A team of scientists search for the origin and purpose of a mysterious capsule found on a building site.
Cast: André Morell, Cec Linder, John Stratton
HDCC
Miniseries
6 episodes
1. The HalfmenProfessor Quatermass is resisting the planners of a rocket project known as the Dead Man's Deterrent. Meanwhile excavation is going on at Hobbs Lane, long the site of reported imps and devils.CC35minDec 22, 1958
2. The GhostsUncovered, they discover that the interior of the object is empty, and a symbol consisting of five intersecting circles, which Roney identifies as the occult pentagram, is found etched on an interior wall which appears to hide an inner chamber.CC37minDec 29, 1958
3. Imp & DemonsThe shell of the object is so hard that even a borazon drill makes no impression, and when the attempt is made, strange vibrations cause severe distress in the people around the object. Quatermass interviews the local residents and discovers that sightings of ghosts and other poltergeist activity have been common in the area for decades. Meanwhile, a soldier is carried out of the object in hysterics — he claims to have seen a dwarf-like apparition walk through the wall of the artefact, a description which matches a 1927 newspaper account of a ghost sighting.
Following the drilling attempt, a hole has somehow opened up in the wall which allows Quatermass and the others access to the interior chamber.CC31minJan 5, 1959
4. The EnchantedFollowing the drilling attempt, a hole has somehow opened up in the wall which allows Quatermass and the others access to the interior chamber. There they find the remains of insect-like aliens resembling giant three-legged locusts, with stubby antennae on their heads giving the impression of horns. As Quatermass and Roney examine the remains, they theorise that the aliens might have come from a nearby planet which was habitable five million years ago — Mars.CC33minJan 12, 1959
5. The Wild HuntQuatermass plans to use an invention of Roney's, an "optic-encephalogram", to see these visions. The device will record impressions from the optical centres of the brain, in effect showing whatever the subject is seeing, hallucinatory or not. He wears the device and goes into the craft, but it is Roney's assistant, Barbara Judd, who is affected most. Placing the device on her, they record what she "sees"—a violent, bloody purge of the Martian hive, to root out unwanted mutations.CC36minJan 19, 1959
6. HobDespite his warnings, the media event occurs, and the power cables that string into the craft fully activate it for the first time. Glowing and humming like a living thing, it starts drawing upon this energy source and awakening the ancient racial programming. Those people of London in whom the alien admixture remains strong fall under the ship's influence; they merge into a group mind and begin a telekinetic mass murder of those without the alien genes, an 'ethnic cleansing' of those that the alien race mind considers impure and weak.CC35minJan 26, 1959
Viewers also watched
Quatermass and the Pit
★ 7.1/1019581 season6 episodesEnded
A team of scientists search for the origin and purpose of a mysterious capsule found on a building site.
Creators and cast
- Directors
- Rudolph Cartier
- Created by
- Nigel Kneale
- Studio
- BBC
Maturity rating
Not yet rated.
Audio languages
English
