Mars Attacks!

Doctor Who has a mother (Verity Lambert) and father (Sydney Newman) it also has two influential godfathers: Nigel Kneale (Quatermass) and Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). The former can be felt in the early 70s era of the program, while Adams, late as always, didn't show up until the late 70s. 

I came late to Quatermass, with its modern British rocket program and science-y gravitas, long after I'd absorbed its influence through Doctor Who through stories such as The Daemons, Image of Fendahl and of course Ambassadors of Death.  The latter in it's cloudy, black and white, pre-vidfired version was frankly stiff and boring viewing.

And it moved like a slug stalling for time. And if you asked me summarize the story I'd have had to reach for my ragged copy of the Jean-Marc Lofficier guide, because I almost always fell asleep somewhere in the middle of the late night omnibus version that played during my early teen years.

Flashforward years later to the golden era of region-free DVD players, cheap flights to London and generously stocked shelves of a Virgin superstore: I picked up a boxset of the existing Quatermass television serials.  They were a revelation. With relatively simple production values they were a masterclass in slow-burn storytelling, solid characterization and mood. Start with Quatermass and the Pit: it's the most accessible and then move on to Quatermass II (sadly only a couple of episodes exist of the first serial, The Quatermass Experiment). You can see a harder version of the relationship between the Doctor and the Brigadier in the pairing of Professor Bernard Quatermass and Colonel Breen. The spirit of scientific curiosity butting heads with order, skepticism and blowing stuff up.

The Ambassadors of Mars excels in the verisimilitude that runs confidently through season 7 of the series.  Characters and groups have agendas and there are (mostly) plausible attempts to fulfil them. We get a rich array of characters representing every aspect of the drama: scientists, the military, the media.

Locations:  Lafarge Aggregates (Marlow), Coldmoorholme Lane, Spade Oak, Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire: Another time honoured gravel pit and Reegan's fave spot to dump bodies.

Call Forwards: Mars will pop up a couple of times in the post 2005 series. The Waters of Mars will introduce a nasty liquid, lunching on the human explorers to the red planet.  Later in The Empress of Mars we'll see a return of the Ice Warriors to Mars along with Victorian soldiers for a tale of intergalactic colonialism.

Hammer Horror or I, Claudius? The ever reliable Cyril Shaps was in Hammer's Rasputin, the Mad Monk from 1966.  And Geoffrey Beevers played a gravedigger in the Hammer House of Horror episode "Growing Pains."

Cheese Please:  Aged Havarti from the Empire Cheese Cooperative 

Next Up:  It's the End of the World as We Know It