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Show Notes
For our 400th episode, we look at the absolute classic BBC serial, Quatermass and the Pit.
Simon and Eugene discuss.
Story Synopsis:
Respected scientist Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group is drawn into a strange mystery when fossils of human ancestors are discovered at an excavation at Hobs Lane. Dated to 5 million years ago and representing a missing link in man’s evolution. The paleontologist Roney rushes against the clock to collect the fossils before construction work begins again
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Things get strange when what appears to be a German unexploded bomb is found at the site, and now everything gets shut down while the bomb disposal squad examines the mysterious object. Quatermass pulls strings to get Colonel Breen of the BXRG, his official second-in-command, but actually his planned replacement to intervene with the bomb disposal group and do some study.
The so-called bomb is something quite different. Non-metallic, hollow, with traces of five million year old radiation, it seems if the fossilized humans may have been inside.
Strange noises begin plaguing the people, and Quatermass takes an interest in local legends of ghosts that have rendered a nearby building uninhabited. The area and even the name, Hob’s Lane, have a long supernatural tradition.
Then an interior hatch is opened and inside are three arthropod corpses.It eventually becomes clear to everyone but Col. Breen that this is a spaceship, not a German bomb.
Quatermass and Roney hypothesize that the ship came from Mars and that, these creatures may have been tampering with mankind, making him into the creature he is today. And that these creatures may be the source of many of our legends about the supernatural.
Breen and the Ministry dismiss this idea in favor of their own concoction, that the ship is a hoax perpetrated by the Germans at the end of WWII that went wrong.
And while Quatermass and Roney gather more evidence that ship’s strange construction is having more and more effects on people in the area, the Ministry opens up the site to the press to peddle their German hoax story.
An accidental influx of electrical power to the spaceship and all hell breaks loose.
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