Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6095 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-05-10
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 154 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Featuring the third incarnation of the Doctor--Jon Pertwee's patriarchal renaissance man--The Green Death is a solid addition to the Doctor Who canon. Originally broadcast in May 1973, it may now have dated a little, with its vegetarian hippies and "boyo" Welshmen, but it has all the elements of classic Who, the Doctor encountering green-glowing dead bodies, a shadowy mastermind, a global conspiracy, brainwashing, a megalomaniacal supercomputer and, of course, giant maggots.

This story, the final sequence of Pertwee's penultimate season, reached the TV ratings Top 10, and fittingly, met high production standards. The environmental message, while facilitating Who's ongoing individual-freedom motif, also proved prophetic in its warnings of globalisation and pollution. The special effects, though admittedly dated now, were good for their time and budget--the stop-motion photography of the maggots and the front-axial projection used for the pulsating green skin are particularly effective. The well-crafted script manages to combine monsters, punch-ups and cliffhanger endings with cerebral concepts, human drama and erudite references to Beethoven and Oscar Wilde--the single tear of the reformed villain as he destroys his paymaster is just one of the subtle touches distinguishing this work. The Green Death's six filler-free episodes belong to the Golden Age of Doctor Who, and their denouement is one of the most poignant in the series' long history.

On the DVD: the Beeb, as always, have gone to town on the picture, with the images and colours scrubbing up nicely for their age. Sadly there are none of the usual nostalgia-inducing contemporaneous news features, but there is an amusing mockumentary starring The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss. The interviews with writer Robert Sloman and actor Stewart Bevan will also give fans some extra insights--particularly Bevan's revelation that the actors were discouraged from rehearsing the final scene so as to give it genuine emotional intensity. --Paul Eisinger

DVD Description
The Doctor and UNIT are called in to investigate a series of mysterious deaths at a disused mine in South Wales, where all the victims were found with their skin glowing green … As the Doctor becomes suspicious of the nearby Global Chemicals factory and its mysterious ‘Boss’, his assistant, Jo Grant, becomes trapped underground – in an abandoned mine infested with deadly giant maggots!

Special Features

• Commentary by Katy Manning (Jo Grant), producer Barry Letts and script-editor Terrance Dicks
  
• Global Conspiracy? - a spoof investigative report programme about the strange happenings in the village of Llanfairfach, written by and starring The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss
  
• Visual Effects - an interview with the story's visual effects designer, Colin Mapson, including a demonstration of how to build a giant maggot
  
• Robert Sloman - the writer of The Green Death discusses the inspirations behind the story
  
• Stewart Bevan - an interview with the actor who played Professor Clifford Jones
  
• Photo Gallery
  
• Production subtitles
  
• Digitally remastered picture and sound quality

DVD Technical Information:

• Subtitles: English SDH
  
• Audio: Mono
  
• Region Code: 2, 4
  
• PAL
  
• Disc Type: DVD-9
  
• Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  
• Running Time: 153 minutes approx.

Customer Reviews

The Green Death:Giant Maggots Abound and Jo Bows Out
"The Green Death" is one of my favourite Dr Who's of all time,Jon Pertwee not this time fighting alien monsters,but man's own greed and the pollution Global Chemicals causes,lead to horrific giant maggots and one flying insect(admittedly not of the best creations)
Katy Manning's Jo Grant who had been a loveable scatter brain,takes the lead in the first episode(as she did in her previous story,"Panet Of The Daleks")while the Doctor takes an eventful short trip to Metebelis Three(it gets more eventful a few stories later!)
The pollution aspects of the story are more relevant today than ever,Jo falls in love with the young Proffesor Jones(Stewart Bevan)and leaves UNIT and The Doctor,Jo's exit is one of the most memorable exits in the classic Dr Who run.
So if you've only grow up with the new Who,please gives this story a go,you won't be diappointed.

Romance! Adventure! Our new hybrid Fungus!
Get yer handkerchiefs out young fellows. This is the time for such escapades as you might dream of, yet nothing so enchanting as this.

It's all perfectly ridiculous. Maggots? Chemical waste? Miners? Welsh Hippies?

Don't believe a word of it. This is an utterly drippy love story, it's scarcely anything else and I tell you, either I'm getting far too old, or maybe I actually grew up some time in the waste of the last few decades and this was all what it was about to begin with.

It starts with Jon going off ostensibly to get something glittery and blue from some place or other and ends with him driving away, lost, forlorn and within earshot of the sounds of distant merriment, exiled and I will never speak to you nor buy you a pint if you don't admit right out that you aren't affected by that.

It's interesting, because it has taken this long to see how closely the new Doctor and his stories are based SPECIFICALLY on this story. It's uncanny; Professor Jones might seem a bit idealistic but witness it for Pete's sake - it's so fresh and original in these worn out and jaded times, it's virtually avant garde.

So it damn well should be. Biologists living in a commune in South Wales? Actualy, why not; I knew some characters like this a long time ago, bless you John, and Dave and the other characters (you know who you are) and ironically, it was only when that era had passed by ten whole years that I recognised the congruence and bitterly regretted the lost days. Despite this, don't think that this lot aren't aware of the silliness of it all - there are two "after the fact" productions here to have a giggle at, though there are some serious unanswered questions for any ambitious writers. Hint! Go on then!

And after all this, there is the BOSS. Oh, nothing compares with this - in the 1970's this really was a proper computer; And incidently, the piece you were wondering about is Beethovens violin concerto in D minor. Watch the final bit and all will be clear.

There's a moral conclusion here, though actually there are several, and I don't know which one I like best. You can select your own.

Katy Manning is so very, very good at this, and now seems to be aware of how much adoration she always engendered; She's kind of like a hybrid between one of the Liver Birds and a cuddly version of Emma Peel from the Avengers (She's going to beat the stuffing out of me the next time I see her at a convention for that); She has warmth and character in abundance and you would be amazed that she didn't get her own spin off series after this. But of course, there we were in the 1970's and we didn't DO that back then. More's the pity. She was wonderful, and incidently, please note, still is; appearing presently as a certain Wildethyme lady. Be sure to look her up. Unit are wonderful, and more than resemble the signals regiment I was in when I was in Perth all those years ago. As for Jon, and the Brig and the others, read them and weep.

They just don't make them like this any more.

Pupatastic!
Being one of the very few Doctor Who stories I have never actually seen all the way through, I sat down to watch this in delicious anticipation. I had read the Target novelisation many times over as a lad and knew it was `the one with the giant maggots'. The tale opens in classic Doctor Who fashion with a clearly fated miner trying to escape from an (admittedly clumsy blue-screen) abandoned mine. The miner turns to the camera and his entire face is suffused with a green glow - cut to the mine head where the oily executive in charge of the company is trying to persuade a mob of angry miners that their jobs are safe.
One of the hallmarks of this particular story is its somewhat frustrated ambition. As a novel, the amazing scenes of The Doctor being beset on all sides on the blue planet Metebelis 3 are simply fantastic. On the small screen in 1973 they are almost laughable, but as a Doctor Who fan I remain steadfastly loyal and can recognise this as a brave attempt to bring a magnificent idea to life with very limited resources. The opening episode ends with Jo and a miner hurtling down the mineshaft in a cage that can't be stopped; is this the end for our plucky heroine..? Of course it isn't and episode two sees The Doctor saving the day once more.
The remainder of episode two focuses on the mysterious Global Chemicals and its sinister BOSS - Bimorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor - a computer with a will of its own that is brainwashing those who attempt to investigate, and controlling events through the aforementioned director of the company - Jerome Willis' calculating Stevens. The infamous maggots are introduced in episode three as the body-count rises, and The Doctor, UNIT and dashing young professor, Clifford Jones, seek to combat the growing menace that is BOSS. This is in many ways The Brigadier's episode. He battles with Stevens and is defeated when the Global man brings his powerful government connections to bear. The Brig then defends Jo and rather incongruously joins Dr Jones at the `Nut Hatch' for a dinner of funghi and bizarre entertainment! There is also a ghoulish scene where the brainwashed Global employee Fell is ordered by the computer to kill himself, and Jo and The Doctor watch horrified as he hurls himself from the roof.
A more light-hearted scene sees The Doctor become a little jealous, as Jo's blossoming romance with Professor Jones becomes more obvious to the Timelord. In a poignant scene he tells her that he finally made it to Metebelis 3 and proudly shows her the blue crystal he brought back. Her mind clearly on other things, she dismisses him dreamily, and you see the pained realisation that he has lost yet another companion.
The fourth episode sees the grotesque grubs come into their own, multiplying a thousand-fold and attacking Global strong-arm man Elgin as he sneaks up on Jo - injecting the eponymous gene-altering infection into his arm. The episode is still more memorable for The Doctor's comedy turns as a milkman and then a charlady; disguises he adopts in order to infiltrate the Global Chemicals compound. Pertwee is clearly in his element here, and it is easy to see how he could have made The Third Doctor an overtly comedic figure (thank goodness the producer reined him in!)
Episodes five and six see Professor Jones become infected, much to Jo's distress, and the maggots begin to pupate...
Aside from some dodgy CSO when The Doctor is driving Bessie and a poorly realised giant fly, The Green Death deserves its place as a fan-favourite; it is rare that `classic' Who gives any insight into character and relationships but there is real pathos when The Doctor slips away as Jo and the Professor plan their new life, without him.