Michael Ferguson, “Doctor Who: The Ambassadors of Death” (Season 7, 1970)
After six seasons, and the departure of two actors playing the eponymous Doctor, perhaps the time was due for a change in style as well as a change from monochrome television broadcasting to colour. Enter a new and nattily dressed Doctor (Jon Pertwee), stranded on Earth by his Time Lord people as punishment for interfering in various planets’ affairs (including Earth’s affairs) and compelled to work with a secret military international taskforce, UNIT, to defend the Earth from alien and other paranormal threats. A new producer, Barry Letts, also came on board: he would change the show’s production schedule which allowed for more rehearsal time in a more relaxed atmosphere and reduced deterioration in the sets used (thus saving money); and he introduced ideas and themes that shifted the show’s ideological orientation towards political liberalism and social progressivism with a critique of colonialism and political conservatism.
These changes along with technological and other innovations in TV production and broadcasting led to a reduction in the number of stories and episodes from Season 6 to Season 7. Season 7 is notable for having just four stories compared to earlier seasons (for example, Season 2 had nine stories) but what these stories lack in quantity, they more than compensate in the quality of writing and acting, their pacing and what they give audiences to think and ponder over: issues of tolerance, being able to co-exist on the same planet and sharing limited resources, and thinking through and resolving problems rather than acting emotionally and creating a bigger mess.
The third story in Season 7, “The Ambassadors of Death” – incidentally a rip-off of “The Quatermass Experiment” – demonstrates this concern for tolerance and dealing with issues with reason and co-operation. Three astronauts on missions to Mars have gone missing for several months, and when eventually they do return in a recovery craft, they are immediately taken into quarantine by General Carrington (John Abineri) who claims these men have been subjected to intense levels of radiation that may be contagious to others. Once UNIT is put onto the case, the Doctor ascertains that the real astronauts are still in space, and the men in Carrington’s custody are actually aliens. In the meantime, a ruthless criminal, Reegan (William Dysart), who is secretly working for Carrington, abducts the Doctor’s assistant, Liz Shaw (Caroline John), and puts her to work alongside another scientist, Lennox (Cyril Shaps), in keeping the alien prisoners alive.
The Doctor volunteers to travel to the Mars probe to find the original astronauts; in his journey, his craft is captured by the alien spacecraft whose controller explains that the human astronauts are being held, their release dependent on the safe return of the three alien ambassadors originally sent to Earth to make peaceful contacts. If anything should happen to the ambassadors, then the aliens will attack Earth. The Doctor pledges the safe return of the ambassadors and zips back to London, only to be kidnapped himself by Reegan. The Doctor eventually discovers that Carrington has lured the alien ambassadors to Earth, to manipulate them into killing humans and arouse public opinion against their kind, with the ultimate aim to instigate a war between Earth and the alien spacecraft. The Doctor sends a radio message to UNIT, the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and his men rescue the Doctor and Liz, and – together with the alien ambassadors – the UNIT forces storm the Space Centre where Carrington is about to make a public announcement “exposing” the aliens. The Brigadier arrests Carrington, but not before Carrington pleads to the Doctor that he is trying to save the world from extraterrestrial invasion.
In stark contrast to earlier Doctor Who stories (and later ones as well), this story makes no concession to children’s intelligence and sensitivities: the plot can be quite convoluted and requires viewers’ full attention. There is plenty of biffo, machine guns and pistols are in full view, people are shot or zapped dead, and even Liz Shaw manages to kick someone hard in the nuts. Even the visuals are gritty, and the entire narrative is delivered in an unsentimental, almost doco-drama realist style. Characters are not black-and-white: the good guy Brigadier is hard, stern and ruthless; while the villain of the piece, Carrington, errs mainly in misunderstanding the purpose of the aliens’ visit, believing them to be hellbent on invasion when they have come in peace. The fact that the aliens, when they touch humans, kill them is an unfortunate accident that the Doctor recognises but which Carrington (because of his military training, along with an incident in which his colleague, on an earlier Mars mission, was killed) interprets as hostility and aggression. One can’t help but feel pity for Carrington who passionately believes he is doing the right thing, even to the extent of hiring crooks to kidnap and even kill people, as he is led away by the Brigadier, and the Doctor, for all his brusqueness in dealing with authority figures, empathises with the general.
In such a long story – it runs to seven episodes – there are moments where it drags and seems to lose sight of the end goal, and in these gaps, there could have been a bit more emphasis on Carrington’s interactions with TV journalist Wakefield (Michael Wisher), to show how Carrington was manipulating both his alien captives and the general public, and how the mass media can be made complicit in stirring up false news about an “invasion” and pushing the public into supporting a needless war. This would have given “The Ambassadors of Death” a contemporary edge that would be readily recognised by future audiences in another 50 years.
On the whole, despite obvious flaws in the pacing and plot, this is a very good Doctor Who adventure, perhaps best seen as a mystery / action thriller with a strong conspiracy theory flavour, that just happens to have sci-fi aliens whose hands you don’t want to shake.