John Robinson ( actor ) | John Robinson, who took on the role of Quatermass for Quatermass II ( 1955 ) following Tate's death. Little is revealed of Quatermass's early life during the course of the films and television series in which he appears.

Quatermass also appears in a short segment of the 2007 graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, in which he takes his niece and nephew to visit an interplanetary zoo.

Suddenly, Kickalong appears with a group of Planet People, including Quatermass ' granddaughter, Hettie.

The light appears, indicating that the alien force has arrived, but the shock of seeing his granddaughter among the Planet People causes Quatermass to suffer a heart attack.

Shubik considered asking Nigel Kneale if he would write a new Quatermass story for the series, and contacted Arthur C. Clarke regarding the possibility of adapting his novel The Deep Range.

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!

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.

In 1955 Kneale was invited by the publishers of the Daily Express to write a new prose Quatermass story for serialisation in their newspaper ; as he was unable to think of a new storyline, they suggested he simply adapt Quatermass II, which he agreed to.

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.

The " ancient invasion " of Quatermass and the Pit cast a huge shadow ... its brilliant blending of superstition, witchcraft and ghosts into the story of a five-million-year-old Martian invasion is copper-bottomed genius.

The writer and critic Kim Newman, speaking about Kneale's career in a 2003 television documentary, cited Quatermass and the Pit as perfecting " the notion of the science-fictional detective story ".

Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first manned flight into space, overseen by Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group.

The story revolves around Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British Experimental Rocket Group.

It is not just Quatermass who is interested in what happened to Carroon and his crewmates ; journalists such as James Fullalove ( Paul Whitsun-Jones ) and Scotland Yard's Inspector Lomax ( Ian Colin ) are also keen to hear his story.

The Radio Times noted in its preview of the episode that " Tonight's story is an enjoyable synthesis of She, The Fly and The Quatermass Experiment — even down to the final battle in a London cathedral.

They approached Quatermass ' creator, Nigel Kneale, with a proposal for a new Quatermass story to be titled X the Unknown.

It is not notably better than Quatermass Xperiment, but the story idea is more involving, the production is livelier and there are more events in the unfolding of the story ”.

The film was a success for Hammer and they quickly announced that Nigel Kneale was writing a new Quatermass story for them but the script never went further than a few prelimininary discussions.

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.

The notion of bringing Professor Quatermass back for a fourth adventure dated back to at least 1965 when producer Irene Shubik asked Kneale to contribute a new Quatermass story for the first season of her science fiction anthology series, Out of the Unknown.

Writing in the listings magazine TV Times to promote the serial, Kneale said, “ Quatermass is a story of the future – but perhaps only a few years from now.

Arrow Books also released a novelisation of the 1979 Quatermass serial, written by Kneale.

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

Like its predecessors, Quatermass and the Pit was written by Nigel Kneale.

Cartier was impressed with Tate's performance, and later that year offered him the lead role in The Quatermass Experiment, a science-fiction serial he was directing, written by BBC staff scriptwriter Nigel Kneale.

Referring to the 1953 science-fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment in a memo written in 1954, BBC Television's Controller of Programmes, Cecil McGivern, noted that: " Had competitive television been in existence then, we would have killed it every Saturday night while Quatermass Experiment lasted.

A serialised novelisation of Quatermass II, written by Kneale, ran in the Daily Express newspaper in the UK from 5 December to 20 December 1955, although Kneale was forced to draw the storyline to a premature conclusion as the paper lost interest in the project.

Like its predecessor, it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass II – written by Nigel Kneale.

In the meantime, Kneale had written a new Quatermass serial for the BBC, titled Quatermass II, which was broadcast on BBC Television in October and November 1955.

For this reason, although Nigel Kneale had written a new Quatermass serial for the BBC, Quatermass and the Pit ( broadcast December 1958 to January 1959 ), Hammer did not acquire the rights until 1961 and the film version did not appear until 1967.

Like its predecessors it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass and the Pit – written by Nigel Kneale.

Professor Bernard Quatermass was first introduced to audiences in two BBC television serials, The Quatermass Experiment ( 1953 ) and Quatermass II ( 1955 ), written by Nigel Kneale.

Like its three predecessors, Quatermass was written by Nigel Kneale.

The success of The Quatermass Experiment led to two sequels, Quatermass II ( 1955 ) and Quatermass and the Pit ( 1958 – 59 ), both produced and directed by Cartier and written by Kneale.

Writing to Rossiter, offering him the part, Elliot described The Year of the Sex Olympics as " the most important play Nigel Kneale has written since Quatermass ".

The Stone Tape was written by Nigel Kneale, best known as the writer of Quatermass.

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.

* Quatermass and the Pit ( 1958 – 1959 ) – A British television serial in which a crashed spacecraft is discovered in London, which reveals that humanity on Earth is the result of experiments by a Martian civilisation, now long dead.

Quatermass and the Pit, a 1958 TV sequel to The Quatermass Experiment by Nigel Kneale, postulates that ancient Martians inspired the supernatural, demonic Wild Hunt as a form of genetic purging.

Early examples made by this method include the first two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment ( 1953 ), transmitted live while simultaneously telerecorded.

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.

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.

Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television.

The character of Quatermass has been described by BBC News Online as Britain's first television hero, and by The Independent newspaper as " A brilliantly conceived and finely crafted creation ... remained a modern ' Mr Standfast ', the one fixed point in an increasingly dreadful and ever-shifting universe.

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.

Only one of the crew, Victor Carroon, remains, and he has been taken over by an alien presence, eventually forcing Quatermass to destroy him and the other two crewmembers who have been absorbed into him in a climax set in Westminster Abbey.

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

Quatermass and the scientist Joe Kapp establish that an alien force is causing the downturn of society and Quatermass forms a plan to induce the intruder away by the detonation of a nuclear device.

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

Morell has been praised by several reviewers as having given the definitive portrayal of Quatermass.

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.