Tuesday 24 May 2022

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?

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