Story 69 - The Green Death

In which people descending into the disused mines of the village of Llanfairfach turn up dead - and glowing bright green. The Brigadier is frustrated when the Doctor decides to travel to Metebelis III, and Jo elects to take her leave at the Wholeweal Community in the Welsh village - run by the young Nobel Prize winning ecologist Clifford Jones. Jones is opposed to the Global Chemicals plant which has been set up in Llanfairfach. He thinks pollution from the plant is responsible for the bizarre deaths - something denied by Global's MD Dr. Stevens. Jo's first meeting with Jones proves inauspicious as she ruins one of his experiments - harvesting fungi for food. She decides to investigate the mines with an ex-miner named Bert. The Doctor has a dreadful time on Metebelis, attacked by hostile plant and animal life, but he does manage to obtain one of its famous blue crystals before heading back to Earth - and joining the Brigadier at Llanfairfach. The mine's lift is sabotaged by Stevens' chauffeur (and henchman) Hinks - leaving Jo and Bert trapped. Stevens proves uncooperative with the rescue efforts. Bert touches some glowing green slime pouring into the mine and becomes infected. The Doctor finds Jo - and they discover that the mine is infested with gigantic mutated maggots.

The Doctor obtains a maggot egg, and they escape up a pipeline into the Global Chemicals plant, assisted by an executive named Elgin. The Brigadier's efforts to investigate the plant are continually thwarted by Stevens, who has powerful friends in government. His promise of cheap, clean fuel is a lie, waste products being dumped illegally in the mine. This is what has mutated the maggots. The egg hatches and Jo is almost bitten. Hinks, who had come to the community to steal it, is killed instead. The Brigadier puts Mike Yates into Global Chemicals undercover. He is then ordered to blow up the mines. Maggots then start to emerge from the ground all over the spoil heaps surrounding the village. The Doctor discovers that Stevens is not the real head of Global Chemicals. He is in the power of its sentient super-computer, known as BOSS - Biomorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor. Stevens' mind is linked directly to the machine, and others are brainwashed by it. It plans to take over all Global employees across the planet, before taking over the world to run on rational lines.

Clifford Jones is bitten by a maggot whilst rescuing Jo from the spoil heaps. The creature which had hatched at the community is found dead. It had eaten some of Jones' fungus food. This substance can kill the maggots and cure the "green death". As he and Benton spread fungus to destroy the maggots, they are attacked by a giant fly, which the Doctor is forced to kill. Yates is brainwashed by BOSS into going to the community to kill the Doctor and Brigadier. The Doctor uses the blue Metebelis crystal to break the conditioning. He then goes alone to Global Chemicals to stop the machine. He uses the crystal on Stevens. He elects to sacrifice himself to destroy BOSS - blowing up the plant. Jones announces that he is going on an Amazonian expedition to locate a new protein-rich fungus - and he asks Jo to marry him and join his travels. She has fallen in love with him and agrees. As everyone celebrates the engagement, the Doctor slips quietly away and drives back to UNIT HQ in "Bessie".

This six part adventure was written by Robert Sloman (and an uncredited Barry Letts), and was broadcast between 19th May and 23rd June, 1973. It marks the departure of popular companion Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and is the final story of Season 10.
Letts was a keen environmentalist, and often used to bemoan the damage being done to the planet by polluting industries, as reported in The Ecologist, New Scientist and other periodicals. Wishing he could do more about such issues, Terrance Dicks pointed out that a Doctor Who story could be devised around his ecological concerns. Previous stories such as Colony in Space had dealt with similar topics. Letts and his sometime writing partner then went off and came up with this tale. Manning shared Letts views, so it made an ideal departure story for her character.
Clifford Jones (Manning's real life boyfriend at the time, Stewart Bevan) is set up as a Doctor substitute. At one point Jo actually describes him to the Doctor as "a sort of younger you". Their first meeting even mirrors her introduction to the Doctor in Terror of the Autons - she ruining one of his experiments.
As well as writing out Jo, this story also begins a short Mike Yates arc, which eventually sees his character leave the programme as well. Likewise, the Doctor's arrival at Metebelis III, after a couple of failed attempts, sets the scene for Pertwee's departure.

Principal guest artist is Jerome Willis as Stevens. He makes for a superb, purely human, villain - eventually redeemed when he breaks BOSS' mental conditioning. The computer is voiced by John Dearth, who will be seen in the programme as Lupton in Planet of the Spiders.
The story has come in for some criticism for its portrayal of the Welsh characters, who cross the border into stereotypes.
Despite this, it is one of the most popular Doctor Who stories of the 1970's - "the one with the maggots".
The creatures are realised with rod puppets (built around terrier skulls), real maggots in model landscapes, and even by the use of inflated prophylactics. The giant fly is a fine model, but the flying sequences are less successful. There is some rather poor CSO as the Doctor and Jo travel through the mine and the lift scenes.
Episode endings for this story are:

1. Jo and Bert are in the mine's lift-shaft when the machinery goes out of control - threatening to plunge them to their deaths...
2. As the Doctor and Jo look for a way out of the mine, there is a  rockfall and they see maggots advance towards them...
3. Jo is reading alone at the Wholeweal Community, unaware that the egg has hatched and the maggot is crawling towards her...
4. The Doctor makes his way to the top floor of  Global Chemicals and meets the real BOSS - the computer...
5. Yates has tried to get an executive named James to help him. The man suddenly drops dead, and Yates is confronted by Stevens...
6. Having slipped away from the impromptu engagement party - observed only by Jo - the Doctor drives off alone into the sunset.

An excellent story with very few faults - Letts and Sloman redeeming themselves after the rather poor Time Monster which closed the previous season. Jo's departure is well sign-posted and her decision to go quite natural and unforced. The Doctor knows something's cooking, and even tries to keep her and Cliff apart. The final scenes are quite heartbreaking.
Things you might like to know:

• Elgin (played by Crossroads stalwart Tony Adams) vanishes half way through the story. Adams fell ill and had to step down, but his scenes couldn't be redone. A new character called James (played by Roy Skelton) takes over what would have been the rest of his role.
• The Brigadier speaks to the Prime Minister on the 'phone - someone called Jeremy. It was assumed that UNIT stories were set slightly in the future, when Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe might be PM.
• In one of the early mine scenes, as Dai Evans is about to use the telephone, you can clearly see a disembodied arm giving him his cue.
• Pertwee gets to indulge his love of dressing up and silly voices by disguising himself as a cleaning lady and an old milkman. Both allow for a bit of funny business - the sticky moustache and the Lady Bracknell thing with the bucket.

• There is a very funny mockumentary called "Global Conspiracy" on the DVD release, which has some of the cast reprising their roles to talk about events in Llanfairfach in the 1970's. Clifford Jones has a veggie food empire, Elgin says he fell ill and missed a lot of the action, and Dr Stevens is MD of the BBC. Roy Evans (Bert) plays his ballet-dancing twin brother.
• In the SJA story Death of the Doctor, Katy Manning reprises her role as Jo and we get to learn of her life after this story. She is still married to Cliff and has a brood of children and grandchildren (one of which, Santiago, joins her in this). She still fights the good fight against political corruption and ecological concerns. Quite right too. It's a wonderful story, written by RTD, and will feature as an extra on the Special Edition DVD release of this story later in 2013.

That Was The Week That Was 19.5.13

And what a roller-coaster of a week it was - though not intended by the BBC to be such (I hope). No sooner had I posted last week's news round-up than I heard about the US Blu-Ray bungle. As it was, I managed to completely avoid overt spoilers (apart from the official BBC ones) and joined the 5.46 million who watched it on transmission last night.
This figure is up quite a bit from the previous episode.
I have read that Doctor Who had 5 out of the top 10 places on i-player for the month of April. Most popular story being The Rings of Akhaten.

Funniest story of the week was the near punch-up at a Star Wars Convention in Norwich, between SW and DW fans. Not a lot usually happens in Norwich.

Sad news of the week was the passing of a number of people associated with the programme.
Costume designer for the latter Troughton era, Bobi Bartlett, died in April though the news only broke this month.

Norman Jones, who played Khrisong in The Abominable Snowmen, Major Baker in The Silurians, and Hieronymous in The Masque of Mandragora, died on 23rd April at the age of 78.

Aubrey Woods, whose superb performance as the Controller was the best thing about Day of the Daleks, passed away on 7th May at the age of 85.

And Sean Caffrey, Lord Palmerdale in The Horror of Fang Rock, died on April 25th aged 72.

The DWM Daleks special "bookazine" (dreadful word) was supposed to be in the shops on Thursday. Except, of course, it wasn't. One on-line retailer (Galaxy 4) now has it available from 22nd May. Come back next week to see if DWM have actually managed to get this into any shops.

With no "bookazine" (still a dreadful word) the award for best publication of the week goes to the latest edition of The Beano - including the reprint of the 1981 summer special which the Doctor was seen reading in The Rings of Akhaten.

Finally, with no new Doctor Who for a full 6 months, this blog can get back on track with its classic series reviews - The Green Death is next up on Tuesday, plus my new on-going series of landmark stories.

Review - The Name of the Doctor

I have come up with a conspiracy theory all of my own - namely that this semi-series has been so patchy, often disappointing, that the finale would stand out as a beacon of genius.
They needn't have bothered, if this is the case, as The Name of the Doctor didn't need to be prefigured by those lesser stories to stand out.
It is a little work of genius anyway.
I was concerned that a 45 minute story would be too rushed to deliver on the promise of answers to a few mysteries. I sat down to watch it expecting to come away disappointed yet again (too much hype about changing the programme forever) - but was won over by the first 30 seconds.
The first Doctor and Susan, stealing the TARDIS and leaving Gallifrey for the very first time. (Nice to see that he was already an old man, and had already adopted the Edwardian clobber - and Susan wasn't someone he adopted on his travels).
Later we find out that it is Clara who points him towards the right TARDIS - which does slightly diminish The Doctor's Wife where the ship claims to have chosen him as much as he it.
What the second Doctor was doing by a Californian beach (in a fur coat) I suppose we will never know.
Interesting that three of Clara's encounters with previous Doctors took place on Gallifrey. A coincidence, or something more? Probably just coincidence.
I'm a bit disappointed that of all the McCoy clips they could have used they chose the utterly stupid Dragonfire end of part one "cliffhanger". If only Clara could have fixed that...
There were lots of theories about Clara kicking about the internet, and most were smart enough to recognise the TARDIS reaction to her as significant - it hating paradoxes.
The gist of the story is that the Great Intelligence steps into the Doctor's time-stream to rewrite it - to turn all his victories into defeats. Clara follows to undo this, and is split into multiple copies that interact with the Doctor throughout his incarnations. Handily, the Doctor follows and saves her.
This all takes place on Trenzalore - where the Doctor's grave is to be found.
One thing I would say is that we hardly know Clara (and she and the Doctor hardly know each other), and it seems slightly strange that she should be the one to sacrifice herself to save him. It would have felt better had this come at the end of a longer standing companion's story arc.
River turned out to be a post-Library projection throughout. Why the Doctor could see and interact with her was never really explained - not in any scientific way at least. She implies there is something more to the connection between her and Clara than the psychic link.

The Whispermen made for creepy new monsters - but were somewhat underused. They appeared simply to be empty shells for the Intelligence to inhabit. I sincerely hope that the Great Intelligence hasn't been destroyed forever. I'd still like it to turn up one day and revisit those Yeti robot blueprints.
I loved the Victorian Glasgow sojourn for Strax, but must admit some of his one-liners were quite misplaced as the story progressed.
Some stunning visuals on display - another glimpse of pre-Time War Gallifrey, the graveyard of Trenzalore, and the Doctor's tomb - the massive TARDIS wreck.
One thing which didn't work visually was the insertion of characters into the old material. It worked with Clara and the First Doctor, thanks to a grainy feel to the image, but on the rest of the occasions it was too obviously green screen work.
I suspect a lot of people will be unhappy about the whole "Name" thing. River says it off camera, and that's your lot. Of course, I never thought for a minute that we would be told the name. Frankly, I would have been annoyed if it had been stated - as I have a belief that, rather than adding to a character, revelations usually diminish them by demystification. Leave the Doctor as "Who?" for another 50 years, please.
And talking of "Who?", what are we to make of the John Hurt Doctor? He is the Doctor, but how so we will have to wait until the Anniversary to find out. I already have my theory (it involves Guilt and the Moment), but I'm sure there will be lots more over the coming six months.
Did The Name of the Doctor change the programme forever? Personally I don't think it did.

• The Great Intelligence rewrote the Doctor's history - but Clara undid the damage. 
• We've seen the Doctor's ultimate resting place - but even fixed points in time can be rewritten. (It was the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS, and there were only 11 Doctor's in the time stream seen by Clara, so unless they plan to end the series forever with Matt Smith, Trenzalore is only one possible future).
• So there's another Doctor we never knew about? We've already had the Valeyard.
• The Doctor's name would be revealed - but it wasn't.

Quite what the game-changer was, I'd love to know.

Landmarks No.5

The Daleks' Master Plan.
Significant in so many ways.
For many years it was the longest running story (at 12 episodes). To be honest, it's really a 13 part adventure, Mission To The Unknown forming a Doctor / companion / TARDIS-less prequel.
This story will be chiefly remembered for the death of a companion for the first time. Poor Katarina (Adrienne Hill) came onboard in the previous story, but the production team had already realised that the character wasn't going to work. A character from ancient history would need everything explaining to them.
Hill's very first filming in the role was actually her airlock death sequence, on film at Ealing.
Viewers at the time would have been doubly shocked to see the apparent replacement, Sara Kingdom, also bite the dust before the end credits.
There won't be another companion death until poor old Adric in 1982, though it now happens with tedious regularity.
Episode seven - The Feast of Steven - marks the programme's first ever "Christmas Special" - in that it was broadcast on 25th December and is a bit of a stand-alone episode, with a high comedy quotient and a distinct lack of Daleks.
This episode also marks the first time that the fourth wall has been breached, as Hartnell includes all of us watching at home in his toast. I say first time, as it does happen a couple of times, less blatantly, in the Tom Baker era, when he addresses remarks directly to the camera with no other characters present.
Nicholas Courtney makes his début in the show, a few years before the iconic Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart. Courtney had earlier auditioned unsuccessfully for the same director (Douglas Camfield) but lost out to Julian Glover for the role of King Richard I in The Crusade. Camfield remembered him for the role of Bret Vyon in this.
The time-meddling Monk becomes the programme's first returning character (as opposed to a race of monsters).
This marks the late Raymond P. Cusick's final design work on Doctor Who.

(Not) The Spoiler-Free Name of the Doctor Round-Up...

Each week during the series' run, I have been delivering a little round-up of spoiler free preview items, plus a bit of my own speculation as to what might feature. Usually, I try to include everything that is officially out there in the public domain, as well as looking at some of the cryptic items from other previews.
This week, it's just too much of a minefield to manoeuvre.
Unfortunately, the BBC seems hell bent on doing a fair amount of spoiling itself. (There's actually a conspiracy theory doing the rounds that the US Blu-Ray was released early deliberately - though I don't personally subscribe to the logic of this).
Four images were released yesterday that are pure spoiler (a couple of pictures of it, a picture of him, and a picture of there) - and even though they are official BBC America releases, I'm going to ignore them.
Likewise the implications of Steven Moffat's offer of an extra scene to be released if spoilers stay off the web - which IMHO is actually a massive spoiler in itself...

(Light) Sabres v. Sonics

This story is quite funny - from the BBC news website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-22542222

Landmarks No.4

The Time Meddler
Imagine what it would have been like to view this for the very first time, without the benefit of the explanatory story title.
Audience reaction in 1965 was decidedly mixed. What were toasters and gramophones doing in 1066 Northumbria? Some people found the whole set-up intriguing - whilst others thought it just silly and switched off.
Apart from the anachronistic items, the first three episodes are a fairly humdrum historical affair - a mere backwater to the big events of that year. Everything changes with the episode three cliffhanger and Vicki's line: "The Monk's got a TARDIS!"
Suddenly the Doctor isn't the only person who can travel in time. There's another - the Monk - who also happens to be from the same planet, and has a similar space / time vessel. The Monk's is more advanced - and it is stated that his is some 50 years newer - one of the first indications as to the Doctor's longevity.
So, the first of the now commonplace pseudo-historical stories.
It is the first story not to feature any of the original companions.
Most importantly, we meet another Time Lord (the race still unnamed at this point), and see inside another TARDIS (a generic name for these capsules and not unique to the Doctor's ship).
It will take a long time for these revelation to bear fruit, but a lot of what we regard as Doctor Who today starts here.