The Green Death is the fifth and final story of season ten of Doctor Who, first broadcast in 1973, and is the eighth of the Pertwee Six-Parters. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates, and John Levene as Sergeant Benton.
As a story written by Robert Sloman and Barry Letts, who also wrote The Dæmons and The Time Monster together, we might expect that this will be another big, season-ending epic starring the 'UNIT Family' and featuring the Master as the baddy. Well, in expecting that we would only be half-right, sadly.
It starts with Stevens (Jerome "Sandbaggers" Willis - we already had Willie Caine turn up in Frontier in Space, this season is practically a Sandbaggers preunion), an obvious baddy if ever there was one, trying to persuade the local mannys to W-word for him. Professor Jones (Stewart "Max in Death-Watch" Bevan) tries to warn them against him. Their argument is interrupted by an emergency at "the pit" where a manny has gone
In the Doctor's laboratory, the Doctor and Jo talk at cross-purposes, with him wanting to go in the TARDIS to the planet Metebelis 3 and her wanting to visit Professor Jones. This conveys to us how they have different priorities in their lives, and foreshadows that the time will soon come for them to part.
The Brigadier doesn't want the Doctor to go to Metebelis 3, he wants him to go to where the ded manny is:
"But Doctor it's exactly your cup of tea. This fellow's bright green apparently, and dead."
This line is classic Brigadier, but the Doctor is not persuaded and he still determines to leave in the TARDIS. The era of the UNIT family is coming to an end, and here we can see it cracking before our eyes, as the Brigadier says
Brigadier: "I wouldn't like to have to order you, Doctor."Doctor: "I wouldn't advise you to try."
The Doctor makes one last attempt to persuade Jo to come with him, and it is presented as her having to choose between his way of life (adventures in all of time and space) or else staying at home on Earth, confined to one time. A nice dramatic dilemma for Jo, if you forget that the TARDIS could return her to Earth the same moment it leaves (as was shown in Colony in Space) so Jo could have gone with the Doctor and still visited Professor Jones afterwards. Obviously we have to forget about that possibility because it's more dramatic for Jo to have to choose, and choose she does:
Jo: "But, Doctor, don't you understand? I've got to go! This Professor Jones, he's fighting for everything that's important, everything that you've fought for. In a funny way, he reminds me of a sort of younger you."Doctor: "I don't know whether to feel flattered or insulted. It's all right, Jo, I understand."
Jo leaves, and when the Doctor is left on his own he only has us to talk to:
"So... the fledgling flies the coop."
Even without that line we can see his real emotion written on his face. He leaves in the TARDIS. Alone.
The Brigadier drives Jo to the Nuthutch, where Professor Jones lives. He isn't happy that he has to do the investigating himself, because with the Doctor and Jo both "gallivanting off on a pleasure jaunt" (as he puts it) he has nobody else in UNIT, nobody at all, that can do it except for him.
Jo meets Professor Jones and goes straight into a komedy scene where she ruins his experiment. This exactly parallels her first scene with the Doctor back in Terror of the Autons, reinforcing Jo's earlier description of Jones as a "younger" Doctor.
The Brigadier arrives at Global Chemicals and meets Stevens. The first thing he does in his investigation is to telephone back to UNIT HQ to try to get the Doctor to come and help him, lol. Silly Brigadier.
The scenes with Jo and the Brigadier are intercut with very short clips, almost snapshots, of the Doctor's adventures on Metebelis 3. The disjointed nature of his scenes makes it clear to us that they are not the focus of the story, a reversal of the norm for this show where we would expect the Doctor to be at the centre of things. Also, they're all blue, and this isn't called The Blue Death.
Unable to reach the Doctor, the Brigadier has to do his own W-word. He asks Stevens for some exposition, and their dialogue plays out in parallel to Jo talking with Jones. The Global Chemicals mannys say their oil refining process has no waste and no pollution ("Minimal. Negligible.") while Jones says it must produce "thousands of gallons of waste." It is clear that they can't both be right, and it is equally clear that the obvious baddys are the ones who are lying.
The Doctor returns to Earth after having been chased back to the TARDIS on Metebelis 3. The telephone is already ringing when he comes out into the lab. The very next scene sees Bessie driving towards...
...Llanfairfach (thanks convenient establishing sign). There, the mining mannys are conducting their own investigation of how their manny died earlier on, and one of them goes down in the mining lift. His name is Dai, which is blatantly tempting fate.
When the Brigadier leaves after saying that he and the Doctor are also going to investigate the mine, Stevens starts to act like he has been hypno-eyesed (suggesting the presence of the Master in this story, even though I know he isn't in it, alas). He orders Hinks, one of his henchmannys, to ensure that
"Nobody must go down the mine."
and then puts on a massive pair of '70s headphones that are obviously going to hypno-eyes him some more.
Jo arrives at the mine, having decided to do her own investigation of it. She is just in time to offer to go with Bert to rescue Dai, who has telephoned his friends from down the mine to ask for help. We viewers can see, though the mining mannys can't, that Dai has a green paw just like the manny who died at the start of the episode. We also get to see that Hinks has sabotaged the mine lift - or rather we see him sneaking away from the mine, and can infer from this that he has sabotaged it.
The Doctor and the Brigadier arrive in time for the cliffhanger:
"The brake won't work. It's out of control!"
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