Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Green Death Episode Six

The maggots are beginning to change into nasty flying things. At the Nuthutch, Nancy, the Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton find a maggot that has gone

because it tried to nom some of their fungus. On a purely plot level this is extremely convenient, but this is because the story is also operating at an allegorical level, where it is the attitudes and the practices of the environmentally friendly Nuthutch mannys, represented by their environmentally friendly noms, that is the solution to the evils of capitalist greed, represented by the maggots that are the product of pollution and corporate corruption.

The Doctor and Benton drive around in Bessie and feed the fungus to the maggots. Benton says

"Here kitty, kitty, kitty, come and get your lovely dindins!"

The Doctor quite rightly chastises him for this, because maggots are not cats!

Stevens talks to Mike Yates, who is being held prisoner in the Global Chemicals base. He says

"Well, young man, you have escaped us once. Believe me, it won't happen again."

but he's wrong, because (almost immediately) Yates pushes his guards away and then runs for it.

The flying thing chases after Bessie, with the SFX trying their hardest to make its attack as terrifying as possible - but that isn't very terrifying, mew. Even the Brigadier shouting "look out!" doesn't help much. There's a lot of CSO used in this bit - Barry Letts must have loved it, but it would be tough to argue these effects aren't pretty bad. They are, however, quite charming, which means these scenes become memorable for the right reasons rather than the wrong ones, if only just.

The threat of the flying thing is diminished even further when the Doctor defeats it really easily, by throwing his coat at it and causing it to crash. Yates also escapes really easily from Global Chemicals, managing most of his getaway off-screen. They must know they're on the last episode and so need to get to the climax as fast as possible.

Yates tells the Doctor what he has found out just as the Doctor has developed a cure for turning bright green and ded, which he leaves with Nancy and Jo to use on Professor Jones. The Doctor and all the UNIT mannys go to the base, but the one guard on the gate has a gun and won't let them in so they are all stuck.

Inside the base, Stevens is doing all the W-word while the BOSS is more concerned with picking his theme music:

"Stevens, you know, we should have arranged for a symphony orchestra to herald my triumph. To take over the world, to sweep into power on the crest of a wave of Wagnerian sound! You like that idea, of course? No? Oh, er... the 1812, perhaps? Or... would we dare... the Glorious Ninth?"

Fortunately for the Doctor, the sound of the BOSS hypno-eyesing all of the Global Chemicals mannys disables the guard and allows him to get into the base. Because the Brigadier, Benton, and all the other heavily armed UNIT soldiers they had with them weren't capable of doing anything. No wonder the Doctor tells them to wait outside while he goes in alone, they're useless, mew.

Stevens wants to get on with taking over the world, but the BOSS is too busy singing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Stevens ends up putting the hypno-eyesing headphones on himself to "connect" to the BOSS.

The Doctor arrives, so it is time for the ultimate showdown.

BOSS: "Stevens no longer exists, Doctor. Say what you have to say to me."

Doctor: "Of course you still exist. Don't listen to this... this machine. Fight it!"

BOSS: "Too late, Doctor. In five minutes, my power will be extended to seven other complexes throughout the world. Think of that. You have failed in your poor little attempt to halt our progress towards maximum efficiency and productivity."

The Doctor appeals to Stevens's humannyty, and with the help of the Metebelis 3 crystal de-hypno-eyeses him. Stevens presses the buttons right next to his hed that will cause the base to blow up, then tells the Doctor to get out.

There's no real need for Stevens to stay and get blowed up too, since he is freed from the headphones and isn't restrained in any other way, he just knows how this sort of thing is supposed to end and so is determined to do it properly. (While Stevens does stay to press loads of other buttons, it's clear from the lighting and the noises the BOSS is making that it is already going to blow up, so it is not at all clear that he needed to stay and self-sacrifice.)

After the big explosion for a climax, the denouement takes place at the Nuthutch, where Jones has recovered from having been got by a maggot. His marriage proposal to Jo (in the presence of the Doctor) is as socially clumsy as she is physically, which is the story's way of telling us they are well-suited and deserve each other, despite theirs having been a short relationship even by cat standards.

All the UNIT mannys come in and congratulate them, with Yates only sounding a little jealous of Jo when he says to her

"I'm sure he'll make you very happy."

The Brigadier commiserates with him and says

"Never mind, Mike, let's have a drink."

This is a callback to their pub visit together at the end of The Dæmons, and shows that they are still the best of friends.

The Doctor gives Jo the Metebelis 3 crystal as a "wedding present," as he realises this is the only context in which she is ever going to be interested in it. They have a quiet chat before Jones comes and, once again, steals her away from him.

As Jo and Jones celebrate with Nancy and the UNIT mannys, the Doctor slips out. Only Jo notices him go.

The Doctor goes outside, seems to consider for a moment taking a doggy with him as his next Companion, and then gets into Bessie and drives away. Alone. It's the end of an era.

Will his next car be called Josie?

What's so good about The Green Death?

Despite being made almost 50 years ago, The Green Death feels as modern as anything from the Doctor Who TV series being made today. This is because its central theme of environmentalism vs capitalism (or, to put it in even simpler terms, solidarity vs greed, the many vs the few) is, if anything, even more relevant now than in the 1970s - global corporations are more powerful, and the environmental issues more pressing.

The Green Death, therefore, feels prescient, as though Letts and Sloman had some real insight into the near-future UNIT era they were trying to predict. They even got it right in predicting that the politicians, when the crunch came, would be on the side of the capitalists.

On the subject of the capitalists, it's hard to imagine a story like The Green Death being made by the modern BBC and presenting corporations as unambiguous baddys. And by this I do not mean that they would present a more nuanced take on the issues, I mean that they would be more likely to suggest that a villainous executive is a singular example of a rogue agent, rather than it being the whole system that is fundamentally broken. This is the same series, after all, that gave us a story about how we shouldn't worry about an impending environmental catastrophe because the Earth would fix itself. To say nothing of Kerblam!

Global Chemicals, meanwhile, stands in for all corporate greed and abuse of power. The pollution that Professor Jones and his friends stand against could be that of any irresponsibly polluting company, the maggots a side-effect of any reckless pursuit of profit. If that seems too simplistic a message for a modern audience, I would compare it to the racism allegory in Star Trek's Let That Be Your Last Battlefield - about as subtle as a brick, but exactly what was needed for the times.

In the case of The Green Death, "the times" could be any time from the 1970s until now, and doubtless the near-future UNIT era as well.

Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis

The Green Death fully justifies its six parts, with less padding across its episodes than you would see in many four-parters. Even scenes which at first glance appear to be padding later turn out not to be, such as the cutaway scenes of the Doctor's adventures on Metebelis 3 - when watching part one they appear to be merely filler, designed to keep the Doctor away from the main action until late on in the episode, but they become relevant much later when the Doctor makes use of the crystal he obtained there.

If anything, The Green Death is too short, and could have used a seventh episode like some of the stories of season seven. This might have allowed us to see more of some of the minor characters from the Nuthutch or Global Chemicals, or made room to develop the subplot about the takeover of Global Chemicals - as it is we never did find out what became of Elgin.

Karl's Engels

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Green Death Episode Five

Instead of carrying on where it left off, the story resumes with Professor Jones looking for Jo. He spots her in the area that is about to get bombed by the RAF, so he chases after her like a doggy.

Back on the top floor of the base, the Doctor talks with the boss, or should I say...

BOSS: "I am the first Biomorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor."

Doctor: "B, O, double S? The BOSS?"

BOSS: "Precisely."

Doctor: "Ha!"

The BOSS has been programmed to maximise profit for Global Chemicals, and

"Nothing and nobody can be allowed to stand in the way of that."

This story was way ahead of its time in predicting the present global environmental crisis brought about by the capitalist pursuit of profit at all costs.

Jo and Jones take shelter from the bombing run, while the BOSS says the bombing was his idea, and claims to be "infallible." This gives the Doctor an opportunity to use one of his old friend Captain Kirk's techniques.

Doctor: "Really? Then try this one: If I were to tell you that the next thing I say will be true, but that the last thing I said was a lie, would you believe me?"

BOSS: "Er... the matter is not relevant."

Doctor: "Check!"

BOSS: "It can be worked out! Yes, er..."

Doctor: "Go on."

BOSS: "Er... your... your statements do not correlate. They are incompatible. It is not a valid query. Give me time, Doctor, I shall work it out. I shall work it out. It cannot be answered. But I will work it out, I shall work it out, I must!"

Doctor: "Check and mate! You're nothing but a machine after all."

BOSS: "I shall answer it. I shall answer it. I shall, I shall, I shall, I shall answer it! I shall, I shall, I shall, I shall answer it!"

The Doctor tries to escape while the BOSS is talking, but Stevens comes in with guards and captures him.

They put the headphones on the Doctor and try to hypno-eyes him, but are completely unsuccessful (like the mind probe scenes in Frontier in Space) and the Doctor claims to be "bored" (like a lot of scenes in Frontier in Space, lol). This leads on to a great exchange of dialogue between the Doctor, Stevens and the BOSS:

Stevens: "What's best for Global Chemicals is best for the world, is best for you."

Doctor: "Such as a little touch of brainwashing?"

Stevens: "Freedom from fear, freedom from pain."

Doctor: "Freedom from freedom?"

BOSS: "Enough! Stevens, destroy him."

Stevens: "Guards!"

Doctor: "Now, wait. BOSS, BOSS, now you're being illogical - if you destroy me, you'll destroy your bargaining power. After all, I'd make a good hostage, wouldn't I?"

BOSS: "Hmm... he's right. We shall not kill him now. We shall postpone that pleasure."

Doctor: "Pleasure? Well, well, well, perhaps I was wrong about you after all. That last remark was worthy of a human being."

The bombing run ends, but Jo and Jones are still trapped by the maggots which, surprise surprise, haven't been blowed up. The last of the explosions knocks out Jones and damages Jo's radio.

They lock the Doctor up, but he is soon rescued by Mike Yates. The alarm is raised and they have to run for it. Yates gets captured, while the Doctor escapes back to his milk float and gets away in it, indulging in an exciting, low-speed ramming of the gate on his way out. No expense spared on this blockbuster!

Jo manages to repair her radio, thus completing her long character arc as she finally accomplishes something technical. The Doctor and Benton head to the rescue in Bessie, and the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to make a noise that allows Benton to get past the maggots (somehow) to where Jo and Jones are, and get them both back to Bessie.

Back at the Nuthutch, Jones wakes up and only has time to give the Doctor and Jo the one-word cryptic clue "Serendipity" before he goes back to have more sleeps.

His neck has some green on it, which means he must have got got by a maggot. This is serious - Jones is practically a main character by now, not like those miner characters from earlier.

Mike Yates comes in, and we can tell immediately that something isn't right because it's Mike Yates of the way he was hiding behind a table for no reason before he entered the scene. Of course he's been hypno-eyesed, and ordered to kill the Doctor.

The Doctor wins Mike's trust by using BOSS-like terms such as "increased efficiency" and then he de-hypno-eyeses him using the Metebelis 3 crystal. There is time for a moment of komedy when the Doctor accidentally hypno-eyeses the Brigadier at the same time, lol.

With Yates back on their side, the Doctor sends him back to Global Chemicals to pretend to Stevens that their plan succeeded. Yates meets with a new* character, Mr James, and de-hypno-eyeses him using the Metebelis 3 crystal.

Mr James has time to tell Yates

"Takeover by the BOSS... At four o'clock this afternoon, the computer is going to..."

before Stevens comes in and makes a noise to knock out Mr James. We end on a crash zoom to Stevens's face - cliffhanger!

* I have no idea why Mr James is introduced at this late stage. It seems to me that it would have made more sense for him to be Elgin, who was last seen in part four about to be hypno-eyesed, and who is not seen again after that.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Green Death Episode Four

The maggot isn't the only one sneaking up on Jo. Hinks comes in and gets got by the maggot instead of her. The maggot then escapes, leaving only a trail of green slime behind. The Doctor and Professor Jones team up to analyse it, while Jo asks them stupid questions on behalf of the audience.

The Brigadier has been ordered by Stevens to blow up the mine, although it is the sort of thing he would have probably done anyway. The Doctor tries to change Stevens's mind, but it seems to have the opposite effect on Stevens and he says

"You have convinced me that you are an arrant sensation monger, a political hothead, and a scientific charlatan. Giant maggots indeed!"

Elgin comes in with Mike Yates, who are both pretending to side with Stevens for now. Yates isn't wearing his uniform, because he is in disguise as a civilian and is pretending to have come from "the Ministry." So a bit like the disguise the Master used back in The Dæmons, I think?

Back at the mine, Jo says to the Brigadier

"No, no, you can't."

Or at least I think that's what she says, after all Jo has been insubordinate to her commanding officer already in this story. The Brigadier proves that he can when he does blow the mine up.

Back at the Nuthutch, the Brigadier protests that, despite all the evidence to the contrary so far this season,

"I'm not such a dunderhead as you all seem to think."

because he has arranged for Mike Yates to infiltrate Global Chemicals. However, he soon undermines (so to speak) his statement when he follows it up with

"We'll see no more of those creepy-crawlies, you mark my words."

Even the incidental music knows how to react to this, giving the Brigadier a 'wah-wah-wah' in response.

Maggots are getting inside Global Chemicals. Elgin sees them and tells Stevens, mistaikenly thinking that Stevens will want to do something about it. Stevens takes out the headset and says

"Don't worry. I won't hurt you."

in a sinister manner that means he means the opposite of what he said. We don't stay to see what happens next, but we can all guess it means Elgin is about to get hypno-eyesed.

The mine being blowed up utterly fails to stop the maggots escaping, and soon they are all over the ground. The Brigadier and Benton surround them with UNIT soldiers.

They try shooting the maggots, but the Brigadier is once again left disappointed. The Doctor thinks the solution will be found in the "oil waste" produced by Global Chemicals, which he and Jones believe was the cause of the maggots' "atavistic mutation."

The only place they could get some of the waste would be from the Global Chemicals base, but even Mike Yates (who is still there and managing to avoid suspicion so far) can't sneak any out for them. He warns the Doctor they have increased security, but the Doctor is still determined to stealth in.

He disguises himself as a milkmanny to get past the guards - pretty simple stuff compared with that time he invented the Trojan Horse stratagem. When they finally realise the milkmanny is the Doctor really, he hides in a cupboard where he changes into another disguise.

At the Nuthutch, Jo is helping Jones do science on the maggot slime when she does another clumsor and knocks fungus all over the experiment. She then decides to go out and try to capture a maggot on her own, which can't possibly be a bad idea, mew.

The Doctor, now disguised as a cleaner, meets up with Mike Yates. After a bit of komedy banter based around the Doctor's choice of disguise, Yates tells the Doctor that everything important is on the "top floor" of the base, and so is the mysterious boss who, Yates has found out, Stevens "takes his instructions from."

Jones discovers that Jo's clumsorness has accidentally (and very conveniently) revealed the cure for turning bright green and ded. The Brigadier, having failed to blow up the problem earlier in the episode, decides that where he went wrong was in not blowing it up enough. He is going to get the RAF to bomb the maggots back into the egg stage. But both Jones and the Brigadier's sub-plots will have to wait for the next episode, because meanwhile...

The Doctor follows Yates's directions to get to the top floor. There he finds a control room, full of '70s-looking computers. He hears the voice of the mysterious boss. 

"Who are you? Where are you?"

he asks, obviously confused that it hasn't turned out to be the Master who was behind it all. Viewers in 1973 may have been similarly expecting this to be the twist, given that it was the Master who was the baddy in the two previous season-ending stories, both by the same writers. Instead the Doctor gets the response

"You disappoint me, Doctor. I should have thought you'd have guessed. I am the boss. I am all around you."

"Exactly. I am the computer."

This is a great cliffhanger. The Doctor may be in no immediate jeopardy, but the revelation by itself is strong enough to take us into the end credits.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Green Death Episode Three

The Doctor and Jo escape on an old mine cart, like a very low budget Indiana Jones escape. The Doctor collects a giant maggot egg as they pass by, just in case it comes in useful later on - which it will, in accordance with the law of conservation of narrative detail.

At Global Chemicals, Elgin confronts Fell and starts him fighting against his hypno-eyes. The Brigadier has another argument with Stevens in which they both threaten to use their "friends in high places" against each other, until Stevens telephones the "Minister of Ecology." There's no such thing as a Minister of Ecology, but there is a Secretary of State for the Environment, which I think is the closest thing to it. In 1973 this was a new position, only begun in 1970, and the minister at that time would have been Geoffrey Rippon, a Conservative MP. But of course The Green Death is set in the near future of the UNIT era. We get a clue to when this is when the Minister speaks to the Prime Minister and calls him Jeremy.

Since, as at time of writing, there hasn't yet been a Prime Minister called Jeremy, then that means the UNIT era must still be in the future. Unless, that is, it is set in a parallel universe where Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister. Or it could have been the writers optimistically (albeit naïvely) predicting that Jeremy Corbyn would one day be Prime Minister - a prediction that, with hindsight, was wrong, but which you must admit was pretty ambitious for 1973 considering that Corbyn wouldn't even become an MP until 10 years later. The Minister and "Jeremy" both order the Brigadier to side with Stevens and Global Chemicals.

The Doctor and Jo try to escape from the mine up a pipe that leads into Global Chemicals. Fell sees they are intruders and is going to pour waste into the pipe to kill them, but then he overcomes his hypno-eyes long enough to tell Elgin how to save them in the nick of time.

Fell goes to see Stevens, who puts his hypno-eyes headphones on Fell to try to re-hypno-eyes him. Fell struggles against it and says

"You've done something to my mind."

This leads to the mysterious boss saying 

BOSS: "Stevens, the processing was a failure. This man is of no further use. I suggest self-destruction."

Stevens: "That's not necessary, surely?"

BOSS: "You are a sentimentalist, Stevens. I repeat: self-destruction."

Stevens doesn't like it, but he has to go along with it, and presses a red button on his control console. Fell gets up and leaves the room. he runs past Elgin, the Doctor and Jo, and then jumps to his death.

Stevens makes a sad face as the boss says

"Stevens, you are a sentimentalist."

In the next scene the Doctor, the Brigadier, Jo and Professor Jones are all at the Nuthutch, where Jones explains about his plan to go "up the Amazon" in search of noms. And by "the Amazon" he means the jungle, not the internets. Given what we already know of Jones's character, he definitely isn't the sort of manny who would do his shopping there.

Hinks has found out that the Doctor and Jo have an egg, and he tells Stevens, who orders Hinks to go and steal it from them.

At the Nuthutch, Jones and Jo are about to have kiffs, because Jo can't resist Jones's... somewhat unorthodox... chat-up line:

"You shouldn't feel ashamed of your grief. It's right to grieve. Your Bert, he was unique. In the whole history of the world, there's never been anybody just like Bert. And they'll never be another, even if the world lasts for a hundred million centuries."

Smoove.

They are interrupted by the Doctor and Brigadier in the nick of time. The Brigadier leaves, but the Doctor twigs to what Jo and Jones were about to get up to, and he tries to tempt Jo away by showing off the blue crystal he got as a souvenir from Metebelis 3. Jo, however, couldn't give less of a shit if she tried (naughty Jo has only one thing on her mind right now), so the Doctor has to attempt a plan B, which involves talking to Jones about science so that he can't go back to kiff Jo.

The egg hatches and a giant maggot is loose in the Nuthutch for the cliffhanger. It starts to sneak up on Jo - maybe it just wants kiffs as well?

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Green Death Episode Two

The Doctor manages to stop the lift from crashing, but Jo and Bert are trapped down the mine. They find Dai, who is covered in green.

Stevens and Fell at Global Chemicals are arguing about whether they should help at the mine or not. A voice on the TV screen says "Stevens" to Stevens, and when Fell, who is the one who wants to help, asks

"Who was that?"

Stevens replies, in a sinister way,

"Our boss. Yours and mine."

This mysterious boss could still turn out to be the Master under another cunning alias, since 'master' and 'boss' are synonyms. Obviously it won't, because the Master isn't in this story, but viewers in 1973 weren't to know that until the boss's identity gets revealed at the end of part four.

By the time the Brigadier comes to ask for help, Fell is acting all hypno-eyesed, and even Elgin, another Global Chemicals manny, notices how strange that is. The Brigadier is suspicious, so maybe he is not as stupid here as he was in The Three Doctors, but he cannot prove anything so he sends for Mike Yates to come and help.

The Doctor meets Professor Jones and together they come up with a plan to get the Doctor into Global Chemicals to investigate. Jones leads his mannys from the Nuthutch in a noisy protest that distracts the guards while the Doctor slips in over the fence at the back.

The henchmannys may all be distracted, but the sci-fi alarms and security cameras still detect the Doctor and alert Stevens. Stevens asks his boss

Stevens: "Shall I terminate him?"

BOSS: "Negative. Apprehend him. Find out his function and purpose."

Hinks and some other henchmannys try to capture the Doctor, but he uses Venusian Karate...

"Venusian Aikido, gentlemen. I do hope I haven't hurt you."

The Doctor has been using Venusian Karate ever since Inferno - can you blame me for making that mistaik if he changes to Venusian Aikido only now?

 

More henchmannys come so the Doctor runs away, but he gets caught in a cage. Stevens comes to talk to him, and they have a civilised conversation that ends when Stevens shows the Doctor that they have no equipment that could help with the rescue at the mine.

Fortunately, the Brigadier and Dave (the Welshest of the mining mannys) have managed to get some, which allows the Doctor, Dave, and a couple of extras to go down in the spare lift. They find Dai, who has gone

but Jo and Bert aren't there.

Jo and Bert haven't been waiting to be rescued, they have been trying to escape by going to an emergency shaft. Jo realises there is light down there, and we see a green glow. The incidental music changes to let us know that something ominous is about to happen. Bert unwisely touches some green slime, which makes his paw glow green like the other mannys.

The Doctor and Dave catch up with them - the Doctor managing to stop Dave from being the fourth mining manny to Darwin Award himself by touching the green slime - and, leaving Dave to look after Bert, the Doctor and Jo go on to find a room full of giant maggots.

Sensibly they try running away. But then there is a mine-in (which is like a cave-in, only in a mine) of the roof in front of them, and three giant maggots start making scary noises at them - cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Green Death Episode One

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!"

Eurovision 2022

It was a very strange Eurovision this year, even by the high standards of that Singing Competition. We cats are not used to knowing who the winner will be in advance - usually there are favourites, but even when the mannys sing about how they are the winners it doesn't always turn out that way.

This year it was a foregone conclusion that Ukraine would win, and that Perennial Eurovision Baddys Russia would come last. Well the latter was avoided only by them not turning up at all!

What was surprising was that the UK won the jury vote (meaning they came second overall, their best result in many years), although as it is well known that they are all rigged by mannys with hardly any cats on the juries - hence the word 'gerrymannydered' -  we shouldn't be surprised when those votes are inevitably all over the place.

This year the cat vote went to Moldova, who were one of only three entries going for the 'fun and silly' type of song. The other two were Norway and Serbia. Norway in particular really went for the silly this time, with their song Give that Wolf a Banana.

Maybe some of the other countries decided they couldn't compete with that and so didn't even try? Whatever the reason, there were a lot of serious, sentimental songs - silly mannys, Eurovision may be serious business, but that doesn't meant the songs have to be!

The best of the serious songs was from Lithuania, who's singer was obviously much inspired by the 1960s. They're  a country with a good track record in Eurovision. So are Sweden, but their entry was disappointing this year. Sure, they got a lot of points and came fourth, but that's not as important as being entertaining to us cats.

There were, to be fair, a few songs that had elements of silliness, but which didn't seem to want to fully commit to it (perhaps in fear that they wouldn't get through the dreaded semi-finals, which are often harsh on the silly songs). These included Finland, France, and the ultimate winners Ukraine.

 Somebody needs to tell that manny that his pink fez is too big.

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: Live and Let Die

1973 found the makers of the expensive luxury James Bond films in need of a way to regenerate the series after Sean Connery left. Legend has it that, sensibly, they asked a cat what they should do about the character of Bond, but that they misheard his response as "Roger Moore" and the rest is history.

Live and Let Die starts with some mannys arguing at the United Nations, New York City (thank you convenient establishing caption). A manny gets killed and the camera briefly shows us the main baddy for the film, Dr Kananga, witnessing the murder as though he is just another delegate, a clever way of introducing him early.

Then we see another manny get killed, this time in New Orleans, Louisiana (thanks second convenient establishing caption) and all the other mannys around him celebrate that he is ded. 

San Monique is an Island in the Caribbean (thanks third convenient establishing caption), where a third manny is killed, this time with a snake used as the murder weapon.

The third murder takes us into the title sequence and theme song. This film has the best of all Bond theme songs. The title sequence tries to be scary with its skull faces, but it is impossible for us cats to be scared when such cool music is playing.

This is followed by some knockabout comedy with Bond, M, and Miss Moneypenny. M is there to give Bond his mission to investigate the pretitles killings, while Bond and Miss Moneypenny conspire try to keep M from finding Miss Caruso, who is hiding in Bond's house.

Sadly, this is one of the very few Bond films with no Q in it. Instead it is Miss Moneypenny who gives Bond his gadget for the film, which is a watch with a magnet in it. As soon as M and Miss Moneypenny leave, Bond immediately uses the watch to undress Miss Caruso.

"Sheer magnetism, darling."

Naughty bond, lol.

Bond arrives in New York, location of the first pretitles murder, and the baddys try to kill him straight away by making his car crash. He is soon following the baddys, but the baddys also have henchmannys following him. Even the taxi driver who takes Bond to the baddys' base is on their side.

The baddys' base is in a Fillet of Soul restaurant, which is how we know that it is not Number One who is the baddy this time. If it were, he would just spend all his time noming the fish instead of plotting world domination.

Bond falls for the old rotating restaurant wall trick and gets captured. He meets Solitaire, who is playing with her cards.

"Black queen on the red king, miss..?"

"Solitaire."

Bond actually guesses the card game she is playing is Solitaire before he asks her name, so maybe he takes her answer as just confirming it? She shows him her tarot cards and gets him to pick one for himself. He turns over The Fool, which is both a joke on one level - i.e. the straightforward reading that Bond is an idiot - but also has the deeper symbolic meaning of The Fool, that Bond is a seeker after knowledge at the start of a perilous journey.

Kananga is in his disguise as Mr Big, which is one of the weakest parts of the plot since they are so blatantly the same person. He calls Bond a "mother" (which is obviously short for motherfucker, but they wanted to keep the film's language suitable for kittens) and orders his henchmannys to kill him. Bond asks Solitaire for a card for his future. He pulls out The Lovers.

"Us?"

Solitaire looks genuinely taken aback by this, even as Bond is taken away by the henchmannys, and this is clearly the moment when she begins her character journey to eventually siding with Bond.

Bond defeats the henchmannys and escapes, meeting up with one of Felix's CIA mannys. Then Bond travels to San Monique where he does some classic spying stuff, scanning his hotel room to find the bugs the baddys have already placed there. While this could be considered a throwback to the earliest Bond films when he used to do this sort of thing more often, here it raises the level of intrigue because the baddys shouldn't have known he was there, but obviously they did. Maybe think about using a false name sometimes, Mr Bond?

The baddys send a snake in to kill Bond (which has shades of Doctor No trying to kill Bond using a pider), but he defeats it using a cigar and some aftershave.

Bond meets Rosie Carver, who claims to be a novice CIA agent on her second mission (helping the manny who got killed pretitles being the first). Bond and Rosie go to sea with "Quarrel Junior," played by Roy "Toberman" Stewart. They sail past Solitaire's house, and Quarrel says

"She's supposed to have the power of the Obeah."

a line that always gets a laugh from fans of Vampire: the Masquerade.

Kananga is getting a tarot reading from Solitaire over the 'phone. When he asks about the future she draws The Lovers again. Foreseeing that it refers to her and Bond, she lies to Kananga and tells him it is Death, and thereby takes another step away from him. As an aside, it's always the major arcana that appears in these sorts of things, isn't it?

Bond is suspicious that Rosie is really W-wording for the baddys, which of course she is, but when he tries to get her to tell him their plan she runs away and gets killed by her own side. An instrumental-only version of the theme tune plays over this scene which helps underscore how ruthless both Bond and the baddys are being.

It was Solitaire who warned Bond about Rosie, by anonymously sending him the tarot card of the Queen of Cups inverted. We have to take back what we said earlier about it always being the major arcana, this makes a nice change.

Kananga is annoyed that Bond is still alive even though Solitaire predicted Death, and for some reason this means he blames her for his plan failing. Rather than patiently explaining things like metaphor and symbolism to him, and how the Death card doesn't always literally mean some manny going "blargh i am ded," Solitaire instead gets "impertinent" which only makes him more annoyed with her.

Bond makes his way to Solitaire's house at night, when she is alone. She finds him playing Solitaire (steady on now) with her cards. Bond gets her to pick a card, and she draws The Lovers again - the third time it has come up for her (although, of course, Bond doesn't know about the second time). Bond moves in for a kiff, and we see that his entire deck is made up of The Lovers. Naughty Bond.

We did see Bond come out of a tarot card-selling shop earlier on, which must have been where he got them from. Presumably that means that somehwere there is a big pile of all the cards he didn't need: 78 identical decks, each missing its copy of The Lovers. It is amusing to think that somebody is going to find these and be very confused.

Bond has realised that the scarecrows we have seen around the island, and which scared Rosie so much, are to keep mannys away from a certain part of the island, so he heads there with Solitaire coming with him... er, accompanying him. You know what I mean, mew.

The baddys are soon aware of where they are and start chasing them. Bond and Solitaire take a bus to make the chase scene more exciting, especially when they have to go under a low bridge. They escape back to Quarrel's boat, and from there head to New Orleans where the remaining pretitles murder took place.

There Bond and Solitaire are immediately captured by the baddy taxi driver from New York. Taken to an airport, Bond escapes into a low speed car chase with him in a small aeroplane, complete with learner pilot Mrs Bell. This scene is mostly played for laughs, such as when they drive through some doors that are too narrow for the plane's wings, and Mrs Bell says

"Holy shit!"

(So "shit" was considered acceptable for inclusion but "motherfucker" wasn't. Mannys are strange.)

We see Felix's CIA manny get killed in the same way as the manny in New Orleans did in the pretitles sequence (although it cuts away once it has made its point that this is going to play out exactly the same). The baddys have hit upon an overly complicated way of killing somebody that has actually been successful, so they aren't about to change it now. Bond and Felix arrive just after they have hidden the body in the coffin and are taking it away. 

In the restaurant Bond is too clever to fall for the old rotating restaurant wall trick a second time, but then he gets caught by the old sinking restaurant table trick, while the singer sings the theme song at him. So Bond isn't the only thing that is dropping here, mew.

Bond doesn't recognise that Mr Big is really Kananga in disguise, although to be fair to Bond this is because he hasn't actually met Kananga yet except when he is pretending to be Mr Big, so has no reason to suspect that Mr Big looks and sounds almost exactly like Kananga.

Bond provokes Mr Big until he pulls his mask and wig off to show he is Kananga really. The reason why the disguise was so poor is explained by the fact that we see the mask come off on camera, which makes for an effective moment, but means they couldn't get a different actor to play Mr Big and then switch them between shots.

"Quite revealing."

quips Bond.

Kananga reveals his evil plan to win a game of Monopoly by giving all his drugs away to the other players until he is the only one left. At least we think that is his plan, it is quite complicated and cats don't do drugs so we don't really understand what it means.

Bond is taken by the henchmannys to the place where they keep their drugs, as well as "quite a few thousand" crocodiles and alligators. The main henchmanny, Tee Hee, feeds some of them, and then leaves Bond behind to become crocodile noms.

Bond tries to use his magnetic watch to escape, but this isn't successful (subverting our expectation that, when used, a gadget will get Bond out of his predicament) and he has to instead escape by running across the backs of the crocodiles to reach dry land. This is a great stunt, though by its nature it is over very quickly.

Bond then mischievously lets the crocodiles into the base where the henchmannys with the drugs are to nom them (the henchmannys, not the drugs; crocodiles aren't stupid), before setting fire to the base and escaping in a speedboat.

More henchmannys chase after him in their own boats, while one of them goes in a car. He gets caught by everybody's least favourite komedy policemanny, Sheriff J. W. Pepper, at least until he sees the boat chase coming towards him and says

"What the f..."

(The second swerving of the word fuck in the film, and there's another from Sheriff Pepper a moment later.)

Sheriff Pepper joins the chase, and it escalates further when more police arrange for a "roadblock" (we think they mean riverblock, lol) across the bridge in the path of the chase. But both Bond and his pursuers just crash straight through it and carry on.

This is a lengthy chase sequence, but it is expertly choreographed so that the action changes things up frequently, with all manner of minor incidents to keep things fresh, such as when Bond's boat breaks down so he changes to another one that he finds nearby, or when the chase crashes through a wedding. Even Sheriff Pepper as the comic relief has his proper function within the plot, since his communicating with the other policemannys helps communicate to us viewers what is going on in the chase. This is useful because Bond has no dialogue at all throughout the whole chase.

Bond eventually makes it to Felix and Sheriff Pepper finally finds out who he has been chasing all this time.

"Secret agent? On whose side?"

We go back to San Monique for the final act of the film. The baddys are going to kill Solitaire in the same way as the third pretitles murder, with a snake. Bond sets some bombs, which look a lot like the bombs used by Blake in Star One, to blow up all of Kananga's drugs.

Bond runs in and rescues Solitaire just as the bombs go off. He shoots one Baron Samedi, which breaks like a statue, but then another one comes out and has a swordfight with him. Bond knocks this one into the coffin full of snakes, then takes Solitaire with him into the baddys' secret underground lair.

Kananga is waiting for them.

"Ah, Mr Bond, there you are. And Miss Solitaire as well. Hardly unexpected but most welcome."

Kananga is making a late bid to become the quintessential Bond villain. He even has "an underground monorail," as Bond points out with a raise of his eyebrow. He'll be trying to feed Bond to his sharks next.

Kananga actually has a reason for the platform lowering Bond and Solitaire into the shark pool descending so slowly, it is to "let our diners assemble." This gives Bond time to escape by using his watch to cut through the ropes tying him up, which is an ability we have not seen before this so feels like a bit of cheat, and doubly so when the magnetic ability we did see demonstrated didn't actually end up doing anything useful.

Bond and Kananga have a fight, which ends when Bond forces Kananga to nom the gas pellet from his anti-shark gun. 

This causes Kananga to blow up like a balloon and then pop, in one of the most hilariously bad special effects ever seen - and we don't just mean in James Bond films, mew. Even though you only see it very briefly - a second or two - it is still awful, especially coming now at the film's climax. What were they thinking when they decided to go with this effect? Solitaire asks

"Where's Kananga?"

"Well he always did have an inflated opinion of himself."

responds Bond. Well we have to conclude that they needed to blow up Kananga so that this quip would make sense.

With Kananga defeated, the next scene shows Felix saying goodbye to Bond and Solitaire as they get on a train. Tee Hee comes in for one last fight with Bond. His fake arm makes him super-strong, but it proves his undoing when Bond cuts the wires that he uses to control it, and then throws him out the window. Solitaire asks

"Now what are you doing?"

"Just being disarming, darling."

Solitaire really does set him up perfectly for the quips, doesn't she?

The final shot of the film shows Baron Samedi sitting on the front of the train trolololing, and then he turns into a scary flaming skull as the credits roll, and the theme song plays one more time.

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Luxury