The Quatermass Conclusion - Episode 1 only - Ringstone Round (1979)

"We can't shoot them sir, they're unarmed civilians!" Predictably rejected by an increasingly patronising BBC, this was one of the last thought-provoking dramas to be broadcast in Britain before Thatcher and her friends' clampdown on creative thought. John Mills stars as the eponymous Professor in 1979's Quatermass, the fourth, final and best of the celebrated television science fiction serials. The Professor's early adventures were 1950's TV productions, all made into cult Hammer films, including the excellent Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Here Quatermass, now an elderly scientist searching for his missing grand-daughter, finds himself facing a new alien nightmare in a convincingly bleak near-future Britain of urban decay, social collapse and unchecked violence. Written by Nigel Kneale, as were all the Quatermass stories, this was an intelligent extrapolation of 1970's industrial-strife-ridden Britain, a continuation of the apocalyptic British SF tradition of John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids was serialised by the BBC two years later). Thanks to a generous budget sufficient to allow for an international theatrical version, the production values are impressively large-scale, and the naturalistic performances from a cast including Simon MacCorkindale, Barbara Kellerman and Brenda Fricker add greatly to the sense of reality. Best of all, John Mills brings tremendous class to an adventure which remains a rare example of serious, ideas-based adult TV SF. Director Piers Haggard (Pennies from Heaven) packs considerable tension and not a few scares into Kneale's epic canvas. http://www.bilderberg.org http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quatermass-Chapters-1-4-Conclusion/dp/B00008OP7A New Age Deception