We have the Season 10 finale The Green Death, the end of Pertwee’s fourth season and Jo’s final story. It’s your usual UNIT story setup where some new company has set up what appears to be a clean energy enterprise, but under the surface lies something sinister. But on this occasion it’s nothing alien, it’s just humans who’ve gone too far with their waste disposal, pumping all waste into the mines, creating a toxic slime that kills anyone who touches it, except a nest of maggots who begin to grow to alarming size, their bites carry to toxins from the slime and it’s only a matter of time before they grow into giant flies. Overseeing the whole operation is a man-made supercomputer called BOSS, who’s basically Hal 900 but with the sanity of Holly from Red Dwarf.

For Modern Who fans, think Arachnids in the UK from the Whittaker era, but longer and better. Though admittedly The Green Death has had its naysayers over the years for valid reasons. A lot of the effects, including the blue screening and the giant fly are in the worse half of Classic Who’s terrible effects, the story is a tad too long with some sequences that feel like they’re just trying to kill time, Jo leaving falls into the category of a companion falling in love and wanting to marry someone they only just met at the start of the story, and really at this point the whole UNIT formula was becoming a bit tired and played out.

All these are very valid, but they’re also countered by some of Classic Who’s best practical effects with the giant maggots, one of my favourite one-off villains in the BOSS who has one of the best voices of any Doctor Who villains, it’s a refreshing and bold take for the threat this time to be something that isn’t alien for once. We even get in rare form for Classic Who foreshadowing of the Doctor’s regeneration the following year, we get a sequence where he travels to Metabilus III to retrieve one of their crystals, something that seems so inconsequential but goes on to have huge ramifications later on. Jo’s decision to marry Cliff after only a few days knowing him (and he was unconscious for a portion of it) is far-fetched when it would’ve been fine if she’d just stay to begin her relationship. But the romance is better developed and more believable than how it was handled for other companions like Susan, Leela and especially Peri! And it does lead into one of my favourite endings and companion departures. After beginning their relationship on bad terms with the Doctor being frustrated with Jo’s clumsiness, the two formed one of the strongest bonds between a Doctor and companion, one of the closest in Classic Who to being akin to a romance, Jo even says that Cliff reminds her of a younger version of the Doctor, which is as close a confirmation as we can get. When she agrees to marry Cliff and leave with him to travel to the amazon, the Doctor shares some final heartfelt words with her and gifts her the Metabilus crystal, and then whilst everyone begins to celebrate, dance and sing, he stands away from the crowd, finishes his glass of champagne, then quietly leaves and drives off into the night. No tears, no speeches, no wailing music, just very simple but powerfully effective and above all subtle! Something Russel T. Davies could learn a thing or two from!