354 The Green Death Episode Five

EPISODE: The Green Death: Episode Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 354
STORY NUMBER: 069
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 16 June 1973
WRITER: Robert Sloman (and Barry Letts uncredited)
DIRECTOR: Michael Briant
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Green Death (Special Edition)
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video

"We must find an answer to those maggots before they pupate. Imagine, thousands of flying insects spreading their infection throughout the world!"

Cliff comes up on the slag heap and spots Jo. The Doctor argues with BOSS (Biomorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor) which the Doctor labels as a Megalomaniac Machine. Jo & Cliff are trapped by the RAF barrage in a cave. Boss boasts of it's infallibility but the Doctor tries to trap it with a logic problem attempting to make his escape as Stevens arrives with guards. The maggots have survived the RAF attack. The Doctor is attached to BOSS. Cliff has been knocked unconscious during the barrage but Jo finds they are now cornered by maggots. The Doctor is taken away & locked in a room to be used as a bargaining chip. Yates comes to rescue him but they are quickly detected. The Doctor escapes, driving through the main gate on the milk float he came in on, but Mike is trapped and captured. The Doctor drives to the slag heap on Bessie as a faint transmission from Jo is received. The Doctor & Benton rescue her & Cliff, taking him back to the Wholeweal where he remains unconscious, waking briefly to say the word "serendipity". Cliff shows signs of being affected by the disease. The Doctor is worried that the Maggots will pupate.

Mike arrives at the Wholeweal, having come to kill the Doctor on BOSS's orders. The Doctor uses the Blue Crystal he brought back from Metebelis 3 to break BOSS's conditioning but unintentionally hypnotises the Brigadier as well. Stevens speaks with Mr James who has been programmed to obey the BOSS. Stevens and BOSS check the progress of their plans Yates returns and reports that he has killed the Doctor. Mike tries to break James' conditioning: he tells Yates that a 4 o'clock today The BOSS intends to take over and then collapses, dead, as Stevens enters the room having discovered Mike's treachery.

Ah the Metebelis 3 Blue Sapphire, or as it will be later known Blue Crystal:

The Doctor uses it to undo Yates' programming and Yates' uses it to undo James'. It's future use probably wouldn't even be in the minds of the show's creators at this time but it will later return to play a rather larger role....

My wife is not a woman that recognises the final technical points of television. She wouldn't have spotted that the end titles of this episode, as per episodes two & six of this story, are shown upside down and reversed. However she walked into the room as the Doctor and Benton are driving through the slag heap and immediately agreed with my assertion that that was Horrible CSO (Colour Separation Overlay) with it being immediately obvious that background and actors have been composited together. Also look at the shots of the Brigadier & UNIT troops standing on the slag heap talking, evidently CSO again. I can't find any record of the notoriously fickle Welsh weather having critically intervened with production but it's a possibility ....

Real life does have a major impact on this episode though: between the second (episodes 3 & 4) & third recording (episodes 5 & 6) studio recording blocks Tony Adams, playing Elgin, went down with Appendicitis and was hospitalised.

Our old friend Roy Skelton, of Dalek Voice fame, was brought in to play a new character, James, who took on Elgin's role & lines. James appears in two scenes, one just after he's been programmed by BOSS:

STEVENS: Mister James? Do you hear me, Mister James?
JAMES: I hear you.
STEVENS: Good. How have you been programmed?
JAMES: To obey the BOSS.
STEVENS: At all times?
JAMES: At all times.
STEVENS: Good. Now then, we must go to work. There is very little time left. Here are your instructions.

A little superfluous, but it does bring back the plot point that BOSS is enslaving people, seen previously with Fell, just before the process is used on Yates. There's a hint too here that it's becoming more prominent in the story:

STEVENS: New York. Seven two oh three slave units prepared.
BOSS: Now reading seven five eight zero.
STEVENS: Zurich. One five eight four.
BOSS: In preparation. Slave unit assessment to follow.
STEVENS: Moscow. Ten zero zero three.
BOSS: Prepared. One one zero zero nine eight.

James is then used to convey the information that BOSS is planning something:

JAMES: What are you doing?
YATES: Nothing. Just concentrate on the blue crystal, Mister James. As you look, you'll see it glow. Watch carefully.
YATES: Mister James? Your mind's clear now. You have to tell me what's going to happen.
JAMES: Takeover. By the BOSS. At four o'clock this afternoon, the computer is going to...
STEVENS: Just can't depend on anyone, can you, Mister Yates.

The novelization of the story restores these lines to Elgin which makes much more sense. Not knowing that Adams was taken ill when you watch the story seeing Elgin disappear without trace then a new character pop up and almost immediately get bumped off makes you wonder what's happening.

I suspect that Elgin may have had earlier scenes in this episode too which were cut when Adams was taken ill and replaced by the poorly CSOd scenes in the studio featuring the Doctor & Benton in Bessie and the Brigadier & Benton with two soldiers played by a couple of regular extras.

The dark haired soldier is Leslie Bates who previously cast the shadow that falls across the Tardis at the end of the first episode, An Unearthly Child and then played a Tribesman in the second, The Cave of Skulls. He's a Man at Lop, Mongol Warrior and Mongol Bandit in Marco Polo, a Guard in The Massacre, a Villager at Inn / Pirate in The Smugglers, an English Soldier in The Highlanders, an IE Guard in The Invasion, an 1862 soldier, Confederate Soldier, foot soldier in The War Games, a Waxworks Visitor/Auton in Spearhead from Space, a BBC3 TV Crewmember in The Dæmons, a UNIT soldier in The Three Doctors, a Guard & Draconian in Frontier in Space and a Security Guard earlier on in this story. He returns as an Army Corporal & UNIT soldier in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, an Exxilon in Death to the Daleks, a Guard in Planet of the Spiders, a Time Lord in Deadly Assassin and a Bi-Al Member in Invisible Enemy. In the The Andromeda Breakthrough he was a British Soldier in Gale Warning, in Doomwatch he was a man in Hear No Evil, The Islanders & Flood and in Moonbase 3 he's a Technician in Castor and Pollux. He's also in our favourite Adam Adamant Lives! episode D for Destruction as a TA Soldier.

The blonde haired soldier, who I identified using his appearance in "I was a Doctor Who Monster", is David Billa who first appeared as a Guard in The Savages then played a German Soldier in The War Games episode one, German / Roman Soldiers / Alien Technician in The War Games episode four and a Time Lord Technician in The War Games episode ten, a Waxworks Visitor/Auton in Spearhead from Space, a Technician in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a UNIT Soldier in Three Doctors, a Prison Guard & Earth Guard in Frontier in Space and a Spiridon in Planet of the Daleks He returns as a a Soldier/Thal Soldier in Genesis of the Daleks and a Vogan in Revenge of the Cybermen. In Moonbase 3 he's a Technician in Departure and Arrival and Behemoth while in Doomwatch he was a Man in Flood.

There's another UNIT soldier in this episode, in the helicopter, and he gets a couple of lines yet isn't credited and I can't work out who he is!

Two days after this episode first aired Roger Delgado, the actor that played the Master, was killed in a car crash in Turkey. He was 55.