The Green Death
The plot of this very ecologically-aware environmental thriller involved the Doctor and his companion Jo (played by Katy Manning who, I am reliably informed, was like a walking magnet for any male viewers over the age of about fifteen. She never had that effect on me - I was probably too young! - but I always liked her as a companion) in a tale of intrigue set in a Welsh mining village.
A miner who is investigating an abandoned mine shaft calls for help and when he is found, his skin is glowing bright green. This effect was really superb and yet was incredibly simple to achieve. The green patches on his skin were painted on using a coloured paint and then, using an electronic system called Colour Separation Overlay (if you worked for the BBC) or Chromakey (if you worked for any other TV station) the colour (which was usually a blue or yellow) was elecronically replaced with a glowing green. The cause of this strange infection was eventually revealed to be a green slime, fatal to the touch, in which lived millions (or at least their appeared to be millions) of giant white maggots.
What had happened was that a nearby chemicals factory had been pouring its waste products down into the abandoned mine where the maggots grew in abundance. One anecdote that I always liked about this production was how, out of desperation, the production team resorted to inflating condoms and placing them in the background to the shots in order to give the impression of there being hundreds of maggots strewn about. For the maggots seen in the foreground, of course, more care was taken. These vicious beasties were made from chicken wire wrapped in sellophane with fox skulls included in their heads to provide the nasty biting teeth. Once covered with green paint and slime, the maggots were nasty enough to give even the most hardened fisherman nightmares.
But, this being Doctor Who, the story did not end there. In charge of the chemicals factory was a computer which had developed something of an ego problem. This computer - which called itself the Boss, the letters standing for Biomorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor - was the only one of its kind and operated partly through being linked to a human brain. Unfortunately it became somewhat disturbed and started taking over the workers at the factory and ultimately wanted t o link itself to other computers across the world and thus in true Pinky and the Brain fashion, wanted to rule the world.
Of course, the Doctor cannot allow this and so appeals to the man to whom the computer is linked. This works and BOSS is destroyed. All in a day's work for the Doctor.
The Green Death is being released by the BBC partly as a tribute to the actor Jon Pertwee who died in May this year, and it was a good story to choose as it shows Pertwee playing his Doctor with confidence and panache. The story also features the para-military organisation UNIT, and, of course, the regular team of Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, John Levene as Sergeant Benton and Richard Franklin as Captain Yates. It also contains one of the most moving and effective scenes in Doctor Who's long history, as the Doctor bids farewell to his companion Jo Grant when she decides to leave him in order to marry the ecologist Professor Clifford Jones and to travel with him up the amazon.
The Green Death closed Doctor Who's tenth season - one that had already seen the first three Doctors team up to fight the renegade Gallifreyan Omega, the introduction of the Draconians and the return of the Daleks - and provided a fitting close to the UNIT career of Jo Grant. Anyone who has fond memories of this era in Doctor Who's history will find something to enjoy in it - even if it is only Jo Grant's amazing fashion sense - or lack of.