Inspirations - The Green Death

January 1972 saw the publication of a special edition of The Ecologist magazine titled A Blueprint for Survival. It was later published in book form. The authors, Edward Goldsmith and Robert Allen, painted a bleak future for planet Earth if people did not start looking after the environment. Their recommendations on how to turn things around centred on a move towards smaller communities, which were less industrialised and more attuned to the local environment. Tribal communities were more socially cohesive and made less of an impact in ecological terms. A number of leading scientists signed their names to the text. One person whom we know read it - because he said that he did - was the producer of Doctor Who, Barry Letts. Letts claimed that reading the piece had made him depressed. Coming into the production office one morning, he told Terrance Dicks about it, and bemoaned the fact that they could not cover ecological issues in Doctor Who. Dicks paused for a moment, then told him that they could use the series to touch on ecological matters, in the context of a science fiction adventure.
As with the previous two seasons, Letts wanted to co-write the final story with his friend Robert Sloman. As it was, Letts provided some ideas but the story was pretty much all Sloman's work.
As well as concluding the tenth season, the story also had to act as a departure for Katy Manning, who had played Jo Grant for three years.

The basic set up was that pollution from a petrochemicals plant was mutating wildlife in the area, and this was spreading a deadly sickness. Sloman looked to his own pet phobias, and made the creatures being mutated maggots. Not only did he find these repulsive, but they were the larval stage for flies and bluebottles, so another creature could be introduced later in the scripts - one which had the potential to spread the disease across the whole country.
The giant maggots would be a secondary threat to what Sloman believed to be the main villains - the big businesses which operated polluting practices in the pursuit of profit, having little or no regard to how their products and processes affected local communities and the environment. Sloman's company became Global Chemicals, which - in the days before you could check these things simply through an internet search - turned out to be the name of a real company. The novelisation, by Malcolm Hulke, changed the name to Panorama Chemicals.
The director of Global Chemicals - Dr Stevens - would not be the head villain, however. There was someone above him - the unseen Boss, or BOSS. This would prove to be a supercomputer which was linked to Stevens' mind. Inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL, Sloman gave the machine a personality and an ego. It wanted only to maximise profits for the company, and was prepared to turn its human workers into its mental slaves to achieve this.

Looking for a means to write Jo out, it was agreed that she should encounter a surrogate Doctor-figure. This was Professor Clifford Jones, leader of a commune close to Global's plant. He is young, good looking, and a brilliant scientist. At one point Jo actually tells the Doctor that Cliff reminds her of a younger him. Jo's first meeting with him mirrors her first encounter with the Doctor, in that she accidentally ruins one of his experiments. We mentioned under Frontier in Space how Jo had initially been hypnotised by the Master in that first story (Terror of the Autons), but had grown to the point that she could now resist him. The meeting with Prof. Jones is another way of showing the character of Jo coming full circle and growing up. Character development was a big thing for the Letts / Dicks era of the show, and other events in this story will feed into Season 11 stories.
For a start, the Doctor finally gets to the blue planet Metebelis III, first mentioned back in Carnival of Monsters. It turns out not to be the paradise he thought it, but he does manage to get his hands on one of its famous blue sapphires. This will, of course, have consequences later on.
The Brigadier has been tasked with protecting Global Chemicals from the hostility of the commune and from the local mining community, which has seen its traditional industry (coal mining) shut down. He spots Dr Stevens as a wrong 'un from the start, however, so has Captain Yates placed inside the firm under cover. At one point the Brigadier and Stevens go head to head, and Stevens calls up the government. The ecology minister slaps the Brigadier down, ordering him to do what Stevens orders. Mention is made of the Prime Minister - a man named Jeremy. This was inspired by Jeremy Thorpe, then leader of the Liberal Party, who might be PM in Doctor Who's near future / alternate universe.

The story has come in for a lot of criticism for its stereotyping of the Welsh. The story is set in the coal mining region of South Wales (Newport is said to be not that far away). Of course, the new version of the series is filmed in Wales, and uses just about every Welsh actor going, and has often been set in Wales - Cardiff especially, due to the Torchwood Rift being located there). This was only one of two stories in the classic era of the programme to be set in the country (the other being Delta and the Bannermen). The Letts / Dicks era has usually portrayed country people as dim-witted yokels, and the Welsh characters seen here are certainly stereotypes. One of the dead miners just has to have been a star rugby player, and there are many "Boyo's". People are named after their occupations (e.g. Jones the Milk is the milkman). Sloman may have taken inspiration from the works of writer AJ Cronin, who worked as a doctor in the Welsh valleys, becoming medical inspector for the mining industry. His best known work is The Citadel, which was made into a film in 1938, starring Robert Donat. Two years after The Citadel was published, How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn was published (also turned into a movie - in 1941, starring Walter Pigeon. Valley actually beat Citizen Kane to the Best Picture Oscar that year). Dramas set in Wales often looked to these two books / movies for inspiration, despite being set in the early part of the 20th Century. There was an expectation in London-centric circles that some parts of the UK (Wales, Scotland and the North East of England) hadn't changed that much since the inter-war years.
The commune fare little better, being a somewhat stereotyped bunch of vegetarian hippies. Cliff is trying to invent his own form of Quorn* - a meat substitute made from toadstools. (* Other meat substitutes are available).

Parallels can be drawn between Prof. Jones and BOSS / Stevens. Are they really all that different? Okay, one side wants to pollute the planet and enslave humanity for profit, and the other wants people to respect the environment and go vegan, but both think they are superior to everyone around them. Cliff believes that he knows what is best for the local community, and is quite prepared to foist his opinions on the wider community and dictate lifestyle choices.
The studio sessions for this story did not go according to plan, as we can see when the character of Elgin - the one sympathetic Global Chemicals employee - suddenly disappears from the narrative two thirds of the way in. Actor Tony Adams fell ill and so was unavailable to appear in the final studio block. A hitherto unseen character named James suddenly pops up to take on Elgin's role. He is played by series regular Roy Skelton - usually heard but not seen as the voice of the Daleks, amongst other aliens. He had just featured as the Spiridon Wester in the previous story, so was called in to help out at the last minute.
Captain Yates gets hypnotised by BOSS into killing the Doctor, but the mental conditioning is broken by the Doctor's new blue crystal. This event will also play out in the next season, as we see how the trauma has affected Yates.
Once BOSS is defeated, the Doctor using the crystal on Stevens to break the hold which the computer has over him, everyone gathers for a party back at the Nuthutch - the name which the locals have given to Cliff's commune. Jo announces that she is going to leave UNIT, as Cliff has just proposed to her. The Doctor gives her the crystal as a wedding present, before driving off alone into the sunset.
As companion departures go, it is one of the better efforts of the classic era of the show. Things have been set up since the start as Jo declines the trip to Metebelis III, and even risks a court martial by going against the Brigadier, intending to campaign against the organisation which he has been tasked with defending. We haven't seen the Doctor this moved by the departure of a companion since Susan left at the conclusion of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and she was his kin.
Next time: it's the debut of the greatest companion of all time, as well as the debut of one of the series' best alien races.