Harrison Chase
Harrison Chase was an eccentric millionaire whose primary hobby was botany. In its pursuit, he assembled the world's largest collection of plants and disdained humanity in favour of plant life. He even composed music for the plants in his greenhouse.
Biography
Chase was obsessive about his plant collection. He deemed himself the greatest collector of plant life and considered it the most helpless and beautiful thing in the world. He severely disliked his fellow human beings. Among his other eccentricities, he always wore black leather gloves.
Chase learned from a government official, Richard Dunbar, that a Krynoid pod had been found in Antarctica. He bribed Dunbar regularly for information. Chase sent his henchman, Scorby, and a scientist, Arnold Keeler, to steal it.
The Krynoid came into his possession and it infected Keeler, who slowly changed into a Krynoid himself. Chase would not allow Keeler to get medical attention. He accelerated the process by feeding it and tried to study the plant's biology.
Chase put the Fourth Doctor in his compost machine, intending it to kill him. He was rescued by Sarah Jane Smith.
The creature grew bigger and more powerful. Chase began photographing it when it attacked him; he became psychically linked with it, and began to aid it in its plans to destroy animal life and become the dominant lifeform on Earth.
Chase captured Sarah Jane and put her in his compost machine; the Doctor freed her and wrestled with Chase. During the struggle, Chase was sucked into the shredder and killed. (TV: The Seeds of Doom)
Behind the scenes
- Chase's nearly omnipresent black gloves were not in the script. Actor Tony Beckley added them to his character's wardrobe as a quirk of Chase's, and they're never explained in the story. He's seen bare-handed only twice: when assembling his camera, and when he's meditating inside his greenhouse. Philip Hinchcliffe wrote the gloves into his novelisation of the story, explaining that Chase wore them in order to limit his physical contact with his fellow humans; he only liked touching plants bare-handed.
- In part four, when Chase writes Amelia Ducat a cheque as belated payment for the painting he bought from her, the black leather gloves inadvertently caused Tony Beckley to tear two cheques out of the prop cheque book instead of just one — a mistake which remained in the finished programme.
