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Quatermass and the Pit

Quatermass and the Pit
★ 7.1/10•1958•30m•Drama•Sci-Fi & Fantasy•Mystery
Similars

A team of scientists search for the origin and purpose of a mysterious capsule found on a building site.

Nigel Kneale · Writer

Rudolph Cartier · Director

StatusEnded
Runtime30m
LanguageEN
First Air DateDec 22, 1958

Episodes

Episode 1 - The HalfmenE135m

The Halfmen

Professor 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.

Dec 22, 1958

Episode 2 - The GhostsE237m

The Ghosts

Uncovered, 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.

Dec 29, 1958

Episode 3 - Imp & DemonsE331m

Imp & Demons

The 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.

Jan 5, 1959

Episode 4 - The EnchantedE433m

The Enchanted

Following 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.

Jan 12, 1959

Episode 5 - The Wild HuntE536m

The Wild Hunt

Quatermass 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.

Jan 19, 1959

Episode 6 - HobE635m

Hob

Despite 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.

Jan 26, 1959

Actors

André Morell

André Morell

Professor Bernard Quatermass

Cec Linder

Cec Linder

Dr. Matthew Roney

John Stratton

John Stratton

Captain Potter

Christine Finn

Christine Finn

Barbara Judd

Anthony Bushell

Anthony Bushell

Colonel James Breen

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