Quatermass (TV Serial) - Production

Production

Professor Bernard Quatermass was created by Manx writer Nigel Kneale in 1953 for the serial The Quatermass Experiment. Its success led to two sequels, Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1958). These three Quatermass serials are seen today as seminal nineteen-fifties television productions. Kneale, however, became disenchanted with the BBC and went freelance in the late nineteen-fifties, producing scripts for Hammer Films and Associated Television.

The notion of bringing Professor Quatermass back for a fourth adventure dated back to at least 1965 when producer Irene Shubik asked Kneale to contribute a new Quatermass story for the first season of her science fiction anthology series, Out of the Unknown. Nothing came of this but the prospect of Quatermass making a reappearance arose again when, following the success of the film version of Quatermass and the Pit in 1967, Hammer announced they were in discussions with Kneale for a new Quatermass adventure. Again, this did not progress beyond the initial negotiation stage. In the meantime, Kneale had been coaxed back to the BBC, writing plays such as The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968), Wine of India (1970) and The Stone Tape (1972). Following completion of The Stone Tape, Kneale was commissioned on 21 November 1972 by BBC Head of Drama Serials, Ronnie Marsh, to write a new four-part Quatermass serial.

Kneale began writing the scripts, working to a delivery deadline of February 1973. Much of the setting for the story was influenced by contemporary political events such as strikes, power cuts, the Oil Crisis and developments in the Space Race, especially the planned Apollo-Soyuz missions and Skylab. Writing in the listings magazine TV Times to promote the serial, Kneale said, “Quatermass is a story of the future – but perhaps only a few years from now. There are some clues already in the most obvious places: the streets. Pavements littered with rubbish. Walls painted with angry graffiti. Belfast black with smoke and rage. Worst of all, the mindless violence”. Concerns about the state of society, especially the “dropout” culture of the youth movement, had been a theme of Kneale's writing for some time, as seen in such works as The Big, Big Giggle, an unmade play about a teenage suicide cult; The Year of the Sex Olympics, about the consequences of a world with no censorship or inhibitions; and Bam! Pow! Zap! (1969), about teenage delinquents, all of which fed into the world depicted in the new Quatermass serial. Kneale said, “I looked at the alarming aspects of contemporary trends. Since then, we'd seen 'flower power' and hippies, so all I did was bring them into the story. It was written in 1972 and it was about the sixties really”. Another theme that had crept into Kneale's writing at this time, as seen in Wine of India, about compulsory euthanasia for the elderly, and, later, the Beasts episode “During Barty's Party”, about an elderly couple terrorised by rats, was the consequences of growing old. Kneale later recalled, “The theme I was trying to get to was the old redressing the balance with the young, saving the young, which I thought a nice, paradoxical, ironic idea after the youth-oriented 60s”.

Assigned to produce the serial was Dixon of Dock Green producer Joe Waters. Preliminary filming on Quatermass began in June 1973 at Ealing Studios where special effects designer Jack Wilkie and his assistant, Ian Scoones, shot model footage, for part one of the serial, of a space station with astronauts working on its hull. However, at this point the BBC got cold feet about the project; they had become concerned about the cost of mounting the production and had been refused permission to film at Stonehenge, one of the locations that Kneale had envisaged the Planet People would gather at to be reaped by the alien force. Kneale recalled that Stonehenge “had become Big Business and the place was like a factory with tourists there from dawn to dusk... they weren't going to let anyone go near it”. Kneale also felt that the BBC were unhappy with the script believing it “didn't suit their image at that time; it was too gloomy”. In the end, it was decided during Summer 1973 that, for financial reasons, the BBC would not proceed with the production. However, the BBC had an option on the script until 1975 which they held onto until it expired.

At this stage, Kneale was working primarily in Independent Television, having written the play Murrain (1975) and the anthology series Beasts (1976) for ATV. However, Star Wars was beginning to make an impact and interest in science fiction projects among film and television studios began to rise. In May 1977, Euston Films, a subsidiary of Thames Television best known for The Sweeney (1975–1978), announced that they had picked up Kneale's unmade Quatermass scripts. This new production, known either as Quatermass or Quatermass IV, would consist of a four part serial to be broadcast by ITV which would be recut as a 100-minute film, titled The Quatermass Conclusion, for release in North America and Europe. Kneale was dubious about having to craft both a television serial and film version of his story feeling that “in the end we had two versions, neither of which was the right length for the story”. During the rewrites, Kneale transplanted the action at the conclusion of part three from Stonehenge to the more easily available Wembley Stadium. When asked about what differences there were between the Euston Films version and the version originally envisaged for the BBC, Kneale remarked that “the BBC version would have been much more in the studio, whereas the Euston Films version was entirely shot on 35mm film with a great deal of it outside. Much more lavish than either the BBC or I had contemplated”.

Filming took place between 26 August 1978 and 23 December 1978 at locations around Middlesex and Hertfordshire as well as London, including Wembley Stadium. The budget was £1.25 million, making it one of the most expensive undertakings Euston had attempted at that time. Production designer Arnold Chapkis constructed several large and elaborate sets including those for the megalithic standing stones at Ringstone Round, the Kapps' radio telescope and observatory and the decaying urban landscape of London; Kneale quipped about the radio telescope set that “it probably would have worked if they'd just aimed it properly!”. Associate producer Norton Knatchbull noted that the serial “was the first 'art department' picture Euston has ever been involved in, in the sense that major sets had to be built on location”. This led Euston executive Johnny Goodman to joke, “Our biggest problem was finding someone who wanted the two giant telescope dishes after we finished filming. There's not much demand for such things”. One aspect where the budget was less than generous was with the model sequences made by Clearwater Films; Johnny Goodman remarked that the cost was less than James Bond producer Cubby Broccoli “would spend on cigars in a week”. Post production was completed in mid-February 1979. Unlike the original BBC Quatermass serials, which had used stock music tracks, the new serial had a specially composed soundtrack by Marc Wilkinson and Nic Rowley which made particular use of the nursery rhyme “Huffity, Puffity, Ringstone Round” devised by Kneale in his scripts.