"The Green Death" - Episode Three

Doctor Who (1963) - Season Ten

Airdate: June 2, 1973
Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Written by Robert Sloman
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Michael Briant

We've actually got two separate but clearly related stories going on here. An unintended consequence of this new oil refining process pioneered by Global Chemicals is a waste product which is highly toxic. Global Chemicals claims that their process produces negligible waste, but that's a lie. The waste is being dumped down into the mine, and from there it has infected and killed several miners. But if the danger was contained safely within the disused coal mines, it wouldn't be such a problem. Unfortunately, the waste has somehow produced giant maggots which carry the infection, and that makes the threat much more difficult to contain.

That's one story, and most of what we've seen so far has been dedicated to exploring that story, but only up to a point. Very little is actually explained. Basically, this is a standard 50s pulp sci-fi story about radiation causing deadly mutations, resulting in giant-sized versions of ordinary creatures. Only this time chemical waste stands in for radiation as a complete non-explanation that justifies whatever plot points need justifying. But there's an largely separate story happening here too, about the supercomputer running Global Chemicals.

It's been a while since we've had a good, old-fashioned world-dominating supercomputer story, but this story is neither the first nor the last example of the trope within this series. It differs from "The War Machines" (the earliest and best example of this in classic "Doctor Who") in some interesting and important ways. WOTAN, the computer in "The War Machines", was meant to be a tool for the storage and expansion of human knowledge. The project was supposed to benefit the whole of mankind, and it was this idealistic vision of the benefits of modern technology that the script was working to subvert. This time, the purpose of BOSS (that is what it is called) is to maximize the profits of Global Chemicals through enhanced efficiency. This distinction is very relevant as a marker for the cultural changes that took place between the mid-'60s and the early '70s.

But the point here is that BOSS is not intentionally creating hazardous waste in an effort to threaten humanity. That is simply an unintended side-effect. The thematic relevance of this is that the unconstrained pursuit of profits through efficiency can have dangerous consequences. Of course, it could be noted that a world devastated by a deadly new virus will certainly not benefit efficiency generally or profits in particular. BOSS is confident (yes, confident... we'll come to that later) that these problems will be overcome quickly enough, and frankly, it's probably right. Even if the Doctor and Prof. Jones didn't ultimately come up with a cure, BOSS presumably would have eventually. At some point, the major threat of the story switches from the disease-spreading maggots to the fact that BOSS intends to take over the world. It's a little clumsy, but it doesn't really undermine the pro-environment, anti-corporate message of the story, so it's not really a problem.