The nature of horror, of what causes audience gooseflesh, was illustrated vividly and "The Seeds of Doom," Saturday's new adventure of Dr. Who (B B C-1), in which the largest menace was a poisonous vegetable from outer space.
The scriptwriter, Robert Banks Stewart, made sure that his characters played for high stakes.
"Mr. Stevenson," said the doctor, sternly, "what you have done could result in the total destruction of all life on this planet."
The wretched scientist had merely defrosted and outsize plant pod, which looked like a large Christmas pudding and have been found in the Antarctic.
This threat of wholesale annihilation was, however, distant and impersonal and therefore not nearly as frightening as the close a metamorphosis of one individual, Stevenson's colleague. His body gradually putrefied and turned green, until he resembled a mobile stick of rotting celery.
We are used in fairy tales to transformation scenes, heroes into swine, frogs into princes, but this was a new twist and the suggestion of amputating the decaying green arm seemed to be distinctly gruesome.
Whether children are scared by it will depend, I suppose, on how much faith they have in the invincibility of Dr Who (Tom Baker).
I wish that he would not dress as if he had just bought his clothes at an Oxfam jumble sale, and I prefer the decisive logic of Mr. Spock, but I respect his ability to deal with mad botanists and any amount of intergalactic asparagus.
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