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The Quatermass Experiment

Season 1

6 listed hours · 1953 · BBC

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From the desk

How this season is filed

Filed by Vivian Cross · The Carpet Report

The Quatermass Experiment is British rocket horror on a shoestring: a 1953 BBC serial that terrified a nation and taught television to do dread. Adult sci-fi, culturally massive, some live episodes wiped. Watch it now as lost-media legend with teeth — the serial that proved the living room could be a frightened theater.

TV Flash files Season 1 of The Quatermass Experiment (1953) on BBC as the only listed season — 6 listed hours, 1953-07-18–1953-08-22 from “Contact Has Been Established” (S01E01) to “State of Emergency” (S01E06). Titles, dates, and synopses on file — no invented recaps.

Desk essentials in this season

  1. S01E01 Contact Has Been Established

    Contact Has Been Established: British rocket horror on a shoestring, 1953 BBC serial opening the night television learned to do dread.

  2. S01E02 Persons Reported Missing

    Persons Reported Missing — week-two title as civic unease, adult sci-fi already culturally massive, some live episodes later wiped.

  3. S01E03 Very Special Knowledge

    Very Special Knowledge: mid-serial titled expertise, lost-media legend with teeth still assembling in a live studio.

  4. S01E05 An Unidentified Species

    An Unidentified Species: late-serial science title, the experiment proving the living room could take a horror it could not pause.

  5. S01E06 State of Emergency

    State of Emergency closes the six-part dare: last titled night, shoestring BBC dread packing away as the serial that taught television fear.

  1. S01E01

    Contact Has Been Established

    A British experimental rocket orbits the earth the capsule crashes back to Earth in Wimbledon, London. When the capsule is opened, only one member of the three-man crew emerges, Victor Carroon.

  2. S01E02

    Persons Reported Missing

    Victor Carroon is subjected to various tests which indicate that he has taken on the identities of the other two men. Quatermass and Paterson find a gelatinous substance spread around the capsule's interior.

  3. S01E03

    Very Special Knowledge

    Carron is taken back to the crash site and a recording of what happened during the orbit is played back to him, with disturbing results. A group of journalists try to kidnap him, but he, in turn, attacks one of them as he begins to change.

  4. S01E04

    Believed to Be Suffering

    Carroon takes refuge inside a cinema (where a spoof film 'Planet of the Dragons', is on screen). He then goes to a chemist where he appears to in pain and his hand is seen to be badly mutated.

  5. S01E05

    An Unidentified Species

    Quatermass picks up Carroon's trail and believes that the mixture of chemicals he has taken will accelerate his metamorphosis. Meanwhile, the killing starts - and Westminster Abbey a pulsating mass is revealed clinging to the building.

  6. S01E06

    State of Emergency

    A state of emergency is declared and the army is brought in. Quatermass plays the creature the rocket tapes and appeals to the last vestiges of humanity left in Carroon to fight what he has become. The creature finally dies, just before it is due to spore.

More from the 1950s.