Doctor Who has always been known for spinning interesting, even classic yarns; for somehow managing, despite serious budgetary constraints, to create visual effects that could be creepy, scary and effective – some of the time. What Doctor Who had never done – before The Green Death – was consciously produce a message story. In the final adventure to feature Jo Grant, Doctor Who took on the challenge of environmental issues – and the possibilities of artificial intelligence – in one of the show’s most rewarding serials.
The Green Death opened with a miner in a Welsh coal mine, terrified, running from something. Portions of his body glowing an eerie green. Cut to UNIT headquarters, where The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) – in a great series running gag – is talking about taking Jo (Katy Manning) to Metebelis Three, while she is getting angrier and angrier about a newspaper article about Global Chemicals and pollution. Neither is paying any attention to the other.
After a bemused Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) interrupts their separate monologues, Jo makes it plain that she is going to Wales to find out more about what’s going on up there. The Doctor heads off to his original destination, while Jo and the Brig find something very wrong in Wales – mutated maggots, and the completely green body of the terrified miner – who is also very dead.
Add to the proceedings a Welsh eco-warrior, Professor Clifford Jones (Stewart Bevan) and an evil AI (voiced by John Dearth) and you have a set of plot arcs that wend their through six very odd, very scary episodes.
Like all Doctor Who serials of the time, the effects were varied in quality and effectiveness – film of masses of maggots was Chroma-keyed into many scenes, but puppets had to be created for scenes in which they interacted with characters. The puppets were ingeniously put together, but they didn’t quite have the same effect.
The use of Chroma-key technology was itself intermittently ineffective because of a change from a blue background on the studio shot scenes of the characters and the new yellow background made scenes in darker sequences (like in the mine) look as fake as they were.
On the other hand, Robert Sloman’s script is smart, creepy and extremely well thought out. In her final bow, Jo comes across as much smarter, more mature and courageous than at the beginning of her run in Terror of the Autons. She has grown from an annoying kid into a strong woman over the course of her adventures.
One of the intriguing things about Jo falling in love with the Professor Jones character on the show is that Jones was played by her boyfriend at the time. Their chemistry makes it completely believable that she would leave The Doctor to marry him and go off to be an environmentalist.
The serial was directed by Michael Briant (who also directed several eps of Blake’s 7). One of his strengths is allowing the characters to develop naturally and some of the serial’s best scenes are those when Jo and The Doctor are having their more introspective moments (Pertwee’s Third Doctor has rarely been so good) – but he never allows emotional beats to unduly slow the proceedings. The result is one of the series best stories.
The two-disc Special Edition of The Green Death has a host of special features – including two sets of commentaries: one for the complete serial, with Manning, producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks; one that features Richard Franklin (Captain Mike Yates), Mitzi McKenzie (Nancy) and visual effects designer Colin Mapson (eps 3-5), Manning and the man who rebooted the series in 2005, Russell T. Davies (ep 6). The first disc also includes the now familiar InfoText feature that presents information about the making of the serial over the actual episodes.
Disc Two contains: The One with The Maggots (making of featurette); Global Conspiracy? (spoof investigative report); Visual Effects – Colin Mapson Interview (and making a maggot demonstration); Robert Sloman Interview; Stewart Bevan Interview; Wales Today (current look at Green Death locations); Doctor Forever! – The Unquiet Dead (the story behind the show’s 2005 reboot); What Katy Did Next (Serendipity); The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of The Doctor (the two-part adventure that brought back Jo Grant – with optional commentary by Manning and writer Russell T. Davies); a 10-minute Photo Gallery; PDF Material (Radio Times Listing; Production Notes).
Grade: Doctor Who: The Green Death – A
Grade: Features – A+
Final Grade: A