The Ambassadors of Death Episode 7

The one where General Carrington's plan comes unravelled...

There's a lot of exposition at the start of episode 7, with General Carrington explaining his motivation like a comic book super villain. The difference is that the villain here is written sympathetically, as a man who has been doing all of this for what he perceives is a good reason, his "moral duty". He is keen for the Doctor to understand his motivation, and why he's done what he's done. The Doctor certainly does understand ("You had to do what you had to do"), but of course he does not agree with it. Carrington actually seeks the Doctor's "approval" twice, at the top and tail of this episode, and John Abineri gives a nice performance. It's the old adage that the bad guys never think that what they're doing is evil; they think what they're doing is for a good reason. As a certain Osirian once said: "Your evil is my good."

It's also interesting to note that all of this plotting and killing was triggered by the accidental death of astronaut Jim Daniels on the Mars Probe 6 mission. Carrington lost a friend because the aliens didn't understand that their touch would kill. It's all one big misunderstanding through a lack of communication.

The Ambassadors of Death Episode 6

The one where we finally see the alien ambassadors...

The first 10 minutes of this episode are really trippy, and must certainly have stretched both the patience and skills of the DVD Restoration Team when adding the US broadcast home video colour signal to the UK 16mm black and white film. The Recovery 7's arrival on the alien spaceship is not as poor as it could be, with the use of Colour Separation Overlay (CSO) being quite effective, even if the ship does look like an enormous colon.

When the Doctor enters the astronauts' waiting room, that's when the eyes really get put through their paces. It's a kaleidoscope of day-glow reds, greens and blues which bleed uncontrollably around the frame, but this adds a suitably weird and wonderful atmosphere to the scenes. When we finally get to see the alien creature in its raw form, it's thanks to the creative use of CSO, which makes them look fuzzy and indistinct, like humanoid interference. It's really effective in maintaining the creatures' mystery, especially shot through a Venetian blind! They remind me a lot of the Chameleons from The Faceless Ones (also co-written by Malcolm Hulke).

The Ambassadors of Death Episode 5

The one where Dr Lennox is served a radioactive meal...

I'm getting a bit frustrated by The Ambassadors of Death now. I used to think I quite liked it, but now I come to sit down and assess it as a drama serial, I find it's actually rather boring. Writer Malcolm Hulke (uncredited, in favour of David Whitaker) is in no hurry for the plot to go anywhere fast, and when you've got seven episodes to fill, you can barely afford to be complacent. There certainly is not enough material here for the allocated slots, and it really shows. You can tell that this story has been cobbled together by committee (Whitaker provided the basic story and scripted episodes 1-3, while assistant script editor Trevor Ray wrote the final draft of episode 1 and Hulke the final drafts of the rest) because it's so tentative, reluctant to power ahead. Despite the premise (bullet-proof alien astronauts, abducted Earth rockets), it's not great entertainment.

The pedestrian nature of proceedings is summed up perfectly for me by the disinterested performance of Joanna Ross as the space centre technician, who seems resolutely unmoved and appears utterly bored by the possibility of the Recovery 7 hurtling into the Sun's orbit. There's absolutely no urgency in these scenes, with Ross, as well as the almost comatose Ronald Allen and Carl Conway, failing to translate any of the real-life panic which might arise in an emergency such as this. Allen has been serenely flat throughout, so I can only blame director Michael Ferguson for turning what should have been a tense moment (the Doctor could die, for heavens sake!) into something akin to a rehearsed reading of the script.

The Ambassadors of Death Episode 4

The one where the ambassadors start killing people...

Although Liz is now a prisoner of Reegan's at the secret laboratory, that doesn't mean she becomes compliant and fearful. Far from it, Liz gives as good as she gets and remains as defiant as ever. When Reegan tells her to "start making yourself useful", she spits: "What if I don't?", and later when she is manhandled by Masters (the second Masters in as many stories!) she struggles to free herself, and snarls: "Don't touch me!" A Doctor Who girl with a fighting spirit (perhaps the first?).

I love how dismissive the Doctor is of General Carrington and his wild theories. First he tries to convince the Brigadier and the Doctor that the radioactive astronauts have been abducted by foreign powers to use as weapons, then tries to back this up by saying that the men's bodies found at the gravel pit had newspaper cuttings on them written in a foreign language. His additional attempt to compound his xenophobic theory with the use of foreign hair combs is ludicrous, and the Doctor sees this too.

The Ambassadors of Death Episode 3

The one where Liz drives Bessie in a car chase...

It really is shocking how poor the colourisation of this story is. Fans seemed to be perfectly pleased with the way it looked when the DVD was released in 2012, but watching it now, it truly is appalling. The colours are all over the place, and often just not there at all, and it makes me wish they hadn't bothered and just left it in monochrome. I remember seeing the story on VHS in black and white and it was much moodier that way, especially with Dudley Simpson's tense score.

The second thing that struck me watching episode 3 is the state of Ralph Cornish's shoes. When he climbs up to peer into the Recovery 7 shuttle you can see his brogues caked with mud! This scene was recorded at BBC TV Centre on February 27th, 1970, an entire month after Ronald Allen was on location in Aldershot for the retrieval of Recovery 7, so that's some very diligent adherence to continuity on the production team's part!

The Ambassadors of Death Episode 2

The one where a UNIT convoy is attacked...

As the Doctor and Liz stride confidently into the computer room with the tape recording of the signal sent from space, it's easy to see why Taltalian wants the spool so much. Maybe it's the original two-inch colour master tape of this episode, hence the urgency to recover it. "I want that tape!" demands Taltalian, to which the Doctor replies: "Do you realise the importance of it?" Yes! Because the quality of the picture on The Ambassadors of Death Episode 2 (and most of the rest) is appalling, despite the very best colour recovery and restoration possible in 2012. The flesh tones are all over the place, and the colour very smeary, especially during rapid movement. Some scenes are like watching through a sieve.

But hark! The reprise of the cliffhanger is counterpointed with a marvellous double sting of the theme tune for the title captions, even more exciting than episode 1. TWANG! Love it.

The Ambassadors of Death Episode 1

The one where contact is lost with a Mars exploration shuttle...

Season 7 is a strange beast. As well as Doctor Who getting a new lead actor and supporting characters, and blazing into colour, its format changed radically too. Gone were the days of the Doctor and his companions arriving on some alien planet or in some distant time and getting involved in scrapes. This new-look Doctor Who was entirely Earth-based, and feels much more generic as a result. By 1970, Lew Grade's ITC production company was churning out 26-part action-adventure series like nobody's business, often with a slightly fantastical twist but always based on a set group of investigators righting wrongs.

Doctor Who in 1970 has a distinct feel of series like Strange Report, Department S and Ghost Squad, with the Doctor and Liz, supported by the Brigadier and UNIT, marching into desperate situations to sort them out, whether they be strange goings-on at a factory, an atomic research station, or a space control centre. The decision to base Doctor Who on Earth, with no alien worlds, was a brave one, because it runs the risk of turning viewers off. People know what to expect when they tune into Doctor Who, but this must have been quite a change at the time. We have yet to see the TARDIS interior this season...