Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist originally created by writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading the British Experimental Rocket Group. He continually finds himself confronting sinister alien forces that threaten to destroy humanity.
The role of Quatermass was featured in three influential BBC science fiction serials of the 1950s, and again in a final serial for Thames Television in 1979. A remake of the first serial appeared on BBC Four in 2005. The character also appeared in films, on the radio and in print over a fifty-year period. Kneale picked the character's unusual surname from a London telephone directory, while the first name was in honour of the astronomer Bernard Lovell.
The character of Quatermass has been described by BBC News Online as Britain's first television hero, and by The Independent newspaper as "a brilliantly conceived and finely crafted creation... [He] remained a modern 'Mr Standfast', the one fixed point in an increasingly dreadful and ever-shifting universe". In 2005, an article in The Daily Telegraph suggested that the character shares other elements from other British heroes such as Sherlock Holmes.
Character Little is revealed of Quatermass's early life during the course of the films and television series in which he appears. In The Quatermass Experiment, he at one point despairs that he should have stuck to his original career as a surveyor.
In Nigel Kneale's 1996 radio serial The Quatermass Memoirs, it is revealed that the Professor was first involved in rocketry experiments in the 1930s, and that his wife died young. The unmade prequel serial Quatermass in the Third Reich, an idea conceived by Kneale in the late 1990s, would have shown Quatermass travelling to Nazi Germany during the 1936 Berlin Olympics and becoming involved with Wernher von Braun and the German rocket programme, before helping a young Jewish refugee to escape from the country.Murray, p. 188. According to The Quatermass Memoirs, during World War II Quatermass conducted top secret work for the British war effort, which he subsequently refused ever to discuss.
By 1953 (in The Quatermass Experiment), Quatermass is the head of the British Experimental Rocket Group, which has a programme to launch a crewed rocket into space from a base in Tarooma, Australia. Although Quatermass succeeds in launching a three-man crew, the rocket vastly overshoots its projected orbit and returns to Earth much later than planned, crash-landing in London. Only one of the crew, Victor Carroon, remains; it transpires that he has been taken over by an alien presence, eventually forcing Quatermass to destroy him and the other two crewmembers who have been absorbed into him in a climax set in Westminster Abbey.
Despite this trauma, Quatermass continues with his space programme, now called the British Rocket Group, and by Quatermass II (1955) is actively planning the establishment of Moon bases. In this serial, his daughter, Paula Quatermass, works as an assistant at the Rocket Group, but there is no sign of a wife or other children. In the fourth episode of the serial, he mentions that he never reached his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, tying in with The Quatermass Memoirs later assertion of his wife's early death.
At the beginning of the third serial, Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59), Quatermass's funding is being cut and the Rocket Group is being handed over to military control, much to his disgust. Command is to be handed over to Colonel Breen, and Quatermass senses that he is being forced out: however, after the events of the serial, Breen is dead, Quatermass has helped to save the world and London is recovering from chaos.
It is not clear what happens to the Rocket Group immediately after this: the next time Quatermass is seen on screen (Quatermass, also released internationally as The Quatermass Conclusion and Quatermass IV, 1979) he has long been retired, living in retreat in the Scottish Highlands. He has recently become the guardian of his teenaged granddaughter Hettie after her parents were killed in a road accident in Germany. After Hettie runs away from home, he travels to London in search of her and finds a dystopian world there. Quatermass and the scientist Joe Kapp establish that an alien probe is causing the collapse of society by feeding on the world's youth, and Quatermass forms a plan to drive the intruder away by the detonation of a nuclear bomb. He presses the button to detonate it himself, with Hettie's help, and they are killed in the blast as the planet is saved.
Appearances + TelevisionTitleYearPlayed byNotes The Quatermass Experiment 1953 Reginald Tate Only two episodes of six exist Quatermass II 1955 John Robinson All six episodes exist Quatermass and the Pit 1958–59 André Morell All six episodes exist Quatermass 1979 John MillsFour-part TV series AKA Quatermass IV recut into film The Quatermass Conclusion The Quatermass Experiment 2005 Jason Flemyng TV film Remake of the 1953 TV series, broadcast live
+ Film The Quatermass Xperiment 1955 Brian Donlevy Remake of the 1953 TV series AKA The Creeping Unknown (USA) Quatermass 21957 Remake of the 1955 TV series AKA Enemy From Space (USA) Quatermass and the Pit 1967 Andrew Keir Remake of the 1958–59 TV series AKA Five Million Years to Earth (USA) The Quatermass Conclusion 1979 John Mills Recut of the 1979 TV series into a film + Radio The Quatermass Memoirs 1996 Andrew Keir Broadcast on BBC Radio 3
History Nigel Kneale conceived the character of Quatermass in 1953, when he was assigned in his capacity as a BBC television staff drama writer to create a new six-part serial to run on Saturday nights in July and August.Pixley, p. 3. Kneale initially named his leading character Professor Charlton,Murray, p. 28. but during the writing process decided he wanted something more striking and memorable.Pixley, p. 5.
A native of the Isle of Man, Kneale was inspired by the fact that surnames beginning with "Qu" were common on the island.Pixley, p. 6. The eventual name was picked from a London telephone directory; there was a family by that name who traded as fruiterers in the city's East End. In 1955, the Evening News interviewed the one Quatermass in the telephone book - Sidney Quatermass, aged 80 - who reported that he had been surprised, but enjoyed watching his namesake on television. The surname has its origins as a measurement of land assigned in the division of England by the Normans following their conquest of the country under William the Conqueror in 1066. The Professor's first name, Bernard, was in honour of the astronomer Bernard Lovell, founder of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England.
On television (1950s)
The director assigned to the serial, which was eventually named The Quatermass Experiment, was Rudolph Cartier. A few months beforehand he had directed a play entitled It Is Midnight, Dr. Schweitzer for the BBC, and he offered the role of Quatermass to one of the stars of that play, André Morell. Morell considered the offer but declined the part, which Cartier then offered to Reginald Tate, another actor who had appeared in the play, who accepted.
The serial was a success, with the British Film Institute later describing it as "one of the most influential series of the 1950s". The following year the BBC's Controller of Programmes, Cecil McGivern—who had initially feared that viewers would not accept such an unusual name for the leading character—noted in reference to the impending launch of the rival ITV network that: "Had competitive television been in existence then, we would have killed it every Saturday night while [The Quatermass Experiment] lasted. We are going to need many more 'Quatermass Experiment' programmes".Johnson, p. 21.
A sequel, Quatermass II, was accordingly commissioned in 1955, but Reginald Tate died of a heart attack only a month before production was due to begin.Pixley, pp. 17–18. With very little time to find a replacement, John Robinson was picked as the only suitable actor available. Robinson was uncomfortable about taking over from Tate and with some of the technical dialogue he was required to deliver, and his performance has been criticised as "robotic",Hearn & Rigby, p. 6. although others such as Andrew Pixley in Time Screen Magazine have praised Robinson for doing compelling work after the initial episode of the serial.
By the summer of 1957, Kneale was working on the scripts for a third and final BBC serial.Pixley, p. 27. Titled Quatermass and the Pit and again produced and directed by Cartier, this was eventually broadcast in December 1958 and January 1959.Pixley, p. 47. John Robinson was no longer available to play Quatermass, so the role was offered instead to Alec Clunes.Murray, p. 67. Clunes turned down the part, and it was offered once more to André Morell, who this time accepted. Morell has been praised by several reviewers as having given the definitive portrayal of Quatermass. The serial itself has been praised by the BBC's own website as "simply the first finest thing the BBC ever made. It justifies licence fees to this day". Despite this success, Kneale was unsure about whether the character would ever return, later telling an interviewer: "I didn't want to go on repeating because Professor Quatermass had already saved the world from ultimate destruction three times, and that seemed to me to be quite enough".Pixley, p. 36.
Of the TV serials, Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit have been preserved in full. Only the first two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment now exist.
In films
At roughly the same time as Quatermass II was being transmitted by the BBC, Hammer Film Productions released its film adaptation of the first serial in British cinemas.Pixley, p. 21. Directed by Val Guest, it was retitled The Quatermass Xperiment to capitalise on the British "X" classification and starred American actor Brian Donlevy as part of a deal to help the film find US distribution.Murray, p. 45. Kneale, who had little involvement with the film, was unimpressed with this casting: "I may have picked Quatermass's surname out of a phone book, but his first name was carefully chosen: Bernard, after Bernard Lovell, the creator of Jodrell Bank. Pioneer, ultimate questing man. Donlevy played him as a mechanic, a creature with a completely closed mind".Hearn & Rigby, p. 7. Val Guest has praised Donlevy's performance, saying that "he gave it absolute reality".Kinsey, p. 35.
Despite Kneale's reservations about the casting, The Quatermass Xperiment was the highest-grossing film Hammer had made up to that point in its history, and has since been described by one academic as "the key British science fiction film of the 1950s".Hunter, p. 8. Hammer was keen to make an immediate follow-up, and wanted to use Quatermass in its 1956 film X the Unknown, but Kneale refused Hammer the rights, and the company created its own substitute character, Doctor Adam Royston.Kinsey, p. 41. Hammer did release an adaptation of Quatermass II in 1957, called Quatermass 2 and this time with Kneale's involvement in the script.Kinsey, p. 50. To the writer's displeasure, Donlevy returned as Quatermass.