Nigel Kneale - Legacy

Legacy

The writer and actor Mark Gatiss, paying tribute to Kneale on the BBC News Online website shortly after his death, indicated that he was among the first rank of British television writers, but that this had been overlooked. "He is amongst the greats—he is absolutely as important as Dennis Potter, as David Mercer, as Alan Bleasdale, as Alan Bennett, but I think because of a strange snobbery about fantasy or sci-fi it's never quite been that way." Similarly, his obituary in The Guardian commented that:

Kneale was by no means the only author to have been largely wasted by television, and to have seen his status overtaken by soap opera hacks. But his place is secure, alongside Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, John Wyndham and Brian Aldiss, as one of the best, most exciting and most compassionate English science fiction writers of his century.

Writing about The Year of the Sex Olympics in 2003, Nancy Banks-Smith felt that Kneale was one of the few television writers whose work was particularly memorable.

Once upon a time, Lord Hailsham, proceeding to the chamber of the House in black stockings and full-bottomed wig as Lord High Chancellor, spotted a friend and cried lustily, "Neil!" They say a whole party of American tourists fell to their knees. At the name of Kneale, I feel, every knee should bow. How much TV do you remember from last night ... last year ... last century? Quite. Curiously, I can remember clearly the first time I saw The Year of the Sex Olympics by Nigel Kneale. It was 35 years ago.

Kneale was admired by the film director John Carpenter, who hired Kneale to write the screenplay Halloween III. Carpenter also wrote the screenplay for his 1987 film Prince of Darkness under the pseudonym "Martin Quatermass" (a reference to Kneale's work). The horror fiction writer Stephen King has also cited Kneale as an influence, with Kim Newman suggesting in 2003 that King had "more or less rewritten Quatermass and the Pit in The Tommyknockers." Other writers to have acclaimed Kneale as an influence on their work have included comics writer Grant Morrison and television screenwriter Russell T Davies, who described the Beasts episode "Baby" as "the most frightening thing I've ever seen ... Powerful stuff." Film screenwriter and director Dan O'Bannon was also an admirer of Kneale's writing, and in 1993 wrote a potential remake of The Quatermass Experiment, of which Kneale approved, but the film was never made.

High-profile entertainment industry figures have publicly expressed admiration for Kneale's work, including The Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr, members of the rock group Pink Floyd and Monty Python's Flying Circus writer/performer Michael Palin.

Kneale never saw himself as a science-fiction writer, and was often critical of the genre. He particularly disliked the BBC series Doctor Who (1963–89; 1996; 2005–present), for which he had once turned down an offer to write. "It sounded a terrible idea and I still think it was," he commented in 1986. "The fact that it's lasted a long time and has a steady audience doesn't mean much. So has Crossroads and that's a stinker". He also slammed Blake's 7, which he described as the lowest point of British television science-fiction: "I think the low point for me would be the very few bits I've seen of a thing called Blake's 7 which I found paralytically awful. The dialogue/characterisation seemed to consist of a kind of childish squabbling" and Doomwatch: "I was approached to write Doomwatch. That didn't seem to be much good either." Doctor Who was heavily influenced by Kneale's Quatermass serials, in some cases even using specific storylines that were very similar to those from Quatermass.