The Green Death - Episode 1

The Green Death is quite a special story for several reasons. Firstly it’s the final story to feature Katy Manning as Jo Grant, a role that she has played since January 1971 comes to an end in a mine in south-Wales. This is the final story of the 1972/73 season and its been encouraging how this season has been so much stronger than the previous one. With the exception of ‘Carnival of Monsters’, we have been treated to so quality stories. Another reason why this story is special is more personal to me as it was the first story to be released on VHS that I purchased. I remember going to the shops and buying it, it was a double pack release with a purple sleeve and it was released a couple of months after Jon Pertwee had passed away and this is one of his best stories. Before I get started with the actual episode, I should also point out that this is the 350^th episode of Doctor Who and Jon Pertwee’s 97^th episode as the Doctor.

It should be pointed out that this is another story that has a major moral to it and this was written by Robert Sloman with uncredited help from Barry Letts. I don’t mind there being a moral message to a story as long as it doesn’t hijack the whole thing and in this case the message blends in well with the story. The story hits the ground running as we are introduced to two of the main supporting characters. Stevens is the man who runs Global Chemicals and in his first scene he gets into a ‘debate’ with Professor Jones. This scene does a pretty good job of painting Stevens as the villain and Jones as the good guy. Stevens comes across as a great villain and this is shown during the criss-cross scene between Stevens and the Brigadier and the Professor and Jo. By the end of the episode we are shown there appears to be an outside influence to Stevens’ behaviour, the mystery has begun.

The first scene with the Doctor and Jo does a good job of achieving two things, first it starts the Metebelis III part of the story and also it puts in wedge between the Doctor and Jo. Jo seems to fall in love with Jones without meeting him. The moment when Jo tells the Doctor that she’s only got 10 minutes and the Doctor responds by saying that she’s got all the time in the world is a lovely moment and it feels like the Doctor knows that he is losing Jo and he doesn’t like it. It’s good to have the Brigadier back in what is the beginning of the end for the character and for the golden era of Doctor Who.

We get to see Metebelis III for the first time and whilst it is as blue as the Doctor has said, it’s not the warmest of planets and I immediately thought that Jo had made the right decision. This is confirmed when the next scene is of Jo and the Professor have their first scene where they do this clumsy and almost flirty scene. The Doctor spends half the episode on the blue planet and it isn’t until the 20 minute mark that he’s back and speeding towards Llanfairfach in Bessie going at least twice the speed limit.

The cliffhanger is rather good because we know Jo’s in peril and the lift wont stop so in the real world this would be a major problem so the threat is real and the close up of Jon Pertwee’s face helps make the tension work. It’s a great opening episode and I am really looking forward to the next five episodes and think that this is going to be a great way of writing Katy Manning out of the show and ending the Anniversary season.