Quite possibly Malcolm Hulke's finest effort.
The opening scene is extended so that Ted Hughes can reminisce about the days when the mine was a working one. The fracas outside Panorama Chemicals (so named) turns into a discussion about the General Strike and how the workers have always been oppressed by one ruling class or other. Prof Jones has black hair, and speaks Welsh, but is told to desist by the villagers: 'Stop talking Welsh with that stupid Cardiff accent. You only learnt it out of a book.' He is frustrated by the way people's ignorance prevents them from understanding his arguments.
Dr Stevens, despite the doctoral qualification he's acquired, seems a shallower individual than his wily screen counterpart. We're told he's a snob, and the piece of paper he waves to the crowd is really a restaurant menu. The real letter is in his case, but he 'couldn't be bothered' to get it out.
He's ineffectual too: symbolically insulated from the real world by the plate glass windows through which he can see the Welsh mountains, and 'hating to imagine what Hinks might do to stop people going down the mine.' Screen Stevens seemed quite happy - even friendly - with his Hinks.
Mark Elgin, of course, 'came from a working-class background himself, but through being bright at exams had gone to university, and now considered himself superior to those less fortunate.'
The Brigadier gets quite annoyed with the Doctor in the opening lab scene, he leaves grimly without looking at the Doctor, as 'he was not used to having his orders disobeyed.' Nor does he appreciate Dr Stevens telling him what his job is.
On his trip to Metebelis the Doctor is successively attacked by venomous blue flowers, blue butterflies, tentacled blue plants, large blue birds, a herd of a hundred blue unicorns, blue ants, animated blue trees, a huge blue eagle and blue snakes writhing in the blue mud produced by blue rain accompanied by blue lightning. From the mountain-top he can see deep blue lakes in the valleys, but 'by now suspected them all to be filled with flesh-eating blue fish.' When he finally gets back to the safety of the TARDIS, he thinks 'Next year I'll try Blackpool.'
Jo gets several feminist speeches - she almost immediately challenges Cliff for saying 'man' to mean 'human', and when Dave initially refuses to let her go down the pit she asks if the old pit ponies were all male. 'If female ponies can go down the mine, so can female humans,' she asserts. Later on in the mine she corrects the Doctor's 'man-made' to 'human-made'.
Bert and Jo's progress through the mine is punctuated by several dialogues about what it's like to live in a pit village. This means that the bit about the emergency shaft leads naturally out of a story about being buried. He does not call her Blodwen (the name is transferred to the cleaning lady at Panorama).
When the Brigadier goes off to Newport, Prof Jones remarks how strongly he must believe in law and order. 'Don't we all,' says the Doctor, 'when there is law and order to believe in.' This has always struck me as just the sort of position the Third Doctor would take. The resulting plan to break into Panorama Chemicals involves climbing a tree, not using a cherry picker.
Dr Fell becomes Dr Bell, and it's he who takes the call from the mine about the cutting equipment. When Elgin wants the pipe door opened, he's babbling quotes from famous Nazis - but when he's ordered to top himself, he's chillingly repeating 'I have no further right to exist.'
The Brigadier doesn't get to talk to the Prime Minister (Jeremy Thorpe or otherwise) on the phone in Stevens' office - and what he thinks is the ecology minister's voice is actually BOSS doing an impression. Afterwards he delivers a patriotic rant to Stevens about how Britain used to be 'a sovereign state, answerable only to its own elected Parliament and Monarch' but now 'we can be told what to do by international business companies'. Either that's early anti-globalisation talk, or it's quite a good imitation of what the Col. David Stirling/National Front types were saying at the time.
The coffee, sherry and whisky served at Panorama Chemicals are all synthetic. Maybe that's what got the Brigadier so cross.
Hinks - who as others have remarked, is a plain thug on the page, rather than the smoother underworld type we see on screen - relaxes by reading comics ('mostly American') which focus on torture.
During dinner at the Nut Hatch the Brigadier chats to a long-haired young man who's wearing a kaftan and wooden beads. 'Ever fancied life in the army?' he asks jokingly. 'It was quite pleasant,' responds the young man, who turns out to be an ex-colonel.
It's the ex-colonel, by the way, who leads the pursuit of the maggot that attacks Jo. And when Benton turns up with the chrysalis later, he addresses him as 'sir', only to be told 'Just call me Jeremy.'
After dinner the Doctor walks the Brig back to the inn through the bright moonlight. Isn't that a nice picture?
The Doctor 'feels an almost childish satisfaction' at spoiling Jo's date with Cliff, but she just feels sorry for him, and wonders why he never married, 'whether there were 'lady Time Lords', whether Time Lords 'got married and had babies'?
Jo makes an extra suggestion in her 'coffee' argument with Cliff, that she should serve it topless. When Cliff follows her to the slag heap, he tricks his way past Benton by getting him to look the other way. 'Very clever,' yells Benton. 'You can get yourself blown to pieces, university degree and all!' We're told about, not shown, the bit where the Doctor and Benton rescue them from the heap.
The Panorama gate guard, subjected to the Doctor's milkman monologue, is 'very bored by all this', possibly like anyone who's got this far with this review.
There is of course no Mr James - it's Elgin who Yates deprogrammes, and who then gets killed by electronic shrieks. When Yates tells the Brigadier that he has his instructions, the Brig snaps 'I am the only person who gives you instructions.'
Benton does not join the Doctor on the maggot-slaughtering expedition, instead he makes off-colour jokes to the Brigadier from the sidelines. The insect in the inside illustration differs from the superbly unpleasant one on the cover, and again from the one seen on screen. When it's dead, the Doctor thinks there should have been another way, and drives off. 'He's always so sorry in the end for the horrible creatures we come across,' says Benton. 'It isn't human.' 'He isn't,' replies the Brigadier.
Best quote: 'They've got a mad scheme to create a well-ordered society where everyone is happy and well-fed.'
Quote that makes the Doctor sound most like some internet hippy: 'Don't let the computer control you, man. You should be the one in control.'
The hypnotised gate guard wakes up again at the end. He's surprised to find himself in Wales, instead of Ward End, Birmingham driving a bus.
There's no engagement party at the end, just a sad scene where the Doctor pretends to be pleased to hear that Jo's getting married. A tear rolls down his 725-year-old cheek as he drives away.
All this and a fantastic, dystopian cover. Now
that's what I call a Target.
