The Green Death
Encyclopedia
The Green Death is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who
, first broadcast in six weekly parts from 19 May 1973 to 23 June 1973. It was the last to feature Katy Manning
as companion Jo Grant
in Doctor Who
. In 2010 she returned as a guest in The Sarah Jane Adventures
.
goes down to investigate the miner's death, taking Jo with him in his car. The Doctor agrees to follow the Brigadier, but is determined to go to Metebelis Three first.
The Brigadier's first port of call is the recently opened Global Chemicals oil plant, close to the abandoned mine. Its headman, Stevens, claims that the plant can "produce 25% more petrol and diesel fuel from a given quantity of crude oil" - but that the 'Stevens process' only produces a minimal amount of waste. Jones, in his environmentally friendly retreat the 'Wholeweal', (nicknamed the "Nuthutch" by the locals), is convinced that the oil-making process must create thousands of gallons of waste. He also believes that there is a link between Global Chemicals and Hughes' death - but his research is too demanding for him to go down the mine and investigate. Jo, who is on the environmentalist's side, heads for the mineshaft.
The Doctor reaches Metebelis Three, but it is far from the "blue paradise" he described: He is attacked by various unseen creatures, returning to the UNIT
laboratory with only a small blue crystal to show for his misadventure. He then drives down to South Wales in his car, Bessie, and meets the Brigadier at Global Chemicals. The two then set off to go down the mine to investigate, despite Stevens' insistence that the mine should be sealed. Stevens summons his henchman, Hinks, and tells him in a strange emotionless voice "nobody must go down the mine". Hinks leaves and Stevens dons a pair of strange headphones.
Jo has arrived at the pithead ahead of the Doctor and the Brigadier, and gone down the shaft with a miner called Bert to help another man, Dai Evans, who has called for help at the bottom of the mine. When the Doctor and the Brigadier arrive, Dave, the man controlling the cage's descent, finds that the brake has been sabotaged. The Doctor manages to slow the cage's descent, but his efforts leave Jo and Bert trapped at the bottom of the shaft. There, they find Dai Evans, 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 suggests cutting the mineshaft cables linking the two cages together, which would enable him to use the second cage to get down the mine. The Brigadier goes to Global Chemicals to request some cutting equipment, but a man named Fell informs him that they do not have such equipment. The Doctor has Professor Jones and his Wholeweal friends create a demonstration at the Global Chemicals gate, while he slips in an attempt to steal the equipment from where it is stored in a large shed. However, he is captured, and Stevens shows him that the shed is empty. Fortunately, Dave and the Brigadier, while on their way to Newport to find some cutting equipment, have stopped at a petrol station and found a man using the required equipment to cut up an old car. They borrow this, free the secondary mine cage, and the Doctor goes down the shaft with Dave and two other miners. They find Dai Evans now dead and a note from Jo telling them that she and Bert have headed for the emergency shaft.
Jo and Bert have made good progress through the old mine tunnels, when they find a green slime trickling down the wall. When Bert touches this, he begins to grow weak, and his hand starts to turn bright green. At Bert's insistence, Jo goes on without him. Dave and the Doctor find Bert, and the Doctor goes on to find Jo. By the time they reunite, Jo has found a vast lake of bright green slime, filled with huge maggot creatures. When the tunnel collapses behind them, they use an old mining wagon to get across the green lake. They then climb a steep shaft, where 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.
In the plant, a worker named Elgin, an old friend of Fell, tells him about Dai Evans' death and the dying Bert. Elgin later follows Fell into a pumping control room, where Fell is pumping the oil waste from the main tank on level four into another tank. The security system then registers the Doctor and Jo's presence in the pipe. Fell, who has actually arranged for the waste to be pumped down the pipe into the abandoned mine workings, is initially reluctant to rescue the two in the pipe. Elgin convinces Fell to help him open the hatch, and the Doctor and Jo escape as the oil waste cascades down the pipe. Fell goes to see Stevens, complaining about a 'headache', and Stevens puts the strange headphones on Fell. A voice tells Stevens that 'Fell's 'processing' was a failure' and orders self-destruction. After Stevens presses a button on a small control panel, Fell leaves the room and jumps off a balcony to his death.
The Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier end the day with a meal of fungus at the Nuthutch, but the frivolity is cut short when they hear Bert too has died. After everyone retires to bed, while Jo stays up to read a book about the Amazon - where Jones is planning to go on an expedition in search of a rare toadstool - the egg the Doctor brought back from the mine hatches out into a giant maggot. Escaping from the lab where the egg was left, the maggot first heads for Jo, but then jumps on and bites Hinks, sent to the Nuthutch by Stevens to steal the egg. The maggot escapes from the house into the dark, and Hinks quickly weakens as the poisonous "green death" infection spreads through his body. The next morning, the Brigadier has the UNIT troops lay explosives and detonate the whole mine pithead, to the Doctor's fury. This fails to trap the maggots in the mine, as they begin to emerge; first, attempting to escape up the Global Chemicals waste disposal pipe, then burrowing through the slagheap near the mine.
At Global Chemicals, Mike Yates has been sent in undercover by the Brigadier, and is contacted by the Doctor, who dons some improbable disguises to get through the gates and move freely. Having liaised with Yates, the Doctor learns that Stevens take his instructions from someone on the top floor of the complex, and heads up there in the special lift to find out who is in charge. He finds that this is the home of the BOSS, Bimorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor, a supercomputer
with its own megalomaniac personality. It runs the company, controls Stevens and other key staff members, and is responsible for the polluting chemical process. The Doctor rejects the brainwashing technique that Stevens and the BOSS subject him to – but Yates is more susceptible and is converted into one of the computer’s slaves. After the Doctor escapes, Yates is sent to the Nuthutch to kill the Doctor. His conditioning is deep and only broken by the Doctor’s use of the blue crystal he brought from Metebelis Three.
Jo has alienated Jones, with whom she is falling in love, by ruining one of his experimenting slides of green slime. Determined to make amends, she heads to the slagheap in search of a maggot to run some tests on. Meanwhile, Jones finds that the fungus powder Jo spilt on the slides is actually a cure for the 'green death' infection. He races to the slag heap to find Jo surrounded by giant maggots, and they are both caught in an RAF bombing raid on the maggots. Jones is infected with the 'green death' and begins to turn green — and all before he was able to share his knowledge of the cure. Jo contacts her UNIT friends with her radio, and the Doctor and Sergeant Benton
rescue the two from the maggots in Bessie. Hearing Jones utter the word "Serendipity
", the Doctor realises that Jones might have stumbled upon something that could combat the maggots and their infection. Benton arrives with a maggot crysallis - proof that the maggots are beginning to transform into mature giant insects. Then, the maggot that escaped from the laboratory is found on the table - dead. Realising that the creature died from eating some of the fungus, the Doctor also discovers the cure for Jones. The Doctor and Benton drive around the slag heaps, liberally scattering the fungus, which proves deadly to the maggots. They are then attacked by a giant fly creature - the mature adult form of the maggots - which the Doctor kills by throwing his cloak over it when it is in mid-air, causing it to fall to the ground.
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. By now, Stevens is completely under the mad computer's control. The Doctor tells Stevens that the BOSS' "efficiency" will result in greater pollution, brainless brainwashed humans, and more death and disease. The Doctor then uses his blue crystal to break Stevens' hypnotic state, and Stevens, infuriated at what the BOSS has done to him, cross-feeds the generator circuits, causing the whole plant to explode, apparently destroying Stevens and the mad computer.
The menace defeated, UNIT troops and environmentalists gather at the Nuthutch for a celebration made all the more special when Jo and Jones announce they are getting married. The Doctor gives his blessing and gives Jo the blue crystal as a wedding present, but since this means the end of Jo's travels with the Doctor, he is evidently upset by the situation and quietly slips away while the party is in full swing.
, which dates back to at least the fourth century BC.
, was published by Target Books
in August 1975. The company Global Chemicals had to be changed to Panorama Chemicals because a real Global Chemicals was found to exist. Hulke tells the story from several points of view including the possessed Stevens, the psychotic Hinks and even a hungry maggot. An unabridged reading by Katy Manning of the novelisation was released on CD in September 2008 by BBC Audiobooks.
Target novelisation
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, first broadcast in six weekly parts from 19 May 1973 to 23 June 1973. It was the last to feature Katy Manning
Katy Manning
Katy Manning is an English actress best known for her part as the companion Jo Grant in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. She has also made many theatre appearances, and is now a citizen of Australia. She is myopic...
as companion Jo Grant
Jo Grant
Josephine "Jo" Grant is a fictional character played by Katy Manning in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
in Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
. In 2010 she returned as a guest in The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...
.
Plot
The Doctor is making adjustments to the TARDIS' coordinate programmer in preparation for a visit to the blue planet of Metebelis Three, when Jo reads in the paper about the mysterious death of a miner named Hughes in the abandoned coal mine in Llanfairfach in South Wales: The miner, doing a monthly inspection of the bottom of the mine shaft, emerged dead and glowing bright green. Jo takes this opportunity to meet the acclaimed local environmentalist and Nobel Prize winner Professor Clifford Jones; while Brigadier Lethbridge-StewartBrigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, generally referred to simply as the Brigadier, is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, played by Nicholas Courtney...
goes down to investigate the miner's death, taking Jo with him in his car. The Doctor agrees to follow the Brigadier, but is determined to go to Metebelis Three first.
The Brigadier's first port of call is the recently opened Global Chemicals oil plant, close to the abandoned mine. Its headman, Stevens, claims that the plant can "produce 25% more petrol and diesel fuel from a given quantity of crude oil" - but that the 'Stevens process' only produces a minimal amount of waste. Jones, in his environmentally friendly retreat the 'Wholeweal', (nicknamed the "Nuthutch" by the locals), is convinced that the oil-making process must create thousands of gallons of waste. He also believes that there is a link between Global Chemicals and Hughes' death - but his research is too demanding for him to go down the mine and investigate. Jo, who is on the environmentalist's side, heads for the mineshaft.
The Doctor reaches Metebelis Three, but it is far from the "blue paradise" he described: He is attacked by various unseen creatures, returning to the UNIT
UNIT
UNIT is a fictional military organisation from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures...
laboratory with only a small blue crystal to show for his misadventure. He then drives down to South Wales in his car, Bessie, and meets the Brigadier at Global Chemicals. The two then set off to go down the mine to investigate, despite Stevens' insistence that the mine should be sealed. Stevens summons his henchman, Hinks, and tells him in a strange emotionless voice "nobody must go down the mine". Hinks leaves and Stevens dons a pair of strange headphones.
Jo has arrived at the pithead ahead of the Doctor and the Brigadier, and gone down the shaft with a miner called Bert to help another man, Dai Evans, who has called for help at the bottom of the mine. When the Doctor and the Brigadier arrive, Dave, the man controlling the cage's descent, finds that the brake has been sabotaged. The Doctor manages to slow the cage's descent, but his efforts leave Jo and Bert trapped at the bottom of the shaft. There, they find Dai Evans, 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 suggests cutting the mineshaft cables linking the two cages together, which would enable him to use the second cage to get down the mine. The Brigadier goes to Global Chemicals to request some cutting equipment, but a man named Fell informs him that they do not have such equipment. The Doctor has Professor Jones and his Wholeweal friends create a demonstration at the Global Chemicals gate, while he slips in an attempt to steal the equipment from where it is stored in a large shed. However, he is captured, and Stevens shows him that the shed is empty. Fortunately, Dave and the Brigadier, while on their way to Newport to find some cutting equipment, have stopped at a petrol station and found a man using the required equipment to cut up an old car. They borrow this, free the secondary mine cage, and the Doctor goes down the shaft with Dave and two other miners. They find Dai Evans now dead and a note from Jo telling them that she and Bert have headed for the emergency shaft.
Jo and Bert have made good progress through the old mine tunnels, when they find a green slime trickling down the wall. When Bert touches this, he begins to grow weak, and his hand starts to turn bright green. At Bert's insistence, Jo goes on without him. Dave and the Doctor find Bert, and the Doctor goes on to find Jo. By the time they reunite, Jo has found a vast lake of bright green slime, filled with huge maggot creatures. When the tunnel collapses behind them, they use an old mining wagon to get across the green lake. They then climb a steep shaft, where 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.
In the plant, a worker named Elgin, an old friend of Fell, tells him about Dai Evans' death and the dying Bert. Elgin later follows Fell into a pumping control room, where Fell is pumping the oil waste from the main tank on level four into another tank. The security system then registers the Doctor and Jo's presence in the pipe. Fell, who has actually arranged for the waste to be pumped down the pipe into the abandoned mine workings, is initially reluctant to rescue the two in the pipe. Elgin convinces Fell to help him open the hatch, and the Doctor and Jo escape as the oil waste cascades down the pipe. Fell goes to see Stevens, complaining about a 'headache', and Stevens puts the strange headphones on Fell. A voice tells Stevens that 'Fell's 'processing' was a failure' and orders self-destruction. After Stevens presses a button on a small control panel, Fell leaves the room and jumps off a balcony to his death.
The Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier end the day with a meal of fungus at the Nuthutch, but the frivolity is cut short when they hear Bert too has died. After everyone retires to bed, while Jo stays up to read a book about the Amazon - where Jones is planning to go on an expedition in search of a rare toadstool - the egg the Doctor brought back from the mine hatches out into a giant maggot. Escaping from the lab where the egg was left, the maggot first heads for Jo, but then jumps on and bites Hinks, sent to the Nuthutch by Stevens to steal the egg. The maggot escapes from the house into the dark, and Hinks quickly weakens as the poisonous "green death" infection spreads through his body. The next morning, the Brigadier has the UNIT troops lay explosives and detonate the whole mine pithead, to the Doctor's fury. This fails to trap the maggots in the mine, as they begin to emerge; first, attempting to escape up the Global Chemicals waste disposal pipe, then burrowing through the slagheap near the mine.
At Global Chemicals, Mike Yates has been sent in undercover by the Brigadier, and is contacted by the Doctor, who dons some improbable disguises to get through the gates and move freely. Having liaised with Yates, the Doctor learns that Stevens take his instructions from someone on the top floor of the complex, and heads up there in the special lift to find out who is in charge. He finds that this is the home of the BOSS, Bimorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor, a supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
with its own megalomaniac personality. It runs the company, controls Stevens and other key staff members, and is responsible for the polluting chemical process. The Doctor rejects the brainwashing technique that Stevens and the BOSS subject him to – but Yates is more susceptible and is converted into one of the computer’s slaves. After the Doctor escapes, Yates is sent to the Nuthutch to kill the Doctor. His conditioning is deep and only broken by the Doctor’s use of the blue crystal he brought from Metebelis Three.
Jo has alienated Jones, with whom she is falling in love, by ruining one of his experimenting slides of green slime. Determined to make amends, she heads to the slagheap in search of a maggot to run some tests on. Meanwhile, Jones finds that the fungus powder Jo spilt on the slides is actually a cure for the 'green death' infection. He races to the slag heap to find Jo surrounded by giant maggots, and they are both caught in an RAF bombing raid on the maggots. Jones is infected with the 'green death' and begins to turn green — and all before he was able to share his knowledge of the cure. Jo contacts her UNIT friends with her radio, and the Doctor and Sergeant Benton
Sergeant Benton
Sergeant Benton is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, played by John Levene. He was the senior NCO of the British contingent of UNIT , an international organisation that defends the Earth...
rescue the two from the maggots in Bessie. Hearing Jones utter the word "Serendipity
Serendipity
Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its...
", the Doctor realises that Jones might have stumbled upon something that could combat the maggots and their infection. Benton arrives with a maggot crysallis - proof that the maggots are beginning to transform into mature giant insects. Then, the maggot that escaped from the laboratory is found on the table - dead. Realising that the creature died from eating some of the fungus, the Doctor also discovers the cure for Jones. The Doctor and Benton drive around the slag heaps, liberally scattering the fungus, which proves deadly to the maggots. They are then attacked by a giant fly creature - the mature adult form of the maggots - which the Doctor kills by throwing his cloak over it when it is in mid-air, causing it to fall to the ground.
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. By now, Stevens is completely under the mad computer's control. The Doctor tells Stevens that the BOSS' "efficiency" will result in greater pollution, brainless brainwashed humans, and more death and disease. The Doctor then uses his blue crystal to break Stevens' hypnotic state, and Stevens, infuriated at what the BOSS has done to him, cross-feeds the generator circuits, causing the whole plant to explode, apparently destroying Stevens and the mad computer.
The menace defeated, UNIT troops and environmentalists gather at the Nuthutch for a celebration made all the more special when Jo and Jones announce they are getting married. The Doctor gives his blessing and gives Jo the blue crystal as a wedding present, but since this means the end of Jo's travels with the Doctor, he is evidently upset by the situation and quietly slips away while the party is in full swing.
Continuity
- This story marked the final appearance of Katy Manning as Jo Grant in the TV series "Doctor WhoDoctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
". She returned to the role in the 2008 audio story The Doll of DeathThe Doll of DeathThe Doll of Death is a Big Finish Productions audiobook based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who....
and in the 2010 series of The Sarah Jane AdventuresThe Sarah Jane AdventuresThe Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...
. She also voices the character Iris WildthymeIris WildthymeIris Wildthyme is a fictional character created by writer Paul Magrs, who has appeared in short stories, novels and audio dramas from numerous publishers...
in several audio stories. - Manning's departure, coupled with the death of Roger DelgadoRoger DelgadoRoger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto was an English actor, best known for his role as the first Master in Doctor Who....
(who played the MasterMaster (Doctor Who)The Master is a recurring character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is a renegade Time Lord and the archenemy of the Doctor....
) and the announced departure of producer Barry LettsBarry LettsBarry Leopold Letts was a British actor, television director, writer and producer best known for his work on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, and for producing the BBC's Sunday Classic drama serials in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
, was a major motivation in Jon Pertwee's decision to leave the series the following year. - The Doctor's desire to journey to Metebelis Three was a recurring theme throughout the season.
- The Prime Minister is addressed as "Jeremy," which was a production joke referring to the then Liberal PartyLiberal Party (UK)The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
leader Jeremy ThorpeJeremy ThorpeJohn Jeremy Thorpe is a British former politician who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1967 to 1976 and was the Member of Parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979. His political career was damaged when an acquaintance, Norman Scott, claimed to have had a love affair with Thorpe at a time...
. - The DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
release of this story features a fictitious documentaryMockumentaryA mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
, Global Conspiracy, starring Mark GatissMark GatissMark Gatiss is an English actor, screenwriter and novelist. He is best known as a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and has both written for and acted in the TV series Doctor Who and Sherlock....
as investigative reporter Terry Scanlon, following up the events surrounding the incident at Global Chemicals. Several actors from The Green Death briefly reprise their roles, and it is revealed that Stevens and BOSS survived.
Production
- During the recording of the footage of the maggots around the quarrysite, several of the maggot props were in fact inflated condomCondomA condom is a barrier device most commonly used during sexual intercourse to reduce the probability of pregnancy and spreading sexually transmitted diseases . It is put on a man's erect penis and physically blocks ejaculated semen from entering the body of a sexual partner...
s (some inflated with air, others with water). - The script required the Doctor to state that the maggots have "thick chitinChitinChitin n is a long-chain polymer of a N-acetylglucosamine, a derivative of glucose, and is found in many places throughout the natural world...
ous 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 [sic]." - This story marks the final appearance of the "howlaround" title sequence introduced in 1970. It also is the last appearance of the logo introduced in Spearhead from SpaceSpearhead from SpaceSpearhead from Space is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 3 January to 24 January 1970. The serial opened Series 7 of the show and was the first to be produced in colour. The serial introduced Jon Pertwee as the...
until the 1996 television movieDoctor Who (1996)Doctor Who is a television movie based on the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Developed as a co-production amongst Universal Television, BBC Television, BBC Worldwide, and the American network FOX, the 1996 television film premiered on 12 May 1996 on CITV in Edmonton,...
. The 1996 version of this logo has been used for marketing purposes by the BBC since that time, and is still used for the "classic series". - The closing title graphics are run upside down and backwards on Episodes 2, 5, and 6. The reasons for this are unclear and range from saving time rewinding the film to trying something new with the titles, as they would not be used again.
- The colliery used for filming was Ogilvie Colliery near GlamorganGlamorganGlamorgan or Glamorganshire is one of the thirteen historic counties and a former administrative county of Wales. It was originally an early medieval kingdom of varying boundaries known as Glywysing until taken over by the Normans as a lordship. Glamorgan is latterly represented by the three...
, while Global Chemicals was the RCARCARCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
International factory in PowysPowysPowys is a local-government county and preserved county in Wales.-Geography:Powys covers the historic counties of Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, most of Brecknockshire , and a small part of Denbighshire — an area of 5,179 km², making it the largest county in Wales by land area.It is...
.
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, Adams actually uses his real illness as an explanation for his character's sudden absence towards the end of the story.
Outside references
The Doctor temporarily stumps BOSS by asking it "If I were to tell you that the next thing I say would be true, but the last thing I said was a lie, would you believe me?" The question is an example of the liar paradoxLiar paradox
In philosophy and logic, the liar paradox or liar's paradox , is the statement "this sentence is false"...
, which dates back to at least the fourth century BC.
In print
A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm HulkeMalcolm Hulke
Malcolm Hulke was a British television writer and author of the industry "bible" Writing for Television in the 70s...
, was published by Target Books
Target Books
Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became well known for their highly successful range of...
in August 1975. The company Global Chemicals had to be changed to Panorama Chemicals because a real Global Chemicals was found to exist. Hulke tells the story from several points of view including the possessed Stevens, the psychotic Hinks and even a hungry maggot. An unabridged reading by Katy Manning of the novelisation was released on CD in September 2008 by BBC Audiobooks.
VHS and DVD releases
- The story was released on VHSVHSThe Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
in October 1996 as a two-tape set. On the back of the VHS box, BBC Video presented this serial's release as a tribute to Jon Pertwee, who died a few months earlier in May 1996. - This story was released on DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in the United Kingdom on 10 May 2004.
External links
ReviewsTarget novelisation