The Green Death is the fifth and final serial of the tenth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 19 May to 23 June 1973. It was the last regular appearance of Katy Manning as companion Jo Grant.
In the serial, the alien time traveller the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and the organisation UNIT investigate a South Wales mine where waste from an oil plant has killed miners and made maggots grow to giant size.
Plot
The Third Doctor has a short misadventure after finally arriving on Metebelis 3, retrieving one of their psionic blue crystals. When he returns he, Jo, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart investigate the mysterious death of a miner in the abandoned coal mine in Llanfairfach in South Wales. The miner was found dead and glowing bright green.
Upon arrival, the Brigadier meets with Stevens of the nearby Global Chemicals plant. Meanwhile, Jo goes down the mineshaft with a miner called Bert to help another man, Dai Evans, who has called for help at the bottom of the mine. They find Dai, who is turning bright green and dying. Bert remembers there is an emergency shaft out of the mine, and he and Jo set off. The Doctor goes down after them and finds Dai dead.
Deeper inside the mine, Jo and Bert find a vast lake of bright green slime, filled with huge maggot creatures. The Doctor collects a huge egg to take back for experimentation. At the top of the natural shaft, they find a large pipe, with the insides covered with traces of crude oil waste—meaning that the pipe leads to the Global Chemicals plant. Bert is infected by the slime and dies that night. The egg hatches out into a giant maggot, which escapes from the house into the dark.
The next morning, the Doctor heads to Global Chemicals to find out who is in charge. On the top floor of the complex, he discovers the BOSS, a supercomputer with its own megalomaniacal personality. It runs the company, controls key staff members, including Stevens, and is responsible for the polluting chemical process.
Environmental scientist Prof. Clifford Jones discovers the fungus he has been working on as a food source kills the maggots and, thus, can cure the "green death" infection, but he is bitten by a maggot and falls into a coma before he can tell anyone. Meanwhile, the Doctor discovers the fungus kills the maggots. He and Sgt Benton proceed to scatter it among the slag heaps to kill them en masse. Later, as Prof. Jones nears death, the Doctor realises an injectible extract of the same fungus, will cure him. Nancy prepares and admministers the extract, and Jones recovers.
The Doctor returns to Global Chemicals to confront the BOSS. The computer plans to link up with others and effect a corporate takeover of the human race. The Doctor breaks Stevens' hypnotic state using the blue crystal, and Stevens, infuriated at what the BOSS has done to him, cross-feeds the generator circuits to trigger an explosion that kills him and destroys the insane computer.
Jo and Jones announce they are getting married. The Doctor gives his blessing and gives her the blue crystal, but since this means the end of Jo's travels with the Doctor, he quietly slips away while the party is in full swing.
Production
In the footage of the maggots around the quarry site, several of the maggot props were inflated party balloons; (some inflated with air, others with water). The colliery used for filming was Ogilvie Colliery near Deri, Caerphilly, while Global Chemicals was the RCA International factory in Brynmawr. The script required the Doctor to state that the maggots have "thick chitinous skin". Pertwee asked producer Barry Letts how to pronounce the word, and Letts, unaware of the term, told him to pronounce the first syllable "chit", rather than the more correct "kite". Two days after Episode 4 was broadcast, Letts received a letter consisting simply of the words, "The reason I'm writin'/Is how to say kitin ."
The prime minister is addressed as "Jeremy", which was a production joke referring to the then Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe.
In 2004, Barry Letts said he was unhappy with the colour separation overlay effect used for the cavern scenes in this story.
Cast notes
Tony Adams, who played Elgin, was taken ill during the recording of The Green Death, and so Roy Skelton was brought in to play a new character called Mr James, who was given the lines written for Elgin. In Global Conspiracy (see 'Home media'), Adams actually uses his real illness as an explanation for his character's sudden absence towards the end of the story.
The part of Professor Clifford Jones was played by Stewart Bevan. Bevan was at the time engaged to Katy Manning. The fictional couple become engaged at the end of the story, whereas Bevan and Manning separated a year after the show was recorded.
Talfryn Thomas, who plays Dave had previously appeared in Spearhead from Space as Mullins.
John Dearth, who voiced BOSS, later played Lupton in Planet of the Spiders (1974).