June 27: The Green Death Episodes Five & Six

Back to the slow burn with episode five, but at least there's enough incident to sustain interest through the slower bits (which, honestly, has been the case with all the episodes of The Green Death so far).  Still, you can't help but be a little exasperated at Jo, who's gone to the slag heap to recover a maggot for Professor Jones to experiment on.  She doesn't know that the Brigadier's about to bomb the area in a (futile) effort to destroy the maggots, but it's still a silly thing to do.  But when Jones goes after her, he's the one who ends up knocked out and infected by maggots, not Jo.  And just as he'd discovered a cure for the green death in the previous episode, too.  Eventually they're rescued, but Jones is in a bad way, and if the Doctor can't discover what the cure for the green death was (the only clue he has is Jones muttering "serendipity", because the cure, the special fungus Jones has been breeding, was knocked onto the treated slides by Jo), then Jones will become its latest victim.

While Jo and Jones are stuck on the slag heap, the Doctor is having a conversation with the computer on the top floor of Global Chemicals: it's the first Biomorphic Organizational Systems Supervisor, or BOSS.  It's been linked to Stevens' mind in order to help it make the leaps of logic that a computer can't do, but in the process it's turned into "a megalomaniac machine".  The Doctor tries to escape but is discovered by Stevens before he can do so, which leads to a lovely scene where BOSS is trying to condition the Doctor the same way he conditioned Fell (this time complete with a nifty little electronic effect around the Doctor's head) but is unsuccessful:

BOSS: The subject is not responding to therapy!
DOCTOR: Therapy?  Oh, what a pretty euphemism.  You're not trying to tell me this is all for my own good?
BOSS: It is.
DOCTOR: And that it hurts you more than it hurts me?
BOSS: It does.
DOCTOR: (happily) You didn't mean it to though, did you?

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Green Death)

Mike Yates holds the Brigadier and the Doctor at gunpoint.
(The Green Death Episode Five) ©BBC

Thus thwarted, BOSS sends the Doctor to a holding room, where he's set free by Mike Yates, but in the escape attempt Mike is caught and conditioned to try and kill the Doctor.  This is where that blue crystal the Doctor took from Metebelis III comes in handy, as the Doctor is able to use it (somehow) to break Mike's conditioning.  Then Mike is sent back into Global Chemicals to find out what's happening, but after he deconditions a man named James⁷⁷ and learns that BOSS is planning a takeover of something at four o'clock, he's caught by Stevens.  "Just can't depend on anyone, can you, Mr. Yates?" he says.

Episode six shows the Doctor accidentally discovering how to kill the maggots, as one dies while eating the fungus stuff.  Armed with this knowledge, the Doctor and Sergeant Benton drive out to the slag heap and throw chunks of fungus at the maggots, who devour the stuff and then perish.  "Kitty, kitty, kitty," Sergeant Benton starts calling out entertainingly at one point, "come on!  Come on and get your lovely din-dins!  Come on, kitty, kit—"  "Sergeant Benton!" the Doctor interjects, appalled.

Just as they think they're done, though, a huge fly starts dive-bombing them -- one of the maggots having pupated.  It's, er, not the most convincing effect in the world, particularly as they've shot it on film and then superimposed the Doctor and Benton via CSO, which means they're both on video and have yellow fringing all around them.  It also doesn't last very long, as the Doctor throws his cloak into the air (another less-than-convincing effect) and ensnares the fly, which crashes to the ground and dies.

They still haven't figured out Jones's cure for the green death yet, but when Jo mentions how she knocked brown powder on his slides, the Doctor works out what "serendipity" means and has Jo show him.  It's the same fungus as killed the maggots, and it means that they can cure Professor Jones.  But Mike Yates has managed to escape from Global Chemicals and warns the Doctor about BOSS's planned takeover.  The Doctor heads to Global Chemicals, only to find that BOSS has completely taken Stevens over.  BOSS is an amazing character, by the way, happily humming to himself and taunting Stevens about his nervousness while he wonders if he should have staged a concert to mark the occasion.  "Stevens, you know, we should have arranged for a symphony orchestra to herald my triumph.  To take over the world, to sweep into power on the crest of a wave of Wagnerian sound!... No?  Oh, er, the 1812, perhaps?  Or would we dare the glorious Ninth?" BOSS asks.  It's such a welcome change from the typical talking computer (even if Doctor Who itself hadn't done much with that particular cliché) that it's incredibly entertaining to watch.

But as I said, the Doctor arrives to stop BOSS from taking over, which would then cause the Stevens process, and therefore the toxic green slime, to go worldwide (in addition to the whole "enslaving the humans" thing).  "Stevens, listen to me," the Doctor says.  "You've seen where this efficiency of yours leads.  Wholesale pollution of the countryside.  Devilish creatures spawned by the filthy by-products of your technology.  Men walking around like brainless vegetables.  Death.  Disease.  Destruction."  But Stevens is under BOSS's control, so the Doctor produces the blue crystal, bringing Stevens back long enough to come to his senses and initiate the destruction of the entire complex by "cross-feeding the generator circuitry."  With a lot of crazy color effects and then a giant explosion, the world is saved.

The Doctor presents Jo with the blue crystal as a wedding
present. (The Green Death Episode Six) ©BBC

Not quite done yet, though; as mentioned before, this is Jo's final story, and so we have to have her farewell scene, where she announces that she's going to follow Jones into the Amazon to look for a high-protein fungus.  Jones asks her to marry him (well, sort of; he more announces his intention to marry her and she agrees), and an impromptu celebration begins at the Nuthutch.  The Doctor realizes he's lost the battle for Jo's affection, so after gallantly giving her the blue crystal as a wedding gift, he quietly slips away and drives off into the night.  (Well, I think it's supposed to be night; they've clearly put a filter on the camera to do day for night filming, but unfortunately the sun is still blazing away in the shot.)  It's quite an emotional moment⁷⁸, and they do a nice balance of celebrating Jo's happiness with the Doctor's loss.

And so The Green Death comes to an end.  This story made a big impact on the audience at the time -- it's probably one of the most fondly-remembered stories of Doctor Who's 20th-century run -- and it's not hard to see why.  The story is paced well (a welcome improvement over the authors' last story, The Time Monster), starting small and getting bigger and bigger.  The pro-environmental theme is also nice because it roots the problem in something relatable: the mad computer angle might muddy the waters a bit, but this is a story about the dangers of pollution.  Yet The Green Death doesn't beat you over the head with this theme, content instead to let it percolate in the background for anyone who wants to think about it; for those that don't, it's just about a freak green slime that causes mutations and death.  Like all the best Doctor Who, it works on multiple levels.  It is a bit patronizing to the Welsh, though, with lots of dialogue ending in questions and "boyo"s thrown in for good measure (not to mention things like Jo describing the deceased Bert as a "funny little Welshman"), but the goodwill that this story generates tends to outweigh these concerns.

So now that we've reached the end of season 10, it's worth taking a look back not just at the previous season, but at how the show has changed over these ten years.  Season 10 itself is generally a triumph, with some of the best stories the show has ever produced.  Not only that, but the public knows it too; the ratings have been up all season and the move to end the Doctor's exile is a good one (even if in terms of settings there's really not that much difference between this and the previous season).  It gives them more freedom to tell different stories, and if the group they've put together this time around is any indication, Doctor Who will be on top for a while.  But there's also a sense of endings, with Katy Manning leaving and Roger Delgado's death (as well as a final hurrah for both these title/end graphics (run upside-down for the end credits of both episodes five and six) and the use of the word "episode" (sob) -- from here on out, the installments will be referred to as "parts"), so how the show moves forward after these events will be interesting to see.  Season 10 is a high point for Doctor Who.

But the show itself has adapted considerably since its beginning, moving from an educational-cum-adventure show to a more formulaic "monster" show into its current incarnation, an action-adventure serial.  Yet that flavor of wonder and learning that made the early seasons such a success isn't gone.  It's still present in most of the stories up through season 10, and there are a lot of moments where Doctor Who tries to both showcase ideas (such as, say, the black hole in The Three Doctors, much of which was accurate based on 1972's understanding of the concept (and is still the most accurate black hole portrayed on the show)) and slip them into the background (e.g., the segregation that exists between the Overlords and the Solonians in The Mutants, some of which is explicit but some of which is casually added as a detail in the background).  I don't know if Sydney Newman's thoughts about this period of the show are recorded, but I would think he would still recognize Letts and Dicks' version as the same one he had come up with back in 1963, just with some cosmetic differences.  There's just as much to enjoy now as there was then, and even with such a restrictive format (and such a massive sea change) as the Doctor's exile to Earth, that sense of investigation is still present, letting us know that this is the same show as before.  Ending the exile only confirms that by showing us stories that are similar in feel to the ones from the '60s, and in the meantime they've surreptitiously increased the importance of the "contemporary problems of Earth" element, almost without our realizing it.

In general, these first ten years of Doctor Who have been a strong success, and it's easy to see why this show became one of the most successful television shows ever created.  Here's to the next ten years and the strengths and changes that those years will bring, while still retaining that core appeal.







⁷⁷ This was supposed to be Elgin, but the actor playing him, Tony Adams, developed peritonitis and thus couldn't be present for the final recording session, so his lines were given to a new character played by Roy Skelton.
⁷⁸ And it's a moment explicitly paid tribute to by the end of Sherlock series 3 episode 2, "The Sign of Three".  Although if you know anything at all about Mark Gatiss and his tendencies towards pastiche in just about every thing he writes, this is perhaps not the most surprising thing in the world.