Doctor Who - The Green Death: The Special Edition

For The Larvae The Professor

Doctor Who - The Green Death: The Special Edition
UK Airdate 19th May - 23rd June 1973
BBC DVD Region 2

Warning: Slight spoilers in this one.

I last saw The Green Death when it was first broadcast in 1973. I would have been five years old and I remember the giant maggots, which are a big feature of the episode, being a talking point around the house and a thing which would invoke both fear and playful memories of big, wiggly things coming to get ya! I wasn’t expecting it to be half as good as I remembered when watching it now on this special edition version of the DVD but... well... it surprised me in more than one way.

I’ve noticed over the past few years that the Doctor Who stories featuring Jon Pertwee don’t seem to age as badly as the ones starring Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy... I don’t know why it is and the special effects are still quite shoddy, though not as shoddy as the ones utilised in the programme during the 1980s and 1990s... I can say with some confidence. The stories and, certainly, the dialogue and scripts, are all pretty top notch and tackle issues in exactly the same way that all of the best science fiction does... head on and by exaggerating certain elements to be able to explore the issue to a degree it would be less able to do without a science fiction context.

In this one, the big issue is ecology and the environment. It centres on a computer who has taken over the employees of a global oil company which is dumping toxic waste... it’s seeping into a local coalmine in Wales. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) and the always brilliant Jo Grant (Katy Manning) go to investigate the deaths of people who come into physical contact the sludge, infecting them with a virus which turns them into a cheap 1970s TV effect... glowing green before claiming their lives. Jo declines going with The Doctor on a quick jaunt to the planet Metebelis 3, where he acquires a blue crystal which will cause him trouble later in the history of the show, because she believes the environmental work being done by Professor Jones and his group of ‘Eco Hippies’, combatting the global company who is responsible for the toxic sludge and the giant sized maggots who are breeding and infesting the coal mine, is more important... good for her. It also heralds the fact that this will be Katy Manning’s last TV adventure as Jo Grant until her brief return to the role in a two part story, The Death Of The Doctor, opposite Elisabeth Sladen and Matt Smith in The Sarah Jane Adventures almost 40 years later (and reviewed by me here).

Now, although Jo Grant was always a well admired character by me, when I was a toddler, my recent rewatches of a few of the old Jon Pertwee stories have made me realise that her character wasn’t all that well fleshed out or given that much interesting dialogue. Here, however, it’s clear that by this point she is really being written in a more useful manner and the focus on her and the dialogue/scenes she is given are all absolutely marvellous. And, of course, Katy Manning really makes the most of it, displaying great chemistry with all her co-workers, including Stewart Bevan as Professor Clifford Jones (she was engaged to him in real life, at the time, although I understand that didn’t last too long) who she goes off with to get married and travel down the amazon at the end of the last episode here.

Now the show is not without its weak moments...

There’s a loose end of a character when one of the principal actors had to drop out of the show due to ill health. The special effects are quite good in some places (the miniature work of explosions is good although the white action figure driving the model of The Doctor’s car Bessie in one shot is hilarious) but utterly abominable in others when it comes to the blue-screen work. Whenever any of the characters goes down the lift shaft in the coal mine, for example, they are quite clearly standing against a superimposed piece of back projection footage. Similarly, although there’s a lot of location work in a fair bit of it, there are a fair few terrible shots when the people at UNIT are walking or standing around a studio, superimposed against a backdrop of the open country. Now I’ve got no idea why this was needed and all I can think of was there wasn’t enough time to get all the shots required and, instead of going back out on location to reshoot, the decision was made to go with a studio solution. In all honesty, it really is quite noticeable and surely hurts the scenes when this is done.

However, everything else in this story seems right on the money and it even involves some scenes of Jon Pertwee returning to his comedy roots as he dons two ridiculous disguises to penetrate the security at Global Chemicals... one is a “funny milkman” personae and the other is the old “dressing up in women’s clothing” routine where he impersonates a cleaning lady. This is all quite amusing, if a bit clunky, but I can’t imagine what young fans of the show might make of all this dressing up shenanigans these days, to be honest. That being said, the costumes Pertwee wears as The Doctor are, as usual, absolutely brilliant and I just wish I could get the crushed leather jackets and the frilly shirts that he got access to on these things... I’d be wearing them all the time.

Not too much else to say on this one. The score by Dudley Simpson is lively and typical of the show in that era, the giant maggots are actually fairly well done but when one of the larvae hatches, the resulting, dragonfly like creature is quite badly handled. However, when The Doctor steps off the TARDIS on Metebelis 3 and a tentacle suddenly whips out from the front of the screen and goes straight around his neck... I have to say that it was so effectively done that it actually made me jump. Something these kinds of shows don’t really do to me that often... at least not since I was a kid, at any rate. The end is quite poignant too and I’d be lying if I didn’t say the last scenes with Pertwee and Manning didn’t bring a tear to the eye. Overall, I’m really impressed that The Green Death has held up as well as it has and I think it’s certainly one of the best Pertwee stories and also, I would say, one of the best of the stories in the history of the show. Now I just have to figure out which Pertwee story to acquire next.

Doctor Who: The Sea Devils

Devils In The Deep Blue Sea

Doctor Who: The Sea Devils
UK Airdate: 26 February to 1 April 1972
BBC Region 2

When I was three years old I watched this serial on my mum and dad’s old black and white television set with them. We all loved it. The iconic monsters that were The Sea Devils, rising up from the surface of the sea in their string vests and waving about their strange weapons was bound to create a certain sense of fear and left a memorable impression on me... and it didn’t help that my dad kept doing impressions of them at the time. I remember being disappointed by them when they returned, with their marine cousins The Silurians (see review here), in the era of The Fifth Doctor (and I’ll know sometime soon whether I still feel the same about that) but this original serial was a big hit with me and it’s taken too long, almost 41 years in fact, for me to catch up with it again.

I’m really pleased to say that this Pertwee era story is even more entertaining than I remembered it although, to be fair, I barely remembered any of it past the obvious iconic monsters and a scene I’ll describe in a little while. It’s well written, Pertwee is in complete control of his character, Katy Manning’s Jo Grant is absolutely adorable (and adorably written) here, complete with her trademark white suits which never get dirty even when she’s been crawling through a ventilation shaft, and Roger Delgado’s triumphant performance as The Master is up to his high standard.

The only thing that surprised me was that UNIT and The Brigadier were not in this story. UNIT is mentioned enough but outside of The Doctor and Jo, their presence is never felt on screen.

The other thing that surprised me was a sequence that I’d forgotten but which made a great impression on me as a kid, when The Doctor and Jo are trying to find their way through a minefield with The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, and then use said familiar implement to blow up a load of mines to frighten off a Sea Devil. I remember incorporating this scene into games I used to play in the garden as a kid... but I’d completely forgotten both the scene and my childhood games of it until I saw it again. Little tear brought to the eye their for sure!

There’s also some amazing stuff in the storyline, like The Doctor and Jo being stranded in a fort on an island with only a sick, surviving crew member and a Sea Devil for company. That’s a really good sequence where you wonder just how our two heroes are going to get themselves out of harm’s way.

And there’s another great sequence where Delgado and Pertwee have a sword fight at the end of an episode which is so good, the entire fight is repeated at the start of the next one. And when I say good, I mean corny and riddled with typical, Hollywood swashbuckler incidents and choreography which is bound to bring a smile to the face on anyone who realises that the two actors in question must have been having a really good time shooting this.

There are some other nice action sequences along the way in subsequent episodes and there’s also a heck of a lot of location work than you might expect from a Doctor Who story arc, especially in comparison to the show today. I have to say that this one knocks a lot of the latest season’s stories for six when it comes to sheer, all ‘round entertainment value. I was really pleased that the one memory I had of this show was not marked by disappointment on the re-watch... this one was a real treat for me and I whizzed through all six episodes in two sittings. Great stuff.

Oh, and the unusual synthesiser music by Malcolm Clarke is absolutely suited to Doctor Who and probably made a big impression on me as a child too. I wish they’d have let this composer loose on some of the other stories in the series because it’s quite forward thinking for it’s time. At the very least, I wish the BBC would have a think about releasing the score properly on CD, as a four or five minute suite really isn’t good enough for this music.

A short review, then, but a very positive one. If you’re a fan of the Pertwee era of the show then this one is definitely one of the best ones to watch, I reckon. Sun, sand and sea monsters are just what The Doctor ordered, it turns out.

Doctor Who - Terror Of The Autons

Mastering The Doctor


Doctor Who - Terror Of The Autons
UK 1971
BBC Region 2

Okay... so here we have a Doctor Who serial that I’ve not seen in 41 years... I was three years old the last time I watched this one. It’s the second and final of the Jon Pertwee era stories to feature the Nestene intelligence and its deadly tools of the trade, the Autons. This is the last time this enemy would be properly seen again until they returned to the series (on more than one occasion) with the inaugural Christopher Eccelston story Rose.

As I began to watch this one, however, it became very clear to me that this story was a pretty interesting tale of Doctor Who “firsts” than I’d realised when I’d slipped the disc into the player. Lets take a little look at those...

My first clue was when one of my favourite all-time companions Jo Grant (played by the incredible Katy Manning) walked into shot and The Doctor was actually quite rude to her. What’s going on, I thought. Turns out these two characters had never met before. Yep! This is the very first story to feature the inimitable, long-standing companion Jo Grant, after Caroline John’s companion Liz Shaw (who featured in the first Pertwee story, Spearhead From Space, which was the first Auton story) had left the show. After accidentally causing trouble and mayhem in her first appearance, Jo Grant is kept on as The Doctor’s new assistant because, it seems, she’s just too nice for The Doctor to tell her he doesn’t want her around. Smart move Doctor!

The second “first” is that this is also the initial story of UNIT (United Nation Intelligence Taskforce) regular Captain Mike Yates on the show (Richard Franklin). He’s got pretty good chemistry with Jo Grant and one might almost feel that romance could possibly be on the cards at this stage. So this is, in fact, the first story to feature the full triumvirate of regular UNIT characters on screen together in the same story - Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates.

Lastly, and my no means leastly, this is the first appearance of The Doctor’s arch nemesis The Master, as played by the late, great Roger Delgado. Delgado made such a lasting impression with this role, mixing charm and ruthless villainy in equal measure... and right from the start he’s using his famous trademark weapon of a Tissue Compressor Gun which kills people by shrinking them down to the size of dolls. In just a couple of years, Delgado would find himself decapitated in a freak road accident in real life, but it’s a testament to the absolute brilliance of his performance that he is the one face you are always guaranteed to think of first (if you’re over 40) when the character of The Master is ever mentioned.

Okay... so this four part serial is one of those ones which got a lot of complaints from the parents of “scared silly” children at the time... and it’s easy to see why. The Auton’s trademark has always been death by everyday plastic objects which are usually harmless and this one has its fair share of ingenious deaths, aside from the trademark shop mannequins. These include a plastic blow up sofa which crushes a man to death by... well kinda swallowing him (it sounds better than it’s actually presented, believe me), a telephone chord that tries its best to strangle the life out of The Doctor, deadly plastic daffodils and a miniature doll that hurls itself on its victims to strangle them. All good stuff although modern viewers looking back at this one through the passing years may wonder what all the fuss was about, and I can’t say I’d blame them. The execution of these effects is so awful and crude (more so than in the previous Doctor’s black and white incarnations) that it’s hard to remember just how naive we all were to be taken in by this kind of thing at the time.  Even some of the effects that shouldn’t be effects shots, just actors in interior sets, are actually the actors standing on a projected backdrop of that interior... and they so look like it. The miniature doll death is particularly disappointing in retrospect, since it relies on an actor in a suit on blown up, projected backdrops lunging... followed by the victim attempting to sell the shot by gagging and trying to pull off a static doll from his throat. Comical death then but... the nation was in an uproar at the time it seems.

But, as typical of the Doctor Who stories in this period of the show, the bad effects work is just not really a problem because the dialogue, story and acting in these things is all top notch and the on-screen chemistry of the performers really helps to sell the story and distract from the sheer clumsiness  of the effects work (mostly due to budgetary constraints I would  guess... the effects teams on these things had to be pretty resourceful) and instead get the viewer caught up and involved in the events as they play out on screen. There’s some nice stuff here, especially when one of the guest characters fights the Nestene consciousness that has taken control of his mind and sacrifices himself for the good of the The Doctor and Jo. Perhaps a little rushed but it still manages to inject a certain amount of poignancy into proceedings.

At the close of the story, The Master helps The Doctor defeat the Nestene intelligence himself but when he escapes, The Doctor reveals that he has swapped out a crucial piece of The Master’s TARDIS with an older version from his own... leaving The Master as stranded on earth as he is. This new Moriarty for The Doctor was obviously expected to be a successful element of the show right from the outset and the chemistry between Pertwee, Manning and Delgado is a joy to watch at these early stages, as they always would be. These characters really hit the ground running.

So... all in all I would say that Terror Of The Autons is even more entertaining than Spearhead From Space and definitely worth a watch as an important serial establishing some long running elements in the show. Put this one on your Doctor Who play list, if you have one.

What Katy did...

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Season 4 Episodes 5 & 6:

The Death of the Doctor

Airdate: October 25th and 26th 2010. UK. BBC1

Woohoo! And now I get to review a kinda historical event because these two episodes of the show features two different Doctor Who companions (gosh... I really miss the days when we used to refer to them as assistants) who have never met each other in the history of the show before and, to top it off, they both get to meet an incarnation of The Doctor they’ve never met before. How cool is that?

Ok... so this episode started off with a bang right from the start with a load of military U.N.I.T types led by Colonel Karim converging on Sarah Jane’s house to inform her that The Doctor has been found dead and that there will be a funeral held for him at a secret U.N.I.T base at the foot of Mount Snowdon... Now before I go any further I just want to have a bit of a rant here!

When the hell will these people stop getting U.N.I.Ts abbreviations all wrong? U.N.I.T has stood for, since the sixties and until recent years, the following: United Nations Intelligence Taskforce! What the hell is all this UNified Intelligence Taskforce? It doesn’t even make sense properly as an acronym! When are the modern writers going to admit they’ve got it all wrong, stop fooling with a bedrock term of Doctor Who history which has been around since Patrick Troughton’s time and get the damn thing right!

OK. I feel so much better now. Vented.

Anyway, Sarah Jane obviously doesn’t believe in The Doctor’s death but she attends the funeral with the kids anyway and, of course, one of the guests who turns up at the funeral is none other than... the incredible and fabulous Jo Grant! Yes people, Katy Manning is back. Remember her from her white suits, fur waistcoats and thigh high boots? Of course, she’s Jo Jones now... remember when she went off to be with Professor Jones at the end of The Green Death back in 1973? Anyway, she’s back and, woohoo, Russel Davies who wrote these two episodes (good thing too, it needed a defter touch than the regular series of Doctor Who has been giving us just recently methinks... but don’t get me started... we just need to give Moffet a bit more time) has written her like the throwback to the hippy she always was. Thank goodness some things never change.

The funeral is being held by the Shansheeth, a race of Undertaker Vultures (which is a neat way of reinforcing the death motif) and it doesn’t take long for Sarah Jane and the kids to realise that The Doctor is still very much alive and that Sarah Jane and Jo have been targeted so that their memories of The Doctor can be harvested and harnessed to make a new key to gain access to the T.A.R.D.I.S which the Shansheeth have stolen from The Doctor... That’d be Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, by the way. Does any writer feel the need to have a go and alter that particular acronym while they’re at it? Oops. Sorry. Forgot I wasn’t supposed to be ranting anymore. :-) They want to use the T.A.R.D.I.S to travel around the history of the universe obliterating death... which is a fairly bird-brained scheme if you ask me... but they are giant vultures so I suppose that’s acceptable.

And then, of course, who should pop up but Who himself... err... that is to say The Doctor, played by Matt Smith himself as his 11th incarnation. The lack of companions is quickly explained away with the explanation that he’d left Amy Pond and Rory on their honeymoon before getting his T.A.R.D.I.S nicked. After The Doctor arrives, of course, the pacing of the episode gets even more frenetic (which is playing to Matt Smith’s strengths) but, you know what? For a little while there everyone pauses to take a few minutes and we have an absolutely beautiful scene played between Matt Smith and Katy Manning which is somewhat similar to the one between David Tennant and Elisabeth Sladen in Tennant’s second season where The Doctor explains to Jo how things are when he leaves a companion behind. It’s played very movingly and it continues to maintain the slightly darker edge The Doctor seems to have these days. Matt Smith gets much more of a chance to shine here when he’s not being too overshadowed by the ever brilliant Karen Gillan. Really great stuff and Katy Manning more than holds her own in contrast to him... as does Elisabeth Sladen of course.

There’s some nice stuff in this story. The plot concerning the harvesting of memories allows for a few fair flashbacks of old Doctors and their enemies. David Tennant, Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell (the last two from the Jo Grant story The Three Doctors) all get a look in although I didn’t spot Peter Davison... who Sarah Jane would have met in The Five Doctors.

The only real let down in this episode (and thanks to Gullane 2 for the reminder), is that the character of Colonel Karim (who is in league with the Shansheeth) seems to hint at a deeper connection to the Doctor Who universe via a previous untold tragedy and with her (seeming?) death at the end of the story, it looks like it was a bit if an unnecessary throwaway for someone who is actually a quite good character.

Anyway, what does it matter? Jo Grant is back. Rejoice and let’s hope that they give her some future appearances on either Doctor Who, Torchwood or The Sarah Jane Adventures at some point in the future... preferably all three!

'sarah Doctor in the house?

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 4

Episodes 1 & 2: The Nightmare Man

Airdate: October 11th and 12th 2010. UK. BBC1

Okay. So the successful Doctor Who spin-off featuring one of his most popular companions, Sarah Jane-Smith, who has been in shows with quite a few of the Doctors now but was primarily a companion to the third and fourth incarnations, returned to our screens this week with the first of a series of two-part episodes.

Now I have to say that I always liked Elisabeth Sladen’s character. I was always a Katy Manning guy and would have happily spent an eternity watching her Jo Grant character but Sarah Jane was no let down in the hard transition period between companions and then between Doctors back in the 70s. I even liked the failed pilot film for the proposed K9 and Company show teaming K9 and Sarah Jane which was shown in 1981 and would have gladly watched more of them if they’d made them (although I suspect it must look pretty creaky nowadays... will have to investigate the DVD). I suspect that one of the reasons The Sarah Jane Adventures has garnered the huge viewing figures it currently has for a children’s programme is because there are also a lot of people my age who grew up with the character in the 70s watching it too... probably watching it with kids of their own but I’ve unfortunately not been blessed with that opportunity.

Another reason why I think the show works really well is because the episodic nature of some of the stories coupled with some genuinely frightening stories give it a much closer feel to the old Doctor Who shows of the 60s, 70s and 80s than the new Doctor Who shows have (and I’m not knocking those because I really like them for the most part... the last season could have done with a little more oomph perhaps). It’s certainly a lot more terrifying at times than the new Doctor Who.

The first story of Season 4 is quite a dark one as it mostly takes place in the nightmares of the alien born Luke (Sarah Jane’s adopted alien son) and so the spook element is fairly present but perhaps just a little dulled down on this one. For a while now the writers have been using the stories as a backdrop to play out teenage social issues and this story is no exception as Sarah Jane, Clive and Rani have to come to terms with the fact that the extra clever Luke is leaving school early and going to Oxford University instead. And since he’s given K9 to take away with him, the writers have managed to get rid of both their “crutch” characters in one hit by stories end. They’ve obviously decided that having a robot dog that can do pretty much anything and a smarter than average teenager who is also alien and therefore not susceptible to the same diabolical plot devices as his human companions is too much fro them to write around and have presumably gotten rid of these characters in an effort to be more creative in the way they get their characters out of jams. This has been an age old problem for characters like DC comics Superman... as his powers grew in number and strength over the years he’s become something of a weak character to write for because, well... how do you place him in jeopardy?

The writers of Doctor Who tried to do a similar thing in the Peter Davison era by destroying the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver but I can’t say the stories at the time got any better as a result. Luke I could probably live without (and I say that with no disrespect to the young actor who plays him as the cast in this show are all actually really good) but I think getting rid of K9 is a bit of a stupid idea since he’s such an iconic character. I think it would have been better if the writers had just gotten better at coming up with cleverer problems for “our heroes” to solve rather than take away the characters who are more likely to solve them quicker... but we’ll have to see how it plays out.

This episode starts with the recurring Slitheen exploding and covering the cast with its internal organs joke which seems to have been going on for a while now. I was already sick of the Slitheen since their first appearance on The Sarah Jane Adventures so I really hope we won’t be seeing them again for a while now.

The lead villain in this one is the surprisingly dark Nightmare Man and his make up and general over-the-top behaviour make him seem like a not too dumbed down version of Heath Ledger’s excellent take on The Joker in the last Batman movie... I guess kids these days are less scared by stuff like that than they used to be.

Not the greatest story we’ve had in the show so far but not exactly one of the best either. Am looking forward to the much promoted Death of the Doctor story in a few weeks time with Matt Smith as the Doctor and the long awaited return of Katy Manning as Jo Grant. The next story looks like it could be a good one too... with some Men In Black looking robots of death in it.

Will let you know how that one works out.