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Professor Bernard Quatermass was a British scientist associated with the British Rocket Group.
Biography
With the British Rocket Group
In 1953, "the Director the British Rocket Group" tracked down an astronaut who had mutated into an alien creature following an experimental mission to Central London, where he defeated it in front of BBC cameras. The broadcast was subsequently played off as science fiction by the British government to prevent mass panic. (PROSE: Background) Bernard still worked alongside Dr Rachel Jensen and Allison Williams in the British Rocket Group by 1963. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
In May 1997, paranoid and full of bleak pessimism, he was interviewed by Eve Waugh on television with Patrick Moore regarding the Mars 97 mission. (PROSE: The Dying Days)
The Doctor was once invited to the Royal Planetary Society by "Bernard and Paula". (PROSE: Beautiful Chaos)
Legacy
UNIT scientific advisor Professor Malcolm Taylor named a unit of measurement after Bernard Quatermass. (TV: Planet of the Dead)
In the 26th century, one name of the theory that gods were ancient aliens was "the Quatermass theory" after Bernard. By this point, he was mostly forgotten outside of the name. (PROSE: Shakedown)
The "Unbound Doctor" once compared Professor Bernard Quatermass, unfavourably, to his friend Professor Bernice Summerfield. (AUDIO: The City and the Clock)
Behind the scenes
Seven different actors have officially portrayed the character of Bernard Quatermass on television in his original series, (including André Morell and Andrew Keir), with none considered "definitive". However, Lance Parkin has stated that he meant to visualise the elderly, nearly crazed John Mills version from the fourth and final Quatermass serial as the one who appeared in the Virgin New Adventures novel The Dying Days.
In the Doctor Who universe, the Nightshade serials (PROSE: Nightshade) have many similarities to the Quatermass serials. One may assume that because Bernard Quatermass is real, Nightshade effectively replaces Quatermass in the Doctor Who Universe (although Background implied that the first Quatermass serial, at least, existed within the DWU as documentary footag which had been passed off as fiction as part of a cover-up).