In the serial, the alien time traveller the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and the organisation UNIT investigate a South Wales mine where waste from an oil plant has killed miners and made maggots grow to giant size.
Plot
The Third Doctor, has a short misadventure after finally arriving on Metebelis 3, retrieving one of their psionic blue crystals. When he returns he, Jo, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart investigate the mysterious death of a miner in the abandoned coal mine in Llanfairfach in South Wales. The miner was found dead and glowing bright green.
Upon arrival, the Brigadier meets with Stevens of the nearby Global Chemicals plant. Meanwhile, Jo goes down the mineshaft with a miner called Bert to help another man, Dai Evans, who has called for help at the bottom of the mine. They find Dai, 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 goes down after them and finds Dai dead.
Deeper inside the mine, Jo and Bert find a vast lake of bright green slime, filled with huge maggot creatures. 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. Bert is infected by the slime and dies that night. The egg hatches out into a giant maggot, which escapes from the house into the dark.
The next morning, the Doctor heads to Global Chemicals to find out who is in charge. On the top floor of the complex, he discovers the BOSS, a supercomputer with its own megalomaniacal personality. It runs the company, controls key staff members, including Stevens, and is responsible for the polluting chemical process.
Local environment scientist Prof. Clifford Jones discovers a cure for the "green death" infection in the form of a local fungus, but is infected with the 'green death' before he can share his knowledge. The Doctor discovers the cure in Jones' lab. The Doctor and Benton drive around the slag heaps, scattering the fungus, which proves deadly to the maggots.
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. The Doctor breaks Stevens' hypnotic state using the blue crystal, and Stevens, infuriated at what the BOSS has done to him, cross-feeds the generator circuits, causing the whole plant to explode, killing Stevens and destroying the insane computer.
Jo and Jones announce they are getting married. The Doctor gives his blessing and gives her the blue crystal, but since this means the end of Jo's travels with the Doctor, he quietly slips away while the party is in full swing.
Production
In the footage of the maggots around the quarry site, several of the maggot props were inflated party balloons; (some inflated with air, others with water). The colliery used for filming was Ogilvie Colliery near Deri, Caerphilly, while Global Chemicals was the RCA International factory in Brynmawr. 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 [sic]."[1]
In 2004, Barry Letts said he was unhappy with the colour separation overlay effect used for the cavern scenes in this story.[3]
Cast notes
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 (see 'Home media'), Adams actually uses his real illness as an explanation for his character's sudden absence towards the end of the story.
The part of Professor Clifford Jones was played by Stewart Bevan. Bevan was at the time engaged to Katy Manning. The fictional couple become engaged at the end of the story, whereas Bevan and Manning separated a year after the show was recorded.[4]
An edited, condensed single omnibus episode of the story was broadcast on BBC1 at 4:00 pm on 27 December 1973,[7] reaching a higher audience than the original episodes, with 10.4 million viewers.[8] A repeat series of all six episodes was shown on BBC2 from 2 January to 6 February 1994, with ratings of 1.3, 1.1, 0.8, 1.1, 1.3 and 1.3 million viewers respectively.[9] BBC Four showed the story in three double-length episodes at 7:10 pm on 3–5 April 2006.[10][11][12]
Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping gave the serial a favourable review in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), though they noted that it "patronises the Welsh".[13] In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker felt that the story was "nicely set up", although they said that the script resorted to stereotypes with the hippies and the Welshmen. While noting that the story "suffers from an over-reliance on CSO" and that the acting of the Global Chemicals employees failed to impress, they praised the maggots, and Jo's departure.[14] In 2010, Mark Braxton of Radio Times awarded it five stars out of five. He described The Green Death as "entertaining, frightening, poignant and important". He also felt the CSO was "woeful" but the maggots a success, and additionally praised the moral and cultural messages.[15]
In 2012, SFX named Jo's departure as the fourth-greatest companion farewell, noting how it was the first time the Doctor was "truly upset" since leaving Susan.[16] In 2009, they listed the scene where a giant maggot approaches Jo as the eighth-scariest Doctor Who moment.[17] The magazine also listed the scene where the Doctor dresses in drag as one of the silliest moments in Doctor Who's history in a 2010 article.[18] In 2013, Ben Lawrence of The Daily Telegraph named The Green Death as one of the top ten Doctor Who stories set in the contemporary time.[19] In the book Doctor Who: The Episode Guide, Mark Campbell awarded it ten out of ten, describing it as "one of the very best UNIT stories, offering terrifying maggots, horrible green slime and some very scary cliffhangers. There is also real character development and an attempt to address adult themes in an adult way." He also thought Jo's departure was "one of the series' saddest moments."[20]
A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in August 1975. The company Global Chemicals had to be changed to Panorama Chemicals because a real Global Chemicals was found to exist. Hulke tells the story from several points of view including the possessed Stevens, the psychotic Hinks and even a hungry maggot. An unabridged reading by Katy Manning of the novelisation was released on CD in September 2008 by BBC Audiobooks.[21]
Home media
The story was released on VHS in October 1996 as a two-tape set. On the back of the VHS box, BBC Video presented this serial's release as a tribute to Jon Pertwee, who had died a few months earlier in May 1996.
The Green Death was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on 10 May 2004. The Green Death featured in issue 48 of Doctor Who DVD Files, published 3 November 2010. A Special Edition DVD of the serial was released in the UK on 5 August 2013 containing extra bonus features including a new 25-minute documentary on the making of the serial called "The One With the Maggots", as well as The Sarah Jane Adventures serial Death of the Doctor, which reunites the Doctor and Jo.
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 serial was released on Blu-ray as part of "The Collection - Season 10" boxed set in July 2019 featuring special features from both DVD releases as well as new content created specially for this release.
^Brian Justice is incorrectly credited onscreen on Episode Four as "Yate's Guard" instead of the grammatically correct "Yates's Guard" as listed in the Radio Times.
References
^Haining, Peter (1983). Doctor Who: A Celebration. W.H. Allen. p. 145. ISBN0-491-03351-6.
