{"id":654,"date":"2018-08-14T07:47:41","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T11:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/?p=654"},"modified":"2023-07-26T08:15:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T12:15:53","slug":"the-green-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/third-doctor\/the-green-death\/","title":{"rendered":"The Green Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat’s best for Global Chemicals is best for the world, is best for you!\u201d \u2013 Stevens<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Goodbye Jo! You\u2019re leaving in one of the top episodes of the Pertwee era. Yes, it has a ton of obvious CSO (early \u2018green screen\u2019) but there is so much good writing and characterization and acting and true scares in this story that it overcomes those. Of course, the biggest and most memorable aspects of the show are the giant maggots\u2014amazingly well realized in design and movement. There are many a time where your skin crawls at the thought of them. The heavy themes of environment, pollution, and corporate greed make the story feel very grown up as well.<\/p>\n

The show uses some stereotyped characters but to good effect. The rural miners are endearing (poor Bert!) and by their contrast serve to highlight just how soulless the company is. Professor Jones and the rest of the \u201cNuthatch\u201d are seventies kitsch to the hilt, yet they\u2019re never played up as silly. Indeed, the whole point of them is that they are just as brilliant and educated as any academic but don\u2019t have to be stuffy and afraid to embrace new ideas; in fact, it enhances their ability to benefit the world. (She\u2019s under used, but I love how Cher-lookalike Nancy is played so straight as earth mother and mum and yet turns around to be a world class biochemist.)<\/p>\n

UNIT comes blazing back in a way\u2014the suddenly super-casually dressed Brigadier seems to be again the thick headed military \u201cdunderhead\u201d (even sitting down for drinks with Stevens as though totally under\u00a0his thumb)\u00a0 until we have the great surprise of Mike Yates turning up in the guise of a government official and we realize that\u00a0the Brigadier was actually playing him all along. Yet again we get to see Yates as quite the brave action hero, and I love the comedic interplay between Yates and the Doctor as he sneaks into the facility.<\/p>\n

I used to not like the idea of BOSS\u2014yet another supercomputer that somehow becomes sentient and takes over. Stories set in the future or with alien technology can get away with this, but how can circuits and keyboards put together by contemporary people become a thinking entity? On this viewing, however, I realized that the story frames it as a computer that was experimentally connected to a human brain–thus altering its abilities and programming–which then fed back and \u2018rewired\u2019 the human to in turn adapt the computer towards even more sentience. This kind of feedback loop between mechanical and organic and the uncharted territory it represents make it a much more plausible story point for me. It\u2019s also interesting that they chose to have the voice of the computer be so natural (rather than the usual stilted mechanized type) and its personality so breezy (as opposed to rigid and logical). It enhances the idea that it has taken on a bit of human psychosis in the process.<\/p>\n

Speaking of thoughtfulness in the writing, I never realized until now that they purposefully signal Jo\u2019s move from the assistant of the Doctor to future wife of Professor Jones by having her first encounter with him virtually mirror her first encounter with the Doctor. Just like with the Doctor in Terror of the Autons<\/em>,\u00a0Jo stumbles into\u00a0Jones’ lab where her overeager attempts to please on first meeting are rebuffed as he is rudely wrapped up in\u00a0work until\u00a0she accidently ruins an experiment leading to an angry first encounter. They also give Jones several Doctorish lines (like his comforting words to Jo\u00a0about the uniqueness of every person in the universe including the miner Bert) to emphasize the parallel. We\u2019ve seen Jo go on this huge arc over time from a rather silly girl to a capable agent anticipating the Doctor\u2019s moves, so it\u2019s fitting that as she transitions to a new hero figure in her life that she reverts back a bit. The emphasis on the Doctor having to deal with his own emotions in letting go as \u201cthe fledgling flies the coop\u201d is unique to this point of the program.<\/p>\n

Beyond the story line and characters, there is also a lot of nice direction in the show. Just the way they shoot the large pulley wheels of the mine in the first episode is nicely done for instance. Putting Jo in a flowing gown in the fire-lit library of the community brilliantly evokes the feelings of a vampire horror film as the cliffhanger follows\u00a0the maggot coming up behind her.\u00a0The close-up on the vacant face of Stevens as a tear rolls down his cheek after the agony of effectively killing his best friend is quite affecting. The closing shot of the lonely Doctor driving off in silhouette after saying goodbye is an iconic part of this episode. The dialogue is even quite clever at times too\u2014like how Yates conveys secret meaning in his monitored words on the phone or the Doctor\u2019s verbal parries with the supercomputer and Stevens (\u201cFreedom from fear, freedom from pain!\u201d \u201cFreedom from freedom?\u201d). There\u2019s a lot to like in this story.<\/p>\n

Best (or worst) unsettling moments:<\/h4>\n

Maggots, obviously. But before we even get to that point, the glowing green death of the first miner is quite alarming as we can see the bones and veins of his hand at the start and it really does look horrific once his whole body is engulfed.<\/p>\n

Firsts:<\/h4>\n
    \n
  • Visit to Wales<\/li>\n
  • Heavy environmental themes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Regrets:<\/h4>\n

    People will get hung up on some of the dodgy effects and especially the woeful flying insect. That whole scene feels a bit tacked on anyway so it would have been nicer for it to have been handled differently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cWhat’s best for Global Chemicals is best for the world, is best for you!\u201d \u2013 Stevens \u00a0Goodbye Jo! You\u2019re leaving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1552,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}