that in order to take off.

01:03:40.220 --> 01:03:40.380
Okay.

01:03:40.420 --> 01:03:43.520
But they were doing it on the launch pad for some reason.

01:03:43.700 --> 01:03:46.460
Part of the confusion is that they didn't really explain that.

01:03:46.820 --> 01:03:51.940
And then they had to do something about venting the fuel so that they could cause it to explode.

01:03:52.580 --> 01:03:56.340
And if they'd done that in Australia, you're like, why were they renting the fuel before they're going to take off?

01:03:56.460 --> 01:03:57.080
I don't understand.

01:03:57.610 --> 01:04:04.700
All those things didn't quite, that was a little bit, this is awfully convenient that the thing that accidentally is a bomb,

01:04:04.890 --> 01:04:09.600
you can now intentionally make a bomb only when you want it to go off.

01:04:09.920 --> 01:04:12.400
That part I will grant was not particularly good.

01:04:12.670 --> 01:04:16.720
And also the fact that it had a nose cone that could return home.

01:04:17.560 --> 01:04:21.380
There was no indication that these guys were ever coming back.

01:04:21.720 --> 01:04:25.280
We're going up there and we're going to detonate this thing and we're going to die.

01:04:25.700 --> 01:04:31.680
Yes, but that was because it was going to detonate, not because they didn't think the rocket was capable of coming back.

01:04:32.660 --> 01:04:43.000
Yeah, but I thought that the rocket was the rocket, not that there was a second escape stage at the front of the rocket.

01:04:43.260 --> 01:04:44.760
Because there was no mention of that.

01:04:45.020 --> 01:04:47.360
It was kind of like, well, it's a one-way trip.

01:04:47.920 --> 01:04:49.120
And they know it's a one-way trip.

01:04:49.260 --> 01:04:50.120
They're going up there.

01:04:50.500 --> 01:04:51.920
They're going to get the asteroid.

01:04:52.080 --> 01:04:53.200
They're going to detonate the rocket.

01:04:53.420 --> 01:04:54.040
They're going to die.

01:04:54.539 --> 01:04:56.560
And they're going to save the world doing it.

01:04:56.820 --> 01:04:57.480
That's the idea.

01:04:57.900 --> 01:04:57.980
Yes.

01:04:58.170 --> 01:05:01.120
I never got the whole, okay, we're sitting there.

01:05:01.200 --> 01:05:01.720
We're setting it up.

01:05:01.990 --> 01:05:03.840
Okay, let's go get back to the escape capsule.

01:05:03.950 --> 01:05:04.540
It's like, what?

01:05:04.720 --> 01:05:05.520
What escape capsule?

01:05:05.960 --> 01:05:17.560
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.

01:05:17.710 --> 01:05:19.680
And I already knew he was alive for Quatermass 3.

01:05:19.980 --> 01:05:20.220
Yes.

01:05:20.380 --> 01:05:24.600
So, yeah, that part was a little, perhaps a little.

01:05:25.100 --> 01:05:26.460
I do want to watch the movie now.

01:05:26.730 --> 01:05:31.460
I do want to watch the movie now and see the liberties that were taken with it.

01:05:32.080 --> 01:05:35.040
But, and who knows, maybe it's good.

01:05:35.290 --> 01:05:36.680
I think it did good box office.

01:05:37.660 --> 01:05:39.840
Have you got anything else on Waitermass 2?

01:05:40.360 --> 01:05:40.600
Nope.

01:05:42.100 --> 01:05:43.200
Simon, thank you for joining me.

01:05:44.100 --> 01:05:45.100
It's a pleasure, as always.

01:05:45.860 --> 01:05:50.280
And listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.

01:05:55.160 --> 01:05:58.680
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01:05:59.540 --> 01:06:06.800
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01:06:08.700 --> 01:06:11.420
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01:06:13.480 --> 01:06:16.040
All episodes are available at FusionPatrol.com.

01:06:17.540 --> 01:06:20.620
Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf.

01:06:22.060 --> 01:06:24.480
This has been a Lone Locust production.

01:06:26.680 --> 01:06:27.620
Ooh, the tripods!

01:06:28.400 --> 01:06:32.660
Just had an idea for a possible later series for us to do.

01:06:33.500 --> 01:06:33.700
I