Profit (1996)

Profit is a short-lived, somewhat trashy drama series from the heart of the 1990s, as is made clear when you watch it by the unmistaikable look and feel of American TV from that era - the lighting, the music, the clothes and the hairstyles; you couldn't be anywhen else.

In basic premise it resembles House of Cards (the original British version preceded it by six years) in having at their cores a charismatic lead character who plots and schemes to advance themselves, committing many heinous crimes along the way and, crucially, conspiring with the audience as they do so. In this they are of course both following in the crooked footsteps of Shakespeare's Richard iii.

The twist in this series then comes in the setting - not politics as such, but big business. Specifically the Corporate America of the 1990s, with main character Jim Profit (played by Adrian Pasdar) manipulating his way up the ranks of "Gracen & Gracen," a multinational company that does... business things. It is never made clear exactly what kind of corporation it is, just that it is very big, very successful, and very corrupt.

Each episode sees Profit trying to advance his own agenda (which might be to make money, secure promotion, eliminate rivals, or some combination of the three) while simultaneously having to avoid threats to his position, or even having his past crimes exposed by the more honest characters. He always ends up coming out on top, although the formula has a bit of flexibility in it - in that sometimes Profit gets rid of obstacles (and mannys) in his way permanently, while at other times the status quo is merely restored by the time the end credits roll.

Jim Profit is a character completely without scruples or any kind of morality, and from his rather too on-the-nose surname we can tell that he is an allegory for the capitalist system and its relentless pursuit of, yes, profit, no matter the cost. However, most of his one-off guest victims are shown to be morally worse even than him - they are murderous Russian gangsters, or rapists, or even (in the final episode) a predatory paedophile. This aids in allowing us to side with Profit and root for him, even as the show makes it clear he is not going up against these people out of any sense of altruism, but purely for his own gain.

Possibly the most interesting feature of the series is that it was one of the first to present the internets not as a futuristic, sci-fi concept, but as simply part of the characters' everyday lives, even if the SFX used to portray the internets looks hilariously far-fetched and unrealistic to modern eyes. In this way the show was ahead of its time, as it would be the better part of a decade later before the internets became an established feature of mainstream drama, rather than something extremely niche or exotic.

Another way in which Profit was ahead of its time was in having a villain protagonist, which was apparently not popular with viewers when it was first broadcast, leading to low ratings and the show being cancelled after only eight episodes. Since the turn of the century there have been several very successful series that contain elements of what Profit was trying to do - Dexter, Mad Men, Hannibal, to name only a few.

But a swift cancellation was most certainly the best thing that could have happened under the circumstances, since it allowed the series to gain the reputation of having been killed too soon 'before its time' rather than having been run into the ground over far more episodes than the formula could really sustain or justify. I'm sure I could name more than a few TV shows that fall into that category too.

The whole series, as well as a documentary about the making of the series, is currently available if you search in the Yousual places. In the meantime, here's a documentary clip about the writers' followup project:

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

Four: Breakthrough

Ronnie waits in his house for McCroon to come to try to kill him. He comes right into the house and points his shotgun at Ronnie, but Ronnie is more concerned with solving the mystery of Emma's murder than with his own safety so, instead of being scared, Ronnie gets angry and challenges McCroon to explain himself. When that doesn't get McCroon to open up (er, with the explanations, I mean, not with the gun) he tries saying

"Please, I want to know."

Then McCroon gets shot by a policemanny sent by Ross.

Ross, meanwhile, meets Pendleton when the police find the body of one of the Gaia team that was drowned at Northmoor. Pendleton uses a geiger counter to discover the body is radioactive, like Emma's hair was. This scares all the policemannys but Pendleton remains calm - an effective way of conveying both the seriousness of the radiation as well as Pendleton's character.

Being radioactive is a little bit more subtle than being bright green and ded, but this makes the Gaia team the equivalent of the miner characters from The Green Death, while Pendleton must be the Brigadier - he even has the moustache, which is a bit of a giveaway now that I think about it, mew.

So far Emma's ghost has been the only paranormal element to this story, and that could still - if you were so inclined - be dismissed as being all in Ronnie's mind. But when he returns home again he sees that a water spring has, er, sprung up in the place where Emma died. Which, in case you were wondering, is not the sort of thing you would expect to see happen in a normal thriller.

Ronnie hears young Emma's ghost singing

"All I want is ratatouille, 

Ratatouille, ratatouille.

All I want is ratatouille, 

Rat-a-touille."

which is an annoyingly catchy jingle, bordering on the (rata)twee, but it leads him to a recipe book where Emma hid a clue for him - a page with a list of street and road names on it.

"I've been trying to tell you about this for ages,"

says Emma.

"Don't lose it - it's important."

Jedburgh is watching Come Dancing, his "favorite TV program" (although I have to assume he means his favourite TV programme that was on in 1985, seeing as Blakes 7 ended in 1981), when Ronnie arrives at the CIA house to ask him about Gaia. Jedburgh helped found it in 1977 at the order of his president, but the president then changed his mind and Jedburgh was ordered to "dismantle" it - but by then it was already too late for him to stop.

Ronnie tells Jedburgh he is thinking of going in to Northmoor, and Jedburgh offers to go with him, but only if Ronnie can get a "proper" map for them.

"That's what I hoped you'd say."

says Ronnie, by which he means 

Mac puts Ronnie in touch with a pair of mannys to help him get access to the MI5 computer. This is a very unusual form of computer hacking, unlike any hacking I've ever seen portrayed elsewhere in films or TV. They go to a new building where the computers have only recently been installed and connected to MI5's network, and use one of those.

Pendleton and Harcourt are almost immediately aware of what is happening. Pendleton tries to delay MI5 from sending the police after Ronnie, but they don't go along with him. Police cars arrive with flashing lights and a bunch of policemannys rush in. The mannys helping Ronnie run away but he keeps his cool - like when he faced McCroon earlier, his safety is only of secondary concern to Ronnie when he is this close to the truth.

Ronnie gets the map of Northmoor from the file after searching for the street names from Emma's list, and then he prints it out on an old fashioned dot matrix printer - the closest to The Matrix this computer hacking ever gets, lol.

Finally Ronnie runs away with the police very close behind him, making for a tense and exciting chase sequence. Ronnie eventually loses the police in a crowd at the Barbican Theatre, where he meets up with Clemmy.

"Good evening, Mr Craven, what a pleasant surprise."

Clemmy may claim this, but the suspicion has to be that she was waiting there for him, so she meant the "surprise" was only on his side. They go into the theatre to hide and watch a play.

Ronnie: "What's it about?"

Clemmy: "Incest."

I have seen it claimed that this line is actually a meta-reference to Edge of Darkness itself, hinting at a subtext of incest between Ronnie and Emma. Which just goes to show that you can read anything into anything should you so choose, mew. Ronnie and Clemmy end up going back to his room together, where they have kiffs.

The next day Pendleton summons Ronnie back to the Houses of Parliament to give evidence to the committee. There he meets Godbolt, who admits that he W-worded for Bennett at Northmoor. He goes further, and tells Ronnie that when Emma was murdered it was Ronnie that McCroon was really after, sent by IIF, because they thought that Ronnie had been the one who showed the Gaia team the way into Northmoor.

Ronnie: "They got it wrong!"

Godbolt: "Like they always do. It were me."

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

Three: Burden of Proof

Part three begins by briefly switching the POV character to Lowe as the police raid his flat to arrest him. Although we also see the policemannys getting ready and taking up their positions, which builds the tension because it means we know something is about to happen, rather than it being a surprise, which it is for Lowe.

It cuts away just as the police burst in through Lowe's door, so we don't see exactly how Lowe ends up defenestrated and badly hurt. Ronnie and Jedburgh only arrive on the scene after it has happened, and Ronnie's friend says

"The bastard jumped."

though since Ronnie's friend is a policemanny we have to suspect that the suspect was "jumped" out of the window by the police.

DCS Ross tells Ronnie to go to the hopistal to ask Lowe who the murderer was. Before he sees Lowe, there is a long atmospheric scene as the place reminds Ronnie of when his wife was in the hopistal.

While Ronnie is talking to Lowe, we are being introduced to the baddys of the series, Jerry Grogan and Robert Bennett (Hugh "Hastings" Fraser, not normally cast in this type of role but so good at it that it's a wonder he didn't end up typecast after this). Bennett owns IIF, which makes him the equivalent of Stevens, while Grogan is the manny who wants to take it over, which I suppose makes him the BOSS. They are the only ones who know everything that happened in Northmoor, because not even Jedburgh, Harcourt and Pendleton know everything yet.

Lowe names McCroon as the murderer, who Ronnie once arrested when he was in Northern Ireland. Ronnie falls out with Ross because he thinks Lowe and McCroon were just henchmannys for somebody else who gave them the gun and told them where to find him, while Ross thinks they could have managed that on their own and that Ronnie is "cracking up" in seeing a larger conspiracy behind it.

Emma's ghost is also worried about Ronnie, appearing to tell him

"You've got to be strong like a tree, don't break."

This is the first time we hear Ronnie get compared to a tree, and it was supposedly foreshadowing for the original ending of the series that was planned* before they changed it, so in the end this doesn't really foreshadow anything.

Ronnie goes to see another old friend, Mac from Northern Ireland. When Ronnie tells Mac that McCroon murdered Emma, Mac immediately sees further than Ross did and asks

"What's in it for McCroon, why would he do it?"

Ronnie asks Mac to help him get access to the MI5 computer, which Carlisle couldn't (or wouldn't) do for him back in part two.

Jedburgh and Pendleton go to visit Terry Shields, and find that both he and the manny who was supposed to be keeping him under surveillance have been killed. This is a superbly tense scene, as Jedburgh looks through the house for Terry and the camera follows closely behind him. It reminds me in a way of the scene in Smiley's People where Smiley finds Otto Leipzig, in that the killing is long over and the danger has passed, but Smiley/Jedburgh/we don't know that.

The Houses of Parliament is the appropriately grand setting for the first meeting of all the main characters, when Ronnie attends a parliamentary inquiry into Grogan's IIF takeover at the request of Harcourt and Pendleton. He sees Bennett and Grogan across the room and his eyes meet Bennett's. We don't need the incidental music to tell us this is significant, the acting is more than sufficient.

Harcourt explains (part of) what's going on to Ronnie:

Ronnie: "You want me to be a witness?"

Harcourt: "We'll provide you with all the information necessary to blast Bennett out of the water."

Ronnie: "Why me?"

Harcourt: "Our intelligence is coming from people whose cover we can't afford to blow, but anything coming from you would look as though you picked it up in the course of investigating your daughter's death."

Ronnie is introduced to "Clemmy" (Zoë Wanamaker), who is a friend of Jedburgh and another spy. She is able to tell Ronnie a bit more about Jedburgh's past, which adds some much-needed humour to this episode and prevents it from being pitch-black. Especially when the next scenes include Emma's funeral and another flashback to when Ronnie's wife died.

Ronnie returns to his home, where he and Ross expect that McCroon will try to kill Ronnie again. They would appear to be correct, as we see McCroon watching the house from a distance. That means that this is a cliffhanger!

* An earlier draft of this review explained what the originally planned ending to the series was.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

Two: Into the Shadows

There isn't a reprise of the important events of part one. Instead we see the policemannys listening to a tape of Ronnie describing Emma's murder from his point of view, and then Ronnie listening to a radio news programme reporting on the current state of the murder inquiry, which together combine to cleverly recap part one while at the same time presenting it to us in a new way.

The episode kicks off with a little moment of Bondesque action as Ronnie loses the policemanny who has been sent to follow him around, so that he can secretly visit his contact Carlisle. He asks his friend to check out Emma's gun, and also asks if he can use Carlisle's computer to look at MI5 files. We get our first sense of the true seriousness of the plot when Carlisle replies

"That's more than my life's worth."

Is this hyperbole? Probably not, as things will turn out.

Ronnie visits Terry Shields (Tim "Lord Percy Percy" McInnerny), an academic lecturer and Emma's boyfriend, who is the nearest equivalent to Professor Jones in this story. He is heavily involved in "socialist" politics, and he and Ronnie immediately don't get on. When Ronnie asks him what Emma was involved in that might explain the meaning of her last words

"Don't tell..."

Terry writes the word "AZURE" on his mirror as a clue - they may not like one another, but they both want to solve the mystery.

When Ronnie leaves, Emma appears to him in a brilliantly directed shot that makes it appear as if she has just... er, appeared to him. This trick is used several times and each time it is simple but effective. She asks

"What does the word 'azure' mean?" 

"The word 'azure' is a police intelligence term. It means the room is bugged or under some sort of electronic surveillance."

but this scene turns into a flashback of when Ronnie told Emma this once before, so we are led to presume she told Terry in turn, which is how come he knew the word, and how he knew that Ronnie would know the word.

Next Ronnie meets Pendleton who takes him to meet his partner Harcourt (Ian "Harcourt" McNeice). After some preliminary chat, Harcourt comes out and asks Ronnie if he knew that Emma led the Gaia raid on "the nuclear waste planet at Northmoor." Bob Peck underplays Ronnie's response beautifully. He only says

"No."

but you can see him swallow as the implication of this sinks in. They reveal a bit more about how well-connected they are when they produce Emma's gun, given to them by Carlisle, and Ronnie very quickly adjusts to this revelation and realises he has to be more honest with them.

They "are interested in anything that goes on at Northmoor" and Harcourt reiterates what Pendleton told Ronnie at the end of episode one, that they want to know if the murderer was after Ronnie or Emma. Harcourt is quite frank that they "have no intention of putting [Ronnie] in the picture" but they still want Ronnie's help and are prepared to give him some clues.

They reveal that Godbolt, the manny that Ronnie was investigating before the murder happened, was connected to Northmoor, and that "the Northmoor management" might have had a motive for committing the election fraud. So this seemingly unrelated plot strand, that looked as though it was only there to (at best) introduce our main character, or at worst to misdirect us from the real plot, turns out to be relevant after all. A bit like the Doctor's trip to Metebelis 3.

Ronnie goes to the police headquarters at New Scotland Yard (ironically this is in London, not in Scotland, mew), where the policemannys think they know who the murderer's accomplice and getaway driver was - a manny called Lowe, who Ronnie once arrested. They then make Ronnie get interviewed about the murder on TV... on TV.

Ronnie gets another telephone call in his hotel room. This time it is from Darius Jedburgh, who wants to meet Ronnie at a restaurant even though it is late at night and Ronnie wants to have sleeps. But he wants to solve the mystery more, so he goes. 

We quickly get an idea of Jedburgh's humour from his dialogue, such as the following exchange:

"You ever been to Dallas, Craven?"

"No sir."

"It's where we shoot our presidents."

Jedburgh talks about country music and brings up Willie Nelson and The Time of the Preacher, which of course we heard playing in the key scene of episode one. He almost goads Ronnie into singing it by getting the words wrong, and then they sing part of it together.

"You know what 'the time of the preacher' signifies, don't you Craven?"

"Gun."

"Yeah, gun. The time of the preacher is the time of the gun."

What is being strongly implied here, only just stopping short of being stated outright, is that Jedburgh knows that Ronnie listened to that song after Emma's death.

Ronnie deduces that Jedburgh W-words for the CIA, and Jedburgh proudly admits it. They go back to the CIA house where he lets Ronnie see a secret file about Northmoor, IIF (the company that owns Northmoor), Gaia, and Emma.

This prompts another flashback scene to when Emma was still alive that reveals to us, the viewers, that Ronnie did know about Northmoor before, and that he at least knew that Emma was thinking about going in because she told him

"The only way to find out is to go down there."

He then warned her off by saying

"Northmoor is a nuclear waste plant. Anyone who breaks in there will be met with ultimate force. It's the most dangerous business in Britain - don't even think of it."

We don't see how Emma responded, but it seems that she thought of it, did it, and just didn't tell Ronnie about it.

Jedburgh's file puts forward the CIA's theory that Emma and her Gaia team were trapped in Northmoor and soaked by radioactive water, although even they don't know if this was done deliberately by IIF to try to murder all the Gaia mannys, or if it was a mistaik. The file also suggests that Terry Shields informed the police about the Gaia raid before it happened, who in turn informed IIF so that they knew they were coming.

Ronnie returns to his hotel room, alone except for Emma's ghost, who tells him that she loved Terry. This only makes Ronnie even more sad, because he knows that Terry betrayed Emma to her death. The episode ends on this downbeat note, with some questions answered by the file, but many more still remaining.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Edge of Darkness

One: Compassionate Leave

Edge of Darkness is a BBC drama series from 1985, famous for its inclusion of environmental themes long before those became mainstream - although not nearly so early as Doctor Who's 1973 serial The Green Death, which it resembles in enough ways that this could be considered to be an attempt at a gritty reimagining; telling the story of how events might have played out if the Doctor had been a policemanny from Yorkshire instead of a Time Lord.

It starts with policemannys turning on a lot of lights in a very short pretitles sequence. It will be a long time before the significance of this bit becomes fully apparent, but it is already clearly meant to be ironic given the title.

After the titles we are introduced to the main character Ronnie Craven (Bob "clever girl" Peck), a police inspector and part-time presenter of Newsround, when he is already on a case investigating electoral fraud in a trade union, and facing political pressure from union official Godbolt to "delay" his investigation.

The environmental theme is subtly introduced early, when we see a brief clip of newsreader Kenneth Kendall on TV talking about the government courting the "green vote" in its manifesto.

Ronnie collects his daughter Emma from a political meeting to give her a lift home in his car. They are going from the car to their house and casually talking about noms when a manny starts shouting at them. He then shoots Emma with a shotgun and runs away. The violence is over just as suddenly as it started out of nowhere, which adds to its shocking power. This is the first twist in the tale, and kicks off the main plot.

All the other policemannys come to help Ronnie, and the episode becomes an acting masterclass of Bob Peck showing how to do grief while they try to do all the actual investigating around him.

The first sign of anything... unusual... in the series is when Ronnie is on his own and he hears Emma say

"Ratatouille?"

(the noms they were discussing just before she got shot) and he reacts to it, but there is nobody there.

This prompts a flashback to the funeral of Ronnie's wife (and Emma's mother). We can tell it is a flashback because Ronnie has more hair and Emma is smaller and played by a different actress.

Back in the present, Ronnie goes into Emma's room and plays a record. It is Willie Nelson's The Time of the Preacher, and the lyrics thematically parallel the events of this story that are about to unfold. He looks through her things and finds a box labelled "GAIA" which contains, among other things, a geiger counter. This is an intriguing mystery, but is as nothing to when he finds a gun.

In the 2010 film remake of the series, which is set in America, this scene is the point where the plot begins to diverge from the original's, in part because a manny owning a gun is not remotely a shocking twist in the USA as it is in the UK. For the TV series, this is the turning point of the story, when it makes the leap beyond being just a murder mystery.

Ronnie goes to his police station where he is given the "compassionate leave" of the title by Chief Superintendent Ross (John Woodvine), but in the knowledge that he will be investigating Emma's murder anyway:

"Officially you have nothing to do with this inquiry. Unofficially... keep me informed."

While Ronnie goes about collecting Emma's things in case they turn out to have clues in them later (they will), we're introduced to Darius Jedburgh (Joe Don Baker), who is visiting Pendleton (Charles "Tsar Nicholas" Kay) when Pendleton tells Jedburgh that Emma is ded. It is not made clear to us yet who either of them are or why they are interested in Emma.

Now back home, Ronnie hears Emma tell him how to use the Washing Machine. Up until this point we might think it is just his imagination, but in fact Emma is a ghost, which we can tell because the Washing Machine is a terrifying servant of Hoover, so it makes sense that it would take one of the undead to not be frightened of it.

In amongst her clothes he finds an IIF badge with a radiation sign on it, which prompts Ronnie to get the geiger counter and use it to check Emma's things. It buzzes the most when he puts it near a lock of her hair, which increases the level of mystery - what made Emma radioactive?

As he drives to London to hunt the murderer, Emma appears in the car with Ronnie as the little manny from the flashback scene. Emma's ghost is no longer just a voice, but the audience has been prepared by the preceding scenes so that we accept her supernatural presence as a natural plot development.

Ronnie is in London watching Mrs Thatcher on the TV when he gets a telephone call from Pendleton to meet him in the car park. Ronnie puts a gun in his pocket* and the incidental music gets very dramatic (although it is also as 1980s as... well, as watching Mrs Thatcher on the TV) as we follow Ronnie through the hotel to the car park, building the tension. It isn't quite done in one take, but that's the sort of technique that they probably would have done if they could have.

Pendleton is a "cloak and dagger" spy who W-words for "the prime minister's office." He thinks Emma was "some sort of terrorist" and he wants to know if the murderer was really after Ronnie (as all the policemannys think) or if he was after Emma really. He doesn't tell Ronnie much, but does intrigue him enough for another meeting with Pendleton and his "partner."

Here we see the writer trusting that he has, like Pendleton, intrigued us viewers enough that we will come back for a second meeting, because that is where the episode ends - quite abruptly, with Pendleton driving away leaving Ronnie on his own.

*Or maybe he's just pleased to see Pendleton? No, it's definitely a gun. Mew.

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