The Green Death - Episode 5

As we approach the final stages of this story, it’s important really that it feels like its building to something.

The Doctor starts the episode talking to the BOSS. The first big scene is of these two have a debate about the human mind. Considering that Jon Pertwee is acting on his own, he manages to give a great performance during this scene. Pertwee has a good episode because after the stuff with the BOSS and Stevens, he has a good attempt at escaping from Global Chemicals. Mike Yates pops up every so often to remind us he’s still around and starts by helping the Doctor escape and then gets hypnotised into trying to kill the Doctor and then is ‘treated’ and goes back to Global Chemicals to pretend that he’s killed the Doctor however as is always the case with someone who works for UNIT, he over does it and raises suspicion with Stevens when he reckons that Jo’s death wasn’t important.

Jo and the Professor are in a spot of trouble at the beginning of the episode after Jo went off to find a maggot. Now they are both trapped in a cave with a few maggots as friends. There is another bit where Jo’s changing feelings after Cliff gets hurt during the explosions. Even though it’s her own fault for being in this situation, Katy Manning is very good in this episode. As this is her penultimate episode its perhaps the best time to just think about how far the character has come since that first episode of ‘Terror of the Autons’ and how far the show has progressed during this period.

This might sound weird but this is where I learnt the word serendipity and its meaning. The word is used after the Professor becomes infected by the green stuff and this means that its game set and match as far as the tennis match for Jo’s feelings go. There is nothing the Doctor can do to turn this around.

The CSO used in this episode is curious. Not because it doesn’t work but because it’s used in a scene which could have been done on location. Especially when in the same scene they go from studio to location filming, it then goes back to the studio before ending with location filming. It ruins the illusion of this being filmed outside. It’s one thing when it’s all filmed one way or another but it doesn’t make sense to do it both ways. The production values in this episode weren’t quite as good as they usually are and that’s a shame considering how good the story is.

Tony Adams was forced to leave the show due to illness and so had to be replaced by Mr James played by Roy Skelton. The voice of the Daleks, Cybermen and of course Zippy from Rainbow, it’s good that he finally gets to appear on screen. He is involved in the cliffhanger which unusually doesn’t involve the Doctor or Jo but it’s still a good cliffhanger, largely due to Jerome Willis’ performance and the stare he gives which the camera zooms into as the theme tune plays. The main issue that I have with the story at this stage is that it doesn’t feel like it’s building up to anything and if I didn’t know beforehand that the next episode would be the last then I would be expecting a few more episodes before the end so it would have been a surprise in 1973 to know the truth. Still a great story with great characters and maggots that don’t undermine the moral that this story has subtly put in front of us.