3.3: The Ambassadors of Death
In which nothing makes sense, excitingly.
Broadcast: March-May 1970
Watched: November 2019
The Ambassadors of Death, Episode 1
“My dear fella, I simpy don’t happen to have a pass.”
Two important questions:
1) Are these ambassadors sent by death, or are they ambassadors associated with death?
2) The version of this I’m watching as a sequence in the middle of the credits, between the Doctor’s face and the title card. Is that actually how it was broadcast or has someone mucked around with it? [No, apparently this is correct. Nice touch.]
Very odd to see the TARDIS console just hanging about in a room. Nice reminder that this is meant to be a time travel series in the comedy “sent into the future” sequence though.
Oh the signal is coming from London, there's a shock.
This is probably the best looking story yet isn’t it? It could be any other early ‘70s thriller. The space stuff is really well done (British space programme lol), even when it’s a simple trick like “running the footage upside down”. The music that plays as the two modules link up is a bit Ceefax though isn’t it? Unless I am in fact watching some weird fan-edited version somehow. [Apparently it was Dudley Simpson’s attempt to do something like A Whiter Shade of Pale, which the BBC used on its moon landing footage the previous summer.]
It’s also a properly intriguing set-up. Missing astronauts! Alien signals! Suspicious moustachioed men in abandoned warehouses! Outrageous accents!
The cliffhanger is mental though. The beard-y bloke threatens the Doctor with a gun out of nowhere and for no obvious reason and what? It looks like an editing error.
The Ambassadors of Death, Episode 2
Ah so they really do split the titles to make “THE AMBASSADORS... OF DEATH!!” sounds more dramatic.
There’s an extra in the space control scenes who looks like Barbara Windsor.
Why on earth do we keep cutting back to Bessie doing a three-point turn. Oooh right it’s so the Doctor isn’t there when the hijack happens right.
Is the lettering on the helicopter (”G-AWFL”) a deliberate joke (”GODAWFUL”)?
Pertwee is great in this one. Suddenly barking an order at the prisoner, pretending to be an old man to trick the hijackers so he can use his “anti-theft device”.
Just looked up the director - Michael Ferguson did War Machines, Seeds, and this. He wasn’t bad was he? Though I seem to remember Claws being a sh*tshow.
Also... there are a lot of very sudden edits, in a way that looks clumsy.
The bearded guy is in his CUPBOARD! I have no idea how this conspiracy is meant to work but it’s hilarious.
The Ambassadors of Death, Episode 3
Oh my god I’ve just noticed the words “of death” are in a bigger font and arrive a second later than “The Ambassadors”, I’m going to call this “The Ambassadors... OF DEATH” from now on because that’s literally its name.
I sort of love how bonkers this conspiracy is. I know it doesn’t actually make any sense - honestly I’ve no clue what’s going on - but Carrington explaining the plot while simultaneously having the astronauts kidnapped and then the kidnappers buried in a gravel pit and the van they’ve been driving in changing its entire appearance at the press of a button, it’s brilliantly insane.
I also love that the space programme is so advanced that by 197something Britain has had seven different Mars missions, but in 2009 Bowie Base One is the first actual settlement on Mars. Sure it is, Russell.
Sort of love how Ronald Allen compensates for being so OTT in The Dominators by being almost entirely expressionless now.
Why does Liz try to run away from the bad guys by running across a weir? Rookie error. Aaaand another weirdly sudden cliffhanger.
Also the thought occurs that this is a weirdly future-facing story: this is exactly the kind of mental coup the security services kept muttering about re Wilson in the mid ‘70s.
Tell you what, this last week has been an absolute f*cker: on top of spending all that time at the hospital, last night I had to have a f*cking tooth out. It is strangely comforting to be up to the Pertwee era while this happens because, despite having been broadcast a decade before I was born, it feels oddly like home. I wonder why. I think maybe it’s partly the “UNIT family” thing? There’s a comforting familiarity to Pertwee and Courtney, even before the rest of the crew arrive. And partly also it’s an era that just appeals to me.
The Ambassadors of Death, Episode 4
“We can’t have you taking risks,” says Regan, who might as well be holding a neon sign reading, “We are going to kill you.”
It’s bloody violent this one, isn’t it? Lot of deaths, often vaguely graphic, mostly totally pointless.
Proper Terry Nation style capture escape loop in which Liz spends five minutes getting away from her captors only to be delivered back with no consequences.
Apropos of nothing, the thought occurs that Lofficier’s compromise on UNIT dating - “put them a year in the future” - was shockingly rubbish, since it doesn’t match up with either technology, intention, or the timelines given on screen. The Norway Option of Dr Who continuity. [Jean Marc Lofficier was the author of The Doctor Who Programme Guide, and assorted books about the series available in the 1990s. One of them proposed dealing with the UNIT dating problem - the fact the dates given for the various UNIT stories just don’t fit, no matter how hard you try - by bunging every story a year into the future. Yeah, no.]
The Ambassadors of Death, Episode 5
Oddly, Benton’s one scene has a “This is an important character!” vibe to it - he introduces himself and everything - even though they could have used anyone in that scene. Did they know he was going to be a regular? Also is he ever called Benton in The Invasion? [James Cooray-Smith reckons his scene here was added later when they cast him in the next story and decided to make him a regular.]
The Brig coming to see the Doctor off is oddly touching. Pertwee’s G-force face is horrifying.
The industrial complex serving as a set is oddly familiar - do they use this a lot, possibly in Blake’s 7 too?
The Ambassadors of Death, Episode 6
The fact we’re five and a half episodes into this before the Doctor discovers they’re ambassadors, as the title says they are, is mental.
Anyway, some questions. Why were individual episodes of this split between black and white and colour for so long? [Something to do with the BBC wiping the colour mastertapes of everything except episode 1, and the colour version having to be reassembled from foreign broadcast tapes.] Why is it such a mess? [Different writers take over a couple of episodes in.] Why do the writers think “an isotope” is a dangerous thing in itself? [No idea!]
Also - what doesn’t make sense? I can see it’s a mess, but also it’s not a mess in a way that you spot if you’re not thinking too hard - so where are the holes? [There are many, but the main one is that we know from very early on that General Carrington is behind the plot, then they pretend he isn’t and hope we’ll just forget. To be fair, this worked on me.]
The Ambassadors of Death, Episode 7
“Please release that gentlemen.”
There’s something very Doctor Who about the way this ultimately comes down to UNIT, which is explicitly international, working with friendly aliens to beat Little Englanders and career criminals.
I actually don’t think using “Carrington is a villain??” as cliffhanger is a problem. Partly because, yes, much of the audience would have forgotten. Partly because it’s not really about the audience discovering it, it’s about the regulars doing so, and Carrington waving a gun at them. The plot here makes *enough* sense.
Other thoughts: the music in this serial is outstanding. Love the bit where UNIT have to use Bessie because none of the other cars are available.
Was there any critical comment at this time about the fact Doctor Who suddenly looked really good? We’re only about five years out from “a play, with cameras pointed at it” and suddenly it’s all high-tech and film.
Anyway, I really enjoyed that one. And now it’s Inferno! Season 7 is great isn’t it?
I know the general consensus these days amongst the clever kids is that the UNIT stories are set in the year of broadcast. I am not sure how that fits with "The Invasion" being set in a near future (say 1975) in which the UK clearly doesn't have its own space programme whereas by the time of "The Ambassadors of Death", the UK has its own Mars programme. Which presumably means that the US, USSR, France, China, Japan and probably several other countries do too. By the time, we get to "The Android Invasion", the UK has a military space programme of its own as well with Senior Defence Astronauts in Jupiter space. If anything, "Ambassadors" is probably set in the early 1980s and "Android" (transmitted in late 1975) the late 1980s. Yes, it doesn't look it. But we have to accept that the timelines of "Ambassadors" and "The Waters of Mars" and "Kill the Moon", etc. etc. just aren't the *same* timeline.
'I also love that the space programme is so advanced that by 197something Britain has had seven different Mars missions, but in 2009 Bowie Base One is the first actual settlement on Mars. Sure it is, Russell.'
This seems fair enough. Even before you consider things like regime changes, political climate, etc, I don't think near double figures of missions to Mars implies you will *ever* establish a colony. I mean, they could all be returning 'slim possibility but not realistic' as their experimental results. How many Apollo missions were there? But we have no moonbase.
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'Also the thought occurs that this is a weirdly future-facing story: this is exactly the kind of mental coup the security services kept muttering about re Wilson in the mid ‘70s.'
'despite having been broadcast a decade before I was born, it feels oddly like home.'
I recently opined (on a Big Finish extras track available wherever you get your audio drama soon, natch) that the thing that defines Pertwee, particulary exile era Pertwee, and PARTICULARLY Season 7, is that it is about something, and that something is Speculative Fiction in the truest sense. It is about where we are, and where we're going, in the real world beyond the show. Hence stories about geopolitics and ecology and little grace notes like 'BBC 3'. I feel like this has some pertinence to both the above quotes.