The Year of the Sex Olympics and other TV Plays
Page 19
He points to the Audience Sampler. All attention goes to that, to the alert, expectant faces on it. At the desk, Opie flicks up the sound of their enjoyment.
He finds Priest’s face a few inches from his own. It is oddly wracked.
PRIEST: Why I let you do this? Why?
OPIE: Do? Is what they need. What they want. What they got to have!
He flips the Sampler sound higher, drowning Priest’s feeble scruples.
THE ISLAND
It is dawn. A wide shot across the misty landscape towards the cottage. Small figures are moving there.
A closer shot. A little way from the cottage, Nat has just filled in a grave in the turf. Deanie stands watching, holding their weapon, the axe.
Nat looks round, almost instinctively, for something to mark the grave. He picks up one of the large quartzite stones that lie among the heather, staggers back with it and plants it firmly on the raw mound. As he does so he freezes, listening.
He looks about him into the mist, remembering the threat. He sees nothing. He joins Deanie and for a moment they stand together in this ancient, incredible duty. Mourners.
He listens again. This time she had heard it too . . . a scuttling somewhere nearby.
DEANIE: A sheep?
Nat takes no chances. He takes the axe from her and waves her back to the cottage. She runs.
He starts to circle, a man defending his territory. Holding the axe at the ready. She is hardly inside the cottage when he hears her scream.
He turns and runs desperately towards it. The door is slammed shut—and as he reaches it, he hears the heavy bar drop into its sockets on the inside. And Deanie is screaming, on and on.
He attacks the door with the axe. Its timbers are resilient, absorbing the blows. He is in a frenzy.
INSIDE THE PRODUCTION POD
The crowded production pod echoes with laughter . . . mostly boosted from the Audience Sampler. Faces there are at a happy peak of vicarious excitement.
On the master screen we see the interior of the cottage as the door bursts in at last. Then struggling figures and the axe still slashing. But the tide of laughter from the outer world drowns all other sounds.
INSIDE THE COTTAGE
Silence now in the cottage.
Panting, Nat turns from the slaughtered body of his enemy. He was too late. He pulls Deanie towards him and strokes her face and head, the shut eyes.
NAT: Deanie.
She will not speak again.
He is quite alone, crouching in a scene as grotesque and terrible as one of Kin Hodder’s drawings.
INSIDE THE PRODUCTION POD
The production pod is uproarious, with triumph now added to the audience’s laughter.
Opie is being feted. Heated by the aphrodisiac of success, Misch smothers him with kisses—even as he is half-carried out by his new admirers in the senior personnel.
Priest sits appalled at the control desk, staring at the master screen.
PRIEST: Look at him. He’s alive . . . (He turns and calls after the others with his frightening realisation) He’s alive! It’s we that are not!
But nobody listens. He slumps down again in his seat, staring at Nat. Both alone. In two worlds.
An announcer-voice cuts in through the steady gale of laughter.
VOICE: So ends the first edition of our new show, the Live-Life Show! Soon be others, bubbies and coddies! Soon be more for you! And now . . . over to Sportsex! . . . to see trials of new talent for this year’s Sex Olympics!
And we are off into the usual brassy lullaby.
THOMAS NIGEL KNEALE (18 April 1922 – 29 October 2006) was a British screenwriter. He wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay. In 2000, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association.
Predominantly a writer of thrillers that used science-fiction and horror elements, he was best known for the creation of the character Professor Bernard Quatermass. Quatermass was a heroic scientist who appeared in various television, film and radio productions written by Kneale for the BBC, Hammer Film Productions and Thames Television between 1953 and 1996. Kneale wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell, John Osborne, H.G. Wells and Susan Hill.
He was most active in television, joining BBC Television in 1951; his final script was transmitted on ITV in 1997. Kneale wrote well-received television dramas such as The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968) and The Stone Tape (1972) in addition to the Quatermass serials. He has been described as “one of the most influential writers of the 20th century”, and as “having invented popular TV”.