The Green Death

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069 – The Green Death
Doctor Who serial

Professor Jones and Jo amidst some mutant maggots.
Cast
Doctor Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor)
Companion Katy Manning (Jo Grant)
Production
Writer Robert Sloman
Barry Letts (uncredited)
Director Michael E. Briant
Script editor Terrance Dicks
Producer Barry Letts
Executive producer(s) None
Production code TTT
Series Season 10
Length 6 episodes, 25 mins each
Originally broadcast May 19–June 23, 1973
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
Planet of the Daleks The Time Warrior

The Green Death is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from May 19, 1973 to June 23, 1973. This serial was the last to feature Katy Manning in the role of Jo Grant.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

A death at an abandoned coal pit brings UNIT and the Doctor to the South Wales town of Llanfairfach when the body is found glowing bright green. Are pollutants from Global Chemicals responsible? And who is the mysterious BOSS?

[edit] Plot

The Doctor is making ajustments to the TARDIS's co-ordinate programmer in preparation for a visit to the blue planet of Metebelis Three, when Jo Grant reads in the paper about the mysterious death of a miner named Hughes in the abandoned coal mine in Llanfairfach in South Wales: The miner, doing a monthly inspection of the bottom of the mine shaft, emerged dead and glowing bright green. Jo takes this opportunity to go down and meet the acclaimed local environmentalist and Nobel Prize winner Professor Clifford Jones; while Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart goes down to investigate the miner's death, taking Jo with him in his car. The Doctor agrees to follow the Brigadier, but is determined to go to Metabelis Three first.

The Brigadier's first port of call is the recently opened Global Chemicals oil plant, close to the abandoned mine. Its headman, Stevens, claims that the plant can "produce 25% more petrol and diesel fuel from a given quantity of crude oil" - but that the 'Stevens process' only produces a minimal amount of waste. Professor Jones, in his environmentally friendly retreat the 'Wholeweal', (nicknamed the 'Nuthutch' by the locals), is convinced that the oil-making process must create thousands of gallons of waste. He also believes that there is a link between Global Chemicals and Hughes's death - but his research is too demanding for him to go down the mine and investigate. Jo, who is on the environmentalist's side, heads for the mine shaft.

The Doctor successfully reaches Metabelis Three, but it is far from the 'blue paradise' he described: He is attacked by various unseen creatures, only returning to the UNIT laboratory with a small blue crystal to show for his misadventure. He then drives down to South Wales in his car, Bessie, and meets the Brigadier at Global Chemicals. The two then set off to go down the mine to investigate, despite Stevens's insistence that the mine should be sealed. Stevens summons his henchman, Hinks, and tells him in a strange emotionless voice 'nobody must go down the mine'. Hinks leaves, and Stevens dons a pair of strange headphones...

Jo, meanwhile, has arrived at the pithead ahead of the Doctor and the Brigadier, and gone down the shaft with a miner called Bert to help another man, Dai Evans, who has called for help at the bottom of the mine. When the Doctor and the Bigadier arrive, Dave, the man controlling the cage's descent, finds that the brake has been sabotaged. The Doctor manages to slow the cage's descent, but his efforts leave Jo and Bert trapped at the bottom of the shaft. There, they find Dai Evans, who is turning bright green and dying. Bert remembers there is an emergency shaft out of the mine, and he and Jo set off.

The Doctor suggests cutting the mine shaft cables linking the two cages together, which would enable him to use the second cage to get down the mine. The Brigadier goes to Global Chemicals to request some cutting equipment, but a man named Fell informs him that they do not have such equipment. The Doctor has Professor Jones and his Wholeweal friends create a demonstration at the Global Chemicals gate, while he slips in in an attempt to steal the equipment from where it is stored in a large shed. However, he is captured, and Stevens shows him that the shed is empty. Fortunately, Dave and the Brigadier, while on their way to Newport to find some cutting equipment, have stopped at a petrol station and found a man using the required equipment to cut up an old car. They borrow this, free the secondary mine cage, and the Doctor goes down the shaft with Dave and two other miners. They finds Dai Evans now dead, and a note from Jo telling them that she and Bert have headed for the emergency shaft.

Jo and Bert have made good progress through the old mine tunnels, when they find a green slime trickling down the wall. When Bert touches this, he begins to grow weak, and his hand starts to turn bright green. At Bert's insistence, Jo goes on without him. Dave and the Doctor find Bert, and the Doctor goes on to find Jo. By the time they reunite, Jo has found a vast lake of bright green slime, filled to huge maggot creatures. When the tunnel collapses behind them, they use an old mining wagon to get across the green lake. They then climb a steep shaft, where the Doctor collects a huge egg to take back for experimentation. At the top of the natural shaft, they find a large pipe, with the insides covered with traces of crude oil waste - meaning that the pipe leads to the Global Chemicals plant.

In the plant, a worker named Elgin, an old friend of Fell, tells him about Dai Evans's death and the dying Bert. Elgin later follows Fell into a pumping control room, wher Fell is pumping the oil waste from the main tank on level four into another tank. The security system then registars the Doctor and Jo's presence in the pipe. Fell, who has actually arranged for the waste to be pumped down the pipe into the abandoned mine workings, is initially reluctant to rescue the two in the pipe. Elgin convinces Fell to help him open the hatch, and the Doctor and Jo escape just as the oil waste cascades down the pipe. Fell goes to see Stevens, complaining about a 'headache', and Stevens puts the strange headphones on Fell. A voice tells Stevens that 'Fell's 'processing' was a failure' and orders self-destruction. After Stevens presses a button on a small control panel, Fell leaves the room and jumps off a balcony to his death.

The Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier end the day with a nourishing meal of fungus at the Nuthutch, but the frivolity is cut short when they hear Bert too has died. After everyone retires to bed, while Jo stays up to read a book about the Amazon - where Jones is planning to go on an expedition in search of a rare toadstool - the egg the Doctor brought back from the mine hatches out into a giant maggot. Escaping from the lab where the egg was left, the maggot first heads for Jo, but then jumps on and bites Hinks, sent to the Nuthutch by Stevens to steal the egg. The maggot escapes from the house into the dark, and Hinks quickly weakens as the poisonous 'green death' infection spreads through his body. The next morning, the Brigadier has the UNIT troops lay explosives and detonate the whole mine pithead, much to the Doctor's fury. This fails to trap the maggots in the mine, as they begin to emerge; first, attempting to escape up the Global Chemicals waste pisopsal pipe, then burrowing through the slag heap near the mine.

At Global Chemicals, Mike Yates has been sent in undercover by the Brigadier, and is contacted by the Doctor, who dons some improbable disguises to get through the gates and move freely. Having liaised with Yates, the Doctor learns that Stevens take his instructions from someone on the top floor of the complex, and heads up there in the special lift to find out who is in charge. He finds that this is the home of the BOSS, Bimorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor, a supercomputer with its own megalomaniac personality. It runs the company, controls Stevens and other key staff members, and is responsible for the polluting chemical process. The Doctor rejects the brain-washing technique that Stevens and the BOSS subject him to – but Mike Yates is more susceptible and is converted into one of the computer’s slaves. After the Doctor escapes, Mike is sent to the Nutchutch to kill the Doctor. His conditioning is deep and only broken by the Doctor’s use of the blue crystal he brought from Metebelis Three.

Jo has meanwhile alienated Cliff, with whom she is falling in love, by ruining one of his experimenting slides of green slime. Determined to make amends, she heads to the slag heap in search of a maggot to run some tests on. Meanwhile, Jones finds that the fungus power Jo spilt on the slides is actually a cure for the 'green death' infection. He races to the slag heap to find Jo surrounded by giant maggots, and they are both caught in an RAF bombing raid on the maggots. Cliff is infected with the 'green death' and begins to turn green — and all before he was able to share his knowledge of the cure. Jo contacts her UNIT friends with her radio, and the Doctor and Sergeant Benton rescue the two from the maggots in Bessie. Hearing Cliff utter the word "Serendipity", the Doctor realises that Cliff might have stumbled upon something that could combat the maggots and their infection. Sergeant Benton arrives with a maggot crysallis - proof that the maggots are beginning to transform into mature giant insects. Then, the maggot that escaped from the laboratory is found on the table - dead. Realising that the creature died from eating some of the fungus, the Doctor also discovers the cure for Professor Jones. The Doctor and Sergeant Benton drive around the slag heaps, liberally scattering the fungus which proves deadly to the maggots. They are then attacked by a giant fly creature - the mature adult form of the maggots - which the Doctor kills by throwing his cloak over it when it is in mid-air, causing it to fall to the ground.

The Doctor returns to Global Chemicals to confront the BOSS. The computer plans to link up with others and effect a corporate takeover of the human race. By now, Stevens is completely under the mad computer's control. The Doctor tells Stevens that the BOSS's 'efficiency' will merely result in greater pollution, brainless brainwashed humans, and more death and disease. The Doctor then uses his blue crystal to break Stevens's hypnotic state, and Stevens, infuriated at what the BOSS has done to him, cross-feeds the generator circuits, causing the whole plant to explode, destroying Stevens and the mad computer.

The menace defeated, UNIT troops and environmentalists gather at the Nuthutch for a celebration made all the more special when Jo and Cliff announce they are getting married. The Doctor gives his blessing and gives Jo the blue crystal as a wedding present, but is evidently very upset by the situation and quietly slips away while the party is in full swing.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Continuity

  • This story marked the final appearance of Katy Manning as Jo Grant. Although Manning continues to attend fan conventions and play other characters for Big Finish Productions audio plays, she has never reprised her role as Jo Grant. Manning stated during a 1993 convention that she would consider reprising the role, but would portray Jo Grant "radically" different from the way she portrayed the character in the series.
  • This story marks the only farewell scene between the Third Doctor and one of his companions. Liz Shaw's actual departure was never seen on screen and Sarah Jane Smith remained a companion beyond the Doctor's third incarnation, departing from the TARDIS crew during the Doctor's fourth incarnation. Manning's departure, coupled with the death of Roger Delgado (who played the Master) and the announced departure of producer Barry Letts, was a major motivation in Jon Pertwee's decision to leave the series the following year.
  • The Doctor's desire to journey to Metebelis Three was a running theme throughout the season.
  • The Brigadier addresses the Prime Minister as "Jeremy," which was a production joke referring to Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe.
  • The DVD release of this story features a fictitious documentary, Global Conspiracy, starring Mark Gatiss as investigative reporter Terry Scanlon, following up the events surrounding the incident at Global Chemicals. Several actors from The Green Death briefly reprise their roles, and it is revealed that Stevens and BOSS survived. The canonicity of this featurette is unclear.
  • Tony Adams, who played Elgin, was taken ill during the recording of The Green Death and so Roy Skelton was brought in to play a new character called Mr James, who was given the lines written for Elgin. In Global Conspiracy, Adams actually uses his real illness as an explanation for his character's sudden absence towards the end of the story.

[edit] Production

  • During the recording of the footage of the maggots around the quarrysite, several of the maggot props were in fact inflated condoms (some inflated with air, others with water).
  • The script required the Doctor to state that the maggots have "thick chitinous skin". Pertwee asked Producer Barry Letts how to pronounce the word, and Letts, unaware of the term, told him to pronounce the first syllable "chit", rather than the more correct "kite". Two days after Episode 4 was broadcast, Letts received a letter consisting simply of the words, "The reason I'm writin'/Is how to say kitin."[1]
  • This story marks the final appearance of the howlaround title sequence introduced in 1970. It also is the last appearance of the logo introduced in Spearhead from Space until the 1996 television movie. The 1996 version of this logo has been used for marketing purposes by the BBC since that time, and is still used for the "classic series".
  • Curiously, the closing title graphics are run upside down and backwards on Episodes 2, 5, and 6. The reasons for this are unclear and range from saving time rewinding the film to trying something new with the titles as they would not be used again.

[edit] Outside references

  • The Doctor temporarily stumps BOSS by asking it "If I were to tell you that the next thing I say would be true, but the last thing I said was a lie, would you believe me?" This is a variation on a line from the Star Trek episode I, Mudd. The question is an example of the liar paradox, which dates back to at least the fourth century BC.

[edit] In print

Doctor Who book
Book cover
Doctor Who and the Green Death
Series Target novelisations
Release number 29
Writer Malcolm Hulke
Publisher Target Books
Cover artist Peter Brookes
ISBN ISBN 0 426 10647 4
Release date 21 August 1975
Preceded by Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons
Followed by Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders

A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in August 1975.

[edit] Broadcast, VHS and DVD releases

  • The serial was shown on BBC Two in 1994, and as part of "1973 Week" on BBC Four in 2006.
  • The Green Death came out on VHS in October 1996.
  • This story was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on May 10, 2004.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Haining, Peter (1983). Doctor Who: A Celebration. W.H. Allen, p. 145. 

[edit] External links

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Target novelisation

v • d • e
Doctor Who season 10 serials
v • d • e
Doctor Who: UNIT television stories
Second Doctor
Third Doctor
Fourth Doctor
Seventh Doctor
Tenth Doctor
Minor appearances
Torchwood
See also