PODCAST 49 – QUATERMASS AND THE PIT Episode Six

PODCAST 49 – QUATERMASS AND THE PIT Episode Six

(listen at: https://soundcloud.com/user-868590968/rta050b-episode-50b-quatermass-nairn-night-gallery-talking-heads)

‘HOB’

The sixth and final episode of Nigel Kneale’s classic BBC serial “QUATERMASS AND THE PIT” entitled – rather ominously for those paying proper attention - “HOB” was first broadcast on the 26^th of January 1959 and attracted a whopping eleven million viewers.

This was the highest figure for the serial, and was up a further four hundred thousand on the previous week’s effort. This was indeed “event television” and, on cold winter Monday evenings, was drawing viewers in like they were possessed.

It’s hard to imagine now, in our strange, modern idea of what the 1950s were like, but word of mouth about some daft television horror serial must have been really getting around, and it was still nearly two years before CORONATION STREET would turn up, become a national addiction, and eventually wipe the floor with anything put up against it, even quality Science-Fiction.

Not that Nigel would have wanted us to think of it as science-fiction, of course.

Anyway. This is the big one. This is the proverbial “it!” This is where all of that hard work throughout much of the decade, the previous five instalments, and all that careful plotting we’ve been considering in these articles has been leading us to, so it had better not disappoint.

And, of course it doesn’t.

This episode delivers in spades, and helps QUATERMASS AND THE PIT reach its now legendary status in the history of television, and, quite frankly, still pack a wallop to the viewer even now, more than sixty years later.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that old, or black and white, television was just primitive, slow, dreary nonsense, just remember that you’ve got this particular ace up your sleeve to play, because it is still, quite frankly, a brilliant piece of clever, innovative, and pacey television that really, really needs to be seen and savoured.

It’s not perfect, of course. Little television is. But it gets pretty darned close in my humble opinion.

Of course maybe your idea of televisual perfection is something completely different, and that’s fine, but I imagine in that case that you’re unlikely to have been joining us here today anyway.

Now, it gets tricky when you’re talking about the final episode of a thing, even if that thing has given you sixty-odd years of opportunities to find out what happens, because there are inevitably some people who are going to come to this piece without knowing what happens, and are going to scream “SPOILER ALERT!” at me for ruining the experience for them.

Well, if you’ve never seen the serial, what on earth are you doing here? Go away and watch it immediately, then come back and we’ll pick up where we left off. We are here to appreciate QUATERMASS AND THE PIT and not ruin it.

Have they gone?

Are they back?

Okay… Here we go.

The titles roll and, for one last time, the words carved out of a slab of ancient stone are revealed until the dramatic zoom on that one word title is attempted and, well… botched a bit.

The camera doing the caption zoom wobbles about all over the place in a manner that might have had hair being pulled out in that live television gallery, but also seems mildly appropriate given the way that television equipment in the pit has been thrashing about under the influence of those ancient martians.

Happily, for the sake of authenticity, the people attempting the excellent blu-ray restoration didn’t try and “improve” or “fix” this, but carefully recreated every frame of this undramatic wobble, and so history remains unwritten, and, ultimately, that one word “HOB” sits front and centre in our screens until the plummy tones of yet another announcer gives us the story so far – although for once, it’s mostly about the events of last week.

And this announcer seems to remain unimpressed by the minister’s actions, too, helping to point us in the right direction emotionally, just in case we’re still thinking that the viewers might also believe that the Minister was right in not going along with this crackpot theory about Martians in the underground, or whatever, and fails to be anything other than underwhelmed by the technological miracle of Roney’s brain-reading device.

He also mentions that term “Race Purge” because, well, it might be worth having that nugget of information tucked away to help explain the events of the next thirty-five minutes.

Anyway, we’re back live in the pit as the burnt body of that poor unfortunate electrician is carried away, having been pronounced dead, burnt up, and unlikely to need artificial respiration.

Well, yes.

The policeman suggests they get him into an ambulance anyway, and there’s a brief exchange about blame, or otherwise, when Quatermass rather tactlessly suggests that it might not have been an accident.

We are nowadays, living in an era of “blame culture” and it’s sometimes difficult to appreciate that it did exist back then, and has existed for a very long time.

Five. Million. Years.

Well, maybe not that long, but possibly that’s another facet of the Martian Inheritance that possibly never occurred to Kneale. We must remember, however, that nineteen-fifties Britain still hadn’t evolved enough to realise yet that the barbaric practice of Capital Punishment was uncivilised, and so the possibility of dire consequences for a deliberate act that results in the death of another human being were a real fear.

Just a small aside, probably not intended at all, but it explains the strength of that reaction.

Meanwhile, Barbara Judd, as played by Christine Finn, has her last moment to shine, as, once again possessed by the strange powers trapped in the ancient wreck, she is blindly drawn to look through the portal into the vessel, and see that strange organic pulsing and glowing that ended episode five, accompanied once again by that eerie music that we are now beginning to associate with ominous impending danger.

Her scream ramps up the tension further, but by the time Quatermass risks looking inside the spaceship himself, it’s all gone quiet again, and the glow has gone.

His concern for her safety finds her being handed into the care of the besotted Captain Potter, who, it turns out, might not turn out to be quite the safe pair of hands that he might have hoped.

Her “I don’t want to go!” may indeed speak volumes, and those five words might just – perhaps - have stuck in the mind of one young Welsh writer when he saw this serial.

However, this moment is interrupted by the blazing rage of that blundering blimp Breen, and Quatermass and him have their final head-to-head argument as Breen refuses to clear the site for safety reasons.

Quatermass does his best, of course, to get them all out of there, although his plea of “My name’s Quatermass. If that means anything to you…” might not sit too well with the members of the press given the fallout after his two previous appearances in the headlines this decade.

James Fullalove tries his best to jivvy the press pack to his way of thinking, but Breen entices them back with promises of the official statement continuing as planned, and, as ever, the press pack remain torn as to where the real story might actually be.

We all have our editors to please.

Quatermass and Breen have their face-off in full view of the cameras, as Breen suggests that Quatermass is tired, and needs a long rest, and, tellingly, that’s not just his view, apparently.

As it’s around twenty years before we’ll see him on our television screens again, maybe he makes a good point.

However, as the paraphernalia of television and all of that of lining up of shots business is played out, we move around the pit to find the future Professor Kettlewell, Edward Burnham, with that expressive face he always had, noticing that the pulsing glow has returned inside the ship, and those terrifying sounds start again.

We cut to a street scene, as several feet obliviously pass a newspaper vendor’s poster reading “ARE WE MARTIANS?” and the camera creeps back as the cries of “Gazette!” are heard, to announce that the whole thing is going to be on the telly.

And so we cut to a close up of a television screen showing the scenes in the pit, as so many television sets in so many homes were currently doing, all overlaid with the audio of just the sort of general introductory blurb from an announcer that it’s surprisingly difficult to fake.

Kneale doing “metatextual” dlong before we even knew it was a thing.

The camera pulls back to reveal a smoky old pub full of the kind of folk who used to fill those kinds of pub in those days. A great social leveller, is the pub, as we see an “ordinary geezer” type chatting to a “posh know-it-all bloke in an evening suit” trying to have his way with Kitty, who we initially take for the kind of bar room lush of the “fur coat and no knickers” variety.

The idea of unaccompanied women in bars still being something that would have been frowned upon in many of the households sitting watching these scenes playing out, by the way, so the nation may have let out a collective “tut!”.

All human life is here. Sort of.

Anyway, as “posh-know-it-all bloke” starts boring everyone in the bar with his war stories, happily the programme proper begins and the customers’ eyes – as well as the camera – is drawn back to that flickering screen, upon which the presenter attempts to carry on as usual as scenes of panic and chaos start to unfold in the background, and then, there’s that unearthly sound again and, quite suddenly, the screen fades to black and an apology caption – something the viewers in those days would be very familiar with – appears.

There is a brief moment of jaunty music in the pub as they respond to this in – presumably – the very usual manner, and whilst “posh-know-it-all” tries to make up some nonsense about “vision on sound” to explain it all, it is Kitty who fearfully and astutely points out that “those people were running…”

Back at the pit, there is a scene of utter bedlam as all of the physical effects, the rattling planks, the whipping cables, the flying earth and rocks are brought into play, as the various supporting artists run around in terror, some tripping and falling over the suddenly animate objects.

John Scott Martin even gets to wrestle with a strangely angry-seeming television camera, which is nice.

The normally staid private secretary from the scenes at the War Office – one Richard Dare - is visibly terrified, but can get no help from Breen who is quite simply far too broken now, and as everyone starts to flee, making for those steps that will get them out of the pit, Quatermass seconds Fullalove into helping him to help one of the electricians to his feet and out of there.

But Quatermass clutches at his head, as he, too, is taken over by the powers in the pit, and, whilst Fullalove seems immune, and is busily snapping pictures with that little spy camera of his, Quatermass twists and turns in a strange throwback to the strange movements he made when he first heard those noises several episodes back, the strange twisted movements of Sladden, and, most tellingly, those Martian insects we saw during the Wild Hunt.

Our hero is lost to the madness. Our hero has the deadly Martian inheritance within him. Who can save the world for us now?

Breen sits down, mesmerised and possessed by that strange propaganda weapon that so irked him, completely still now, but strangely empowered by the forces consuming him, as he causes more of the wires and cables to thrash, and hurl rocks towards any threat, including Quatermass, as the chaos continues, and the fleeing mob fill the screen.

Barbara is thrashing and screaming and it is all Potter can do to keep hold of her, as the escaping crowd storm along the street past the police barriers and, whilst Potter wrestles to keep Barbara from getting away from him, even Quatermass can be seen being carried along by this mindless, angry mob.

The camera then holds on Quatermass looking confused, befuddled and utterly lost, and moves in to a close up on the dead man lying on the ground next to him, another victim of this collective madness as we fade to black.

Back in the pub, there are attempts being made to fix the now defunct television set, ironically because they are worried they might miss the organised fisticuffs of a boxing match, which is a nice touch.

The “posh-know-it-all” and Kitty are thinking about moving on to somewhere known as “Millies” when Kitty is overwhelmed by that strange headache as the Martian influence spreads.

However, a ruined looking man enters, demanding a drink – and another –quick. This is Sydney Bromley, by the way, a distinctive looking actor who was always reliable, and who is another carry over from the “Quatermass 2” cast.

He has tales to tell, and is able to deliver that lovely budget-culling line about there being “hundreds out there” before those unearthly sounds start to be heard within the pub, and, whilst Kitty shares a heartfelt “Don’t say it’s vision on sound for God’s sake!” – a rare light moment amidst all of the madness – as the lights go out and the pub is suddenly a whirlwind of physical effects, and the customers finally decide to flee, and, soon the pub is suddenly empty, apart from the body of the “ordinary geezer” that fails to escape the crush.

Back in the street, Quatermass is recognised, stopped and grabbed from amongst the mob by Roney, who is desperate to try and save him, and drags him through an open doorway into the ruins of that pub.

He flings Quatermass into a chair, and, because he’s Roney, he does at least manage to find some whisky amongst the smashed and broken bottles, and, whilst “it’s no way to serve decent whisky”, manages to get some down the throat of a very confused professor.

Yes, booze is always the answer, apparently, people.

Remember that.

This scene is phenomenal, by the way, and whilst Andre Morell is fantastic playing the confused figure of Quatermass, it is Cec Linder playing Roney who finally earns his pay after a couple of episodes being rather sidelined by the plot.

And amongst all this gasping and general air of confusion, we learn a lot about the nature of what’s going on. Roney, apparently, can’t see the vision held within the pit. He is one of the “some” that don’t, and this makes him different enough that he is a target for those with the Martian influence inside them.

Racial purity. Dislike for the unlike. Ah, you know.

Tellingly, as we learn a little about mass into energy, and that this is what is happening to the machine in the pit, we also learn, in another great line, how you simply don’t see this world any more.

But Quatermass is struggling to retain control over his mind as they discuss the few people who remain at the excavation, including Breen. He battles to use a telephone, but the noise comes again, and the telephone is destroyed, and, ominously, Quatermass tells Roney, and us, that it’s changing, and getting stronger…!

We cut, briefly, to the newsroom of the Gazette where news editor Tony Quinn is mercifully alone, hanging onto a telephone receiver, and thanklessly covering another scene change. He is worried about, oh, pretty much everything, but mostly his missing ace reporter James Fullalove.

And so he should be.

Unfortunately, it’s another of those “tell not show” moments where he is able to describe the madness he has witnessed from the window of his office, but as he turns again to that window, he sees something horrible.

But we don’t see what, just yet.

Instead we return to the pit where, free of the influence, James Fullalove is busily snapping his photographs, as we see Breen and some other watchers gazing almost lifelessly at the ship as, in what is a model shot sadly lacking in scale, the glowing spaceship melts, and the smoke rises past that now all-too familiar row of houses in Hob’s slash Hobb’s Lane.

Inside that house once considered so haunted we find Captain Potter, another of those apparently immune to the Martian influence, busily knocking a hole in the wall that is right above the excavation. Across from him, the still, insect like body of Barbara Judd is watching him, and starts attacking him simply with the power of her mind.

Once again the rafters shift and rattle furiously – the physical effects in this are tremendous and must have given the behind the scenes staff tremendous fun as they did the wrangling live – and more mud and boulders are flung at the strangely smitten Captain.

Anyway, with a brief demonstration of what many thought was perfectly acceptable domestic behaviour back then, Barbara is knocked unconscious by the no longer gallant Captain Potter, but he does, at least, seem to regret what he feels he must do to stop the attack.

Within the pit itself the lights are pulsing brightly as Fullalove continues trying to chase his final story. He is spotted by Breen and his cronies, and the possessed people turn and stare at him with much the same fury in their eyes that Barbara had.

Fullalove is pelted by rocks and stones and eventually falls, ending up in a hole, killed by a stoning, and Brian Worth ends a story arc of the only other recurring Quatermass character (other than Professor Quatermass himself)  first played by Paul Whitsun-Jones in the very first serial seven years earlier.

Back at the pub, the camera pans across from a peepshow poster as a stiffly moving Quatermass advances on Roney, and it looks like there will have to be a fight to the death between the old friends.

Happily it seems that intellect manages to prevail over physical strength and, thanks to a fishing trip the two men once took – an unfortunate one for a twenty-nine pound pike apparently – Quatermass is able to use his brain and his memory to regain control of himself again.

This is shocking stuff, really. Our hero is trying to kill his best friend. He wanted to kill him, and he could do it without trying and without moving, simply because Roney was different. It’s not what we usually see in television drama – especially in the 1950s – but it shows how high the stakes are, and how the Martian influence can effect absolutely anybody.

And as we are about to find out, the stakes are particularly high, as they’re killing anything different, including the animals.

Yes, the dog actually dies in this one, people.

Although, thankfully, we don’t see it.

And it’s not only the animals, because, as Quatermass reminds us, THIS is the Wild Hunt, the savage compulsion to preserve their colony, buried with the spaceship in the pit, happening again, right now, five million years too late in contemporary London.

Morell is terrific in this, as he battles the agony of trying to retain control of his own mind, and it is a thoroughly disturbing and exhilarating tour de force of acting from this veteran and distinguished actor.

And, yet, simply by hanging on to that rather unlikely notion of Quatermass on a fishing trip, they finally escape the ruin of that old pub as the picture fades…

…to that familiar trope of using a newsroom to carry the bigger story, take us away from this small, human moment, and give us an idea of the huge scale of what’s apparently going on. It may be a familiar trope now, of course, but probably felt quite innovative back in 1959, and may very well have been. Clichés, after all, only become clichés, through overuse – but somebody had to do them first for them to begin the journey to becoming clichés.

Anyway, in the studios of the NYBCTV Newscast, the vaguely “American” sounding newsreader tells his viewers – and us - about the sudden unexpected paralysis of “London, England” using terms like “flash” which, perhaps, demonstrate how much in-vision news-reading has changed, and we ought to remind ourselves that this was something that had only begun on the BBC as recently as 1955.

Via the strange live link to the pilots of a freighter aircraft above London, we cut to the relatively convincing interior of the plane, and get a commentary on the spreading blackouts, and the collapsing buildings as, in another budget stretching “tell not show” sequence we hear about the fires and the smoke, whilst we visit that happy land known as “Stockfootage” to find repurposed film of London during the blitz, which seems to be curiously appropriate, given all of that nonsense that Breen was spouting last week.

Anyway, things do not end well for this brave aircrew. The co-pilot has collapsed, and the controls start thrashing about in an all-too-familiar manner, and the plane is suddenly flying towards a bright glowing light which falls on the face of the pilot as he screams, and we hear the worryingly familiar sound of a plane going down overlaid upon more stock footage of a ruined London.

The camera cuts once again to those familiar Hob’s slash Hobb’s Lane street signs, now lit by a throbbing glow and flames, and, above the model street, we get our first view of Hob, the horned devil, throbbing into being in the sky and, unsurprisingly perhaps, it resembles very closely one of those Martians found in the pit.

Below this beast, in the once-haunted house, Potter has succeeded in breaking through that wall, and the throbbing glow is now lighting the ruined interior of the room.

Quatermass and Roney arrive and find the senseless body of Barbara lying there, and, despite the fact that Roney knows it, Potter feels the need to reassure them both that she’s not dead, and Potter is suitably apologetic about doing what he felt he had to do.

The lucky slash unlucky immune ones are able to be picked out instinctively, and, in another “tell not show” moment, we discover that Roney could have been killed a dozen times on their way here, but that the presence of Quatermass confused the attackers.

The scientists then scramble over to see what is happening through that hole in the wall and it is left to Roney to pronounce “The Devil! The Horned Devil!” at our latest view of Hob.

And when the solution comes, it comes very easily.

From the kind of clear thinking and discussion the Martian Inheritance is designed to suppress.

The vessel has gone completely, the mass of the ship having turned into the energy of the figure now floating above them, and Roney reasons that the legends they’ve been exploring may also provide the answer that somehow works both scientifically and magically.

Iron and water were the traditional enemies of the devil, and iron and water might just provide the solution that they need.

The minutes left before the end of the story are now very few, so it will probably work, of course, even if, like Potter says, it seems far too simple.

Even if it is too easy, and really it isn’t, it had better work though. And, at the very least, the clues have always been there, throughout the entire six episodes.

Meanwhile, as Potter bravely heads back out into the street to retrieve some of that builder’s steel chain – it’s also been in plain sight throughout that we’re sitting on a building site remember - we hear a blood-curdling scream.

It is not Potter screaming, though. He returns, visibly shaken, to report that he was only saved by the fact that a blind man stumbled into the angry mob and drew their attention away from him.

John Stratton plays it very quietly here, which, as he would become a notoriously demonstrative actor later in his career, seems just a little surprising.

A lot of Londoners are going to wake up tomorrow full of remorse. At least, we hope they will. Maybe several won’t give a toss, given that some people can be very intolerant of the unlike, even those with disabilities.

This really is a story for the ages, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, Roney does some prop wrangling, attaching the chain to an old, forgotten fire grate which looks just like the one that used to be in my ramshackle old house, and Quatermass offers to do the fateful deed.

The camera angle shifts to outside that hole in the wall, intermittently lit so brightly by that throbbing glow, and we get what might be now considered a “Hero Shot” of Quatermass heading through it on his heroic quest.

And so this elderly hero – we don’t see that many of those these days – clambers endlessly down onto the now brightly lit roof of Crispin’s hut - such is the real time nature of real time television - but, because he is one of the enchanted, Quatermass falters.

Both Roney and Potter see this, and Roney begins his own fateful climb down back into the pit, as Quatermass arrives at the strangely waxy form of Breen who, fully consumed, is now a lifeless husk, which topples at his touch.

That’s either a fabulous model, or a rather brilliant make-up job and deadfall. I’m tending towards the latter, but that is finally the end of Anthony Bushell’s contribution as Breen in this story.

And Quatermass looks as if he might be about to share this fate. He staggers, falls to his knees, and drops the chain of salvation and, basically, our hero actually fails to save the day.

So it is left to Roney to seize that firegrate and, in a wide shot, fling it skyward, and there is a blinding flash as the screen bleaches out to a bright white, before fading, inevitably, to black.

We fade up on the staggering, bewildered figure of Professor Quatermass, shouting Roney’s name, and then, having spotted the huge circle of white ash that subtly explains his fate, almost whimpering it, as normality starts to return and people begin to return to the now perfectly harmless building site, and the music on the soundtrack begins to surge in more hopeful tones.

And we cut to a close-up of Quatermass – presumably pre-filmed as he’s his old neat and tidy self again – speaking at what appears to be the public enquiry about the entire incident, adding a coda that, apparently, some people wanted cut from the broadcast, which warns us that we now have the hope and the knowledge to deal with the situation should another Martian landing site ever be found.

As the rousing music, the final contribution to the serial by Trevor Duncan, swells, this speech, during which the camera remains focussed on the star as he walks forward serves as a reminder and a warning that if we cannot control the Martian inheritance within us, this will be their second dead planet.

And with that, Quatermass leaves the frame, and we see several of the main cast, including Sladden and Gilpin who return for just this one wordless scene (which makes me think it might have been filmed whilst they were making episode five) and - it is over.

The character of Professor Bernard Quatermass would never be seen again on BBC Television screens, and, apart from a repeat of this serial in two parts the following Christmas, and the Hammer Movie Adaptation in the late nineteen-sixties, his return to television would be in the form of Sir John Mills in the strike-affected Euston Films serial on ITV in the late nineteen-seventies, which is a very different, and rather troubled beast, and broadcast a year after the death of Andre Morell.

Nigel Kneale would survive until 2006, and is, quite rightly considered by many of us - if not those in the industry - to be one of the finest – and most prescient – television writers of that pioneering generation, but, arguably, possibly his career never quite reached the heights of this work, one which I consider to be his masterpiece.

Because, more than sixty years on, I really do think that it is simply just brilliant, and I hope, over the course of these six articles, that some of that enthusiasm has come across and, despite this rather forensic retelling perhaps spoiling the plot for you, I also genuinely hope you’ll give it a go sometime.

It is well worth it, and remains the only television serial I would have considered worthwhile enough to cover in an extensive set of articles like this. So if that doesn’t tell you something about how good it is, I’m not sure what will.

Martin A W Holmes, January 2020