The Quatermass Experiment

This is probably the oldest television programme I shall ever watch. Broadcast live in 1953, only the first two episodes of the six part series survive, although the same story was made into a film version by Hammer two years later and that does still exist to be watched so I know how it ends from that.

The TV version differs from the film in many of the same ways that the Doctor Who TV stories The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth differ from their film versions. Most notably, from the two parts that we can see, they differ in where the rocket crashes - in the film it crashes in the countryside, an isolated location, but on TV it crashes in the middle of London city, leading to scenes consciously reminiscent of the Blitz (which was only 10 years past at the time this was made). It seems that a rocket crashed into a crowded city street was easier to create in a TV studio, while a rocket crashed in a wide open but empty field was easier to create on location.

On the subject of Doctor Who, it seems The Quatermass Experiment's writer Nigel Kneale didn't like Doctor Who and thought it stole all his ideas. While it is hard to ignore that some stories from Doctor Who have elements that resemble those of The Quatermass Experiment - the disappearing astronauts in The Ambassadors of Death, the monster from The Seeds of Doom, and The Lazarus Experiment was not even trying to hide its influence when setting its own climax inside a big church - they are only a few out of many different story archetypes done over the years, and I think it would be tough to detect much resemblance between Quatermass and the serials from the early William Hartnell years of the show.

Four years before doggys first went into space, and eight years before mannys followed them, The Quatermass Experiment showed a British space programme being the ones to put the first mannys into space. This optimistic view of the UK's technological reach and associated status in the world would perhaps be the most lasting influence on Doctor Who, in which the Doctor would normally visit Earth by way of England, where the BBC studios were helpfully located.

The technical limitations of the time this dates from are obvious and inescapable, and the absence of parts three to six is tragic in a way, but this is nevertheless a fascinating look back to the dawn of television science fiction.