He added " Blake's 7s triumph lay in its vivid characters, its tight, pacey plots and its satisfying realism ... For arguably the first time since the 1950s Quatermass serials, the BBC had created a popular sci-fi / fantasy show along adult lines.

Quatermass is narrowly saved from discovery by the rioting construction workers, who storm the plant and along with him are besieged inside the gas distribution centre, where they pump oxygen into the pressure domes to poison the ammonids, however some of the workers succumb to propaganda from the plant controllers, who offer them the chance to see inside the domes.

Beginning with black and white adaptations of Nigel Kneale's BBC science fiction serials The Quatermass Experiment ( 1955 ) and Quatermass II ( 1957 ), Hammer quickly graduated to deceptively lavish colour versions of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy.

In the critically acclaimed and influential 1950s TV series created by Nigel Kneale, Quatermass and the Pit, depictions of supernatural horned entities, with specific reference to prehistoric cave-art and shamanistic horned head-dress are revealed to be a " race-memory " of psychic Martian grasshoppers, manifested at the climax of the film by a fiery horned god.

Hammer's first significant experiment with horror came in the form of a 1955 adaptation of Nigel Kneale's BBC Television science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment, which was directed by Val Guest.

As a consequence of the contract with Robert Lippert, American actor Brian Donlevy was imported for the lead role, and the title was changed to The Quatermass Xperiment to cash in on the new X certificate for horror films.

The film was an unexpectedly big hit, and led to an almost equally popular 1957 sequel Quatermass 2again adapted from one of Kneale's television scripts, this time by Kneale himself and with a budget double that of the original: £ 92, 000.

The unmade prequel serial Quatermass in the Third Reich, an idea conceived by Kneale in the late 1990s, would have shown Quatermass travelling to Nazi Germany during the 1936 Berlin Olympics and becoming involved with Wernher von Braun and the German rocket programme, before helping a young Jewish refugee to escape from the country.

Despite this trauma, Quatermass continues with his space programme, and by Quatermass II ( 1955 ) is actively planning the establishment of Moon bases.

In the fourth episode of the serial he mentions that he never reached his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, tying in with The Quatermass Memoirs later assertion of his wife's early death.

They did release an adaptation of Quatermass II in 1957, called Quatermass 2 and this time with Kneale's involvement in the script.

Hammer also purchased the film rights to Quatermass and the Pit ( released in the USA as Five Million Years to Earth ), as it had done with the previous two TV serials, although they did not release their version until 1967.

Possible remakes of one or more of the Hammer film adaptations were also mooted at various points during the 1990s, with Dan O ' Bannon scripting a potential new version of The Quatermass Experiment in 1993, but again nothing was eventually filmed.

In 1995, BBC radio producer Paul Quinn approached Kneale with the idea of making a new radio series based around Quatermass, and the resulting project was produced and aired as the five-part serial The Quatermass Memoirs on BBC Radio 3 in the spring of 1996.

The serial had three strands: a monologue from Kneale recounting the background to the creation and writing of the original 1950s serials ; archive material from both the original productions and contemporary news broadcasts ; and a dramatised strand set shortly before the 1979 serial, with Quatermass being visited in retreat in Scotland by a reporter eager to write his life story.

A live theatrical production of Quatermass and the Pit was staged, with the permission of Kneale, outdoors in a quarry at the village of Cropwell Bishop in Nottinghamshire in August 1997.

The adaptation was written by Peter Thornhill and mounted by Creation Productions, with David Longford starring as Quatermass.

" As a leading scientific innovator, Quatermass is invested with scientific and moral authority.

( In the 1979 Quatermass, he has acquired a granddaughter ; possibly connected with this is the fact that here he seems a much weaker figure who can only defeat the aliens through the sacrifice of the lives of both himself and his granddaughter ).

Although Carpenter wrote the screenplay, in the film's credits the writer is listed as Martin Quatermass, a homage repeated in the film with Kneale University.

The storyline features elements associated with Kneale ( the ancient evil aspect of both Quatermass and the Pit and The Quartermass Conclusion, the idea of messages from the future from The Road, and the scientific investigation of the supernatural from The Stone Tape ).

Shortly thereafter Ngakane went into exile in the United Kingdom, where he appeared in Quatermass and the Pit ( 1958 ) and in the television spy series Danger Man ( Deadline, 1962 ) with Patrick McGoohan.

* The Quatermass Conclusion ( 1979 )

The production company Euston Films also released a 100 minute film version, renaming it The Quatermass Conclusion, for distribution abroad.

* Quatermass ( TV serial ) ( Thames Television, 1979 ), also edited for international distribution as a cinematic release titled The Quatermass Conclusion

A new serial adventure – titled simply Quatermass – was eventually made in 1979 by ITV television in 1979 and ( in re-edited form ) received a limited cinema release under the title The Quatermass Conclusion.

Kneale did eventually write a fourth Quatermass story, broadcast as a four-part serial, titled Quatermass, by ITV television in 1979, an edited version of which was also given a limited cinema release under the title The Quatermass Conclusion.

Quatermass ( also known as The Quatermass Conclusion or Quatermass IV ) is a British television science fiction serial produced by Euston Films for Thames Television and broadcast on the ITV network in October and November 1979.

The scripts were taken by Euston Films and Kneale, now working for independent television, was commissioned to rewrite the scripts into two versions: a four-part television serial and The Quatermass Conclusion, a 100-minute film, intended for international theatrical release.

This new production, known either as Quatermass or Quatermass IV, would consist of a four part serial to be broadcast by ITV which would be recut as a 100-minute film, titled The Quatermass Conclusion, for release in North America and Europe.

This view is echoed by filmmaker John Carpenter who said, “ Nigel was very embittered about the way of the world, as was shown, I think, in The Quatermass Conclusion ”.

From the outset, Euston intended to create two versions of the story ; a four-part serial for broadcast on UK television and a 100-minute film, The Quatermass Conclusion, for distribution abroad.

There was little interest among film distributors in The Quatermass Conclusion and it received only a limited theatrical release.

The Quatermass Conclusion was released on VHS videotape in 1985 while the complete four-part Quatermass serial was released in 1994.

* The object discovered in Quatermass and the Pit was made of a material of extreme hardness, such that diamond-tipped drills and acetylene torches would not damage it.

His most famous television role was probably as the title character in Quatermass for ITV in 1979.

Lime Grove would be home to many BBC TV shows over the next forty-two years, including: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Quatermass II, Steptoe and Son, Doctor Who, Nationwide, Top of the Pops and the 1950s soap opera The Grove Family took the name of its title family from the studios, where it was made.

He appeared in the 1955 BBC Television serial Quatermass II, had a role in the Powell and Pressburger wartime drama Battle of the River Plate ( 1956 ), and came to wide popular attention in Britain when he played the duplicitous Spanish envoy Mendoza in the ITC Entertainment series Sir Francis Drake ( 1961 – 62 ), after which he was much in demand ; an ' in-joke ' in the 1971 Doctor Who story Colony in Space refers to that role: the Brigadier tells the Doctor not to worry — the suspected sighting of the Master was only the Spanish Ambassador!

Quatermass 2 used Hemel Hempstead, which was at the time under development, for the fictional new town of Winerton Flats.

In Nigel Kneale's 1996 radio serial The Quatermass Memoirs, it is revealed that the Professor was first involved in rocketry experiments in the 1930s, and that his wife died at a young age.

Nigel Kneale conceived the character of Quatermass in 1953, when he was assigned in his capacity as a BBC television staff drama writer to create a new six-part serial to run on Saturday nights in July and August.

The director assigned to the serial, which was eventually named The Quatermass Experiment, was Rudolph Cartier.

A sequel, Quatermass II, was accordingly commissioned in 1955, but Reginald Tate died of a heart attack only a month before production was due to begin.

Titled Quatermass and the Pit and again produced and directed by Cartier, this was eventually broadcast in December 1958 and January 1959.

John Robinson was no longer available to play Quatermass, so the role was offered instead to Alec Clunes.

" Despite this success, Kneale was unsure about whether the character would ever return, later telling an interviewer: " I didn't want to go on repeating because Professor Quatermass had already saved the world from ultimate destruction three times, and that seemed to me to be quite enough.

At roughly the same time as Quatermass II was being transmitted by the BBC, Hammer Film Productions released their film adaptation of the first serial in British cinemas.

Directed by Val Guest, it was retitled The Quatermass Xperiment, and starred American actor Brian Donlevy as part of a deal to help the film find US distribution.

Despite Kneale's reservations about the casting, The Quatermass Xperiment was the highest-grossing film Hammer had made up to that point in their history, and has since been described by one academic as " the key British science fiction film of the 1950s.

Soon after the release of the Quatermass and the Pit film, Kneale was approached by Hammer about writing a fourth Quatermass story directly for them, but the idea came to nothing.