Quatermass

The true grandfather of science fiction is actually a doddery old scientist from the 1850s called Bernard Quatermass, who apparently managed to give Britain it's very own shuttle technology with his Rocket Group. Three times in the fifties he ran into alien menaces, fighting plant creatures, alien invaders and the remnants of Martians plan to genetically alter us. And then, rather sadly, he disappeared off our screens, handing over to another doddery old scientist - Doctor Who.

Nigel Kneale, the series creator and writer, never had a lot of time for Doctor Who, and so it's a little ironic that the final outing Quatermass was to have, in 1979, would be produced by original Doctor Who producer Verity Lambert. However, the landscape had changed, and while Kneal insured his creation hadn't, the young upstart who had usurped Quatermass was not being played by Tom Baker and redefining what the audience wanted out of television science-fiction, in the wake of the release of Star Wars.

As a result, even for 1979, Quatermass feels a little out of date. Chock full of hippies wandering around looking for aliens to take them away, the story is effectively the young vs the old, with Quatermass in the middle trying to find his granddaughter, before coming down on the side of the old.

The story is, however, quite moody and more than a little disturbing - groups of young people of the "Planet People" cult, are gathering at stone circles whereupon a beam of light disintegrates them all. The Planet People sees this as the rescue they have been searching for, but the government sees this merely as mass slaughter and after a shuttle mission is destroyed, Quatermass is called in to help.

At times the story seems to go nowhere, and all episodes end with the beam striking the planet which lends some predictability to the story, not in a terribly good way. The cast, however, are uniformly excellent, with Mills playing the part very well, initially as a confused old man only interested in his granddaughter, before finding a new cause and a new purpose in life.

The story is also shot magnificiently, and the feel of a London having fallen into a 'Warriors' style society is portrayed magnificiently. And while the story in general may let down the piece as a whole, the ending is really quite sad, but strangely fitting not only for Quatermass but for British science-fiction as a whole.

Always intended to be both a four part broadcast story and a 100 minute movie, the DVD set comes with The Quatermass Conclusion - the movie form of the story which hacks away about sixty minutes of material, mostly, one suspects, from Episode 3, in which the plot really goes absolutely nowhere. There is also a documentary on Stonehenge which, while quite interesting, has a very tenuous connection to the story it is released with.

Quatermass is a nice final hoorah for the Quatermass series, but sadly it lacks the warmth of its predecessors, feeling more Wickerman than The Quatermass Experiment.