The Ambassadors of Death: Episode 1

WOW! A brilliant story... I only saw this complete story recently on BBC DVD, and boy, I was impressed! Jon Pertwee, in his third story as the Doctor, is marvellous. To me it shows him setting the foundations for the rest of his WHO career. The plot is also brilliant, given it is the eventual work of FOUR script writers: David Whitaker, Terrance Dicks, Trevor Ray and Malcolm Hulke. The conspiracy plot and mystery of the ambassadors creates an eerie setting, sending the Doctor into deep space and Liz Shaw into trouble. What interested me when I first saw Part One was the opening titles. The splitting of the titles (music, graphics and text: DOCTOR WHO; and electronic sting, graphics and text: THE AMBASSADORS... OF DEATH, BY David WHITAKER, PART ONE) helps generate a sense that this is something big. The scene slotted between the DOCTOR WHO and THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH allows the cliffhanger from the previous episode to be replayed, creating an even bigger sense of evil. Overall, THE AMBASSADORS... OF DEATH is a brilliant, 1970s example of "Who", full of death, action fight, conspiracy and mystery. If you have not yet seen it, go and buy the DVD and enjoy. You will not be disappointed.

Normally I have a really hard time getting through the serials that just seem to repeat the same actions for 2-7 episodes, like The Doctor getting captured, escaping, finding a single clue, the companion gets caught, escapes, finds one clue, red herrings, and a whole bunch of chase scenes to pretend there is something going on, instead of just a flurry of mindless activity. But this cast is SO GOOD despite everything that I just want to watch them do whatever they need to do to (maybe) push the plot forward. I can't believe this is so early into Jon Pertwee, Caroline John, and Nicholas Courtney's run, because they have their roles down. This is a really solid serial, despite its shortcomings.

Review of all 7 episodes:

This story begins intriguingly with UNIT and The Doctor helping to look into space missions which have run into trouble. The whole story has brilliant performances from Jon Pertwee (The Doctor), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stuart), Ronald Allen (Professor Cornish), John Abineri (General Carrington) and the rest of the cast, some good grown-up science fiction writing, realistic dialogue, plenty of thrills and intrigue plus good production values. It features some mysterious aliens, lots of action and double crossing and some good underlying moral themes to do with xenophobia and military reaction to perceived threats. That this good, solid story is the weak link in series 7 is testament to the extremely high quality of this period of the show.

The first episode is very well done with interest provided by missing astronauts, mysterious goings on, lively action and very good script and performances. The second and third episodes are less impressive. The storytelling in these two episodes feels a bit jumbled and unclear and in the second episode the Doctor inexplicably is able to make an object disappear into thin air and reappear at will - bizarre and inconsistent with anything in the series history! Episodes 4 and 5 are better although it is slightly hard to believe that UNITs security is repeatedly shown to be so poor. Episodes 6 and 7 are back to the excellent standard of the first part with the story coming to a well written, action packed and satisfying climax.

Whilst being pretty impressive for its day in presenting a space mission it does not feel entirely in keeping with its setting in the 70s or even early 80s. The ability to travel to Mars, to carry out launches and returns to Earth at great speed and a few other bits of technology shown suggest a more advanced age. This is because it was originally written to be a Second Doctor story set a bit further in the future. The original story was written by David Whitaker and would be his last credit as writer on the series. Whitaker had been the very first Doctor Who script editor, a role he carried out brilliantly, and had written such great stories as The Crusade, The Power of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks. His contribution to the series was huge. Sadly this final story was rewritten (uncredited) by Terrance Dicks, Malcolm Hulke and Trevor Ray and, whilst good, I believe it became less successful than it could have been. I think the rewrites lead to the little bits of jumbled plot, UNITs inept security and the Doctor's incongruous magical powers making it into the story! It is also a pity the story was used whilst the Doctor was stuck in a contemporary Earth setting as a setting in the future would have added believability.

This is a very exciting, enjoyable, well acted story but under different circumstances I think it could have been one of the real classics which it falls short of in my opinion.

Episode ratings: Episode 1 - 9/10, Episode 2 - 6.5/10, Episode 3 - 7.5/10, Episode 4 - 8/10, Episode 5 - 8/10, Episode 6 - 9/10, Episode 7 - 9/10. Average rating: 8.14/10

Watched THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH today-- all 7 parts of it. (But with a break between parts 5 & 6.) Only 7 months after Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, we get a story that's HEAVY with space program technical stuff. There sure is a lot of "action" in this one-- shooting, fighting, running around, helicopters, stunt-work, you name it. Of course, there's also a lot of the plot running in circles, and the bad guys continually, repeatedly being one step ahead of the goods guys-- by the time this one villain sabotages the fuel supply to the spaceship the Doctor was in, I was getting completely exasperated. UNIT's "security" seemed to totally fall apart over the course of this story!

After noting The Doctor wasn't nearly as angry and bitchy in the previous story as I remember, he walks in in full "cranky" mode this time, only to get apologetic when he realizes it's the only way to get the head of the space center to cooperate. If memory serves, David Whitaker (the show's original story editor) wrote this originally for season 6, but somehow things fell thru, and it wound up being extensively re-written and re-written. There's a few scenes where I could easily see Troughton in Pertwee's performance, but mostly, he's just too serious and even sad-looking, when at times he should be more full of wonder (or outright anger). the impression I'm getting is that Pertwee's Doctor was getting slowly MORE irritated (and irritating) the longer he was stuck on Earth.

The Doctor-Liz relationship in spots reminds me of The Doctor-Barbara friendship, while in other scenes I'm reminded he didn't have anyone who could help him on the "technical" side again until Romana showed up. That thought got me thinking about The Brigadier, and how the show had a long history of the scientist teamed with the action guy-- the latter being Ian, Steven, Ben, Jamie, and now here The Brig. (Later on, somehow, Harry Sullivan just didn't seem to cut it! Later still, Tom Baker's Doctor became his own action guy, and still later, Leela became action character and girl sidekick in one.)

This story's got a lot of familiar faces if you've seen the entirety of the series, actors who came back later on in other parts. Perhaps most notable is Michael Wisher, who supplied a voice in THE SEEDS OF DEATH, returned in TERROR OF THE AUTONS, CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS, FRONTIER IN SPACE, PLANET OF THE DALEKS, DEATH TO THE DALEKS, GENESIS OF THE DALEKS, REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN and PLANET OF EVIL! (It's a shame he wasn't available for DESTINY OF THE DALEKS of any of its sequels...)

Ronald Allen as Cornish, the head of the space center, looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. He was one of the alien baddies in THE DOMINATORS! I addition, Robert Cawdron, who played the heavily-accented Dr. Tartalian, I've seen in episodes of THE AVENGERS and THE SAINT. Cyril Shaps, who plays the collaborating scientist Dr. Lennox, also turned up in THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN, PLANET OF THE SPIDERS and THE ANDROIDS OF TARA!

Then there were 2 actors who only reminded me of other actors... William Dysart, as the criminal Reegan, had me thinking of William Campbell; and John Abineri as General Carrington, I swore had returned in a similar role in THE CURSE OF FENRIC, but that was actually Alfred Lynch as Commander Millington. (Gee, even the characters' names were similar.)

Somebody said this felt like a 6-parter padded out to 7 parts, instead of feeling like a 4-parter padded out to 7. I guess that's something!

I always remember when I first saw this (back when it was still IN COLOR!), I saw Liz chased by baddies and almost fall into the river... and then I missed the next 2 or 3 in a row, finally tuning in on part 7. So the end of this story was actually the first time I saw a "finale" on one of these. More than a decade later, when Philly's Channel 12 (PBS) ran it in "movie" form, they showed the story without any breaks at all... and, abruptly, CUT IT OFF about 8 minutes before the end of the story. WHAT th'...??? The following week, they ran INFERNO (which had turned up a year or two earlier, as it was in color), and at the end, they issued an apology for the screw-up the previous week-- and then, RAN the ending. Lucky me, I was fast enough on the draw, I was able to tape the ending right onto the end of the rest of the story with a virtually-invisible edit.

In addition to not having color copies, another shame is how, after the first 4 (or was it 5?) episodes were really sharp picture quality, the last few it suddenly switches to really fuzzy FILM copies. Oy! I'm guessing this was assembled from at least 2 different sources.

Things really pick up in the last 2 episodes, but after so much padding and slow, slow build-up, it does seem to end pretty quick. I mean, The Doctor doesn't even stick around to see the aliens off, we don't get to see any resolution with the alien captain, we have no idea if they decided to avoid Earth like a plague after their experiences. Of course, given just HOW alien these aliens were, and how dangerous their very physical make-up was to humans (or just about anything else on Earth), maybe they decided it would be mutually beneficial to both species if they just went away and never came back... It would serve mankind and its armies right if ONE unhinged military commander can single-handedly bring the entire planet to the brink of destruction. (Gee, shades of DR. STRANGELOVE! And The Brig does look a lot like that English officer Peter Sellers played in there-- doesn't he?).

The "Brigadier" (Nicholas Courtney) is having trouble contacting the returning Mars probe so drafts in the "Doctor" (Jon Pertwee) and "Miss Shaw" (Caroline John) to try and get to the bottom of the mystery. With a bit of help from the space centre director "Cornish" (Ronald Allen) he quickly concludes that there is some extra-terrestrial shenanigans going on - especially when the crew do, eventually, arrive and seem to need enormous amounts of radiation in order to survive. A return trip to space to retrace their steps seems to be in order, but there appears to be an uncanny number of obstacles being thrown in the path of his scientific investigations. Is there someone on the inside who knows more than they are letting on - and is there an ulterior motive? This is another rather plodding seven-parter that takes it's time to get going, and when it does all rather underwhelms. It's fairly obvious who the antagonists are from episode three and until the tail end of the series, there's not really enough action happening. Director Michael Ferguson clearly hadn't the budget, or the notion, for special effects and this comes across as merely an half-decent murder mystery, with an underlying moral message, that only has a very slight sci-fi influence. It's not really a time-travelling adventure for "Dr. Who" with a solid story for us to get our teeth into. I'm still struggling to warm to "Shaw" too - though her role here is somewhat third wheel to Courtney's - and the military's - more prominent ones and to be honest I found this just a little bit of a wordy slog.