Quatermass and the Pit

Inside the mind of every Doctor Who writer there is a race memory of Quatermass and the Pit.

The final installment of the 1950s sci-fi series by Nigel Kneale had parts of it taken and used in multiple Doctor Who stories, without any of them quite going so far as to copy the plot outright.

The Daemons is one of the most blatant, including as it does an archaeological dig turning up an ancient spacecraft, whose alien occupants are horned, and who have influenced the development of humanity, and whose technology is sufficiently advanced as to be taken for black magic.

Image of the Fendahl also prominently features ancient aliens, as well as a skull far older than it should be. Also the pentagram on the Fendahl skull is reminiscent of the pentacle marking inside the spacecraft from the pit.

If Robert Holmes took a few ideas from Quatermass ii for his Spearhead From Space, it is not too much more of a stretch to see the influence of Quatermass and the Pit in The Ark in Space, not only in the insect design of the Wirrn being a bit like the aliens from Quatermass and the Pit, but in the way that the Doctor and Harry find one long dead as the ending to an episode. There is also the small matter of the Doctor using a device to see into the dead Wirrn's brain, which resembles the (somewhat convenient) machine that Quatermass uses to see the race memory of the aliens.

Doctor Who and the Silurians (one of the best Doctor Who stories evar, it has Paul Darrow in it!) features a race memory buried in the minds of mannys so they go mad when they see the Silurians. Although in  a clever twist on Quatermass and the Pit, instead of mannys being Martians, it turns out that Silurians are Earthlings.

Considering that Doctor Who and the Silurians is from the same season as Spearhead From Space (influenced by Quatermass ii) and The Ambassadors of Death (influenced by The Quatermass Experiment), that only leaves Inferno out of Jon Pertwee's first season as the Doctor - and while I see it as a bit more of a stretch than the other three, you could consider the mannys digging up an ancient substance that influences their minds and makes them go on destructive rampages as a reflection of the events in Quatermass and the Pit.

Also throughout season seven, the Doctor's relationship with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT more closely resembles the dynamic between Professor Quatermass and the military (and in particular Colonel Breen in Quatermass and the Pit), with this never more apparent than when they are actively in conflict with each other in Doctor Who and the Silurians. It can be easy to forget this when you are used to the more comfortable "UNIT family" dynamic seen from season eight onwards.

Beyond the 1970s, where the majority of stories influenced by Quatermass seem to be found, in The Curse of Fenric the "evil from the dawn of time" Fenric has been waiting in his container for mannys to find him and wake him up. And by the time we reach The Satan Pit in 2006 there is a very real question of whether Doctor Who is still being influenced by Quatermass or if it is now simply being influenced by earlier Doctor Who that was influenced by Quatermass.

Quatermass and the Pit is a masterpiece of building up suspense before paying it off. There is very little peril for the characters until near the end of part four (of six), only a long, slow build of mystery as the fantastic premise is established for us. When the peril does arrive, it escalates quickly until the whole of London is threatened at the climax.

The structure is similar to that of The Quatermass Experiment, but with much of that earlier series missing we lose out on being able to experience this effect there - the film version is not long enough to substitute in this respect - and Quatermass ii has a more conventional structure (with hindsight of the direction most TV sci-fi would take) of revealing much of the threat early so we then watch our heroes struggle against it.

"We are the Martians."

With a premise as strong yet fantastic as "mannys are Martians really" it is no wonder that this series proved so memorable, and as an allegory for immigration it remains as topical now as it was 60 years ago. It pulls this premise off by playing it absolutely straight, with total conviction from the actors - a real strength of all of the Quatermass serials.

André Morell is great as Professor Quatermass, although at first I found myself missing John Robinson (who played the part in Quatermass ii) since he doesn't remind me of Tiberius from The Caesars. Morell is ably assisted by a new self-sacrificing Companion, Dr Roney the Canadian archaeologist, proto-Indiana Jones and part-time inventor of convenient plot devices.

While the machine for seeing into mannys' brains is almost one sci-fi contrivance too far, it is used extremely well, with the brief footage of the aliens fighting each other being all the more effective for its brevity. The alien design is great too, and their first reveal makes for a fantastic end-of-episode cliffhanger.

The three Quatermass serials each features an original method of alien invasion that allows every one to stand out in its own way. My favourite of the trilogy (in as much as it is possible to fairly judge between them when so much of the first story is lost) is Quatermass ii, which I thought had the most exciting story, but all three are great and stand the test of time.