David Moloney

Jan 21, 20236 min read

SENTIMENTAL FRIENDS

Updated: Feb 25, 2023

The Green Death v. Revolution of the Daleks

This week’s randomised pairing of Classic and New Who brings together Robert Sloman’s The Green Death (May/June 1973) and Chris Chibnall’s Revolution of the Daleks (New Year’s Day 2021).

The Green Death

I rewatched The Green Death over the course of a recent Saturday afternoon and found it comforting, a contrast with the edginess and tension of other episodes I’ve watched recently. Which I suppose is a little surprising as it’s a story with depth and challenge.

It could just be nostalgia for a lost age, but also I think there’s a seductive folky element to this story. Grey sky and blasted heath, the isolated, innocent community, the threat of modernity, and demons rising from the angry earth. British telly in the 70s was good at this.

The politics of the story are not cosied by subtle allegory, and one senses that they wouldn’t have annoyed as many people in 1973 as they would if the same programme was made today. Organised unions, capitalist greed and deceit, and environmental catastrophe – it’s all there.

TGD is as preachy as anything in modern-day Doctor Who. Today it would be described as ‘woke’ – that ignorant, self-own of an insult dribbled by the lower half of intelligent society. In TGD, the word used to deride someone who cares about what’s right is ‘sentimental’.

Common with New Who, this is a story in which no single person is really ‘bad’ (henchman Hinks the possible exception). Even Global Chemicals' Stevens is revealed to be a victim of the super-computer. BOSS knows Stevens is a puny human, describing him as ‘my sentimental friend’.

Entertainingly voiced by John Dearth, BOSS is an engaging villain: a fascistically evolved AI with an inflated ego, a GSOH and a taste for Wagner and other bombastic classical scores. Its control over human minds is broken by the psychic properties of a Metebelis III crystal.

That’s the main thrust of this story, I think: not just an ecological warning but a tale of blue crystals v. men in suits, tambourines v. symphony orchestras, mushrooms v. steaks, long hair v. short back and sides, passion v. duty, and new horizons v. boundaried routine.

TGD culminates in Jo’s departure for a new life with Cliff Jones. The closing scenes are beautifully done - perhaps the most emotionally confident DW has been to this point - although I can’t help feeling Jo has switched from one bossy man to another.

Jo Grant was excellent in DW, memorably played by the great Katy Manning. Like so many female companions, she was consistently patronised (called ‘the fledgling’, ‘a goat’, ‘Blodwyn’ in this story alone) despite demonstrating as much ability and intelligence as most of the males.

I haven’t yet mentioned the horrors! Giant maggots, a giant fly and ghastly green infections. The visual effects are a bit poor by today’s standards (although those wolfish maggot teeth are effective), but still - I can see why ‘the one with the maggots’ is so fondly remembered.

Revolution of the Daleks

It’s not clear why the Doctor spends a large part of Revolution of the Daleks in space prison, until a throwaway line that it’s because of just about everything she’s ever done. It’s different though, and a fun opportunity to see some old foes, such as Sycorax, Ood and a Silence.

In actuality, it seems to be more of a device to facilitate other plot developments: in part the brief return of Captain Jack; in larger part to give some breathing space to Yaz, Ryan and Graham back on Earth.

ROTD is Ryan’s final story and there is a concerted effort to give him greater agency and attention. Although a lot of this turns out to be reflecting on how things have turned out for him with the Doctor, it’s an opportunity for Tosin Cole to show a more mature characterisation.

Yaz has become driven, to an obsessive level, to find the Doctor. Is her professed love for the Doctor unhealthy? All she wants is to be with her; in contrast, Ryan and Graham’s time with the Doctor has made them want to be better people, to emulate her by saving the world.

I think it’s a fair guess that the Doctor sees this in Yaz and that contributes to her decision to keep their relationship friendzoned. Whether she loves her too or not, the Doctor prefers to have companions to help them become better people, rather than for her own happiness.

Watching Ryan and Yaz’s stories here felt uncomfortable, a reminder perhaps that spending lots of time with the Doctor (i.e. being a fan) doesn’t always leave one feeling great. There’s a danger of becoming either disaffected or addicted (or, like Jack, overbearingly keen).

Let’s not forget this is a Dalek episode! And a really good one, I think. Those ‘security’ Daleks are a great design, and their chilling switch from servants of the state to uncontrollable killing machines reminded me of the Mechanismo story arc in 2000AD’s Judge Dredd.

It seems likely that Chris Chibnall was deliberately reflecting an awareness that violence in UK/US police culture was rapidly increasing. Production on ROTD coincided with the George Floyd murder, and it was broadcast at the start of 2021, the year Sarah Couzens was murdered.

Obviously Chibnall didn’t know of these specific incidents when he wrote ROTD, but the fears were there. It’s notable perhaps that five of the first six people murdered by the Daleks after they turn bad are people of colour; four of the first five are women.

The cloned Dalek mutant, which rides on the back and possesses the mind of Leo, is incredibly sinister, giving the first half of ROTD a creepy, snuggle-up-on-the-sofa vibe. It mocks and sneers, illustrating the human streak which ultimately makes it impure to other Daleks.

And the traditional model Dalek death squad are also very enjoyable, with their insane screaming, their mazey spaceship corridors, and their in-the-round committee meetings. I thought the Doctor’s tricking of them into a collapsing decoy TARDIS was clever and satisfying.

Connections

The Green Death and Revolution of the Daleks are two very different styles of story from very different eras of the show, but what connects them today?

I’m not sure what the Doctor’s prison food is but it looks very similar to the fungus-based foodstuff developed by the Wholeweal community. It’s not unreasonable to think her Judoon jailers might provide their prisoners with a non-meat form of sustenance.

Both stories feature an exciting prison break, the Doctor aided by Captain Mike Yates in TGD and by Captain Jack Harkness in ROTD. BOSS taunts Stevens: ‘As Oscar Wilde so very nearly said, to lose one prisoner may be accounted a misfortune, to lose two smacks of carelessness.’

It’s fairly common to meet the latest British prime minister in modern-day Doctor Who, but it didn’t happen often in the classic series. In TGD, however, the Brigadier talks directly to the PM, identified only as Jeremy – one of many predecessors to ROTD’s Jo Patterson.

Patterson refers to ‘a little toxic waste scandal’ that ruined Jack Robertson’s political ambitions. This refers to his previous appearance (Arachnids in the UK), in which waste materials from his company caused insects to grow to enormous size. Ring any maggoty bells?

Building his security machines will ‘repurpose’ old car factories, Robertson tells Patterson in ROTD. ‘New infrastructure, new jobs!’

‘Coal is a dying industry,’ Stevens tells miners in TGD. Global Chemicals will bring ‘Money for all of us! More jobs, more housing, more cars!'

But of course there’s a darker force in the background of both stories, exploiting the capitalist greed. BOSS and the cloned Dalek mutant have many similarities: scheming, taunting and spouting Nazi ideologies as they use mind-controlled human puppets to conquer the world.

The companions take charge in both of these stories, pursuing their own hunches and leads - Jo at the Nuthutch, Ryan and Graham on the trail of Jack Robertson - while the Doctor is otherwise engaged - holidaying on Metebelis III in TGD, and serving Time Lord time in ROTD.