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The Quatermass Experiment (UK)
- The effect of the monster inside Westminster Abbey was achieved by using a pair of gloves covered in fake foliage stuck through a blown-up picture of the Abbey interior.
- Broadcast live, this was the first BBC Drama to be recorded onto film via the 'telerecording' or 'kinoscope' process. Telerecordings were made by filming the image off a specially designed TV screen with a film camera (either 16mm or 35mm.) Unfortunately, the results were judged to be unsatisfactory, and only the first two episodes were recorded, the rest being broadcast live. Because of this, only the first two episodes were preserved.
- Ian Colin replaced Keith Pyott; Pyott ended up with a more minor role.
- Commissioned by the BBC to fill a gap in its programming schedule.
- Was to have been repeated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, but this never occurred since the final four episodes were either never recorded or were not kept by the BBC.
- When BBC research revealed that 75% of the audience for the final episode had viewed all previous episodes, scepticism about the viability of a TV drama serial for adults was overcome, and the format went on to become a staple of TV programming in the UK and elsewhere.
- Nigel Kneale picked the name Quatermass out of a contemporary London phone directory. The professor's first name was a reference to astronomer Bernard Lovell, the creator of the Jodrell Bank observatory.
- André Morell was favoured to play the lead. He turned down the role of Professor Bernard Quatermass on that occasion but would later play the character in Quatermass and the Pit (UK).
- Nigel Kneale was still writing the final episodes when the first episode was broadcast, and had only a vague idea how it would end.
- The first TV role of Moray Watson.
- The serial's storyline concerns the first three humans to journey into outer space and to orbit the Earth. John Glen plays the major role of Dr. Gordon Briscoe. On February 20, 1962, almost nine years later in real life, his near namesake John Glenn became the fifth person in space as well as the first American to orbit the Earth. He was the second person overall to orbit the Earth after the first person in space, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961.
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