69: The Green Death

Before Watching

Of “The Green Death” I remember precious little at the moment, other than giant maggots and slime. And Jo Grant leaving. I was quite upset about that at the time, not realizing that, just as Jon Pertwee would be soon replaced by an even greater Doctor, Jo Grant was to be replaced by an even greater companion. Just my opinion, of course. But I’m right.

This is one of the last UNIT stories, and one of the last Pertwee stories set entirely on Earth. Maybe this is why I can remember so little about it when compared against, let’s say the other stories of the 10^th season.

“The Green Death” was scripted by Robert Sloman, whose other contributions towards Doctor Who were writing “The Daemons” in conjunction with Barry Letts, the show’s producer, and Jon Pertwee’s last story, “Planet of the Spiders”. Now, regarding “The Daemons”, any story with Roger Delgado’s Master in it has an unfair advantage before it starts, and when I watched it recently I found it an enjoyable enough romp. For me, “Planet of the Spiders” hasn’t fared so well, although I promise to give it a fair hearing when I sit own to watch it again in a couple of weeks’ time. Really, as I’m a confirmed arachnophobe it should have given me the willies, but those spiders just weren’t convincing enough. There was too much padding, especially in the chase scene with Lupton, where Jon Pertwee was given his head and allowed to use a range of vehicles, none of which seemed all that necessary. There was yet another Time Lord we’d never heard of before, who apparently was the Doctor’s mentor, and who helped the Doctor regenerate. Sorry – this is meant to be a review of “The Green Death”. I’m just hoping – well, I’m just hoping that this is better than “Planet of the Spiders”, otherwise it could be a long 6 episodes.

After Watching

Wow. I loved this. I mean, maybe this is just me, but be fair, wasn’t that terrific? Which is a weird thing for me to say when you think that I didn’t think that much of it when it was first transmitted. But then I was 9 years old at the time, I suppose, and a lot of it must have gone over my head. All of the principals are in marvellous form here, and it kind of showed for me that when a Unit story worked it could be really good – in fact there’s probably a good argument for saying that this was the last really good Unit story.

As a story, the basic premise isn’t that promising. This is what it boils down to. A giant sentient supercomputer going by the acronym BOSS takes over the head of multinational chemical company. (actually you could say that it takes over the head of the Head of a multinational chemical company) The company pumps industrial waste into a disused section of a coal mine which kills anyone who touches it, yet also it alters the DNA of maggots, and said maggots become three foot long armour plated acid spitting super-maggots, and tunnel out of the mine after it is closed off by explosives. This is all part of the supercomputer’s plan to subjugate humanity, and impose order and regulation upon a chaotic world – you get the drift. Yet for all the seeming drawbacks of this particular scenario it is actually exceptionally watchable.

With the megalomaniac supercomputer this is crossing ground which has already been well trodden in “The war Machines”, and will be well trodden again in years to come. Yet for me, BOSS works a lot better than WOTAN ever did. For one thing, it turns out that this computer does have a personality. A rather smug, arrogant and barking mad personality, granted, but it does make for a more interesting story. It has a couple of good lines as well, telling Stevens, its human catspaw “That's how you get your kicks like the good little Nietzschean you are.” You don’t get lines like that in your average Terry Nation.

Watching it, I was surprised how really rather sickening and repulsive the green pulsating goo and the maggots still looked today. Watching the documentary in the extras with the BBC DVD, I was intrigued to see that the maggots weren’t all, as I had previously heard, made from condoms. Actually the special effects people used a variety of several different construction methods including glove puppet and mechanical puppet, depending on the kind of shot that was required. The results are effective, and considering the time that this story was made, really rather remarkably so. Less so the adult insect. It really wasn’t brilliantly realised , and the flying effects were not good. Thankfully they didn’t last that long. I had to chuckle when the creature was brought down dead, and the Doctor examined it saying “What a beautiful creature!” I do wonder how Jon Pertwee managed to keep a straight face saying that one.

While we’re raising the few negatives there are about this story, as we now know, this is where the third Doctor sows the seeds of his eventual destruction by visiting Metebelis Three after threatening to do so for ages. Now, the studio jungle scenes are as good as always, but as for the gigantic avian feet and talons that swoop on the Doctor – well, I’m sorry, but it’s a no from me, Simon. It is rare, though, for such an inconsequential moment in one serial to come back and be used in the way that it is a season later. There’s a strange and inconsistent use of CSO at one point. Most of the scenes on the hillside outside the mine were clearly shot on location. However there is one which makes such obvious use of CSO that it looks ridiculous. All I can think of is that they must have found late on that they needed to reshoot the scene, and didn’t have time and money to go back on location to do it. Oh, and while I think of it there’s the obligatory UNIT “bomb the hell out of them” scene. This scene was a good example of the principle  - if you can’t do it well, then do something different -.

Helicopter Watch

The bombing run is carried out by a tiny one man helicopter, and it’s so unimpressive it would probably have been better just to have the Brig being told over the phone that the bombing run had been completed.

I’ve lived in South Wales for the best part of three decades now, and so much of it must have rubbed off on me that I can get rather defensive about bad accents and patronizing clichés. This does all start off a little bit like it should have been titled “How Green Death Was My Valley” But I found that as the show went on this didn’t seem quite so much of a problem. Not accent wise, anyway, since there’s quite a few really genuine Welsh accents in the mix. I noticed good old Talfryn Thomas when the Doctor descended into the mine for the first time.  I remembered him from being a guest star in a few episodes of “Dad’s Army”. Now I can tell you from personal experience that his accent is the real McCoy. The exteriors looked dead right for the South Wales valleys too – probably because that’s where they were filmed.

Since we’re mentioning performances at this point, we’ll talk about the guest stars. Now there’s definite on-screen chemistry between Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan who  play Jo Grant and Professor Jones, but then that’s hardly surprising since there was off-screen chemistry between them at the time as well. I believe that they were engaged at the time, although the relationship ended. A mention for Tony Adams, making an early TV appearance here as one of Stevens’ flunkeys. He disappears about halfway through the story, because he was taken ill, but this didn’t have any hugely detrimental effect on his career. He went on to play Doctor Neville Bywaters in General Hospital, and then Adam Chance in theat perennial favourite of lovers of bad TV, Crossroads. Acting bouquets, though, go to Jerome Willis, who plays Stevens. He is a terrific villain, and to add to that, his conversion to the light at the end of the story was convincing enough to make his sacrifice at the end rather moving.

How did people view this story’s eco agenda when it was first shown? I ask the question because it just seems right on the money today. When the story was written, alternative ‘clean’ energy, edible fungus and textured vegetable protein, and the dangers of genetic modification were all on the agenda, but pretty much on the fringes of national consciousness, while it’s fair to say that they all firmly in the mainstream today. As a result you don’t have to be a genius to see that this story has a remarkable resonance when you watch it today.

We can’t ignore the fact that this is Jo Grant’s last story. It’s always been fairly clear to those of us who look for that sort of thing, that Jo has confused feelings towards the Doctor. He is obviously a father figure towards her, yet at the same time her feelings are a lot more complicated than that. So when she meets a rather hippyish, young, long haired, Nobel prize winning scientist called Professor Jones, with whom she gets off on the wrong foot at their first meeting, it’s pretty much a given that we’re going to be hearing wedding bells – well, engagement bells anyway, at the end of the story. Actually this does give us a really rather good end to the story. The Doctor slips away from the engagement party, and gives a rueful look as he drives Bessie away into the twilight. He’s going to be lonely, we know. What we don’t know at this point is that in the very next story he’ll get the pleasure of the company of wonderful Liz Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith. Ahh, the lucky swine.

What Have We Learned?

Even at this late stage the production team were capable of pulling a great UNIT story out of the bag.

Today’s Science fiction can sometimes become tomorrow’s science fact.