Day 179 — June 28th 2021
The Green Death Episodes Three and Four
The Green Death — Episode Three
As is so often the case with Doctor Who — as I’ve discovered over the last few months — it’s the human characters which really make the stories work. It’s as true here as it has been in any other story. We got that brilliantly effective cliffhanger to Episode Two revealing the monster for the story but this episode largely focusses back on the humans at Global Chemicals, and the story is all the better for it.
We’ve three main players in this one, and while none of them are drawn particularly deeply, I feel as though I understand them all, and totally get their motives. The two most interesting ones are of course Elgin — who’s the only one not under the control of the computer — and Fell, who’s struggling against the conditioning he’s just received. The scene in which the former desperately breaks the latter free from his programming is great, and genuinely tense as Doctor Who and Jo make their way up the pipe.
Stevens is a less interesting character, largely because his brainwashed position doesn’t give him a lot of room for character or depth. I spent a long time yesterday comparing this story to The Invasion, and it would be fair to say that Stevens is a poor comparison to Tobias Vaghun, though both characters are in similar situations as heads of companies under the control of some robots. That’s not to say that I’m not enjoying the character — there’s a great moment when he goes toe-to-toe with the Brigadier, and he’s genuinely menacing without ever changing his tone;
The Brigadier: ‘Are you threatening me, Mister Stevens?’
Stevens: ‘Yes, I think perhaps I am.’
And then of course there’s the cast of characters at the Nuthutch. They’ve all been a bit identikit so far, generic hippies, but they’re rounded out nicely in this episode and revealed to be some of the brightest minds in the country. Having been in the vicinity of the Wholeweal farm just yesterday it’s tempting to pretend it’s all real. One of the men is revealed to be working on windmills, and true to form the area today is filled with wind turbines. It’d be easy to believe that they’re the work of this little band of forward thinkers.
Indeed, there’s a lot of idea in this story which feel quite ahead of their time. In Episode One Cliff told Jo that we as humans need to start looking at alternate forms of energy, from the sun the wind and the tide. I know 1973 wasn’t really all that long ago, but given the debate is still going on today this all feels really modern. There’s a great bit in Episode Two where Doctor Who praises Cliff for just that fact;
Doctor Who: ‘Your paper on DNA synthesis was quite remarkable for your age.’
Cliff: ‘A promising youngster, huh?’
Doctor Who: ‘No, no, no, I mean for the age that you live in.’
It’s lovely to see our regulars — Doctor Who, Jo and the Brigadier — enjoying themselves for a change, having a bit of downtime and a dinner party at the Nuthutch. It’s not the kind of thing you usually have time for in a Doctor Who story, and it feels all the more special as a result. The Brigadier proves himself surprisingly amenable to the kind of people you’d expect him to take against, and the blossoming relationship between Cliff and Jo feels so carefully written as to be completely believable.
I worried yesterday that her decision to travel the world with Cliff might end up feeling a bit forced or throwaway; they don’t interact at all in the second episode, which felt like a bold decision when it comes to setting them up in a relationship. It’s used so well, though, allowing Cliff to show genuine concern for the girl, and Jo having to leave Bert behind sets up one of the best scenes of this episode, in which Cliff gets to comfort her after the man’s death;
Jo: ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying. A funny little Welshman that I
hardly knew.’
Cliff: ‘You shouldn’t feel ashamed of your grief. It’s right to grieve. Your Bert, he was unique. In the whole history of the world, there’s never been anybody just
like Bert. And they’ll never be another, even if the world lasts for a hundred million centuries.’
It’s the kind of lovely speech they’ve been giving to Doctor Who lately, and yet it fits Cliff so well. You can sense the affection between the pair, and I totally believe Jo could be so much more tempted to follow Cliff up the Amazon than to head off to Metebilis Three with Doctor Who. It’s heart breaking when Doctor Who realises that he’s lost her, but it’s also rather special. We’ve never had a companion departure set up this beautifully before.
And I’ll tell you what; I was gutted when they didn’t get to kiss!
Another 7/10.
The Green Death — Episode Four
I’ve the same complaint about this episode that I had with Episode Two yesterday — the shots of real maggots are pretty creepy, but they don’t match up even slightly with the full size props, to the point that it actively takes me out of the story a bit every time they cut to a shot of them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliant for giving a sense of scale to proceedings, but I think it’s a weak area of the production.
It’s not helped by the fact that the full-size prop maggots are brilliant. Genuinely fantastic creations. They manage to look completely real while also feeling like a bit of an exaggeration to make them more monstrous. There’s a great shot in this episode where a maggot burrows out of the ground to attack a UNIT soldier’s leg and it looks genuinely scary. It’s such a simple concept, but one that works so well.
Their movement is fantastic, too. When the one crawls across the floor at Jo in the cliffhanger reprise, or when they’re moving around out on location, it looks totally real. It seems strange to call out a maggot as one of the most effective Doctor Who monster designs ever, but they really are.
Another surprisingly successful element in this episode is Doctor Who donning a series of disguises to infiltrate the Global Chemicals building. I always though his dressing up as a cleaning lady was a silly idea and an indication of the show losing its way a bit… but actually watching it again I can’t help but love it! I think it helps that it follows a turn as a milkman, and that Pertwee is so obviously enjoying both of his disguises. It reminds me a little of the early Troughton stories, where he’d dress up at the drop of a hat.
If anything it’s made me wish Pertwee got to do this more often across his run. I can imagine a fun version of the UNIT era where both Doctor Who and the Master are continuously dressing up and trying to trick each other. It’s a fun character trait, and really gives Pertwee a chance to flex his comedy muscles.
Elsewhere I have to admit that I’m not massively taking to Cliff. Sure he got some lovely material with Jo in Episode Three but in general he’s a bit of a dick towards her, isn’t he? A lot of his comments in the first episode could be put down as ‘banter’ and possibly even a bit of flirting, but he’s awfully dismissive and patronising towards her across the story. No wonder he reminds her of Doctor Who — this is the kind of awful behaviour we had from him towards Jo in Season Eight!
I’m sure it’ll all come good in the end but right now I’m struggling to see why Jo might want to go sailing up the Amazon with a bloke who treats her like this. Fair play, though, the story doesn’t let Jo simply fall into the role of submissive wife to Cliff — she reacts to his attitude by going off on her own to catch a maggot despite the protests of all the men around her.
It’s another 7/10.
