Post by Nicholas Fitzpatrick on Jul 22, 2013 22:13:31 GMT
Is there any record of the Canadian broadcaster citing this as a reason to discontinue showing the serial, as well as the more well known explanation of the BBC being unhappy with quality for the reasons stated?
I'd never realised that CBC was to have shown the Quatermass Experiment. I've spent a couple of hours poking around July/August 1953 Toronto papers (Globe and Star), but no mentions of why that I could find.
All that is there, is simply the Friday July 31st TV listing for CBLT (CBC Toronto) which shows it at 7:30 pm. The Globe has a rare description:
Quatermass Experiment: Six part space travel series produced by BBC. Written by Nigel Kneal and produced by Rudolph Cartier. "The Quatermass Experiment" is, briefly, the story of an attempt to send a manned rocket beyond the atmosphere of the earth, and what transpires when a technical fault develops in outer space. Ottawa Citizen shows a simple listing in the same time slot for CBOT (in 1953 the CBC consisted of only 3 stations, all connected by a microwave network).
I couldn't find an explanation anywhere, though the image quality is poor for much of that period in the Star, and the text recognition software clearly hasn't coped with it well. And I couldn't find Gordon Sinclair's TV column in the Star except for August 14th (perhaps he was on vacation) which I would have thought would have mentioned something. I expect some more diligent digging might find some mention in the media.
If I had to guess what happened, the second episode in UK was broadcast on July 25th, so I'd assume by July 31st, they'd have known if the fly was a show-stopper, and the quality wasn't yet a show-stopper. The first unrecorded episode in UK was August 1st. I'd guess that it was only after that episode was not recorded (for whatever reason) that it was cancelled on CBC. The August 7th newspaper shows what appears to be newsreel footage of Ascot.
Interestingly, The Quatermass Experiment seemed to be a summer replacement for CBC's "Space Command" series. Although reported to be 150 episodes, only a single 1953 episode survived at CBC (personally, based on broadcast dates, I think there were closer to only 50 episodes than 150). Space Command is reported to be CBC's first TV drama, and the stars included James Doohan (Scotty on Star Trek). For those lamenting the loss of early BBC sci-fi, the loss of the entire run of this CBC series seems far worse - particularly as it was reported to have been telecined at the time.