 The BBC science @-@ fiction series Doctor Who has often been heavily influenced by the various Quatermass serials , and despite Kneale 's dislike of it ( " It sounded a terrible idea and I still think it was , " he commented in 1986 ) and his refusal to write for it , unofficial references to Quatermass have appeared in the programme and its spinoffs . Serials directly influenced include The Web of Fear , The Invasion , Spearhead from Space , The Ambassadors of Death , Inferno , The Seeds of Doom and Image of the Fendahl , as well as the 2007 " The Lazarus Experiment " , which echoes the first serial 's climax in Westminster Abbey , with the use of Southwark Cathedral . Former Doctor Who script editor and producer Derrick Sherwin admitted on a DVD documentary that the idea of setting more serials on contemporary Earth in the early 1970s was to recall a Quatermass feel . 
