Line #31 Franchise/Quatermass


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5	[[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Quatermass_1906.jpg]]
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7	Professor Bernard Quatermass is a heroic scientist character featured in four television serials -- ''The Quatermass Experiment'' (BBC, 1953), ''Quatermass II'' (BBC, 1955), ''Quatermass and the Pit'' (BBC, 1958), and ''Quatermass'' (ITV, 1979) -- and a radio serial -- ''The Quatermass Memoirs'' (BBC, 1996) -- all written by Creator/NigelKneale.
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9	* ''The Quatermass Experiment'': The British Rocket Group, led by Professor Bernard Quatermass (Reginald Tate), successfully launches the first manned mission into space. When it returns, it's carrying an alien lifeform with the potential to bring about the end of life on Earth.
10	* ''Quatermass II'': Professor Quatermass (John Robinson) is asked to investigate a series of strange meteor showers and discovers that they're part of a subtle alien invasion.
11	* ''Quatermass and the Pit'': Professor Quatermass (André Morell) is called in when building excavations uncover a mysterious object that turns out to be an alien spacecraft that has lain undisturbed for five million years.
12	* ''Quatermass'': Professor Quatermass (Creator/JohnMills) comes out of secluded retirement when his granddaughter disappears. He finds that she has joined a New Age group called the Planet People, who believe that benevolent aliens will come and take them to a better life on another planet. This being science fiction, there really are aliens, and they really are taking Planet People, but Quatermass has grave doubts about their benevolence.
13	* ''The Quatermass Memoirs'': Really a retrospective documentary about the series, but includes a fictional strand, set before ''Quatermass'', in which the retired Professor (Andrew Keir) is interviewed about his career.
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15	The Quatermass serials were very successful, and broke the ground for original science fiction on television (previous TV SF had either been children's telefantasy or adapted from literature). As one instance of the series' influence, 1970s ''Series/DoctorWho'' owes a huge debt to Kneale and Quatermass, both in the types of stories being told and in the willingness of BBC executives to let the series tell them. (Kneale himself was reportedly unimpressed by this, feeling that ''Doctor Who'' was stealing his ideas.)
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17	The first three serials were successfully remade as films by Film/{{Hammer\|Horror}}, two of which were scripted by Kneale himself. The fourth was re-edited directly into a film-length version, titled ''The Quatermass Conclusion'', and given a limited theatrical release. There were also {{novelization}}s by Kneale himself.
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19	''The Quatermass Experiment'' was remade for television by the BBC in 2005 as a single feature-length drama, with the spy subplot and some comic material edited out to save time. For added conformity to the original, this version was broadcast live (the first live drama broadcast on the BBC for many years, with the exception of filmed stage plays) with no special effects that would have been unavailable for TV in 1953. Notable amongst the cast is Creator/DavidTennant, who'd been cast in ''Series/DoctorWho'' just before the broadcast.
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21	----
22	!!The stories provide examples of:
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24	[[foldercontrol]]
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26	[[folder:Multiple instalments]]
27	%%* BodyHorror: ''The Quatermass Experiment'', and to a lesser extent the second two serials.
28	* BroadcastLive: The three 1950s serials, as was usual in those days because the video recorder hadn't been invented yet.[[note]]The first videotape machines were used in the US in 1958, the same year as the third ''Quatermass'' serial, but the BBC didn't acquire some until a few years later.[[/note]] The second and third serials did include some scenes that were filmed in advance, with the film being played back and fed into the live broadcast feed at the appropriate point.[[note]]This resulted in a drop in picture quality on the film recordings of the live episodes, but most of the film sequences for ''Quatermass and the Pit'' survived and were reinserted into the remastered DVD.[[/note]]
29	* ContentWarnings: ''Quatermass II'' and ''Quatermass and the Pit'' were both preceded by content warnings for those "of a nervous disposition", possibly the first ever British examples.
30	* HiddenDepths: James Fullalove is a reporter for an evening newspaper who is fluent in Medieval Latin.
31	%%* IntrepidReporter: James Fullalove in ''The Quatermass Experiment'' and ''Quatermass and the Pit'', and Hugh Conrad in ''Quatermass II''.
32	* MarketBasedTitle: The three films produced by Hammer were all renamed when released in English:
33	** ''The Quatermass Xperiment'' became ''The Creeping Unknown''.
34	** ''Quatermass II'' became ''Enemy from Space''.
35	** ''Quatermass and the Pit'' became ''Five Million Years to Earth''.
36	** Another release simply restored traditional spelling of "Experiment" to the first movie's title. That peculiar title only made sense in Britain, where ''The Quatermass Xperiment'' was given an X rating. The British "X" was applied to much tamer material than its American equivalent, but highlighting the rating in the film's title gave notice that the movie [[invoked]][[RatedMForMoney featured stronger fare than the norm, for those who like that sort of thing]].
37	* NukeEm: When the chips are down, Quatermass has few qualms about the applied use of nuclear weaponry. Attempts by the superpowers in ''Quatermass'' to employ this trope are less successful.
38	* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Professor Quatermass develops into one of these over the course of the three fifties serials. In the first, he pointedly notes describes himself as "only an engineer" during one scene and relies on surgeon Dr. Briscoe for anything relating to biology, but by his third encounter with aliens, he's done quite a bit of brushing up on other fields.
39	%%* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Lomax in ''The Quatermass Experiment'', Fowler in ''Quatermass II'', and Annie Morgan in ''Quatermass''. Quatermass himself probably counts as well.
40	* ScienceHero: Bernard Quatermass is a rocket scientist who battles alien invaders and always manages to dispatch them by using science to uncover their weaknesses.
41	* StarfishAliens: The aliens in ''The Quatermass Experiment'' and ''Quatermass II'' are weird to almost EldritchAbomination levels. Put another way, the ''least'' bizarre aliens Quatermass encounters are three-legged telepathic insects from Mars.
42	* TelevisionSerial
43	[[/folder]]
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45	[[folder:''The Quatermass Experiment'']]
46	* TheAssimilator: When Victor Caroon begins to transform into a monster, he absorbs a potted cactus into his alien-growth-infested arm. When that arm next appears on screen, it's mutated into a lumpy fingerless mass with protruding cactus spines all over it.
47	* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Judith's parting words to Victor, before he set off in the rocket, were a request that he bring her back something from space (in fact, the teleplay was originally titled "Bring Something Back"). As it turns out, he ''does'' bring something back... something alien and horrible.
48	* BlobMonster: The alien has an amoeboid form and absorbs organic matter that comes in contact with it. What's disturbing is that [[AndIMustScream it retains their brains in full functionality after it absorbs them]].
49	* BroadcastLive: The 2005 remake was done live as the original serials had been, [[LiveEpisode as a gimmick]], although it backfired slightly because the live footage was treated to look like film.
50	%%* HeroicSacrifice: Dr. Roney.
51	* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: In the climax, [[spoiler:Quatermass defeats an alien plant which has absorbed three astronauts by use of this technique.]] It's a pity [[invoked]][[MissingEpisode we can't actually watch it]].
52	* ImprobableInfantSurvival: When the infected Victor encounters a young girl, he prevents himself from succumbing to the alien's [[TheAssimilator drive to absorb living matter]] by frightening her away, thus leaving her unharmed.
53	* InsufferableGenius: Quatermass comes across as one in the film, refusing to listen to criticism from anyone.
54	* KillItWithFire: The Army's plan to [[spoiler:kill the creature in Westminster Abbey]].
55	* LiveEpisode: The 2005 remake, like the original serial, was broadcast live (thus actually making it a 1:40 serial...) but ironically treated to look like a film. A few goofs present in the broadcast were replaced with filmed rehearsal footage for the DVD.
56	* SameContentDifferentRating: The Hammer film was given an X certificate when it was released in 1955, due to the horror of a human transforming into a {{Starfish Alien\|s}} as the precursor to an invasion. By the time of the video release in 2003, it got a PG rating in the UK.
57	* StuffBlowingUp: The [[spoiler:climax of the Hammer film, replacing the IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight denouement of the original]]. Kneale was not impressed.
58	* TalkingTheMonsterToDeath: [[spoiler:An alien life force had absorbed the consciousnesses of three astronauts, and Quatermass convinces them to commit suicide to keep the creature from reproducing via thousands of infectious spores.]]
59	* XtremeKoolLetterz: The film was actually titled ''The Quatermass Xperiment'', to draw attention to its X rating[[note]]approximately an R rating in modern US terms[[/note]] (for motives as described in AvoidTheDreadedGRating, except that this film came by its rating honestly).
60	[[/folder]]
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62	[[folder:''Quatermass II'']]
63	%%* AlienInvasion: ''Quatermass II''
64	* AtmosphereAbuse: A chemical plant, run by humans under alien control, manufactures [[spoiler:gases in which the aliens can live but which are horribly corrosive to human flesh. The aliens plan to manufacture enough gas to ultimately replace the Earth's atmosphere]].
65	* TheDogBitesBack: Yeah, aliens, it's a great idea to [[spoiler:liquidize your rebellious minions' representatives ForTheEvulz when the minions have rocket-launchers]].
66	* DomedHometown: Professor Quatermass shows off a concept drawing of his planned Moon base, which has domed buildings to provide an atmosphere on the airless Moon. He's surprised to find a chemical planet in Britain has the same domed buildings... [[spoiler:because aliens are using it during their HostileTerraforming of the Earth]].
67	* DressingAsTheEnemy: To infiltrate the higher security domes in Winnerden Flats, Quatermass nabs a dead plant worker's uniform.
68	%%* GasMaskMooks: The plant workers.
69	* HazmatSuit: Quatermass and his team watch film footage of the aftermath of a nuclear-powered RetroRocket exploding in the Australian desert, killing hundreds. Men in 1950s hazmat suits are shown running Geiger counters over the area, which is [[invoked]]HarsherInHindsight given [[https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/maralinga what was actually happening at Maralinga in the 1950s]].
70	* HostileTerraforming: Part of the aliens' plan. [[spoiler:An alien vanguard takes over selected humans so they can build a chemical plant to make an atmosphere that will support their kind of life and kill all terrestrial life.]]
71	* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: {{Subverted\|Trope}}, as [[spoiler:the apparent success of this trope on an alien-controlled Dillon is actually the aliens changing his orders and instructing him to go along with Quatermass' plan (to launch a nuclear-armed rocket at their asteroid base) because they intend to seize the rocket and bring the rest of their race to Earth]].
72	* JustifiedTitle: ''Quatermass II'' features the Professor's experimental rocket, known as the Quatermass II. [[invoked]][[WordOfGod Kneale later confessed]] that he only wrote in that connection because he couldn't think of a better title for the second serial than "Quatermass II", and he had to justify it to himself.
73	* {{Kaiju}}: [[spoiler:The large alien creatures that emerge from the domes to destroy the plant.]]
74	* LawOfInverseRecoil: A somewhat questionable {{aver\|tedTrope}}sion occurs when an astronaut fires a submachine gun on an asteroid -- the recoil knocks him off the low gravity surface and out into space.
75	* NumberedSequels: A Roman numeral in the 1955 original (''II''), and an Arabic numeral in the 1957 film (''2''). The latter is probably the first example of an Arabic numeral number in a sequel title. In both cases, it's technically a {{subver\|tedTrope}}sion, as the title actually refers to a rocket ship literally named ''Quatermass 2''.[[note]]In the United States, the first film was issued as ''The Creeping Unknown'', so the second one had to be retitled as well: it was known as ''Enemy from Space''.[[/note]]
76	* ObstructiveBureaucrat: [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]]. During TheInfiltration, these oppose Quatermass' attempts to uncover the truth about the AlienInvasion, some out of petty authoritarianism, others because they're possessed by aliens. However, a senior civil servant named Fowler helps Quatermass because he's experienced enough in how the system works to realize that the obstructiveness is happening in a way that ''doesn't make sense''.
77	-->'''Fowler:''' Quatermass, we've had dealings for a number of years. You as a driving force of an enterprise of The Future, I as one of the obstructive civil servants you had to contend with.
78	* PuppeteerParasite: Aliens from a nearby asteroid reach Earth via hollow meteorites and start infiltrating the upper echelons of society.
79	* YouHaveToBelieveMe: Played with -- Quatermass is trying to get a committee of {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s to authorise an inspection of a well-guarded synthetic food factory, which has some connection with strange hollow meteorites landing in the area. A politician who also wants to get to the bottom of the matter agrees to help him and starts pitching to the committee the idea that the factory might be in danger from these meteorites crashing down on top of it. Rather than realizing what he's up to, Quatermass keeps interrupting to 'correct' the politician's supposed scientific error.
80	[[/folder]]
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82	[[folder:''Quatermass and the Pit'']]
83	* AdaptedOut: Fullalove is in the TV serial but doesn't appear in the film version.
84	* TheAestheticsOfTechnology: The RetroRocket-style design for the alien spacecraft in the TV serial is replaced in the film with a more exotic design that gave it a more weirdly "alien" look.[[note]]Nearly 5 decades since the film's release, many of the design aesthetics of the alien spaceship -- the surfaces, the lines and curves, and even the colour -- which all must have looked very unusual and exotic in 1967 now are all bizarrely similar to what is commonly found on the designs of contemporary automobiles today.[[/note]]
85	* AlienFairFolk: Ancient aliens who not only gave the human race intelligence but also were the inspiration for supernatural beings, most notably horned demons.
86	* AncientAstronauts: Beliefs in witchcraft and demons stemmed from the arrival of Martians early in Earth's history, [[spoiler:who attempted to engineer the hominids of Earth to become the successors of their own DyingRace]].
87	* AnyoneCanDie: The rather casual death of [[spoiler:Fullalove]], who had survived ''The Quatermass Experiment''.
88	* AskAStupidQuestion: {{Invoked\|Trope}} by Sladden in the film after the lights go out in the Underground station and he mutters to himself:
89	-->''"Where was Moses when the lights when out?\
90	In the flippin' dark."''
91	* AstralProjection: In the climax, [[spoiler:a Martian (whether real or just a manifestation of the spaceship) appears in this way]].
92	* ColdIron: In the climax, [[spoiler:the Martian "devil" appears as a ghostly projection, powering destructive atavistic urges in humans. Professor Quatermass and Ronay realize that "cold iron", in the form of an electrical conductor, can be used to short out the energy responsible]].
93	* DecoyProtagonist: Roney actually achieves a lot more when it comes to understanding and neutralizing the alien menace than Quatermass.
94	* DyingRace: The alien AncientAstronauts were apparently dying out [[spoiler:and thus attempted to genetically engineer humanity to become their successors]].
95	* EnemyWithin: Any human who still has the Martian race memory left intact.
96	* HeadInTheSandManagement: In the Hammer film, the Minister of Defense believes that the items in the pit are planted propaganda rather than alien artifacts, which makes sense at first. However, he sticks to this theory even as incredibly weird stuff starts happening, including displays of psychic powers by people who previously had none but were exposed to the items in the pit.
97	%%* HugeHolographicHead: The Martian spectre.
98	* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: Reversing the usual roles, [[spoiler:Quatermass himself (along with most of the human race) falls prey to possession by ancient Martian psychic energy, while his friend Dr. Roney is one of the comparatively few people immune. Roney desperately tries to talk Quatermass (who is at the same time doing his best to kill Roney) out of it -- and is ultimately successful]].
99	* InsectoidAliens: The Martians look like large locusts.
100	* KilroyWasHere: The very words "Kilroy Was Here" can be seen written in a tunnel in the Hammer film version.
101	%%* MadeOfIndestructium: The craft.
102	* MagicFromTechnology: Traditional black magic and the occult are explained as being garbled racial memories of AncientAstronauts meddling with the brains and cognitive abilities of primitive hominids.
103	* MentalPictureProjector: Roney's thought-visualizing machine, called an "optic encephalograph", shows racial memories of Martian genocide.
104	%%* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Colonel Breen and the Minister.
105	* OneMythToExplainThemAll: The insectoid Martians, their telekinesis and their spectral projections are the origins of the beliefs in poltergeists, ghosts, and horned demons.
106	* SealedEvilInACan: An ancient alien evil which has laid buried under London for millions of years is finally unearthed by building works.
107	* SinisterSubway: The film replaces the ordinary building site of the TV show with a London Underground station (not exactly abandoned, just closed, being reconstructed for an extension), making the scenes and the unearthly events therein even creepier.
108	* SupportingProtagonist: Quatermass may be the title and main character, but it's Dr. Roney who first investigates the pit, is one of the only characters unaffected by the Martian Devil, and ultimately performs a HeroicSacrifice to defeat the Martians.
109	* TheVicar: The Vicar who comes to Hob's End is a decent man of the cloth confronted by forces which he can't begin to understand.
110	* TheWildHunt: The episode "The Wild Hunt" involves [[spoiler:the alien race holding a periodic Wild Hunt to weed out the unfit. Quatermass theorizes that this urge has been genetically passed down through the human race, leading to wars and racial conflict]].
111	* ZombieGait: Non-zombie example: when Sladden the drill operator falls under Martian influence, he walks with a weird lurching gait, the idea being that he's trying to replicate the Martians' tripedal locomotion with only two legs.
112	[[/folder]]
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114	[[folder:''Quatermass'']]
115	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The setting is a dystopian future UK plagued by social breakdown, fuel and food shortages, and heavily armed street gangs. The Soviet Union still exists, and it vies with the US to spend billions on useless space projects. No date is given but clues in the text of the novelisation (written by Kneale) indicate that it is happening in 1990. Ironically, it turned out to be at least partially TruthInTelevision, as the Soviet Union ''did'' still exist in 1990, not having broken up until around Christmas 1991, and the late '80s ''were'' the scene of a last spat in UsefulNotes/TheSpaceRace. Social breakdown in the UK, not so much (despite teenagers readopting hippy-ish culture and dancing themselves silly in fields).
116	* AmoralAfrikaner: In a grim, dystopian, near-future Britain, the UK's police services have been disbanded and replaced by the Contract Police, or 'pay cops', a force comprised of overly aggressive and not-very-bright mercenaries. The {{Novelization}} of the story makes it clear that they are almost exclusively white South Africans; the ones heard speaking in the serial have Afrikaner accents.
117	* AncientAstronauts: A race of aliens is responsible for the existence of Stonhenge and other ancient stone rings. [[spoiler:They were originally markers to warn of spots where the aliens used to harvest humans.]]
118	* TheApunkalypse: Britain and by implication other parts of the Earth are in the early stages of this, due to out-of-control youth violence and delinquency. It's implied to be due to alien interference.
119	%%* ArcWords: The nursery rhyme.
120	* AuthorTract: The serial is so reactionary as to occasionally tip into self-parody. Its central premise involves alien mind control which targets hippies but doesn't affect old people. The other part of its premise is that there's a cult who believe that the aliens are transporting them to a utopia, when in fact [[spoiler:they're just being incinerated]]. The result, basically, is 100 minutes of Creator/NigelKneale yelling at viewers to get off his lawn.
121	* BigRedButton: The nuke detonator has one.
122	-->''"Just thump it."''
123	* CircleOfStandingStones: Young people are drawn to stone circles and apparently ascended to a higher plane. However, all is not as it seems. It is eventually revealed that standing stones and other ancient sites [[spoiler:are warning markers at places where an alien device killed people in the past -- and is doing so again]].
124	* CompilationMovie: ''Quatermass'' was edited down into a feature film called ''The Quatermass Conclusion'' for release in other countries, like the US. An odd example, since the original serial was deliberately written and shot so that it could be edited down into a much shorter movie (the section with the old people in the scrapyard was specifically written to be cuttable without affecting the plot too much).
125	%%* CreepyChildrenSinging:
126	* DeadMansSwitch: Quatermass is not happy about his planned Moonbase being used to launch nuclear missiles for a proposed Dead Man deterrence strategy, the idea being that if an aggressor nuked Britain, missiles would launch from the Moon and [[MutuallyAssuredDestruction wipe out the attacker three days later]].
127	* DeathOfAChild: [[spoiler:Joe Kapp's wife and children are suddenly killed off-screen in an alien bombardment.]]
128	* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: The Stonehenge stand-in is named ''Ring''stone ''Round''.
129	* DownInTheDumps: A badly injured Professor Quatermass, stumbling through the streets of a London in the late stages of urban collapse, is saved by a community of elderly people hiding out in an ingenious labyrinth made out of old vehicles in a scrapyard.
130	* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Twice:
131	** [[spoiler:Annie gets either knocked out or killed in a sudden head-on crash with a Land Rover driven by possessed soldiers, then incinerated by an alien energy bolt.]]
132	** [[spoiler:Joe Kapp gets ready to heroically sacrifice himself as a backup to Quatermass to ensure that the nuke is detonated but is casually shot dead by Kickalong when the Planet People invade the observatory grounds.]]
133	* TheGenerationGap: It turns out that the Generation Gap is caused by the malign influence of aliens.
134	* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Quatermass himself and possibly his granddaughter -- it doesn't seem that she actually knew what that big red button was for, although the novelization claims "she knew because he knew". Plus, the fact that her photo was propped up against it might have given her a clue.]]
135	* HorrorHippies: The Planet People are a hippie-like movement being mind-controlled by a malevolent alien force]. Luckily, old people's brains are unaffected by the mind control, so are able to save the Earth from the pernicious influence of hippiedom. This was made in ''1979''.
136	* HumanResources: Quatermass speculates that this is the aliens' motivation, although we never find out for sure.
137	* IronicNurseryTune: The children's nursery rhyme "Ringstone Round" contains seemingly innocent lyrics which actually indicate that the terrible, inexplicable events currently occurring have happened before.
138	-->''"Huffety puffety Ringstone Round.\
139	If you lose your hat, it will never be found,\
140	So pull up your britches right up to your chin,\
141	And fasten your cloak with a bright new pin,\
142	And when you are ready, then we can begin,\
143	Huffity, puffity puff!"''
144	* {{Jerkass}}: Kickalong is a seething cauldron of hate. In one scene, he pretends to beg for food from a man cowering in a boarded-up house, and when the man passes out a can of beans, Kickalong machine-guns him.
145	* KillSat: An alien device lures people into small areas and then engulfs them in a column of light. True Believers assume that the light will transport them to a better planet. No such luck; [[spoiler:it's actually a nasty and insidious form of Kill Sat, only just to make things worse, there isn't an actual satellite that can be shot down (there's ''something'' that the Russians launch nuclear missiles at, but it doesn't work). In Kneale's {{Novelization}}, Quatermass theorizes that it's a kind of energy field surrounding the Earth like a huge soap bubble. When it needs to fire, it just concentrates its energy on one spot]].
146	* MindControlMusic: {{Implied\|Trope}}. While the Planet People are gathering, ethereal music plays on the soundtrack, apparently symbolizing the alien influence that's drawing them to their deaths like a deadly version of Literature/{{the Pied Piper\|OfHamelin}}. The final closing credits make it clear that it has the same tune as [[IronicNurseryTune the Ringstone Round nursery rhyme]].
147	* NewAgeRetroHippie: The serial somehow managed to combine this and TheNewRockAndRoll; the cities are decaying, and one symptom of this is a band of violent hippies -- sorry, "Planet People" -- who believe they've made contact with a peaceful race of aliens [[spoiler:(who are actually conning the hippies and plan to harvest them as a food source)]]. Kneale decided in retrospect that he shouldn't have gone with hippies (as it was 1979) and should have used punks instead, [[TheQuincyPunk but that's another trope entirely]]. Although the more explicitly violent youth gangs certainly have the appearance of punks, and prove just as susceptible to the alien influence as the Planet People.
148	* OlderHeroVsYoungerVillain: Young people are affected by an evil alien force, and old people are the only ones who can save the day.
149	* OneMythToExplainThemAll: Stone circles (which do nothing; the stones only mark the places where people congregated in the past) around the world becoming activated; people congregate there (an activated race memory), expecting to either be contacted by aliens, be 'raptured' into heaven, 'go to the planet', etc. [[spoiler:Instead, they are 'harvested' by an interstellar energy beam that reduces them to dust, with a tiny fraction lost to the beam.]] It is further suggested that all religions, and by extension, all of human politics, wars and history, have been the result of this race memory: to congregate and [[spoiler:be harvested]].
150	* PathOfInspiration: The Planet People are a sect influenced by aliens to [[spoiler:voluntarily submit themselves for consumption]].
151	* PillarOfLight: The Planet People are a sect who believe they are being transported to a wonderful new planet by beams of light that descend to the Earth. Professor Quatermass discovers that the beams have a much deadlier purpose.
152	* ReCut: The serial was specifically written so that it could be recut as a cinema movie for US distribution. One subplot, the one dealing with [[WackyWaysideTribe the old people living in the junkyard]], was specifically designed to be cut without affecting the main plot.
153	* SpontaneousHumanCombustion: The sole survivor of an alien attack suddenly explodes into ash a couple of days later. Quatermass had previously wondered why Annie hadn't noticed the corpses he saw at Ringstone Round a few days earlier -- they'd obviously gone the same way.
154	* WackyWaysideTribe: The section with the old people living in the scrapyard was specifically written so that it could be removed for a condensed feature-film version.
155	* WriterOnBoard: According to Creator/NigelKneale, hippie teenagers are terrifying, lawless punks with no respect for anything, and when the chips are down, only a scientific team made up entirely of old people ignored by the world are capable of saving it.
156	[[/folder]]
157

Context Franchise / Quatermass