The Green Death

Serendipity

Environmentalism, action and Jo's departure. The Green Death is a highly regarded story amongst fans and one of the few Third Doctor stories that I've seen before. I recall enjoying the first time I watched it but am curious to see how it fares a second time around. I do know that it is generally agreed to be considered the best of the four stories authored by Robert Sloman and Barry Letts, who wrote the season finales for Seasons 8 thru 11. Of course, given the reputations of the other three (The Dæmons, The Time Monster, Planet of the Spiders) that doesn't seem to be too hard.

Plot Summary

At the headquarters of Global Chemicals in South Wales, the director, Stevens, returns from London with promises of government contracts that will provide jobs for a group of miners who were recently put out of work when the coal mine was closed. This is met with cheers by most of the crowd but also derision from the members of an environmentalist commune led by Professor Clifford Jones. He argues with Stevens but both men are interrupted by a whistle from the mine. One of the workers collapsed on the whistle after returning from an inspection and has now died, his skin glowing with green phosphorescence.

UNIT is called in to investigate but the Doctor has already made plans to visit Metebelis III. He wants Jo to come with but she has already decided to visit Professor Cliff Jones' community to help out. As they are near each other, the Brigadier offers Jo a ride while the Doctor takes off in the TARDIS. He manages to collect one of the large blue gems the planet is famous for but has a very rough time while on the planet.

The Brigadier drops off Jo who meets Professor Jones in his lab. She is impressed by the work he and his team are doing and becomes fascinated by his research into the pollution that Global Chemicals is likely dumping into the old coal mine. Curious, but also a little put off by Jones' patronizing tone, Jo leaves to go investigate the mine.

The Brigadier arrives at Global Chemicals and informs Stevens of his task to investigate the situation. Stevens agrees though he assures him that their process is safe. The Brigadier calls back to UNIT HQ and informs them to let him know when the Doctor has returned and to send him there. The Doctor arrives shortly after the call, relieved to be in a safe location again. He drives up to Global Chemicals in Bessie.

The Doctor arrives and he and the Brigadier decide to investigate the mine for themselves. Stevens gives them access but tells one of his henchmen named Hinks that no one should enter the mine and that he is to take care of it. Hinks agrees but is concerned over Stevens' odd manner. Stevens dismisses him but retrieves a set of heavy earphones and puts them on.

One of the old miners named Dai, concerned about the death of the co-worker, heads down to inspect the mind for himself. He calls up for help a while later just as Jo arrives to investigate. She goes with another miner named Bert who is heading down to get him due to her first aid training. As they are being lowered, the Brigadier and the Doctor arrive. The Doctor orders the workers to stop the tram and pull them back up. The worker tries to comply but the brake fails.

The Doctor and the Brigadier, working together, manage to jam the lift controls and stop the lift just before it crashes at the bottom of the shaft. At the bottom of the shaft, Jo and Bert find Dai infected with the same green glow that killed the first miner. They wait for the lift to be repaired but fearing for Dai's life, they decide to travel to another part of the mine that had been shut down to try and find a way out.

To get the lift working again, they need to cut the control cable but the mine lacks the equipment as it had been shut down. They call Professor Jones to ask him but he also does not have the equipment so they go to Global Chemicals. Stevens learns of the request, but receives orders from the director to not give the equipment in order to protect what is in the mine. Stevens orders one of his men, named Fell, brainwashed to ensure this. When the Brigadier comes by, Stevens claims the equipment was removed a couple days ago in preparation for the arrival of updated equipment.

Both the Doctor and Jones are sure that Stevens is lying and decide to find it. The Brigadier however decides to drive to the nearest town to try and find some. Jones and his people stage a protest to distract the guards while the Doctor sneaks into the plant. He is discovered and trapped in a pump room. Stevens comes and shows the Doctor the empty shed and then releases him, having been ordered by the director to let the Doctor go in order to learn of his purpose.

The Doctor and Jones return to the mine to find the Brigadier found cutting equipment at a local gas station and was able to borrow it. They cut through the line and the Doctor heads down with two miners as guides. They find Dai dead and a note on his body from Jo telling them where they went. The Doctor and one of the miners head after them.

They come upon Bert who is nearly passed out, infected with the same disease affecting the first two miners, having touched a trickle of green slime oozing down the side of the mine. The other miner takes Burt back while the Doctor continues to look for Jo. He finds her at the edge of a pool of the same green ooze which is swarming with enlarged maggots. They turn to head back but the tunnel suffers a cave in and several maggots crawl out of rocks, cutting off their escape route.

The Doctor and Jo turn over an abandoned mine cart and use it to ferry themselves across the pool of ooze. Once on the other side, they climb their way through the seam until they come across an access tunnel leading up to Global Chemicals. Near the entrance, they find an enlarged fly egg and the Doctor pockets it to examine later. They proceed to climb the ladder to the drain point.

After Bert and Dai are taken to the hospital and morgue respectively, the Brigadier heads to Global Chemicals to confront Stevens. He tries to impose a UNIT takeover of the investigation but Stevens calls up the Ecology Minister who involves the Prime Minister. Both men shut the Brigadier down and he is forced to leave.

Fell is sent to purge the tanks but another employee, Elgin, has become increasingly concerned over his and Stevens' odd behavior. He follows Fell and asks him what he is doing. Fell hypnotically responds that he is dumping into the mine. They are alerted to the Doctor and Jo climbing up and Fell completes the automatic dump process which will flood the tube in thirty seconds. Elgin appeals to Fell who fights off the control long enough to tell Elgin how to open the hatch. He does so and pulls the Doctor and Jo out just before the tube floods with the same green ooze seen below.

Fell returns to Stevens' office in a state of confusion. Stevens puts him under the headphones again but Fell does not respond and the director comes on to recommend self-disposal. Stevens is uncomfortable with this but the director insists and sends a signal through the headphones. Fell gets up and walks out of the office, passing Elgin, the Doctor and Jo in the hall and throws himself off a balcony, killing himself.

Elgin escorts the Doctor and Jo out the back entrance and they reunite with the Brigadier at Professor Jones' compound. Over dinner he introduces them to the other members of the commune and notes his plans to go up the Amazon river to do research in creating fungus that can be grown and used as a meat substitute. The Doctor gets along with Jones and they plan to dissect the fly egg in the morning. Their dinner is unfortunately cut short with the news that Bert has died.

Jo cries over Bert, comforted by Jones. The Brigadier and the Doctor decide to head back to the pub to spend the night but Jo decides to stay at the compound and look over a book Jones showed her. She doesn't respond much to a Metebelis III crystal the Doctor shows her and he somewhat jealously pulls Jones away from her for a chat. In the other room, the fly egg hatches and a large maggot crawls across the floor towards Jo.

Hinks heads back to Stevens office to report on the UNIT activities and includes the story about the fly egg. Alarmed, Stevens sends Hinks to steal the egg. He arrives just as the maggot is crawling towards Jo. The maggot, sensing his presence, changes direction and leaps at him and bites him before crawling off again. His and Jo's screams alert the Doctor and Jones who rush back in and take Hinks to the hospital.

The next morning, the Brigadier calls in his forces to patrol the area and blow up the mine entrance. The Doctor protests but the Brigadier is under orders. The Doctor goes to Global Chemicals to see if they will stop the mine sealing but Stevens refuses. He also shows him a representative from the Ministry who is on site to deal with UNIT directly. The representative turns out to be Mike Yates working for UNIT undercover. Yates also goes along with Stevens, not wanting to blow his cover, and they hear the sound of the explosion sealing the mine.

However, the maggots find new ways out. A large group of them burrow up a seam and infest a hillside where they are spotted by Sargent Benton on patrol. Another group come up the waste pipe where they are discovered by Elgin. Elgin tells Stevens that they need to shut down the project but Stevens has Elgin brainwashed to continue to go along with things.

UNIT keeps tabs on the maggots, though they are bullet resistant, while the Doctor and Jones try to find a cure for the ooze. The Doctor wants a sample of the ooze for them to experiment on but Stevens is keeping tabs on Yates and he is unable to get them a sample. The Doctor then disguises himself as the milkman and infiltrates Global Chemicals. Yates slips his watcher for a few minutes and fills the Doctor in on the goings on, including the fact that Stevens reports to someone only accessible through a secured elevator.

Jo assists Jones in his work but accidently knocks some of Jones' dried fungus on his sample slides. Irritated, Jones becomes engrossed in his work and begins to ignore Jo. Jo, wanting to redeem herself, leaves to capture a maggot for them to dissect. She gets up to the hillside where the maggots have manifested but is intercepted by Sargent Benton. Meanwhile, Jones notices that the fungus has neutralized the mutagen in the ooze. He tries to tell Jo but notices a note she has left and runs out after her.

Yates is reconnected with Stevens and his escort, leaving the Doctor alone. The Doctor uses his sonic to access the secured elevator and travels to the top floor. There he discovers that the director is actually a computer called BOSS that was structured after human brain patterns and gone mad with Nietzschean philosophy. The computer summons Stevens to brainwash the Doctor but he is able to resist the conditioning. BOSS initially tells Stevens to kill the Doctor but the Doctor convinces him to hold him as a hostage.

Jo convinces Benton that she's looking for the Doctor and slips away up the hillside, unaware that the Brigadier has called in an aerial grenade attack. Jones arrives, spies Jo on the hillside and runs after her. They meet but before Jones can pull her away, the helicopter arrives and starts dropping grenades. They duck into a cave but the blast of one of the grenades knocks Jones out and damages Jo's radio.

At Global Chemicals, Yates frees the Doctor from his cell and the two men try to escape. They are spotted an alarm is sounded. Yates is captured but the Doctor gets away. He drives up to the hillside to inform the Brigadier and to verify that the grenade strike had no effect on the maggots.

Shortly after the Doctor arrives, Jo manages to repair the radio and sends a weak signal for help. The Doctor and Benton drive up the hill to the cave. The Doctor uses his sonic to stun the maggots swarming outside the cave while Benton carries Jones to Bessie. The four then drive back to Jones' compound where he is diagnosed with a concussion and also a maggot bite. The Doctor gives him an aggressive dose of antibiotics which slows the infection but he heads back to the lab to work on a cure.

In the lab, the Doctor finds Yates who has been brainwashed by BOSS and sent to kill him. The Doctor uses the blue crystal he took from Metebelis III to undo Yates' hypnosis and sends him back to Global Chemicals to pretend he has killed the Doctor and free other employees from BOSS's control. Stevens however catches on to Yates and captures him.

Benton arrives at the compound with the chrysalis of one of the maggots, indicating that they are beginning to change into flies. As they examine it, one of the residents named Nancy discovers the maggot which hatched from the egg earlier. It is dead, having eaten some of the fungus she had prepared for lunch. The Doctor, Nancy and Benton quickly gather as much of the fungus as they can and toss it to the maggots on the hill from Bessie.

The maggots eat the fungus and begin to die. As they finish their rounds, the hatched fly attacks Bessie. The Doctor and Benton duck it's spewing of the green ooze before the Doctor manages to knock it down and kill it with his coat.

Back at Global Chemicals, two guards take Yates from his cell and prepare to take him upstairs for further processing. Yates however manages to get away from them and escape the facility. He runs to the hill where the Brigadier is supervising the lowering of the leftover fungus into the mine to feed to any remaining maggots. Yates warns the Brigadier that BOSS is planning to link up with other computers and move to the next stage of his plan at 4pm.

The Brigadier heads to Global Chemicals while Benton heads to the compound to warn the Doctor, who had gone back to try and find a cure for Jones. As he examines him, Jo relates how she had spilled fungus on some of his slides. The Doctor examines the slides and realizes that the same fungus before has killed the infection. He starts to prepare a paste to treat Jones but turns it over to Nancy when Benton tells him of the situation.

The guards refuse to let either the Brigadier or the Doctor in but the guard collapses when Stevens and BOSS activate the slave controls for pretreated employees. The Doctor rushes in and finds Stevens hooked up to BOSS, who is merging his mind with Stevens'. The Doctor pulls out the blue crystal recovered from Yates and cuts through BOSS's programing of Stevens. Stevens returns to his own mind enough to understand the horror of what BOSS is unleashing and cross wires the computer. The Doctor flees and the computer, along with most of the facility, explodes.

They all return to the compound where Jones has improved greatly. They get a telegram from Geneva proclaiming that Jones' facility will the official UN site for ecological research in the area. This provides funding and Jones makes plans to head to the Amazon to further his research. Jo wants to come along and Jones asks her to marry him. She agrees and an impromptu party breaks out. The Doctor, sad at losing Jo, gives her the Metebelis III crystal as a present, then quietly slips out and drives away in Bessie.

Analysis

One of the best markers of a higher quality six-part story is the fact that you forget that it is a six-part story and start to lose yourself in the overall plot. This story does that very well and even the sections that are clearly designed to string things along have a natural feel to them. Of all of them, I think only Episode Five runs the risk of feeling like padding and a good portion of that comes from the feeling that some of the action in Episode Six could have been spread a little more.

This is a well crafted story that could easily be attributed to one of the deeper writers of the Third Doctor era (such as Malcolm Hulke). The Doctor and Jo are given a great deal to do, there's a decent amount of action but not so much as to mistake this for a Danger Man story, UNIT is involved but not so much as to make it an all military story and you have an interesting and credible villain. All of these elements combine to draw the viewer in with an interesting and well paced plot that has a strong creep factor and even a couple of genuine scares.

The Doctor does very well in a nice balance of intellectualism, action and also comedy. His less than subtle cock-blocking of Cliff just after dinner is a bit amusing as well as seeing the Doctor pose as the cleaning lady. In fact, you almost think that the Doctor is talking to the audience when he warns off Yates from making a snide comment to his appearance. It's also nice to see that the "keep the Doctor away" trick of sending him to Metebelis III for most of Episode One actually has a payoff with the use of the blue crystal to break BOSS's control. If the Third Doctor were as balanced in other stories as he is here, I think I would enjoy him a bit more. Not that I don't like him, but for me he may be one of the least engaging Doctors and it is more the stories he's in that I like rather than him personally.

This is also one of the better companion send offs. Jo is given a lot to do and is genuinely engaging, even if she does indulge in most of her tropes. She is clumsy, she is proposed to and she finds herself as the damsel in distress due to her own folly. But she also pours her passion into things and she does have a nice rapport with Cliff. I'm not sure I buy the romance completely on his end but I believe that for this particular marriage proposal Jo would accept as she clearly has an established admiration for this man. That passion carries over to her performance, so much so that you actually cringe a bit when Cliff is dismissive, to the point of being mean at times when she tries to help. But it was a good send off for Jo and the Doctor's reaction at her leaving is fittingly poignant.

There was a nice balance in how UNIT was deployed in this story. I liked that the Brig was almost acting in an undercover role for the first couple of episodes given his civilian dress. I especially liked that Yates was given the useful role of being a mole, even if it wasn't a particularly good one. At the very least, it expanded their scope a bit. I did question why they kept trying bullets and explosions against the maggots. My first thought was flame throwers and it seemed odd that the Brigadier never thought of that.

The maggots made an excellent secondary villain. They were quite creepy and I think most people have had enough experience with flies and maggots to be thoroughly disgusted by them. On top of that, they are simple enough that the puppet work was quite believable, which made them more unsettling. The unfortunate contrast is the fly that the one maggot turns into to. That was not a believable puppet and the CSO work on it's attack looked particularly bad, especially when cut with the on location film work with the maggots.

Stevens and BOSS make for a good overall villain. A megalomaniacal computer is nothing new (see WOTAN) but there is the nice mystery of what BOSS is which draws the viewer in for the first four episodes. But unlike WOTAN, BOSS is given a large personality and his evoking Nazi-style buzzwords just makes him even more engaging. Stevens himself is slimy enough that you can see him as the villain until you get the slow reveal of BOSS. What's more, you get the seeds of Stevens' eventual repentance sown throughout as even he hesitates about what they are doing throughout the story. The fact that it takes the Doctor using the dehypnotizing crystal to bring that side of Stevens out long enough to destroy BOSS adds to the humanization of Stevens in his villain role.

It does make you wonder if Stevens created BOSS as a noble experiment and BOSS simply overwhelmed his mind or if there was actual malicious intent from the beginning. Of course, until the maggots actually appear, there is nothing that says that they are doing anything wrong so it's easy to see how BOSS could have gotten through Stevens' defenses and made him the coldly logical man we see through most of the story. His pitch to the miners seems heartfelt in that he is expanding his company and is promising them jobs. What person is going to say no to that or think that what he is doing is evil. It is only when a man dies and a deliberate cover up is made that you could even argue that Stevens is in proper villain territory and by this point he is clearly under BOSS's control.

One of the best scenes in the story is the final scene with the Doctor leaving Jo. It's somewhat obvious that Jo is going to be leaving in this story and the Doctor clearly makes attempts to thwart Cliff in the way you might expect an overprotective father to do. But the Doctor's sadness at the end is very touching. He knows he has to let Jo go but you still see the pain at losing a friend. But it is done in such a simple way. He keep focus in the foreground as everyone else mixes in the background party and he quietly leaves. He doesn't say a word and just drives off into the evening with that expression that shows that while he should be happy for her, he can't help but miss someone he cares about. It's quiet and an absolutely perfect bit of acting by Jon Pertwee. It's also an excellent bit of camera work to leave the Doctor in silhouetted shadow as he drives away, leaving that previously seen expression as the lasting memory as he drives away. It's just very well done.

A lot of the direction is very good in this story. Obviously there is a lot of straight camera work but the director clearly maximized his location opportunities with some nice improvised angles and different views when he actually had the chance to stretch the palate. Of course, this excellent work also drew further attention when things went off-kilter. I've already mentioned the fake fly work but there are some other scenes with the Doctor in Bessie where it's a stationary model against a green screen. There are a couple of other shots of the Brigadier or other UNIT members supposed to be at the base of the hill but are clearly done with CSO. I suspect these were pick up shots and they weren't able to go back to the location for them. Unfortunately they just stick out and look so much worse because of how good the other stuff worked. Some shoddy effects you expect and forgive, such as the mine cart ferry ride through the maggots and ooze. That would have to be a studio shot and it's fairly easy to let go. But seeing the same scene cut from location film to studio with CSO just clashes the eyes and is hard to forgive.

By my count, I've got four Third Doctor stories left but I think there's a very good chance this will end up as my favorite. It zips along, is acted well, has credible villains and is generally well shot, to say nothing of the fitting send off for Jo. It sags a touch around Episode Five and the effects of Episode Six drag it down a notch, but I'd easily call it the most entertaining of all the Third Doctor stories I've watched, though I could entertain an argument for Carnival of Monsters. In a way, this stands on much the same ground as Invasion of the Dinosaurs and I think my score should reflect that.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5