Wonderland: Science Fiction in the Atomic Age - Episode 4 Quatermass to Christopher Nolan

 

When I was young I desperately wanted to watch Quatermass, the TV series that starts this fourth and (thank goodness) final episode of this series. But I was not allowed. I was eight and living in London when 1953's The Quatermass Experiment was broadcast. It was the first British seriously adult drama from the BBC that "terrified its's large British audience". Perhaps my parents were right. But it was a big hit. The following feature films had even greater success such as Quatermass and The Pit. They seem so tame these days. 

We then hear about the John Wyndham novels (some of my favourites as a late teenager) that were then made into films. An extract from The Day of the Triffids takes me back. After Doctor Who and those Daleks, we are into 2001, A Space Odyssey (that I watched in the first row of the Odeon Leicester Square when it first opened), Close Encounters of the Third Kind and A.I. Artificial Intelligence that is described as "attractive but sinister" and that I found so sad. I wasn't sure about references to Neuromancer. 

We then have all sorts of short clips from who knows where. The producer then describes Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and the  earlier novel on which it is based Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? Alien gets a mention as does The Matrix where the narrator tries to unravel it's complexities. I was unimpressed by the inclusion of all those Marvel films (are superhero movies science fiction?) Followed by The Dark Knight? and The Day After Tomorrow. Fortunately we see a clip from the film and hear about Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Of course it was the producer that had saved himself to tread an extract. But does it end with Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry of the Future. Why?

Just to add the same presenters from previous episodes are here, although nearly all is narrated by Adrian Munsey, producer, director, music, editing and everything else. Is this one man's vanity project? He does have unseen Anna Wilson-Jones as a part time narrator, but it's all a bit of a mess, cramming so  much in. Avoid in the future.