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''Quatermass II'' is a British science-fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the ''Quatermass'' series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the oldest of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives. The serial sees Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group being asked to examine strange meteorite showers. His investigations lead to his uncovering a conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British Government. As even some of Quatermass's closest colleagues fall victim to the alien influence, he is forced to use his own unsafe rocket prototype, which recently caused a nuclear disaster at an Australian testing range, to prevent the aliens from taking over mankind. Although sometimes compared unfavourably to the first and third ''Quatermass'' serials, ''Quatermass II'' was praised for its allegorical concerns of the damaging effects of industrialisation and the corruption of governments by big business. It is described on the British Film Institute's "Screenonline" website as "compulsive viewing." == Production == On 22 September 1955 the ITV network was launched in the UK, bringing commercial television to Britain for the first time and ending the BBC's broadcasting monopoly in the country. The new network's creation had been established by the Television Act 1954, and the BBC had known in advance that they would need programmes to combat the new rival for television audiences. Referring to the 1953 science-fiction serial ''The Quatermass Experiment'' in a memo written in 1954, BBC Television's Controller of Programmes, Cecil McGivern, noted that: "Had competitive television been in existence then, we would have killed it every Saturday night while (Quatermass Experiment'' ) lasted. We are going to need ''many'' more 'Quatermass Experiment' programmes."〔Quoted in 〕 Having recently signed a two-year extension to his BBC staff writer's contract,〔Pixley, p. 16.〕 Nigel Kneale was specifically commissioned to write a sequel to ''The Quatermass Experiment'' in early 1955 to challenge the new ITV network.〔 Kneale was inspired by contemporary fears over secret UK Ministry of Defence research establishments such as Porton Down, and also by being required, as a BBC staff member, to sign the Official Secrets Act.〔 As with ''The Quatermass Experiment'', ''Quatermass II'' was produced and directed by Rudolph Cartier; he and Kneale particularly enjoyed working together. Since the first ''Quatermass'' serial, the two men had collaborated on the literary adaptations ''Wuthering Heights'' (1953) and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1954), and on Kneale's abominable snowman play ''The Creature'' (1955).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Cartier, Rudolph (1904–94) — Film & TV credits )〕 ''Quatermass II'' comprised six half-hour episodes, transmitted live from Studio G at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios in London.〔Pixley, p. 22.〕 The episodes — individually subtitled "The Bolts", "The Mark", "The Food", "The Coming", "The Frenzy" and "The Destroyers" — were shown every Saturday night at 8 p.m. from 22 October to 26 November 1955; because of the live nature of the performances, most of the episodes overran their allotted half-hour slots slightly.〔Pixley, p. 23.〕 Each episode was rehearsed on the Monday to Friday before transmission at Mansergh Woodall Boys Club in St John's Wood, London, and then camera rehearsed in studio for most of the day on the Saturday.〔Pixley, p. 21.〕 Not every scene was performed live; because of the increased budget — £7,552 was spent on the serial,〔£131,555.84 in 2007 figures, according to the National Archives (currency converter tool ). In comparison, the BBC's (drama commissioning notes for independent producers ), as of 2007, specify a budget of £450,000 – £700,000 per hour for a Saturday evening drama series, at least three and a half times more than the amount spent on the whole of ''Quatermass II''.〕 nearly double the amount spent on ''The Quatermass Experiment'' — Cartier was able to include a larger proportion of pre-filmed inserts on 35 mm film, which were included during the live transmissions of each episode.〔Pixley, pp. 19–20.〕 Most of the pre-filmed material was shot on location at the Shell Haven oil refinery in Stanford-le-Hope, doubling for the factory where the alien creature is being grown on Earth.〔 Filming also took place in rural Essex for material showing the meteorites being discovered in fields, and in the boiler rooms of the under-construction BBC Television Centre in London for scenes set inside the factory.〔 The location film sequences were the most ambitious that had then been attempted in British television drama, which was usually predominantly studio-bound.〔 Each episode of ''Quatermass II'' was telerecorded onto 35 mm film during its live transmission, for a scheduled repeat the following Monday night at 10:15 p.m.〔 All six episodes survive intact in the BBC's archives, although the telerecording copies in some cases suffer from poor quality sound and vision. Owing to either technical or artistic problems, Cartier had some scenes re-performed by the cast immediately following the live performance on the Saturday evening, and these were telerecorded and used to replace the live versions in the Monday night repeats.〔 ''Quatermass II'' was one of the first BBC drama productions to be repeated from a telerecording, rather than having the production re-performed live for any second showing as had been the norm in the past.〔 Episode three, "The Food", was repeated in a slightly edited form on BBC 2 on 26 August 1991 as part of ''The Lime Grove Story''. This was a day of programming to commemorate the closure of the studios after forty years of use by the BBC.〔Pixley, p. 40.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Quatermass II」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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