Ted Newsom wrote:
OK, I took the bait. Lured back.

I'm not at all convinced Nigel Kneale's resentment about Q-X being sold to Hammer had diddly to do with the script of Q-2. On both of them he was a staff writer, and it's not unusual at all for work done on company time to be owned by a company.

As for the discussed Nazi implicatons--I'd rather take Kneale at face value. Q-2's targets were complaceny and government treachery against its people-- plus the Quisling factor of well-fed workers working against their own interests.

Hi Ted, I don't think Kneale was a staff writer on QX. Writing duties went to Richard Landau, which in turn had to be practially re-written by Val Guest. Kneale did not leave the BBC until the end of 1955, his contract with them prevented him from working freelance up until that point, which was long after QX had been made and released, but I'm willing to be proved wrong.image

I think you can just about read anything you like into any film if you wish to, Q2 just happens to be one of those films that goes the extra mile and gives you that bit more. Yes, there is the treachery, conspiracy, mass murder, mans own complacency - the 'As long as it doesn't bother me! kind of attitude, even xenophobia is there, if you want it to be. As one wag wrote in the UK newspaper 'The Guardian', that Kneale was writing about the West Indian immigrants that arrived in the UK in the 1950s, pointing out that Kneale used Q2 to enforce the White British peoples fears against the new Black immigrants, even to the point of making the burning food slime -'Black'. Although an extreme viewpoint, and one I myself disagree with, it's there if you look for it. That is why I prefer to take Q2 on face value, rather than to read a political infrastructure around it, to me it's damn good entertainment, yes it's dark and scarey and yes, even political, but just entertainment - and that is what matters at the end of the day.

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Last Edited By: Stephen Reed May 26 08 8:44 AM. Edited 1 times.