The Ambassadors of Death - Episode 1

The Ambassadors of Death is one of the stranger stories of the seventh series. It’s the one out of the four stories that form the seventh series that I have seen the least and so it’s the one that I perhaps don’t rate as highly as the others. I’ve never been quite sure why and hopefully by watching this story an episode at a time I will find out. The first strange thing about this story is the beginning of the episode. We get a tiny bit of the opening theme tune before cutting to some action and then a bit more of the theme with the title of the story.

There’s a strange scene between the Doctor and Liz where they disappear and then re-appear. It goes on for about a minute and it doesn’t really seem to serve a purpose at this moment but thankfully it gives way for the Doctor to notice that the Brigadier is on TV and makes a comment about blowing up the Silurians at the end of the previous episode. Apart from this brief comment there seems to be no lingering negative feeling between the two and the Doctor carries on acting like nothing has happened which I suppose in 2014 would seem strange but in 1970 it would be part of the course. Its hard trying to compare the way that a show was constructed in the past to today considering we have different standards.

The thing that I like about the setting and current situation is that its been going on for a while. The Brigadier has been there for a certain period of time. Not too long after the events of ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ but long enough so its not like it’s a couple of days afterwards. The idea of space travel was something that was still in the minds of the audience as it was less than a year since Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon and so travelling to outer space was something that seemed so real. I like the moment when the Doctor is trying to remember where he’s heard a noise before but can’t and this seems to imply that it’s due to the Timelords. Jon Pertwee is absolutely fantastic in this episode from the very beginning to the scene where he’s at space control, Pertwee just loves to show off how far more intelligent the Doctor is than everyone else.

The conspiracy is kicked off relatively early when it’s clear that someone else is replying to the alien messages. We actually get to encounter it although we don’t know what the people involved have to do with the space centre so it’s a nice mystery in the first episode. There’s a great action sequence featuring the UNIT soldiers and I am surprised that this is done so quickly. Another thing that’s quite surprising is that there is not incidental music to go over it. I think that a bit of a tune would have helped make this scene brilliant but as it is a perfectly fine scene and gives the Brigadier the chance to look heroic and show why he’s there.

The cliffhanger is rather good as it is both the Doctor and Liz being held at gunpoint by Taltalian. What’s good about it is that up until that point Taltalian has been a character that appears to be a good guy and this shows that he’s not such a good guy. It’s an intriguing episode that despite a rather fun action piece, didn’t really feel like it was going anywhere. It just seemed to be there to get the Doctor and Liz to space control.