 The science @-@ fiction production to which Jacobs referred was The Quatermass Experiment , broadcast in six half @-@ hour episodes in July and August 1953 . The serial told the story of Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group , and the consequences of his sending the first manned mission into space when a terrible fate befalls the crew and only one returns . The Quatermass Experiment was the first adult television science @-@ fiction production , held a large television audience gripped across its six weeks , and has been described by the Museum of Broadcast Communications as dramatising " a new range of gendered fears about Britain 's postwar and post @-@ colonial security . " Kneale was inspired in choosing the character 's unusual surname by the fact that many Manx surnames began with " Qu " ; the actual name itself was picked from a London telephone directory . The Professor 's first name was chosen in honour of the astronomer Bernard Lovell . 
