The Monsters Episode One
Presenting the first episode from this lost four part BBC-tv serial shown on Thursday 8 November 1962 at 8pm.
The Monsters Episode One
Written by Evelyn Frazer and Vincent Tilsley and directed by Mervyn Pinfield.
You can read its origins story here.
The still water of Lake Kingswater is suddenly and swiftly disturbed by a wake, but there is nothing on the surface...1
A car pulls up and its occupants admire the view which includes a ruined priory. Professor John Brent and Felicity, his much younger bride, are entranced by the view and the bird song. Brent notes that the birds are direct descendants of the Archaeopteryx from the Jurassic age. As the car pulls away, they are observed by someone holding a pair of binoculars…
The honeymooners arrive at the Lakeside hotel which Felicity instantly takes against despite Brent’s recommendation. As he rings for service, Brent reminds her that she wanted to go somewhere peaceful after Paris and he suggested a tour of the Lakes, but Felicity feels ill at ease. A ‘disgruntled looking man of sixty’ carrying a basket of logs appears. He is Wilf Marner and appears uninterested in the new arrivals, calling for ‘Missis Milroy’ and then takes their luggage upstairs with less than good grace. Jess Milroy enters through the service door, ‘a pleasant North country woman in her forties.’ She welcomes the couple and assures them they won’t be disturbed as it is out of season. Marner returns and leaves them to find their own way to their room. He takes a generous tip without a word of thanks.
Pulford enters, clutching his camera and binoculars, in time for his pre-arranged phone call from London. Marner points out the newly weds, the Brents. He deduced their marital status by the size of the tip. The caller is Hopkins and he warns Pulford to watch out for their ‘American friend’ who has flown out to Manchester and picked up a hire car to tour the Lakes. Pulford has recognised Brent, a Canadian expert on pre-history and dinosaurs who recently ‘bagged a research chair in London’. Hopkins hopes this is only a coincidence.
In their room, Felicity suspects that the real reason they are here is for a spot of monster hunting. Brent has recently returned from a failed expedition to find the Loch Ness monster and suggested visiting any lakes in Britain with a tradition of monster sightings: one was spotted in Lake Kingswater in 1806. Disturbed by the area, Felicity wants to return to Paris where they began their honeymoon. Thwarted from a kiss and a cuddle, Brent begins unpacking. Guiltily, Felicity reminds him that he didn’t have to marry her. She isn’t a scientist and cannot share his interests, which Brent claims is part of the attraction for him. Felicity can ‘feel’ things and but cannot put them into voice, like her reaction to this place. The lake and hills are lovely, but as soon as they left, the bird song stopped dead. Brent puts her mood down to her being tired. They will leave if she really wants to. Felicity attempts to pull herself together, determined to act like a married woman, and not behave like a school girl. As he kisses her, he promises he most certainly will remind her of that.2
In the lounge, Howard Milroy is pulling a pint for Pulford who claims he had no luck with the fish in the lake and questions his host about nearby Wildbeck Hall and the reclusive Professor Cato, who, according to Milroy, is writing ‘one of those ban the bomb efforts.’ Pulford notes Cato’s visitors are mainly foreigners which intrigues Milroy: does he know Cato? Caught off guard, Pulford exclaims that they met once and found Cato to be a bit high powered for his own small brain. Pulford then fishes for information on the Brents who can be seen walking down the stairs. When he learns they are a honeymooning couple he ‘supposes’ he has to meet them.
As Felicity finds a table, Brent is astonished to see Pulford, who now ‘recognises’ Brent – what a small world. Brent explains he is on a ‘holiday’ with his wife. Pulford wonders how shy types manage to find wives. Pulford notes Felicity does not look a scientist and dodges answering the question why is he here? Lake Kingswater has the worst fishing record in the British isles.
Van Holloren, a tall and distinguished looking American, enters and asks Milroy for directions to Wildbeck Hall. After a quick gulp of whisky, he goes on his way. Brent stops Pulford from following. He recognises Van Holloren: what the hell is going on? Pulford feigns ignorance, thinking he thought he recognised him, but what has that got to do with him? Brent points out that Cato, one of England’s greatest scientists, is living on the other side of the lake and is about to be visited by one of America’s top scientists, and Pulford is ‘snooping’ around. Pulford asks why Brent is really here. Brent gets over his embarrassment and admits he is on his honeymoon. Triumphant, Pulford promises not to mention a word about Esmee…
Brent joins Felicity and explains why he doesn’t like Pulford. He works for the Ministry of Science as a kind of detective. Felicity knows Cato as she saw him speak in Trafalgar Square which made her cry.3 He is something of a hero to her. A government scientist, he specialised in chemical warfare but resigned rather than develop something far worse than the nuclear bomb and hand it over to politicians. Brent disapproves of his politics but hates the snooping more. They won’t let Cato die in peace.
In his study in Wildbeck Hall, Cato is speaking into a Dictaphone on why he and other scientists have embarked on ‘an apparently incredible venture’. A chemist named Meissonier enters, surprised to see Cato working this late on a monograph the government will suppress should they fail… ‘It would take the Kingswater Monster to stop us now,’ Cato laughs. He explains the local legend to the sceptical Meissonier that it concerns some sort of dinosaur lurking in the depths of the lake. Cato suggests rotting vegetation at the bottom of the lake could be releasing enormous gas bubbles, and if seen from a distance, it could look like something large swimming in the water.4 He returns to their unstated purpose. With Van Halloren arriving today, and Smetanov tomorrow, Cato’s great experiment can begin. If Man wishes to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, it needs ‘a course of action so swift and astonishing that it cannot be prevented even by those in power who, by misusing science, have brought us to the brink of this tragedy…’ If Cato fails, then this monograph will be his testament. Meissonier feels if everyone could hear him speak, they would be no need for any experiment. Cato asks his assistant Parsons to transcribe the tape, but first, he needs to open the gates for Van Halloren.
Observed by Pulford, secreted in a rowing boat, Van Holloren drives up to the gates of the hall. Parsons holds back a ferocious Alsatian as he opens the gates to a terrified Van Holloren who drives in.5
As Cato gives Van Halloren a large scotch, he explains that the dog is a necessity to keep people out. Smetanov will join them tomorrow after he throws off his bodyguard in London. As he applies for political asylum, he will then slip away from Special Branch too.
Brent and Felicity are having more drinks while Howard serves local customers. Brent is astonished to discover that their ‘grumpy bag man’ has seen the monster. Brent offers the suspicious man a drink and he agrees to a stout. Brent explains that he is a professor of zoology and has a chair at a university (‘useful to rest your loins’, comments Marner) and his field is the study of extinct creatures. As Marner starts his story, Felicity goes to bed, irritated and uneasy.
Marner saw it in 1942 when he was with the Home Guard stationed at the hall. About 3am, there was a great splashing in the lake which he thought was a German glider, but it was a quarter of a mile out ‘all frothing and foaming’. It came close ashore and here he got a look at it. Twenty feet long, at least, with a great thick neck, a flat head like a crocodile. The rest of the body resembled a whale with a tail which ran off to a point. It opened its mouth and revealed two rows of teeth. It then suddenly turned and went back to the centre of the lake at great speed and just sank into the water. Brent says that that sounds like it can change its density. Clearly disappointed, he decides to call it a night. Marner’s superiors thought he was drunk when he reported it, and he admits to having a few. However, he saw it again this year – for the third time. Brent asks him to sketch a picture.
Felicity has been sketching a Camptosaurus, complete with cave entrance and rocks. She looks at the lake from her window and screws up the picture. Brent enters with his sketch, somewhat depressed. A prehistoric survival would have been more likely be a Plesiosaur, which is long and thin and with a little head. When he describes what Marner saw, Felicity is alarmed and shows Brent the picture she felt compelled to sketch, but he thinks she must have recalled a book at his place. He remembered her remarking how intelligent it looked in comparison to other dinosaurs. He suggests bed but she won’t sleep here. He points out with heavy irony it is a bit late to find somewhere else and testily promises to leave in the morning. Felicity insists something terrible will happen here. Deciding he needs a drink to mark their first row, Brent calms down and says she can’t expect him to cart them round the country every time she has a feeling. But it is an evil feeling, Felicity insists, worried for her husband.
There is a commotion outside and they open the window to investigate. Marner is outside, shouting for the hotel to open up: someone is dead. Milroy and Jess are in their dressing gowns as they let Marner inside. He tells them there is a body floating in the lake and asks for the keys to the boathouse.
Under moonlight, Marner and Milroy row out towards the body and pull it into the boat and return to the landing stage.
Pulford’s body has now been wrapped up in a sheet and placed on a table in the lounge. Marner goes to fetch Sergeant Oakroyd. Jess lifts up the sheet and nearly vomits at what she sees. Marner is not surprised. ‘Look how he’s torn. What do you reckon did that?’
Determined more than ever to leave, Felicity is weeping on the bed. This is just the beginning. She is also not happy to learn that Brent had once been engaged to Pulford’s sister and he will have to contact her so she can identify the body. Brent says she can stay with Cato as she used to be his assistant and worshipped him. He tries to reassure her that their engagement just stopped and now she is just a friend. He leaves Felicity alone.6
Esmee Pulford is woken by her bedside phone and after she utters a barrage of indignant questions about the time, Brent breaks the news directly. Esmee suspected something like this would happened to her brother one day. Brent wants to talk to her first before the police do. He suggests she should stay with Cato and not at the hotel where he is staying with his wife. Esmee’s face falls at that revelation. He proposes meeting her at the waterfall just outside Kingswater at eight o’ clock. Esmee thanks him for phoning.7
Marner is scrubbing the table upon which the body had been laid. He tells Brent that Sergeant Oakroyd will see him at the station when he is ready. Marner also said he didn’t reveal all that he saw tonight – he would only have been called a liar. He saw its wake in the water; it was moving very fast. Other folk have seen it, he reveals, but are afraid of being laughed at. But it wasn’t anywhere near the body.
When Brent arrives at the police station. Sergeant Oakroyd is talking to a doctor who has inspected the corpse. He wonders if a dog could have caused those wounds, forcing Pulford back into the lake or whether he just fell in. Oakroyd points out they found an upturned rowing boat. The doctor shrugs and leaves. Oakroyd asks Brent for his version of events. Brent is interested to hear about the boat because Pulford was found amongst weeds. Brent wonders if he was attacked while he was actually on the water. Sergeant Oakroyd remembers Brent is an expert on things like the Loch Ness Monster – although Brent points out that there isn’t much known about the monster for anyone to call himself an expert. So, they had better stick to facts, declares the Sergeant. Like the boat, Brent points out and bids him goodnight.
Brent returns to find his wife is facing away from him, concerned about whether he contacted Esmee, obsessing with his seeing her again. Brent must because there is something going on here and he wants to find out what that is. He gets ready for bed. When she asks what happened to the man, he suddenly looks again at Felicity’s picture – an evil, primitive Camptosaurus.
Hopkins is in bed, listening to the early morning radio news while sipping some tea. He is startled by the news that Nicolai Smetanov, the famous Russian scientist, has asked for political asylum. He rushes to the phone to contact Pulford at the hotel but is told the news of his death by Jess. Thunderstruck, he hangs up and then dials another number and speaks to a man called Robert. Yes, the news about Smetanov is splendid but Pulford is dead. Hopkins issues a string of instructions: get the Chief Constable to keep the whole thing as ‘quiet as the grave’ and check on John Brent.8
Cato has also been listening to the news. The phone rings. It is Esmee who has been driving through the night. Cato is astonished by the news of Pulford’s death and but cannot offer her his hospitality, suggesting the hotel and swiftly ends the call. Van Halloren asks what’s wrong. Distressed, Cato explains Pulford had been attacked and killed. Does he know anything about it?
Brent wants Felicity to come with him and meet Esmee at the waterfall but she won’t come. Felicity turns down breakfast and admits to Jess she hasn’t slept at all. Jess wonders if Pulford’s poor sister has heard the news as she was a frequent guest. Felicity hears her husband’s car start up and leave. Marner tells Jess that Miss Pulford will need something cheerful to welcome her and Brent has gone out to meet her. Jess tells him off for eaves-dropping, but agrees she ought to stay she here rather than at Wildbeck Hall.
Felicity stares out of the window at the lake and then tries to pack a few things into a suitcase. She goes over to a table and picks up her husband’s monster book and finds the picture of the Camptosaurus. She then sinks into a chair, utterly defeated.
Brent pulls up at the waterfall rendezvous point and waits outside his car for Esmee. He spots something in the water. He grabs his binoculars. There is a wake travelling across the lake…9
Cast
Robert Harris (Professor Cato), William Greene (John Brent), Alan Gifford (Van Halloren), Mark Dignam (Hopkins), Helen Lindsay (Esmee Pulford), Elizabeth Weaver (Felicity Brent), Gordon Whiting (Meissonier), Geoffrey Colville (Charles Pulford), Howard Douglas (Wilf Marner), Joyce Wright (Jess Milroy), Clifford Cox (Howard Milroy), John Barrett (Parsons), Norman Mitchell (Sgt Oakroyd), and Cameron Miller (Doctor).10
No attempt has been made to infringe the copyright of the authors or their estates in the presentation of this article.
NEXT TIME
Felicity meets Esmee! Other monsters continue to gather in and around Lake Kingswater, and we learn of an encounter with the beasts back in Saxon times and why a modern sin made them angry...
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The titles were superimposed over this shot of the lake, and Humphrey Searle composed the theme tune. He also conducted the 15 members of the Sinfonia of London on 29 September. Only one minute and thirty seven seconds of incidental music was used this week. The episode was recorded onto 35mm film rather than videotape. No recording breaks or pauses are in the camera script, and as mentioned in the previous article, director Mervyn Pinfield allowed for very few camera cuts in any scene unless cross-cutting between sets during telephone conversations, or when Jess Milroy answers the phone in a later scene.
For Elizabeth Weaver, this was her first major role on television after a spell on radio. Married to Christopher Coll and with a young daughter, she will later get to play the separated wife Helen Gamble in Fraud Squad (who is a fashionable left winger and usually takes the ‘wrong’ stance for the sake of the plot) before becoming in 1972 Doctor Quist’s psychiatrist wife in the third series of Doomwatch. Weaver was not impressed with the character of Felicity Brent and told the Leicester Evening Mail on the week of transmission: ‘Felicity… is quite unlike me. She’s a bit feeble, I think: psychic and always going into trances and so on. I’m rather a practical person.’
It is not explicitly stated but this was probably one of the famous - or infamous - Easter Aldermaston marches. Felicity says she was still at school when she saw Cato deliver his speech, but since she is 19 in the script, could be any time on or after 1958.
I’m having a bath tonight.
The dog was provided by Golden Dog Model Co.
The one thing critics all agreed on was the tedious nature of Felicity’s jealousy and general grumpiness. Peter Green in the Express and Star felt these ‘sick making’ scenes reminded him of Compact which had just been on. ‘Every subsequent science fiction serial has been measured by the Quatermass yardstick and found wanting. Something pretty drastic has got to happen in the next three episodes if it is going to be considering worth measuring at all.’ ‘Telecrit’ agreed: ‘I prefer my science fiction neat – as in Quatermass and the Pit… with little or no love interest to delay or side track the development of the story.’
We are supposed to see a photograph on Esmee’s bedside cabinet but whether it is of Brent or her brother is not revealed. I think we can take a guess.
David Brown recorded all three radio announcements during camera rehearsals on 6 November.
Dennis Potter writing in the Daily Herald called the director ‘first class’ although he may have been thinking of George R. Foa who until recently directed opera for the BBC, rather than Mervyn Pinfield, unfair though that may be. Potter became interested when the body was found. ‘Good old monster, we say, hoping for a bit of action after some of the dreariest opening sequences I can remember in a thriller series. But after 45 minutes the lake monster still had not appeared although we did see a ripple on the water at the end. Or was it a side view of the monstrously funny Michael Bentine in It’s a Square World which followed?’
Technical credits will accompany Episode 4.