Maggie
12th August 2016, 16:09
Thanks to youtube I am discovering intelligent science fiction films from the early days of TV. My latest find is Nigel Kneale. This documentary is not just about Kneale but deconstructs how brilliant design and story insinuates ideas the alt community has taken as fact.
vqNTEh-CsFE
IMO ideas of what is possible are organized from story, spreading by mediums like TV and now youtube, filtering into common expectation. Then these ideas seem more than story, becoming truth. When people talk about humanity being in an AI reality behind a wall under a dome, it's like they are describing the skull and the mental thought fence we accept as our possibility.
The first Quatermass Xperiment was a BBC production from Nigel Kneale with "prescience" for contemporary concerns. He is reminding me of PKD in his influence of science fiction and popular ideas of the paranormal. This is a 1953 film which tapped into wide spread paranoia and the feeling of fear generated by the nuclear threat and the cold war. In this story we have been sold out to aliens.
seen here on veoh
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v10498947FbKCEXBG
Arguably the original bedrock foundation for British episodic television science fiction, the Quatermass serials also undoubtedly represent a high watermark of excellence for television drama in any genre. Few characters have had as much impact, or have been as influential as the brilliant, driven, but still very humanly fallible, Professor Bernard Quatermass.
QUATERMASS: INTRODUCTION
The story of the four Quatermass serials span three decades of television history, the original three being produced by the BBC in the 1950s and the belated fourth and final adventure for the independent company, Thames Television in 1979. The original trio were also adapted for the big screen by the legendary Hammer studios, whilst the third, and possibly the best of the serials, Quatermass and the Pit gained a video release in 1988, allowing its darkly disturbing tale to be appreciated for the first time by an entire generation to which it had hitherto been only an oft mentioned, but never seen legend. A legend that had began in the year 1953, with the first broadcast of a new serial. A serial titled:
THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT
The summer of 1953, had seen the BBC's then new head of drama Michael Barry allocates his entire first year's budget for new scripts - the princely sum of £250 - on a single author, a young staff writer (and winner of the 1950 Somerset Maughan Prize for Literature), named Nigel Kneale. The scripts ultimately delivered by Kneale were for an imaginative, atmospheric, and innovative six-part science fiction thriller very much different from the somewhat staid, theatrical productions that at the time were very much the standard template for the BBC's television drama output. Kneale's dark and disturbing story was basically woven around a simple but highly effective framework. The Quatermass Experiment told the tale Professor Bernard Quatermass (Reginald Tate), head of the British Rocket Research Group, and the deadly after effects which arise when an experimental spaceship with a three-man crew is deflected hundreds of thousands of miles off-course, before finally returning to Earth. The survivor, Victor Caroon (Duncan Lamont) had been contaminated with an alien life-form that caused him to metamorphose into a hundred-foot-tall vegetable creature capable of infinite reproduction. After a tense cat and mouse manhunt, that saw the alien wreak havoc on London, it was finally cornered by Quatermass in Westminster Abbey and ultimately destroyed in time to save the world...............http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/quatermass.htm
Quatermass II
QUATERMASS II archive (https://archive.org/details/PhotosbyHaroldQuatermassIIAllSixPartsCompiledintoO neFile)
Quatermass II - Episode 1 and playlist
mPhGqMc1jAs?list=PLKiRhvfc0Lm8rWoVWJRn95BDZ55iOjr7 K
Broadcast in 1955, just two years after the original triumph, Kneale's second serial is not really a sequel as only the central character of Quatermass himself was carried over from the first series of episodes. (This time John Robinson, replacing the originals Reginald Tate following the veteran actor's death a few weeks earlier portrayed Quatermass). Time had moved on, and in the two years that had passed since the fateful events of the original Quatermass Experiment, space exploration had become an inescapable fact, although the path to it was dogged by near constant frustration and failure. These technical 'doldrums' provided the basic framework for Kneale's second set of scripts, with Quatermass's work on his technically sophisticated prototype Mark II Moon rocket languishing at a standstill...............http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/quatermass.htm
Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59)
K2HSbfeXeBs
By the arrival of Quatermass And The Pit in 1959, the world had been ushered into a genuine space age, and as a consequence, viewer expectations had grown more aware and sophisticated than they had been during the pioneering rocket project of the first Quatermass 'experiment'. However, the basic character of Professor Bernard Quatermass himself, plagued by his realistic bouts of conscience and disdainful loathing of short-sighted bureaucracy, was still very much far from obsolete, and the fortuitous timing of the first episode of the new serial, broadcast just before Christmas 1958, was clear evidence that the powers that were at the BBC at that time realised that they had a sure fire ratings winner on their hands.
The Pit of the title squarely roots the events of the story firmly in its time. A time when the last of London's blitzed areas were being rebuilt, and the face of the entire country was undergoing a radical change to reflect the onset of a new decade, and in certain respects, the end of an old way of life. Contemporary real life events of the time had seen the unearthing of Roman and medieval remains within the capitol, during renewal excavations. Using these as an inspiration, Kneale's basic premise for the serial's story saw something much stranger, more sinister and unimaginably dangerous being unearthed from within the mud of the city. As Quatermass the highly skilled Andre Morell (who had been a chilling O'Brien in the earlier celebrated and controversial Cartier and Kneale adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four), here became the third, and arguably the definitive, television incarnation of the Quatermass character who finds himself drawn into the deadly investigation of an alien spacecraft. A craft that contains clear, unequivocal evidence that Earth had been visited millennia ago by Martians. Insect-like creatures that had manipulated man's simian ancestors, genetically altering them to become receptacles for their own otherworldly faculties.............http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/quatermass.htm
YABwwZHSZcw
THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION
(1979, UK TV series, 4 x 50 mins)
also called QUATERMASS
Death from above
Creator Nigel Kneale's last series for his most famous character, Bernard Quatermass, presented the visionary rocket scientist as an old man simply obsessed with tracking down his lost granddaughter. There are two major obstacles: in near-future Britain, society has decayed into anarchy, and there's an alien force lurking in the sky that spirits away the young.
Watching this again I was shocked at just how cynically Kneale presented the future. Neither capitalism or communism has worked and society has descended into chaos, wreckage blocks the street, the elderly are hiding underground, goods and food can no longer be bought, only bartered or stolen. The streets aren't safe, unless you pay for protection from the 'cash cops'.http://blackholereviews.blogspot.com/2011/03/quatermass-conclusion-1979-grim-finale.html
IMO when we see where the ideas come from, we can then decide if we will call them true (needing our attention and use as information for action) or call them entertainment (just a fig-newton of imagination without need to incorporate into our reality tunnel models). Media like the Quatermass serial has IMO been very influential and now turns up in people's mind as a true representation of "how things are".
vqNTEh-CsFE
IMO ideas of what is possible are organized from story, spreading by mediums like TV and now youtube, filtering into common expectation. Then these ideas seem more than story, becoming truth. When people talk about humanity being in an AI reality behind a wall under a dome, it's like they are describing the skull and the mental thought fence we accept as our possibility.
The first Quatermass Xperiment was a BBC production from Nigel Kneale with "prescience" for contemporary concerns. He is reminding me of PKD in his influence of science fiction and popular ideas of the paranormal. This is a 1953 film which tapped into wide spread paranoia and the feeling of fear generated by the nuclear threat and the cold war. In this story we have been sold out to aliens.
seen here on veoh
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v10498947FbKCEXBG
Arguably the original bedrock foundation for British episodic television science fiction, the Quatermass serials also undoubtedly represent a high watermark of excellence for television drama in any genre. Few characters have had as much impact, or have been as influential as the brilliant, driven, but still very humanly fallible, Professor Bernard Quatermass.
QUATERMASS: INTRODUCTION
The story of the four Quatermass serials span three decades of television history, the original three being produced by the BBC in the 1950s and the belated fourth and final adventure for the independent company, Thames Television in 1979. The original trio were also adapted for the big screen by the legendary Hammer studios, whilst the third, and possibly the best of the serials, Quatermass and the Pit gained a video release in 1988, allowing its darkly disturbing tale to be appreciated for the first time by an entire generation to which it had hitherto been only an oft mentioned, but never seen legend. A legend that had began in the year 1953, with the first broadcast of a new serial. A serial titled:
THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT
The summer of 1953, had seen the BBC's then new head of drama Michael Barry allocates his entire first year's budget for new scripts - the princely sum of £250 - on a single author, a young staff writer (and winner of the 1950 Somerset Maughan Prize for Literature), named Nigel Kneale. The scripts ultimately delivered by Kneale were for an imaginative, atmospheric, and innovative six-part science fiction thriller very much different from the somewhat staid, theatrical productions that at the time were very much the standard template for the BBC's television drama output. Kneale's dark and disturbing story was basically woven around a simple but highly effective framework. The Quatermass Experiment told the tale Professor Bernard Quatermass (Reginald Tate), head of the British Rocket Research Group, and the deadly after effects which arise when an experimental spaceship with a three-man crew is deflected hundreds of thousands of miles off-course, before finally returning to Earth. The survivor, Victor Caroon (Duncan Lamont) had been contaminated with an alien life-form that caused him to metamorphose into a hundred-foot-tall vegetable creature capable of infinite reproduction. After a tense cat and mouse manhunt, that saw the alien wreak havoc on London, it was finally cornered by Quatermass in Westminster Abbey and ultimately destroyed in time to save the world...............http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/quatermass.htm
Quatermass II
QUATERMASS II archive (https://archive.org/details/PhotosbyHaroldQuatermassIIAllSixPartsCompiledintoO neFile)
Quatermass II - Episode 1 and playlist
mPhGqMc1jAs?list=PLKiRhvfc0Lm8rWoVWJRn95BDZ55iOjr7 K
Broadcast in 1955, just two years after the original triumph, Kneale's second serial is not really a sequel as only the central character of Quatermass himself was carried over from the first series of episodes. (This time John Robinson, replacing the originals Reginald Tate following the veteran actor's death a few weeks earlier portrayed Quatermass). Time had moved on, and in the two years that had passed since the fateful events of the original Quatermass Experiment, space exploration had become an inescapable fact, although the path to it was dogged by near constant frustration and failure. These technical 'doldrums' provided the basic framework for Kneale's second set of scripts, with Quatermass's work on his technically sophisticated prototype Mark II Moon rocket languishing at a standstill...............http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/quatermass.htm
Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59)
K2HSbfeXeBs
By the arrival of Quatermass And The Pit in 1959, the world had been ushered into a genuine space age, and as a consequence, viewer expectations had grown more aware and sophisticated than they had been during the pioneering rocket project of the first Quatermass 'experiment'. However, the basic character of Professor Bernard Quatermass himself, plagued by his realistic bouts of conscience and disdainful loathing of short-sighted bureaucracy, was still very much far from obsolete, and the fortuitous timing of the first episode of the new serial, broadcast just before Christmas 1958, was clear evidence that the powers that were at the BBC at that time realised that they had a sure fire ratings winner on their hands.
The Pit of the title squarely roots the events of the story firmly in its time. A time when the last of London's blitzed areas were being rebuilt, and the face of the entire country was undergoing a radical change to reflect the onset of a new decade, and in certain respects, the end of an old way of life. Contemporary real life events of the time had seen the unearthing of Roman and medieval remains within the capitol, during renewal excavations. Using these as an inspiration, Kneale's basic premise for the serial's story saw something much stranger, more sinister and unimaginably dangerous being unearthed from within the mud of the city. As Quatermass the highly skilled Andre Morell (who had been a chilling O'Brien in the earlier celebrated and controversial Cartier and Kneale adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four), here became the third, and arguably the definitive, television incarnation of the Quatermass character who finds himself drawn into the deadly investigation of an alien spacecraft. A craft that contains clear, unequivocal evidence that Earth had been visited millennia ago by Martians. Insect-like creatures that had manipulated man's simian ancestors, genetically altering them to become receptacles for their own otherworldly faculties.............http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/quatermass.htm
YABwwZHSZcw
THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION
(1979, UK TV series, 4 x 50 mins)
also called QUATERMASS
Death from above
Creator Nigel Kneale's last series for his most famous character, Bernard Quatermass, presented the visionary rocket scientist as an old man simply obsessed with tracking down his lost granddaughter. There are two major obstacles: in near-future Britain, society has decayed into anarchy, and there's an alien force lurking in the sky that spirits away the young.
Watching this again I was shocked at just how cynically Kneale presented the future. Neither capitalism or communism has worked and society has descended into chaos, wreckage blocks the street, the elderly are hiding underground, goods and food can no longer be bought, only bartered or stolen. The streets aren't safe, unless you pay for protection from the 'cash cops'.http://blackholereviews.blogspot.com/2011/03/quatermass-conclusion-1979-grim-finale.html
IMO when we see where the ideas come from, we can then decide if we will call them true (needing our attention and use as information for action) or call them entertainment (just a fig-newton of imagination without need to incorporate into our reality tunnel models). Media like the Quatermass serial has IMO been very influential and now turns up in people's mind as a true representation of "how things are".