The Quatermass Experiment (DVD)

If you didn't spend the night of April 2nd, 2005 hiding under the dining room table with a packet of chocolate digestives and an aged relative - you weren't there. You didn't experience the cross-generational collision of 1950s science-fiction reconstructed, re-enacted and delivered with twenty-first century aplomb.

Basically, you missed THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE on BBC Four. You know it. You're ashamed of it. And now you're ...
...science-fiction serial - created by the late NIGEL KNEALE - in 1953. As each of the original episodes were performed and broadcast live, and no one thought to commit them to film archive at the time, few of these early examples of science-fiction on television survive.

Fifty-two years, six STAR WARS movies and nine seasons of THE X-FILES later THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE presents one question: Can 'live' science-fiction television ... more

If you didn't spend the night of April 2nd, 2005 hiding under the dining room table with a packet of chocolate digestives and an aged relative - you weren't there. You didn't experience the cross-generational collision of 1950s science-fiction reconstructed, re-enacted and delivered with twenty-first century aplomb.

Basically, you missed THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE on BBC Four. You know it. You're ashamed of it. And now you're looking for the DVD to make up for it.

Good for you!

QUATERMASS began as a weekly science-fiction serial - created by the late NIGEL KNEALE - in 1953. As each of the original episodes were performed and broadcast live, and no one thought to commit them to film archive at the time, few of these early examples of science-fiction on television survive.

Fifty-two years, six STAR WARS movies and nine seasons of THE X-FILES later THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE presents one question: Can 'live' science-fiction television work anymore?

Or have we all gone soft and become addicted to elaborate visual effects and CGI post-production techniques in the two generations that've gone by since the original QUATERMASS sent small children running for cover.

The answer to that question is, with a brilliant cast of theatre actors and military-scale precision in cutting between cameras - yes. And they should do it again. And again. The first dozen times to prove it wasn't a fluke, and the next dozen times because the QUATERMASS stories are that good.

Unfortunately there's a thrill to watching the live broadcast that you don't get with the DVD. JASON FLEMYNG (QUATERMASS himself) sums the 'missing thrill' up, in one of the interviews included on the disk, when he compares THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE to watching Formula One racing - appreciating the skill of the drivers but, really, if you're honest, you just want one of them to crash.

This is true. Most of the barely-contained fear I felt as I hid under the dining room table watching THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE was for the actors and the technical staff that they wouldn't muck things up completely. While simultaneously purging my guiltiest wish for **precisely** this to happen with a handful of chocolate digestives!

This is the only problem with the DVD edition - it gives a live experience the inverted commas ('live') treatment, which sucks the adrenaline and excitement out of it. Unlike recent release of LIVE AID on DVD, you don't have the primary attraction of the music to focus on. THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE is essentially theatre on television, so the more you watch the DVD the more the shine gets knocked off it. And, if you're a QUATERMASS buff, the more inclined you'll be towards reaching for the BRIAN DONLEVY movies of the late 1950s/early 1960s for something a little less visually jarring.

And it is visually jarring. Bearing in mind THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE was just that, the insertion of stock footage London city scapes between scenes (used to enable the actors to dash off to their next scene) seem to drag on and feel a little lingering and out of pace with the actors' performances.

The abuse of stock footage isn't quite as moss-cultivatingly slow as its application in BBC Four's modern retake of A FOR ANDROMEDA. And the cinematography for THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE is generally of a higher quality than other BBC one-offs like THE HAUNTED AIRMAN and SEX, THE CITY, AND ME.

The performance quality with THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE is also less cheesy than expected. Given the context of the production as theatre on TV, and the number of stage-trained performers involved, I was expecting the kind of bone-rattling vocal delivery and overwrought physical performance that carries in a theatrical auditorium but has you rolling in hysterics when you see it on TV.

Again my inner-schadenfreude was sent back to the biscuit packet!

The entire cast manage to embrace the theatrical context of the production while delivering nicely modulated, toned down TV performances. Ok, so watching the DVD again there is the slight whiff of ham and cheese about some of the scenes. But with the live element factored in again you soon get an appreciation for the fact that is not the contents of a rather nice sandwich you're smelling, that's the smell of the best of British Theatre in '05 seeing their collective past and future prospects flashing before their eyes!

Which is dreadful to watch when you haven't got a packet of biscuits handy because they're all so spectacularly GOOD under the unique pressure of the situation - if you haven't got something to quieten your inner bad-luck demon it'll make you sick! I recommend THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE to any and all drama/acting students because the performance bar is set so high, it'll make you want to jack it all in and enrol on a plumbing course!

It's not HAMLET. It's not HENRY V. It's something a whole lot worse - it's the ability to make the fundamentally ludicrous plausible, which is a heck of a lot more difficult!

In this respect JASON FLEMYNG and ANDREW TIERNAN deserve particular praise. FLEMYNG's QUATERMASS is intensely earnest and as serious as the senior scientist in charge of a commercial rocket launch should be without behaving like a block of of chiselled wood. While TIERNAN's Carroon is believably and frighteningly energised in his transformation by alien plant biology, even though his on-screen transformation props amount to a blanket over the head and a rubber glove spiked with pieces of rubber!

Did I mention THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE is an absolute essential to own if you believe in two kinds of triumph - against adversity and against the might of the BBC Props department? Because it is. It's also nostalgically reassuring that yes, Britain can still make great TV out of the least scary knobbly rubber aliens, 50p and a packet of Marigolds can create!

Speaking of knobbly rubber aliens and actors with future prospects: DAVID TENNANT fans will either be impressed or disappointed with THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE as he plays the exposition-spewing Doctor Gordon Briscoe, who really has very little to do other than feed critical plot details over to Professor QUATERMASS and engage in a twee, romantic subplot with Judith Carroon - INDIRA VARMA (ROME, TORCHWOOD). I fall into the category of 'impressed' - both TENNANT and VARMA manage to make so much out of so little and handle singularly the most ridiculous scene in the entire show brilliantly, where Briscoe and Judith have a short discussion on the theme of an affair over the unconscious body of Judith's husband.

Seriously, you WANT to laugh but TENNANT and VARMA conspire to make the whole bizarre scene quite sweet and authentically touching.

You can't see, but I'm reaching for the biscuits again. Curses!

THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE isn't free from wobbly performances. There are few and those are far between. But once you're into it, THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE - even in DVD format - rapidly becomes an exercise for viewers in cheering this lot on. Loudly. Which is something you can do with a TV show but can get you thrown out of a theatre for!

THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE is one of the few drama productions where the story isn't really that important. The plot synopsis is almost identical (give or take a few tweaks to bring the story up to date) to the 1955 film THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT: A three-man rocket mission loses contact with Earth. When the rocket crash lands it's discovered that all but one member of the crew have vanished. Unfortunately for the mission's leader - Professor Bernard QUATERMASS - the surviving crew member goes missing and is apparently infected with an alien plant life form that threatens to spread across the planet.

For the full B-movie experience, THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT will sate your urges. If you really want to put yourself through the torture of the variation-on-a-theme with maxed out effects - stick to SPECIES II. THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE's charm is in its overall process and ability to free modern science-fiction from its effects-packed prison. If you like that concept of an experiment within the EXPERIMENT, you'll enjoy it on a rental. Purchasing, I'm afraid, is definitely for hardcore, confirmed QUATERMASS fans.

The extras on the disk are limited, but more than I expected given this is a BBC DVD. There is a very funny and informative featurette on the making-of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT: LIVE. This consists mostly of interviews with the cast and production members with the odd comment by NIGEL KNEALE. The audio commentary provides a technical overview of the production. There's also a photo gallery to flick through and a small booklet to skim over.

It's actually the documentary featurette that makes buying this DVD worthwhile. Where the show itself on DVD is a wisp in a bottle - lacking the urgency and intensity of a fleeting moment that made it stand out as something special - the featurette is informative and enduring in a way that it's impossible not to like, respect and feel thankful for everyone involved in the production from start to finish.

I picked my copy up for £6 in the January sale at play.com - which isn't a bargain but is spot on for the product and repeat-watch potential. It does make a great gift for science-fiction loving theatre fans or event-TV collectors with a fondness for things like GHOSTWATCH. 

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