Archive for the ‘Sci-fi’ Category

It’s said that pub landlords hated the Quatermass TV serial back in the 1950s. When the BBC first broadcast his adventures in those pre-iPlayer days, hostelries would empty as drinkers hurried home to catch the latest instalment, leaving no-one for barmen to pull pints for.

Professor Bernard Quatermass was the first great icon of British television. The creation of writer Nigel Kneale (himself the first great British TV dramatist), Quatermass has influenced the entire science fiction genre, from Doctor Who to John Carpenter and beyond. Perhaps more importantly, he keeps finding fans in each successive generation: the first three film adaptations have just been re-released, and since they’re on DVD you can enjoy them in your own time – no need to hurry your drinking.

In Kneale’s world, Quatermass was the head of the ‘British Rocket Group’ (oh, for the days when spacecraft boasted a Union Jack on their nose cones!). His position led him to encounter the dregs of the universe: Starting with BBC series The Quatermass Experiment in 1953 and continuing in Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1959), the professor battled with extraterrestrial invasion and, perhaps even worse, intransigent civil service bureaucracy.

Intrigued by the character’s TV success, a small film studio called Hammer Films chanced their arm with a film adaptation of the first story (which they audaciously renamed The Quatermass Xperiment to emphasise its shocking content and capitalise on the decision of the then British Board of Film Censors to award it an X certificate). It was a huge hit in 1955, establishing Hammer as the serious film-biz players they would remain for the next two decades.

Hammer eventually filmed all three serials (Quatermass 2 came in 1957, while his adventures In the Pit had to wait until 1967) and it’s these versions which are most familiar to modern viewers. All three are stories of alien invasion, in which the (largely unseen) enemy first possesses and then transforms their earthling victims so they lose their fundamental humanity.

This being the 1950s there are subtexts galore. We can view the aliens as a manifestation of the existential threat of communism, although this is a very reductive interpretation. Nigel Kneale was a more acute writer than that: the main tension in the film is not between mankind and the aliens but between this planet’s inhabitants – Quatermass is appalled how his inventions are co-opted by the military, who plan to use them to slaughter their enemies.

As with all successes, Quatermass inspired imitations. Hammer’s own (tremendously entertaining) X: The Unknown was even set to feature Quatermass until Kneale – unhappy at the Studio’s use of American tough-guy actor Brian Donlevy in the role in The Quatermass Xperiment – protested. It didn’t dissuade him from letting Hammer make The Abominable Snowman, adapted from another of his teleplays. Maybe the best of the Kneale / Hammer films, it concerns the hunt for the yeti and the terrible consequences for those who find it.

This boom was short lived. Soon after, Hammer discovered tacky Gothic Horror and changed course: apart from one-off efforts like Quatermass and the Pit and The Damned, Hammer steered clear of science fiction.

This is a shame, because they were amongst the best films the company made: mature, sophisticated and still thought-provoking.

Has there been a more influential British TV programme than Doctor Who? Not the modern version, you understand, with its CGI, top-line talent and generous budget but the spit ‘n’ sawdust original.

That might sound like a stupid question. After all, Doctor Who – in its ‘classic’ form – was a tacky science fiction show whereas, say, Cathy Come Home changed policy. But consider the millions of imaginations fired by ‘classic’ Doctor Who and the question seems less absurd.

Consider the many people who have cited it as an influence on their lives. They include scientists, writers, musicians (that theme tune was a pioneering piece of electronica) and many more besides. Not bad for a tacky sci-fi show.

It has become fashionable of late to sneer at ‘classic’ Who for its perceived deficiencies. Sadly, many of the charges hold water. The scripts were indeed sometimes silly. Many of the monsters were risible. But such criticism ignores the fact that, at its best, Doctor Who was pretty damned good. Take The Talons of Weng-Chiang, for example: a mash-up of Victorian music hall, giant rats and fake Chinese Gods. It’s a brilliant piece of pulp storytelling, featuring the peerless Tom Baker on top form.

Baker’s reign was the golden age – the body-horror of The Ark in Space (a plausible influence on the rather more expensive Alien), the genuinely terrifying Pyramids of Mars and the cod Frankenstein story, The Brain of Morbius. Perhaps his finest hour (and-a-half), however, was City of Death, a wonderful comedy co-written by Douglas Adams and featuring a cameo by John Cleese.

Very nearly as good is Inferno, in which Jon Pertwee gets blasted into an alternative universe. In addition to dealing with big philosophical issues of free will, it throws in green slime that turns people into monsters. The ultimate green slime adventure, though, is surely The Green Death aka ‘the one with the maggots’.

One of the constant complaints of Doctor Who fans is the shabby treatment accorded to the first decade of the Doctor’s travels. In its wisdom, the BBC destroyed many episodes starring the first Doctor, William Hartnell and his successor, Patrick Troughton (although fortunately the archivists carefully preserved every Trooping the Colour, in case you were worried).

The DVD releases go some way to rescuing the afflicted stories. For The Invasion (in which the Cybermen try to take over swinging London), the two missing episodes have been replaced by animated recreations.

The best release (so far, of course), is Lost in Time, gathering together the 18 ‘orphan’ episodes, the only surviving representations of their respective stories. The casual viewer might be better advised to start elsewhere – these are incomplete stories – but there’s a poignant magic to these episodes, at once a reminder of what we’ve lost and a celebration of what we have.

We shouldn’t deny the power of nostalgia in all this: it exerts a powerful gravitational pull that makes some of us more willing to overlook certain faults. Yes, Old Skool Who was cheap, silly and anything else you want to throw at it. But at its best, it gave us some of the finest TV ever. And that’s why it keeps drawing us back.