PODCAST 48 - QUATERMASS AND THE PIT Episode Five

PODCAST 48 – QUATERMASS AND THE PIT Episode Five

(listen at: https://soundcloud.com/user-868590968/rta049-episode-49-jackanory-crown-court-the-magician-tales-of-the-unexpected)

‘THE WILD HUNT’

Episode five of the Nigel Kneale six-part serial QUATERMASS AND THE PIT was broadcast on the nineteenth of January 1959, and the official viewing figures hit a new high of 10.6 million.

People were obviously talking about it.

“THE WILD HUNT” might actually be considered to be the calm before the storm, or perhaps the very last opportunity to explain to the viewers at home the writer’s reasoning behind the whole piece, just to help them catch up with where we are and what exactly is happening.

Let’s be honest, there won’t be much time for that sort of thing during the hectic final episode, but this episode manages to visualise - through the use of the Martians - a lot of what we will have to imagine that a lot of human beings get up to in that brutal gut-punch of a final episode. Remember, what you see during a rather vivid sequence here, is what is implied happens on the streets of London in a week’s time.

But, once again, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The running time for this episode is just shy of 36 minutes, and it’s just as well, because there’s an awful lot to cram in.

But first there’s a recap, which, on the surviving film copies, seems to be a very different voice this week. I suppose it depended upon who was available, but the tone is also far more emphatic, leaving little doubt in the minds of the viewers at home that, at least according to the story so far, we are the descendants of a long-lost Martian civilisation.

Well, it saves times if that’s a given from the get-go from now on.

We also get to see a much shorter re-edited silent montage showing the highlights of the terrifying events involving poor Mr Sladden during the lengthy last section of episode four, accompanied by a suitably spooky soundtrack, which manages to maintain the creepiness without undermining the drama, which is quite some task, and ending with that sinister vision of the pebbles on the ground rolling and undulating beneath his terrified form.

We still don’t know quite what happened to him after that.

In fact the episode proper starts with Barbara Judd – played by Christine Finn – and really earning her keep in this one and she is finally given a lot to do, and plenty of chances to shine, which she seizes magnificently.

Me meet Barbara as we return to the dig site as John Stratton’s Captain Potter comes to her aid as she stumbles up from the pit with a wound on her forehead from where something hit her during Sladden’s ordeal.

Strangely enough, having suffered from a supernatural assault, she is handled very much like the victim of a physical assault would be here, and her description of how she got hurt, and shocked reports of what she saw and heard and Sladden running away are very evocative of exactly the way that sort of scene might have been played in a police drama at the time.

Although the things she says are still suggestive of more unearthly goings on, and when Michael Ripper’s Sergeant joins them, earning his pay for the week by talking in a serious alarmed tone of the way Sladden moved, so that the sinister air of strange goings on is maintained by the actors treating the material with a rightful solemn respect.

Leaving Barbara to be cared for by the Sergeant, Captain Potter goes into the now quiet hull of the Martian spaceship, and examines the now dark lamps and the now still wires.

Meanwhile, the rest of the squad, including our everyman figure, Harold Goodwin’s Corporal Gibson, walk down the ramp, still bewildered by the sights they saw as Sladden fled, now claiming that they knew something was going to happen because of the sudden deadly cold.

Potter meets them talking about smashed lamps and torn cables, and suddenly very concerned because he knows all about the breaking strength of those cables, and the power of the forces that could have done such a thing to them.

Potter, it seems, is now more than convinced about the real danger the thing in the pit now represents, and is suddenly quite keen to talk to Professor Quatermass, who, we are reminded, has been called off to that conference at the War Office that so vexed us during episode four.

He asks Barbara if she might be able to go and look for him, and offers her the use of the Land Rover to do so and, in another nod to the fact that this is truly an ongoing narrative, Barbara first wants to retrieve her notes from Crispin’s hut which was the reason she returned to the pit before the whole Sladden incident kicked off last week.

Potter, meanwhile, wants to go and find Sladden.

In a cop drama, it might be to seek his revenge on the assailant who hurt “his” girl, but we’re not in a cop drama, despite the tropes.

In the eerie darkness of his office at the Institute, the camera favours the sinister face of one of those preserved Martians before we find Cec Linder’s Roney  asleep at his desk.

He is woken by Quatermass bursting in, furious after his meeting, and angry at the pig-headedness of the Minister, born, of course, out of fear, and wanting easy answers to the complicated questions that Quatermass keeps on asking.

To be fair, however, from the Minister’s point of view, he does have someone blaming ancient biological experiments by Martians upon Pliocene Apemen for what’s going on, and someone suggesting that we owe our human condition to the intervention of insects.

Even I struggle to think that would play well on the six o’clock news, and I’ve been following the plot. Colonel Breen’s “propaganda weapon” theory really is the much safer bet, even if you know, like the viewers do by now, that it’s a fundamentally flawed theory, despite the “common sense” of it.

As ever, politicians remain scared of the press, their colleagues and being blamed for something. The culture so expertly dissected twenty years later by YES, MINISTER is being cleverly foreshadowed here.

Thankfully, we are saved from the sight of Breen looking for a tiny swastika printed on those preserved Martian remains, but our interior alarm bells start ringing when we hear that “all precautions” have been cancelled at the site of the pit.

Darwin is quite rightly name-checked here, by the way, as the two scientists drink their coffee in an episode that does feature hot beverages a lot as shorthand for ordinary human needs in the face of adversity.

In the midst of all this righteous anger between two middle-aged men coming face-to-face with idiocy, Barbara arrives, now sporting a dressing on the cut on her head, and, because she is feeling a little bit fainty having dashed all over town - despite her ordeal - looking for the Professor, Roney slips her a swift shot of that brandy he’s always so ashamed of carrying, as she describes her experiences at the pit and how “something” hit her.

This becomes a big scene for her and she sells it brilliantly, telling us once again of how everything in the pit came alive, and how Sladden didn’t seem human any more.

They are interrupted by a phone call, also taken by Barbara, who really is at the centre of the action for the moment, and showing that she’s not a shrinking violet – or is it just that those two old blokes simply expect her to answer the phone despite everything she’s been through - and we hear that captain Potter has indeed found Sladden, last seen, remember, lying on the ground surrounded by those undulating pebbles.

And Barbara won’t be put off because, hauntingly, she “needs to see” what Sladden looks like now, rather than the terrifying figure she saw earlier, and so they all dash off as once again the camera favours the figure of the Martian and…

…mixes to a stone gargoyle in the vestry of a church, emphasising once again, a point made during the researches in the archives during the previous episodes.

In this vestry, gloriously lit throughout this scene by a sinister flickering firelight, the vicar – played by Noel Howlett (who telly fans will know far better for his later works in sitcoms like PLEASE, SIR!) – is pacing anxiously, until we find Sladden, deep in shock, sitting at a chair being given a huge mug of what turns out to be cocoa, beverage spotters, provided by a woman who is a supporting artist and described in the script book as “stout” in a way that would be frowned upon today.

Quatermass and Barbara arrive, and are greeted by Captain Potter, and, whilst Barbara is initially nervous of Sladden, he has the sincere and faintly embarrassed air of someone who went too far at a drunken party meeting his friends the morning after.

Despite the chaos of his experiences earlier, all is quiet now. The Professor introduces himself with a hearty “My name’s Quatermass” which the vicar counters with an icy “And mine’s Gilpin” and seems frostily defensive of his charge as he explains that he understands that Quatermass was this man’s employer, at least for today.

Bloody freelancers!

Anyway, seemingly satisfied that Quatermass is not indeed the spawn of satan – although, if he looked at his records with regard to the fates of his employees he might have had a bigger shock – Gilpin proceeds to fill the professor in on what brought this poor unfortunate to his door that night.

He seems genuinely concerned about Sladden – as well he might, given what he witnessed when they met – but reluctantly agrees to allow further questioning once it is suggested that there might be further danger in waiting.

Potter and Barbara share a small bonding moment as the cast rearrange themselves, more cocoa is poured, and, because it truly is an excellent performance by Richard Shaw, his calmness turns to quiet fear, and then outright terror as he is pulled back into the memory of running in fear from a vision of creatures like the ones they found in the hull, becoming one of the creatures himself, and a description of ancient Mars, jumping and leaping, and the huge places reaching up into a sky of dark, dark purple.

Then the strange, sinister radiophonic noise we have started to associate with the more terrifying moments starts up again and a fire poker, suddenly possessed in much the same way as the objects at the building site, falls crashing to the ground, breaking the spell and allowing the noise to fade to nothing again.

The same thing all over again, only on a far reduced scale.

The room seems suddenly colder, as does the vicar’s mood as he starts to preach, and is interrupted by Quatermass suggesting that whatever the Vicar thinks has possessed Sladden might very well have always lying dormant within him, and all of us.

This gives the vicar something to latch on to, and as he starts to babble about the difference between faith and science and “fashionable” explanations for the inexplicable, he seems genuinely surprised to find Quatermass agreeing with him about the nature of evil, albeit an ancient evil that has been lying buried in a pit mostly undisturbed for five million years.

For life on ancient Mars is precisely what he believes Sladden experienced and described to them, and whilst he really wants to investigate this further, and suggests an experimental reconstruction of what happened that night should be attempted back at the pit. The vicar, however, puts his foot down at Sladden being put in further peril – it’s a powerful trigger word for the viewers at home that; “peril” - and refuses to let Sladden be put through any more of this, at least not that night.

Sladden, however, is a rather lovable and helpful old soul – with good insurance, remember – and, because he is an ordinary bloke with a certain amount of bravery, agrees to try, as long as the vicar comes along to look after him.

And so the plot is about to move on, and our heroes are about to leave. However, from beyond a doorway into the main church, a noise is heard, and we are momentarily on edge again, only to find – false jeopardy alert – that it’s only that callous, self-serving journalist slash reporter James Fullalove lurking in the shadows again, and heartlessly taking a moment to take a snapshot of the unfortunate Sladden in the pursuit of his latest scoop.

We cut to the War Office where Colonel Breen – remember him? – is dictating his Press release into a recording machine the size of a small refrigerator, and whilst the Minister and his Private Secretary are congratulating themselves at successfully announcing that the missile was an evil Nazi hoax and having it believed by their pals in the press (again, little changes, does it?), Captain Potter bursts in to, well, burst their bubble.

This brief scene serves to cover the move as Quatermass, Roney, and, making himself surprisingly comfortable in Roney’s office, James Fullalove explain that Potter is unlikely to have any chance in getting the War Office to retract their statement, which, rather cleverly, serves to explain the scene we have just witnessed without it needing to be any longer than it was.

Then we are reintroduced to “The Device” as we see Roney and Barbara tinkering with the “purely experimental” Optic-Encephalograph plot device that will drive much of the story for the rest of this episode and serve to demonstrate a hideous massacre involving Space Aliens without the need to actually film a hideous massacre involving Human Beings next week; Because we see it on ancient Mars, so we can imagine the streets running with those rivers of blood.

But I’m getting ahead of myself again, aren’t I?

Anyway, this Device gets a quick test, and a lot of explanation about how it’s supposed to work, whilst Journalist – No! Reporter! (same difference?) – James Fullalove discusses the fact that the missile – or whatever – in the pit is far from inert and seems capable of turning vibrations or electricity or energy from any source into something that affects people.

This is important stuff, people, so take note. Much of what is to happen later on is explained right there if you’re paying attention.

Brian Worth, incidentally, is far better in this episode than he was back in that scene in Episode Three - “IMPS AND DEMONS” – that so vexed me, so I guess it must have been an aberration fuelled by adrenaline that week.

Anyway, he’s been a journalist – sorry, reporter - for twelve years (the script book says fourteen) “Come Michaelmas” – it may seem an odd turn of phrase from Kneale, there, perhaps, (at least to modern ears), but it serves to add an unusual bit of character to the Ace Reporter and refers to September the twenty-ninth, fact fans, and used to mark another quarter turned in the financial year, so it does make sense for someone to mark their career by it.

Anyway, it prompts a bit of a natter about press coverage of paranormal activity, poltergeists, and telekinesis, as well as a bit of business with a mug of tea, beverage spotters, and as the old Professor looks once again at that old preserved Martian cadaver, throws in a few notions about second sight and the ability to put images into another person’s mind, just in case the viewers might think the stuff that follows is starting to get a little too far-fetched.

And, of course, their discussion about the nature of the hull itself, Barbara’s admission that she “Felt things (!)”, and how there are vestiges of ancient life on Mars that we all carry within ourselves is basically THE ENTIRE PLOT OF THE STORY explained in full to a secondary character in an almost throwaway little scene in Episode Five of a Six-Part Serial, as the interesting stuff seems to be going on across the room.

Exquisitely done.

Interestingly, it is James Fullalove who gets to utter the immortal line “So – As far an anybody is… We’re the Martians now…!” and almost nobody bats an eye.

Instead, the fiendishly Science-Fiction-y bit of kit is plonked upon the journalist’s – sorry, reporter’s - head and they run a proper Sci-Fi moment of a  test to see whether they can see the lamp that he can see, and Roney’s genius is displayed for all to see, as they decide to tinker with the Device a little bit more.

And so, the next day dawns back in the pit, and the Reverend Gilpin is inside the spaceship looking at the markings of ancient evil, and looking at the very spot where Sladden’s unfortunate journey began.

Outside the ship, Quatermass is in the full Optic-Encephalograph kit, and, with that and the pit location itself, we do wonder whether this is a film insert, or that fade-out was originally far longer than it now is.

Anyway, Gilpin is carrying a briefcase – you don’t see those very often these days, do you? – and explains to Fullalove that he thought that he might have to try a bit of exorcism with the old Bell, Book and Candle.

Fullalove is, however, rather dismissive, saying that they already tried that back in 1341, which is a tad snarky of him, but shows that Kneale is still up to his old tricks of inserting sinister symbolism that the audience would be very familiar with into his tale just to remind them that disturbing things are still afoot despite all of that rationality they’ve been seeing.

The machine is tested, and the observers can all see the hut that Quatermass is seeing, and, bravely, Sladden is there to tell Quatermass precisely what it was that he did the night before, before…

Barbara is also there, bravely helping to set up the recording equipment in the place she was brutally attacked only the night before.

They really don’t appreciate just how much Barbara does for them, these boffins, do they?

Quatermass enters the spaceship, the power is cut and…

…it begins.

The twisting wires, the unearthly sound…

Sladden is immediately entranced again, and has to be calmed by the vicar.

Nothing is being transmitted through Quatermass, but we notice that Barbara is also stumbling blindly towards the ship, with that strange, possessed walk that the Enchanted have, and she announces that she CAN see the Martian vision, and, as they struggle to get the Device onto her instead, the vicar has to fight to restrain Sladden, who is starting to panic, and Fullalove sees the images from Barbara’s mind start to appear on the screen as all hell is breaking loose around them once again, ending with a shrill scream as they finally wrench the Device from her head, and normality is restored.

The vicar is furious at what they’ve put these people through, but it is Sladden who announces that it seemed different this time, and, pointedly, mentions “All that killing…!”

And, then, whilst Potter gets another moment to act all protective of Barbara, Breen arrives unexpectedly, having heard that there was some kind of insane Quatermass experiment going on.

Well, they always end well, don’t they?

Roney, meanwhile, is extracting the film of his recording, and it seems that they might have something to show Breen and his War Office buddies.

Like I say – because that was an effects and people heavy scene, I think it was pre-filmed, because everybody is in place at the War Office for a film show very quickly after the fade.

Quatermass stands at the front giving a lecture about what they are about to see – a recording of an ancient memory, and he admits for those of us watching at home, that the equipment it was recorded on is far less subtle than the device in the pit is at storing and projecting images.

Whether this is merely an understandably nervous script-writer preparing his audience for a scene that might not have been executed all that well given the limits of special effects technology at the time is unclear, but once bitten, and all that.

Although actually, when we do see the sequence, he really needn’t have worried, because it’s actually superbly executed, even if modern audiences brought up in our CGI-laden cinematic world might find it less than astounding these days.

Roney describes what we are about to see as “The Wild Hunt”, the phantom ride of witches and devils of fable, a ritual cleansing of the ancient hives, a race purge, and basically, a horrifying demonstration of the ultimate form of a desire for racial purity.

Gloves off, Nigel; Tell it like it is.

What we do see is less than a minute of those Martian creatures we were introduced to at the end of episode three, only in far greater numbers and, basically, alive, and hopping about like grasshoppers on the dark surface of ancient Mars. Granted some of the hoppity stuff at the beginning is a little unconvincing, but when the savage brutality of the ethnic cleansing begins we see close-ups of animated eyes, creatures crawling for their lives, and brutal evisceration of and hacking at the living – and dying - bodies of Martians, all in a kind of whirlwind of frenzied cutting, and blurred swoops past the lens, and, perhaps surprisingly, given that this is all achieved with puppets and models, in the 1950s on a budget that I can’t imagine stretched very far at all, it all works astonishingly well.

It’s the image of those animated eyes that sticks with you, I find, especially when you remember how dead we were told they were when first spotted through that scope at the end of Episode Three.

The shot is used twice, in extreme close up, and remains genuinely disturbing.

Well, it still disturbs me, anyway. The Minister and his cronies are far less impressed, to be honest, and glibly explain it away as the wild imaginings of an impressionable, overwrought young woman.

Nothing ever changes, does it? The gits! I hope people end up bunging rocks at the lot of ’em.

Oh, wait a minute…

Let’s go back a moment.

The Minister finds it all “most curious”, whilst Professor Quatermass does his level best to convince them all that this was a memory of ritual slaughter, and equates it all to the activities of Termites and wasps in their hives.

Be careful, Nigel; your influences are showing!

Although, making a real-life comparison is a very good move at a point like this, just in case people are sitting at home mocking at the ridiculousness of the whole idea.

In fact, it’s such an effective move, that writers of S-F horror have been using the same device ever since, and maybe even earlier.

The point that the sequence really serves, however, is the unsettling  foretelling of what people are likely to do to each other if the dark powers still held in the pit are unleashed, and, let’s be honest, the original audience have got a full week ahead of them to dwell on that spicy nugget of thought.

Breen and Quatermass are about lock horns again over the events that occurred at the pit, because Breen is still clinging on to that “Vibration Effects” theory that caused him to throw up in Episode Three, and is merciless about the suggestion that the missile has the power to redirect human energy into forces beyond our control.

Should’ve listened to Captain Potter; those cables didn’t tear themselves apart.

Meanwhile, the Minister, having made his mind up about the whole thing and not being prepared to change it (they’re still around these types, you know), is looking for what he believes is a reasonable explanation, a bit of spin if you like, which he believes is hallucination, or at least a mental image, and, that Professor Quatermass is wrong.

He isn’t, of course, but what can you do with these people?

Anyway, with a reminder that they are all in service of the public (Hah!) the die is cast, the excavation is going to be opened up to the public, and the inevitable tragedy is suddenly unavoidable as our hero bristles  with fury.

And so, we approach the end of the episode.

A taxi pulls up alongside a BBC Outside Broadcast Van circa 1959, and big old BBC cameras are shifted into position for the kind of live broadcast you really can’t imagine getting the public interested in at all nowadays.

Still, there were only two channels back then, so what else would they be watching?

There are, of course, whole articles yet to be written on the fake “programmes within programmes” that feature in TV drama series that scriptwriters expected that the public might actually watch, but that is, perhaps for another time.

Here we find ourselves in a busy pit with police officers, and crowds of journalists – sorry, reporters – and telly folk all milling around alongside our main characters.

One of them is Edward Burnham who would make more of an impression in a couple of DOCTOR WHOs later on, not least as Professor Kettlewell in ROBOT.

Another is the long-time Dalek-in-chief John Scott Martin playing a TV cameraman hoping for something interesting to shoot.

Be careful what you wish for, Johnny-boy!

Anyway lots of lovely high tension cables are lying about all over the place, and there’s much talk of firing up the generator, and, as the wise attentive viewers at home already know, that’s not a good idea in this particular pit.

Nevertheless, all is proceeding as planned. Press Releases are being handed out, and Bren is reading out his prepared statement and batting away irritating questions from Journalist – sorry, reporter - James Fullalove and a woman journalist – sorry, reporter - with a fixation with Nazis who sounds not unlike that “Hang ’em and flog ’em” woman on the jury in HANCOCK’S HALF HOUR.

Breen, of course, does his usual bullying act by trying to belittle Fullalove in front of the other members of the Press Pack, but then Quatermass steps forward to slam the final nail in any working relationship he might have possibly had with Breen by asking him whether he’s an imbecile or a coward, and suggesting that he’s so afraid of something that he prefers to make the thinnest of rationalizations.

This, of course, gets Breen bristling as well, although he does give the impression of a man finally cracking under the strain, but they are interrupted by a flash of electricity and the lights go out as the electrician working inside the spaceship is horribly killed in front of his mate.

And as the horribly burnt body is hastily removed from the darkened pit, and the surviving electrician is helped away by Quatermass and one of the officials, the camera creeps inside the hull and we notice that its surface is starting to pulse and glow and throb in a creepy, almost organic manner, and the soundtrack appears to have developed a noise not unlike a heartbeat.

The Martian ship seems to be coming alive…!

And episode five is all but over as the credits roll over that eerie alien pulsation, and fade to black with the credits rolling until…

Until…

The caption at the end tells it all. The next episode will be broadcast on the 26^th of January at 8:00pm.

It’s called “HOB”

It’s one of the familiar names for the devil, you know…

And, as episodes go, I promise you that it’s utterly fantastic…!

Martin A W Holmes, January 2020