Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 372: The Green Death, Episode Four
Dear diary,
Now this feels like Jo’s proper send off! The Brig’s back in his UNIT attire, Benton’s arrived to help contain the situation, and there’s a group of soldiers running around an industrial location in film footage. It’s like being back in the early UNIT era, and I’m surprised just how excited I am by this. As if that weren’t enough, the Doctor gets himself backed into a corner, about to fight his way against a man from the government… when it turns out to be Yates working undercover! The Brigadier seems quite pleased with himself for having organised all of this, and quite right too – it comes as a brilliant reveal, and it’s another one of those moments when the series causes me to actually laugh out loud.
As if to really rub in the nostalgia-fest for UNIT, we get to see the Doctor fighting against the Bring (and the rest of UNIT, plus Global Chemicals) in an attempt to stop him from blowing up an underground hideout for this story’s ‘monster’. It really is just like old times. I love that blowing the mine up (in another impressive model shot; if there’s one thing this era does very well, it’s blowing places up!) has some very real consequences, in that it forces the maggots to the surface. Until now, the threat hasn’t seemed all the great because people had to actively go to the maggots (or, at the very least, to the slime) to get infected – now that threat is above ground, and seemingly unstoppable! I also need to draw attention to the Brigadier’s fab line today ‘I never thought I’d fire in anger at a dratted caterpillar…’, to me it should be much more famous than the much-quoted ‘five rounds rapid’.
Considering that I didn’t know they’d used any real maggots in the production of this story, they turn up en masse here today. And don’t they look really effective? Even the moment where one falls at some speed down the side of a muddy bank can’t stop the scene from being effective.
Of course I’m going to need to discuss the Doctor’s series of disguises today. His intention is clear from the second he sees the milk-truck, but I didn’t anticipate just how funny it would turn out to be. His turn as the milkman’s father recalls many of his radio performances, and then when he gets inside and switches into the guise of a (female) cleaner…!
As soon as I saw the cleaner earlier in the episode, I remembered that he’d be stealing the outfit at some point. I’ve never seen this story before, but it’s another one of those moments that you just know about simply by being a Doctor Who fan. It’s absolutely fantastic – hilarious! – and Yates’ reaction is priceless.
THE DOCTOR
You say one word…
YATES
(indicating the Doctor’s bucket) I like your handbag.
Though now, for any complaints I made the other day about knowing about this story taking away some of the effect… I don’t have a clue where we’re going from here. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the computer on the top floor could be WOTAN (don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting them to actually say that it is, but in my head if there’s nothing to contradict it, then I’m taking it as fact), especially as it expects the Doctor to know him (it?). Aside from the fact that they will presumably get rid of the maggot problem and disable the computer, I really have no idea what’s still to come, and I really rather like that.
