The Green Death

"SlimeWatch UK", "Sludge of the Day", "Eco Eco Ology"

"The One With the Giant Maggots" (USA), "The One with the Right Idea" (Quorn Magazine), "A Moment of Paradise" (Giant Flies Monthly)

Doctor Who's friend Jo discovers an ecological bent and finds a nice boy to settle down with. One out of two isn't bad.

*** - Who builds a super computer, calls it BOSS and is surprised when it tries to take over?

"That Professor Jones makes a good point" (nobody (1) over 30 and (2) well dressed was allowed to say this line on orders from BBC management)

"Devilish pants spawned by the filthy by-products of your technology"

The giant condoms used were actually the skins of real maggots sewn together by the woman who would come to knit Tom Baker's scarf

Originally called ‘Doctor Who and the Slimy Shaft’, this story was renamed after Barry Letts found an amusing nickname for venereal disease in a book.

Katy Manning fell in love with four of the cast of this story and had to hold a raffle to determine who she would appoint as her new lover.

A fly on the wall documentary crew followed filming of this story until flouncing off and muttering ‘you’re taking the piss’ when the giant fly appeared.

Cash payments to the Welsh Mafia – the Tafia – were made every day to ensure there were no ‘accidents’ during filming. One day’s was sixpence short and Katy Manning found her eyebrow pencil snapped in three places.

Filming was the lead story on Wales Tonight eight days running. On the ninth day, a sheep developed a cough and Dr Who was bumped to second place.

...is that you must take care when you build a super computer not to use Mrs Thatcher's personality as an operating system

Si Hunt

"A very similar thing happened to me as happened to "The Doctor" in Story TTT. Some years ago I decided to hire a young research assistant. Naturally, he or she wouldn't be trusted with anything as important or exciting as research - the prole was merely to perform auxiliary tasks such as making me small cups of coffee, mopping my brow, removing used tissues, answering the telephone (if British Telecom fixed the long standing fault that stopped the telephone from ringing), standing outside the BBC Vaults and giving me a sign if anyone in a security guard uniform approached, carrying my satchel on trips to the shops, warning me if any darts were flying my way while I was enjoying a small glass of sherry in the Elk and Bush and generally performing tasks fitting for a member of the lower caste. I was delighted when the Job Centre sent along a young blonde lady to assist me for the princely sum of sixty five pence per hour. She was adequate as far as women go - her coffee tended to taste a little uriney, she was rather slow when it came to warning me about incoming darts, her brow mopping was regularly achieved with the very used tissues she was employed to remove and she accidentally published photographs from my personal collection on an internet site called mybossisapervert.com but she was cheap and she turned up more or less every day. Alas, it was not to be as, like Josephine Grant in Story TTT, she resigned her position when something else turned up. In her case, ironically enough, she chose to go down a chemically polluted mine shaft and risk death at the hands of mutated insect rather than be my assistant. I can only assume they were prepared to pay her more. Oh well, it was her loss <shrug>."

"The Nuthutch" magazine oddly came out as one of this story's harshest critics. Dez Labian called it "Full of flabby politics, windy environmentalism and softness on the Welsh question." Meanwhile, Randy Beaver, writing in "The Tesco Staff Magazine" used the story to highlight the value of Tesco stocking a full range of meat-free mushroom protein products. "Anyone who links vegetarian meals with deadly maggots needs their head testing with computers" he argued, adding "This is good stuff - it fooled the Brig and he's got a gun. So it must make you really brave too." Elsewhere, Simon Epilate (writing in "Time and Relative Dimensions in Spon") commented "while I'm happy and strangely moved by Jo's happy ending, I was really hoping she'd get infected and die in hideous agony as it would've been more enjoyable television."