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...

Episode 1 of The Ambassadors of Death need not be Doctor Who. There's very little about it which says Doctor Who, rather than any number of other TV shows being made at the time. Apart from the brief (and quite odd) scene at the start where the Doctor tinkers with the TARDIS console in what appears to be his personal Victorian-style study, this is Doctor Who dialed down to 1.

There's plenty of intrigue to keep the interest, however - it's just that this feels nothing like Doctor Who as I know and prefer it. It's basically Jon Pertwee as Professor Quatermass.

It opens with one of those dull space travel scenes that bogged down The Tenth Planet and The Space Pirates, with everything being described and checked in detail. Director Michael Ferguson sedately keeps the camera focused on head and shoulders (Cornish and Van Lyden), but just as you begin to nod off, they start talking about Mars Probe 7, and how it took off from Mars seven months ago but has been floating in space ever since, without communication. Van Lyden is the one-man crew of Recovery 7, sent up to dock with Mars Probe 7 and bring the astronauts back home (if they're alive).

Instantly I'm intrigued, and ever so slightly thrilled when the story title, episode number and writer captions crash in on the crest of a classic Doctor Who sting. It's like having a 21st century style pre-credits teaser and it really works well!

Again, the set-up feels very Quatermass, with the promise of something having gone terribly wrong with Mars Probe 7's crew. This is confirmed in a startlingly directed scene when Van Lyden makes his way into the probe's linking chamber only to be assaulted by deafening noise (made to seem all the more nightmarish by being in slow-motion). The camera zooms in on his screaming face, intercut with the Brigadier, Liz and Taltalian covering their ears. What did Van Lyden see?

The Doctor's arrival at space control is typically brash and amusing, forcing his way through without a pass and virtually taking over without so much as a hello. The Doctor is particularly unlikeable here. Gone are the pleasantries, to be replaced with a kind of egotistical self-importance which endears him to nobody, either on or off screen. He is patronising and disrespectful ("The man's a fool!") until the Brigadier manages to calm his mood. I don't like this version of the Doctor; it's the same behaviour some people criticise the Sixth and Twelfth for, but here, the Third is just really unpleasant, rather than rude and detached.

There's some impressive model work of the probe and shuttle docking in space, accompanied by some unusual 1970s lounge music (obviously inspired by, but falling considerably short of, 2001: A Space Odyssey!). There's also some rather jazzy music accompanying the Doctor's arrival at the space centre, and a jaunty theme for UNIT's arrival at the abandoned warehouse. Dudley Simpson is surely an improvement on Carey Blyton, but some of his choices remain eccentric.

I'm not a big fan of David Myerscough-Jones's sets design either. The space control centre is a typically cramped affair, but access to it seems so laborious and impractical. First you have to come up in a shonky lift, then descend some steps that make you go all around the room before you get to the middle. Not good when you're in a rush. Plus, the map projection area is out of sight of where Ralph Cornish, the main man, sits (and poor Ronald Allen literally sits for the entire 25 minutes!). I don't like the Doctor's weird study-cum-lab either, it's a decor disaster. That said, I love the wide-angle establishing shot of the space control centre, complete with sectional roof.

Oh, and Cheryl Molineaux as Miss Rutherford is pretty poor too, delivering her lines as very obviously rehearsed statements rather being acted naturally. You can almost see her thinking: "Right, my line's coming up. I need to say them, and then move away out of camera shot."

The gunfight between UNIT and the heavies at the abandoned warehouse (conveniently situated just seven miles away!) is very well filmed and adds plenty of action to the story, but again in a very ITC adventure series way. It doesn't feel like Doctor Who, and the although the scene where Collinson corners the Brigadier and threatens to kill him is tense, it has a grittiness to it that feels ill-suited to a family show. This is Doctor Who, not Danger Man. This episode must hold some kind of record for the most bullets fired in one installment, and there are plenty of deaths, despite Carrington's request for no killing (why don't UNIT troops wear body armour in these situations? They're soldiers, not policemen).

By the end of the episode they're already considering sending another shuttle up to rescue Mars Probe 7 and Recovery 7, despite the fact it took them seven months to get Recovery 7 up and running (which in itself doesn't make sense, because it takes at least 10 months to get from Earth to Mars). First, Cornish wants to try bringing the probe back to Earth remotely, but can't do so until the crew switches off manual control. Surely this doesn't make any sense? I would have thought the space centre would be able to activate remote control itself in case of incidents just like this, where the on-board crew is unable to manually operate it.

The cliffhanger comes somewhat out of the blue (a fuzzy-edged CSO blue?) as the Doctor tries to get uber-French Bruno Taltalian to let him use a computer. He emerges from behind a door, pistol in hand, trained on the Doctor and Liz. It's a rather abrupt and unexpected ending, as Taltalian has been a rather peripheral character so far (if you can excuse Robert Cawdron's outrageous accent and beard), but it adds to the intrigue I suppose.

So far, so Quatermass. Although everything I'm seeing is perfectly fine, it just doesn't feel like Doctor Who very much, and at the end of the day I'm watching this because I like Doctor Who. If I wanted to see Department S, I'd get the box set off my shelf instead.

First broadcast: March 21st, 1970

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: I do like the episode captions coming in after a little teaser at the start. It would have been great to keep that up.
The Bad: That silly scene with the TARDIS console. It's not even explained what the console is, and why it's outside of the TARDIS. We haven't seen inside the police box since Season 6, so anybody new to the series will be wondering what it all means. Plus, it's done badly - you can hear Jon Pertwee and Caroline John shuffling about into their positions behind each masked-off shot.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 3 - The Doctor insists that Ralph Cornish listens to him.
Neck-rub tally: 0

NEXT TIME: Episode 2...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 2; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 5; Episode 6; Episode 7

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ambassadors-of-death.html

The Ambassadors of Death is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Ambassadors-Death-DVD/dp/B008H2JK5Y.