What do you think?
Rate this book
Quatermass #3
Quatermass and the Pit
Hobbs Lane, in central London, has been the scene of mysterious incidents for centuries past. Stories of hauntings and of strange apparitions abound... and now an excavation crew have discovered parts of a skeleton that contradict all previous theories of Man's ancestry.
Professor Quatermass is in London for top-level talks on a military project for the furtherance of space war—an enterprise to which Quatermass is violently opposed.
But his attention is drawn away from the battle with officialdom, when the Hobbs Lane site yields an even more startling find—a vast rocket made of a metal unknown to science.
And soon after that, the terror begins...
Professor Quatermass is in London for top-level talks on a military project for the furtherance of space war—an enterprise to which Quatermass is violently opposed.
But his attention is drawn away from the battle with officialdom, when the Hobbs Lane site yields an even more startling find—a vast rocket made of a metal unknown to science.
And soon after that, the terror begins...
190 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
2 people are currently reading
371 people want to read
About the author
Nigel Kneale
46 books38 followersNigel Kneale was a British screenwriter. He is best known for being the creator of Professor Bernard Quatermass. Kneale wrote four Quatermass TV serials in total between 1953 and 1979 as well as BBC radio docudrama retrospective "The Quatermass Memoirs" that was first broadcast in 1995. Kneale also wrote such programs as The Year Of The Sex Olympics, The Stone Tape and the 1989 adaptation of Susan Hill's novel The Woman in Black.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 17, 2016
Nigel Kneale is a sublime writer; much underrated which is a shame. The quality of his work shows a keen mind that does not think like a typical science fiction writer. The Quatermass stories are unique in that they do not follow the usual tired formulas, in this one for example the invasion... No hidden spoilers...
If you have not seen the original 50’s TV series, then please do so, there are no spoilers because this is a script book not a novel. The film whilst an incredible piece of drama is not on par with the series for me. Why does it work so well? Well there is a mix of history, the occult and science fiction used in a way that has never been copied.
As an aside check out the Stone Tape an incredible take on ghosts and hauntings. No spoilers the secrets in the title.
Now The Road is perfection, sadly wiped by the BBC and not in print so I do not consider this a spoiler:
The year is 1771 and Sir Timothy Hassell is investigating a haunted wood where men die screaming after hearing strange cries. “As if all the dead people was risin’ out o’ hell.”
These are not ghosts of the past... Now go and find out and remember this beauty was made in 1963 so think Cuban missile crisis when reading.
If you have not seen the original 50’s TV series, then please do so, there are no spoilers because this is a script book not a novel. The film whilst an incredible piece of drama is not on par with the series for me. Why does it work so well? Well there is a mix of history, the occult and science fiction used in a way that has never been copied.
As an aside check out the Stone Tape an incredible take on ghosts and hauntings. No spoilers the secrets in the title.
Now The Road is perfection, sadly wiped by the BBC and not in print so I do not consider this a spoiler:
The year is 1771 and Sir Timothy Hassell is investigating a haunted wood where men die screaming after hearing strange cries. “As if all the dead people was risin’ out o’ hell.”
These are not ghosts of the past... Now go and find out and remember this beauty was made in 1963 so think Cuban missile crisis when reading.
February 28, 2013
"The third Quatermass teleplay, in which an ancient Martian spaceship is unearthed during expansion of a London tube station. Kneal can blend science fiction and the supernatural better than any other writer living today. Later this was refilmed as Five Million Years to Earth."
-Karl Edward Wagner, 13 Best Science Fiction Horror Novels (Twilight Zone Magazine, 1983)
The final teleplay of the original Quatermass triology, this one was produced for TV at the end of 1958. It's also the best of the three. Many of us experienced it first on late-night TV under the film adaptation, Five Million Years to Earth (1967), although British audiences saw it under the original title. I've seen the original series and the film version, it's hard to decide which is better. The film was able to take advantage of color film, but some of the key scenes are better realized in the serial.
The teleplay begins with the discovery of fossils in a London excevation project. Reading the first section, "The Halfmen" can be a little confusing to those of us on this side of the Atlantic; I don't think I've ever encountered the term "grab" when used for an earth excivator. This episode exists to introduce us to the major characters: Quatermass, his unpleasent college Col Breen and Dr. Matthew Roney. Roney and his assistant Barbara Judd are called in to excavate the site when the prehistoric bones are discovered. At the same time, Quatermass is horrified to find his Experimental Rocket Group is being put until military control with the martinet Colonel James Breen in charge. When a possible unexploded WW2 missile is discovered on the site, Quatermass and Breen are called in to examine it.
Tension begins to build in the second episode, "The Ghosts". Roney becomes increasingly convinced there is a connection between the hull found in the site and the primates whose fossilized skeletons they are removing. And elderly couple known as the Chilcots are forced to leave their house because of the "unexploded bomb" threat, allowing Kneal to add a little local color to the teleplay. It ends with one of the military sappers cringing in horror from the demon he claims to have seen inside the hull.
Unable to get the hull open, Breen calls in a civilian drill expert who brings a borazon drill with him. While Roney and Quatermass research all the legends and storie of demons about the site area, the teleplay inter-cuts with the attempt to open the hull. In this episode, "Imps and Demons", the inhabitants of the hull are revealed: dead things who are connected to it by way of spidery strands. Kneal describes them as:
Insect-like creatures...rather more than two feet high...with tripod legs and stick-like forelimbs hunched like those of the mantis.Each face is a mockery of the human, with a pointed proboscis below its two complex eyes. Above this triangular mask sprout antennae shaped like antlers.
Part four, "The Enchanted" has Quatermass and Roney arguing for the hull as a remenant of a Martian spaceship which crash landed five million years ago. Breen and his fraction refuse to believe them, claiming it was a Nazi terror rocket launched against Britain in the closing days of WW2. Meanwhile, a civilian operator has a terrifying experience while trying to unpack his drill and flees the site to the safety of a church. Kneale spends five pages on directions at the end of this episode, demonstrating his clear vision of the action.
In five, "The Wild Hunt", the action takes a pause when Roney, Quatermass hook Barbara Judd up to a machine conveniently built by Roney to record mental images. By recreating the conditions which caused the drill operator to experience his visions, they are able to record on videotape (a new medium at the time), the same images. Quatermass shows the recordings to Breen and the government minister in charge and argues the hull is a spaceship sent from Mars five million years ago:
Quatermass: Arthropods like those we found.You'll have noticed they were killing-and being killed. I think we may have seen ritual slaughter- to preserve a fixed society- to rid it of mutations. You find something like it on earth among certain termites and wasps. Now my concern is that this stored memory of killing coupled with another power that hull in the pit seems to posses- the power to redirect human energy!
The series concludes with "Hob". Unpersuaded by Quatermass and Roney, Breen and his allies in the government schedule a press conference to push the idea of the hull being a WW2 weapon. To make the situation worse, they plan on making the announcement in the dig site. When a power cable for the camera lights shorts out on the hull, all hell breaks loose and the ancient Martian spaceship comes to life. As Kneale describes it:
Cut to the floor of the excavation Through swirling dust it can be seen that the incandescent hull is almost gone...sublimated to the monstrous shape that hangs above the pit. A shimmering form bursts rhythmically into a blinding glare. It extends upwards for a hundred feet or more, and its outline is defined. It recalls that of the Martian bodies...a terrible horned thing!
Of course, Quatermass and Roney save they day and prevent humanity's destruction at the feelers of alien invaders. I'm sure post-modernists can read all kinds of things into these teleplays. Kneale pounds the message home on the last page where the survivors are speaking at a press conference:
Quatermass [speaking to front]:...That is the full account. Matthew Roney was a brave man and a friend. Much more- it is with his kind that hope lies. For they have outgrown the Martian in us [track to a close up] If another of these things should ever be found. But we also have knowledge of ourselves...of the ancient, destructive urges in us, that grow more deadly as our populations approach in size and complexity those of ancient Mars. Every war crisis, witch-hunt, race riot, and purge...is a reminder and a warning. [he pauses] We are the Martians. If we cannot control the inheritance within us...this will be the second dead planet!
-Karl Edward Wagner, 13 Best Science Fiction Horror Novels (Twilight Zone Magazine, 1983)
The final teleplay of the original Quatermass triology, this one was produced for TV at the end of 1958. It's also the best of the three. Many of us experienced it first on late-night TV under the film adaptation, Five Million Years to Earth (1967), although British audiences saw it under the original title. I've seen the original series and the film version, it's hard to decide which is better. The film was able to take advantage of color film, but some of the key scenes are better realized in the serial.
The teleplay begins with the discovery of fossils in a London excevation project. Reading the first section, "The Halfmen" can be a little confusing to those of us on this side of the Atlantic; I don't think I've ever encountered the term "grab" when used for an earth excivator. This episode exists to introduce us to the major characters: Quatermass, his unpleasent college Col Breen and Dr. Matthew Roney. Roney and his assistant Barbara Judd are called in to excavate the site when the prehistoric bones are discovered. At the same time, Quatermass is horrified to find his Experimental Rocket Group is being put until military control with the martinet Colonel James Breen in charge. When a possible unexploded WW2 missile is discovered on the site, Quatermass and Breen are called in to examine it.
Tension begins to build in the second episode, "The Ghosts". Roney becomes increasingly convinced there is a connection between the hull found in the site and the primates whose fossilized skeletons they are removing. And elderly couple known as the Chilcots are forced to leave their house because of the "unexploded bomb" threat, allowing Kneal to add a little local color to the teleplay. It ends with one of the military sappers cringing in horror from the demon he claims to have seen inside the hull.
Unable to get the hull open, Breen calls in a civilian drill expert who brings a borazon drill with him. While Roney and Quatermass research all the legends and storie of demons about the site area, the teleplay inter-cuts with the attempt to open the hull. In this episode, "Imps and Demons", the inhabitants of the hull are revealed: dead things who are connected to it by way of spidery strands. Kneal describes them as:
Insect-like creatures...rather more than two feet high...with tripod legs and stick-like forelimbs hunched like those of the mantis.Each face is a mockery of the human, with a pointed proboscis below its two complex eyes. Above this triangular mask sprout antennae shaped like antlers.
Part four, "The Enchanted" has Quatermass and Roney arguing for the hull as a remenant of a Martian spaceship which crash landed five million years ago. Breen and his fraction refuse to believe them, claiming it was a Nazi terror rocket launched against Britain in the closing days of WW2. Meanwhile, a civilian operator has a terrifying experience while trying to unpack his drill and flees the site to the safety of a church. Kneale spends five pages on directions at the end of this episode, demonstrating his clear vision of the action.
In five, "The Wild Hunt", the action takes a pause when Roney, Quatermass hook Barbara Judd up to a machine conveniently built by Roney to record mental images. By recreating the conditions which caused the drill operator to experience his visions, they are able to record on videotape (a new medium at the time), the same images. Quatermass shows the recordings to Breen and the government minister in charge and argues the hull is a spaceship sent from Mars five million years ago:
Quatermass: Arthropods like those we found.You'll have noticed they were killing-and being killed. I think we may have seen ritual slaughter- to preserve a fixed society- to rid it of mutations. You find something like it on earth among certain termites and wasps. Now my concern is that this stored memory of killing coupled with another power that hull in the pit seems to posses- the power to redirect human energy!
The series concludes with "Hob". Unpersuaded by Quatermass and Roney, Breen and his allies in the government schedule a press conference to push the idea of the hull being a WW2 weapon. To make the situation worse, they plan on making the announcement in the dig site. When a power cable for the camera lights shorts out on the hull, all hell breaks loose and the ancient Martian spaceship comes to life. As Kneale describes it:
Cut to the floor of the excavation Through swirling dust it can be seen that the incandescent hull is almost gone...sublimated to the monstrous shape that hangs above the pit. A shimmering form bursts rhythmically into a blinding glare. It extends upwards for a hundred feet or more, and its outline is defined. It recalls that of the Martian bodies...a terrible horned thing!
Of course, Quatermass and Roney save they day and prevent humanity's destruction at the feelers of alien invaders. I'm sure post-modernists can read all kinds of things into these teleplays. Kneale pounds the message home on the last page where the survivors are speaking at a press conference:
Quatermass [speaking to front]:...That is the full account. Matthew Roney was a brave man and a friend. Much more- it is with his kind that hope lies. For they have outgrown the Martian in us [track to a close up] If another of these things should ever be found. But we also have knowledge of ourselves...of the ancient, destructive urges in us, that grow more deadly as our populations approach in size and complexity those of ancient Mars. Every war crisis, witch-hunt, race riot, and purge...is a reminder and a warning. [he pauses] We are the Martians. If we cannot control the inheritance within us...this will be the second dead planet!
December 16, 2025
Although the 1967 Hammer film version of Quatermass and the Pit was very good I still prefer the original 1958 television series, so I thoroughly enjoyed this screenplay for Nigel Kneale's classic science fiction adventure.
Kneale created a fine story with great dialogue and it stands the test of time extremely well. In the introduction to this script Kneale makes it clear how much he disliked the casting of Brian Donlevy as Quatermass in two Hammer films. However, he clearly liked the excellent Andre Morell who played Professor Quatermass in the television series Quatermass and the Pit. For me Morell is still my favourite actor to take on the role.
This edition also contains some excellent photographs from the series, and I have a feeling I'll be watching it again in the not too distant future.
Kneale created a fine story with great dialogue and it stands the test of time extremely well. In the introduction to this script Kneale makes it clear how much he disliked the casting of Brian Donlevy as Quatermass in two Hammer films. However, he clearly liked the excellent Andre Morell who played Professor Quatermass in the television series Quatermass and the Pit. For me Morell is still my favourite actor to take on the role.
This edition also contains some excellent photographs from the series, and I have a feeling I'll be watching it again in the not too distant future.
January 25, 2020
Another TV screen play chockful of ideas for Chris Carter to steal. Okay, let's be nice and say 'borrow'. Or let's be even nicer and say 'pay homage to'. Everyone knows what he did was to rip-off Kneale, but the other way sounds nicer. Besides, why sweat to come up with a new concept when no one today is aware of the original. After all, QATP doesn't have CGI.
As to the book, it explains the origin of human life on Earth as well as Evil, the Devil, supernatural beliefs in goblins, and our tendency toward violence. Quite a mouthful really. It is much too long tho, and the movie version had a more dramatic ending. Also Quatermass' final speech is a tad preachy. Still it's an excellent story. Definitely more thought provoking than Star Wars or Alien or Terminator. Maybe that's why it's not so well remembered. People have been raised since the 80s on sound bites and news clips and music videos, and no longer want to think. We have 'celebrities' to do our thinking for us.
As to the book, it explains the origin of human life on Earth as well as Evil, the Devil, supernatural beliefs in goblins, and our tendency toward violence. Quite a mouthful really. It is much too long tho, and the movie version had a more dramatic ending. Also Quatermass' final speech is a tad preachy. Still it's an excellent story. Definitely more thought provoking than Star Wars or Alien or Terminator. Maybe that's why it's not so well remembered. People have been raised since the 80s on sound bites and news clips and music videos, and no longer want to think. We have 'celebrities' to do our thinking for us.
June 15, 2008
Kneale was a master storyteller when television was in its infancy and people were trying to come to grips with how it differed from the stage. Watching TV back then required imagination and tolerance on the part of the viewer! But Kneale succeeded in scaring the pants off his audience anyway.
This script (it's not in novel form) is a delight. Make allowances for the "advanced technology" used in the lab. But the idea of our human origins and the "cleansing of the hive" compulsion still present in some of us and awoken by the discovery in the pit, is gorgeous.
This script (it's not in novel form) is a delight. Make allowances for the "advanced technology" used in the lab. But the idea of our human origins and the "cleansing of the hive" compulsion still present in some of us and awoken by the discovery in the pit, is gorgeous.
December 10, 2025
It's actually a TV script, and worked better on TV than in print.
October 3, 2025
Hammer's 1960s Quatermass and the Pit is quite probably among my favourite movies, so I'll keep it short.
Nigel Kneale was a genius, it can't be argued otherwise. The themes explored in the story are as thought provoking as they are relevant; the melding of science and religious belief, the concepts of ethnic cleansing and race riots, that these should be explored so explicitly in a teleplay from the 1950s is almost mind-blowing. I won't provide a synopsis. While others here have done so, I'll refrain. Better that you should just read it for yourself.
A thing of rare depth and intelligently-crafted beauty.
What are you waiting for?
Nigel Kneale was a genius, it can't be argued otherwise. The themes explored in the story are as thought provoking as they are relevant; the melding of science and religious belief, the concepts of ethnic cleansing and race riots, that these should be explored so explicitly in a teleplay from the 1950s is almost mind-blowing. I won't provide a synopsis. While others here have done so, I'll refrain. Better that you should just read it for yourself.
A thing of rare depth and intelligently-crafted beauty.
What are you waiting for?
February 23, 2019
It's funny, I thought this was the weakest of the 3 initial Quatermass television scripts, while I thought it was the strongest movie. Kneale also thought it was the strongest of the three films. The big weakness here is Quatermass' incredible leaps of logic, "It's the Wild Hunt!" based on some cave drawings.
October 9, 2017
Yet another riveting teleplay from the master!
Read
January 17, 2022I like Quatermass' first outing in terms of story, but this has the best script, I reckon. It's brilliant at ratcheting up the tension and it has a an excellent baddie-you-love-to-hate.
June 24, 2024
One of the greatest pieces of cinematic/tv Sci-Fi Horror is here presented in script form, and loses very little of the impact of the original 50s tv series (or the subsequent Hammer film adaptation). Utterly compelling and chilling, and offering a masterclass in scriptwriting, this publication (now sadly out of print) should be tracked down by all aficianados of the subgenre. This is Nigel Kneale at his absolute best.
June 26, 2023
Second time around reading this (and something like the 8th time around in terms of watching the TV serial of which this is the script). I wish Nigel Kneale had worked on this again after the TV shows and developed it into a full blown novel. Had he done that it would be up there with my two favourite stories: Shane and The Day of the Triffids. As it is, this (and the other two scripts in the series: The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass 2) are all we have.
That sounds like a complaint, it isn't, this is great. But there is a world class novel here just waiting to be written.
That sounds like a complaint, it isn't, this is great. But there is a world class novel here just waiting to be written.
Read
July 31, 2011Although I think that if it had been written in novel form it would have been better, this was the next best thing. Answered one or two questions out of the tv series which were not over clear. Recommended if your a fan of the tv series.
August 31, 2013
Questa è la terza avventura del Prof. Bernard Quatermass. Durante uno scavo per la metro di Londra viene alla luce una antica capsula spaziale, con resti alieni e pre-umani. Da dove viene veramente l'umanità?
Una grande lettura, anche se la scrittura è quella di uno sceneggiato TV anni '50.
Una grande lettura, anche se la scrittura è quella di uno sceneggiato TV anni '50.
September 29, 2014
From the scripts of the original TV series back in the late 50's, but the movie they made from one those scripts is one of my all-time favorite movies.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews