‘Doctor Who and the Green Death’ – Malcolm Hulke (Target)

 

Page Count: 142 Pages

When I found my copy of ‘The Twin Dilemma’, the other day, ‘The Green Death’ was sat right next to it so I thought I’d make that my next read. I love it when random chance determines what I read :o) I actually got some sleep, on Wednesday night, so was able to spend a little time with ‘The Green Death’ yesterday. I was pretty keen to get into the ‘Green Death’ as I’ve never watched the serial; I don’t think I’d read the book either, until yesterday. Let me tell you a little about it…

The Green Death begins slowly. In a small Welsh mining village, a man emerges from the disused colliery covered in a green fungus. Minutes later, he is dead.

UNIT, the Doctor and Jo Grant arrive on the scene to investigate, but strangely reluctant to assist their enquiries is Dr. Stevens, director of the local refinery Panorama Chemicals.

Are they in time to destroy the mysterious power which threatens them all before the whole village, and possibly the world, is wiped out by a deadly swarm of green maggots…?

As someone who obsesses over ‘missing bits in a series’, until I can fill them in, it was a bit of a relief to finally tick off ‘The Green Death’. The book that is, I still need to watch the serial and based on what I read, I think it could be worth a watch.

That’s not to say that ‘The Green Death’ isn’t without its issues though, I was left wondering if this story worked better on the small screen than on the page. There are two threats at play, in this plot, and given the book is only 142 pages long, there wasn’t enough room to either flesh these threats out or establish a more solid connection between them (although I absolutely won't rule out my missing something really obvious, that's where I am at the moment). I couldn’t help but wonder whether the faster pace of a TV show (over a read) might have addressed this by keeping the focus on the high stakes/consequences of failure? I don’t know, it’s another reason to watch the serial though :o) It’s a little bit of a shame as the maggots are nice and icky while BOSS makes for an intriguing villain.

That’s a relatively small quibble though and shouldn’t take away from the book too much. What we’ve got here is a nice ‘two-pronged creature feature’ along with some environmental commentary and it works. You wouldn’t have thought that maggots were particularly scary… until you see an oversized maggot hunting for human flesh, and finding it. And the environmental message manages to just skirt the edges of being too heavy handed.

I always enjoy reading Malcolm Hulkes novelization of ‘The Cave Monsters’ and he displays that same control here, knowing when to stick to detailing the plot and when a little more about the characters is needed. And he definitely has captured the sense of horror that I always enjoy in ‘Doctor Who’, especially in the hints given about Hinks (every petro-chemical company needs an evil henchman...)

I wouldn’t have minded another fifty, or so, pages in ‘The Green Death’, just to really establish the link between the two threats; but that’s just me though. The book has encouraged me to go and find the serial though so it did its job and a little bit more ;o)