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The story revolves around Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British Experimental Rocket Group. It begins with Quatermass anxiously awaiting the return to Earth of his new rocket ship and its crew, who have become the first humans to travel into space. The rocket is at first thought to be lost, having dramatically overshot its planned orbit, but eventually it is picked up on radar and returns to Earth, crash-landing in Wimbledon, London.
When Quatermass and his team reach the crash area and succeed in opening the rocket, they discover that only one of the three crewmen, Victor Carroon, remains inside. Quatermass and his chief assistant Paterson (Hugh Kelly) investigate the interior of the rocket, and are baffled by what they find: the space suits of the others are present, and the instruments on board indicate that the door was never opened in flight, but there is no sign of the other two crewmen.
Carroon, gravely ill, is cared for by the Rocket Group's doctor, Briscoe (John Glen), who has been having a secret affair with Carroon's wife, Judith (Isabel Dean). It is not just Quatermass who is interested in what happened to Carroon and his crew mates; journalists such as James Fullalove (Paul Whitsun-Jones) and Scotland Yard's Inspector Lomax (Ian Colin) are also keen to hear his story. Carroon is abducted by a group of foreign agents whose government wants the information they believe he has obtained about traveling in space. It is clear that there is something very wrong: he appears to have absorbed the consciousness of the other two crew members, and is slowly mutating into a plant-like alien organism.
As the police chase the rapidly transforming Carroon across London, Quatermass analysis samples of the mutated creature in a laboratory, and realises that it has the ability to end all life on Earth if it spores. A television crew working on an architectural program locates the monster in Westminster Abbey, and Quatermass and troops from the British Army rush in to destroy it in the hour before it brings about doomsday. Quatermass convinces the consciousness of the three crewmen buried deep inside the creature to turn against it and destroy it; this appeal to the last remains of their humanity succeeds in defeating the organism.
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