The Ambassadors of Death

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053 – The Ambassadors of Death
Doctor Who serial

The Brigadier pulls his gun on an Ambassador attacking the Doctor as he examines Sir James Quinlan's body.
Cast
Doctor Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor)
Companion Caroline John (Liz Shaw)
Production
Writer David Whitaker
Trevor Ray (episode 1, uncredited)
Malcolm Hulke (episodes 2-7, uncredited)
Director Michael Ferguson
Script editor Terrance Dicks
Producer Barry Letts
Executive producer(s) None
Production code CCC
Series Season 7
Length 7 episodes, 25 mins each (4 in black and white, bits of 2, 3, 6-7 in black and white)
Originally broadcast March 21–May 2, 1970
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
Doctor Who and the Silurians Inferno

The Ambassadors of Death is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in seven weekly parts from March 21 to May 2, 1970.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Two manned astronaut missions to Mars have gone awry and the Doctor becomes suspicious. It seems that nothing is simple: in a world of double-cross and triple-cross, the Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Liz must work out who to trust as they attempt to piece together the mystery surrounding mankind's contact with an alien species. When one of the space probes return to Earth, the chase is on to locate the occupants and work out what has happened to the British astronauts...

[edit] Plot

With the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce providing security, the British Space Programme under Professor Ralph Cornish oversees the launch of the Recovery Seven probe. This has been sent to Mars to make contact with the missing Mars Probe Seven and its three astronauts, who lost contact with Earth eight months earlier. The pilot of Recovery Seven, Van Lyden, makes contact with the Probe but is then silenced by a piercing unearthly sound. The noise troubles the Doctor who travels with his assistant Liz Shaw to the Space Centre to investigate the situation, offering insights into the origin and meaning of the sound, which he interprets as coded messages. He also identifies a reply message sent from Earth and this is pinpointed to be coming from a warehouse seven miles away. Led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT troops attack the warehouse and engage in a gun battle with troops organised by General Carrington.

Meanwhile Recovery Seven has returned to Earth and while UNIT is transporting it more of Carrington’s troops stage an ambush and steal the vessel. The Doctor relocates it, by which time it is empty. Carrington has ensured the contents – three space suited astronauts – are detained elsewhere, feeding them radiation to keep them alive. Carrington is now introduced to the Doctor by Sir James Quinlan, the Minister for Technology, who explains that he is head of the newly formed Space Security Department, and that his actions were to protect the astronauts as they had been infected with contagious radiation. Quinlan states that they did not want the public to become panic-stricken and so Carrington had been acting with authority in his actions.

By the time Carrington takes the Doctor and his friends to meet the astronauts the situation has changed again. A criminal named Reegan has organised their abduction, killing the soldiers and scientists protecting them. When the Doctor and Liz examine the situation they work out that human tissue could not have withstood the degree of radiation emitted to the astronauts, who are still in orbit, meaning the three space suits contain alien beings instead. Reegan now engineers the kidnapping of Liz Shaw to aid his own scientist, Lennox, a disgraced Cambridge professor, in maintaining the alien beings while they are incarcerated. Together they build a device to communicate with and control the aliens, who are sent on a killer rampage at the Space Centre, killing Quinlan and others. Liz later helps Lennox escape, but his bid for freedom is cut short by Reegan’s merciless revenge.

Despite the obstruction of the authorities, Ralph Cornish is determined to organise another space flight to Mars to investigate the situation. With Quinlan dead, the Doctor now decides to pilot the Recovery Seven probe ship himself. As he prepares to blast off Reegan tries to sabotage the probe by increasing the feed of M3 variant, but the Doctor survives the attempt on his life and succeeds in piloting the probe so that it connects with an enormous space craft orbiting Mars. Aboard the spaceship the Doctor discovers the three original astronauts are unharmed but mentally deluded into believing they are in quarantine. An alien being now reveals itself to the Doctor and explains the humans are being held aboard the craft pending the safe return of the Alien Ambassadors. They had been sent to Earth following a Treaty between the race and mankind, but the terms of this agreement have now been broken because of the detention of the Ambassadors. The Doctor offers his personal guarantee to help return the Ambassadors to their mother ship and resolve the conflict before a state of war is declared, and is permitted to leave the alien craft and return to Earth.

When the Doctor touches down he is gassed and kidnapped by Reegan, who takes him to Liz. Reegan’s real paymaster and the real organiser of the situation is revealed to them: General Carrington. The General reveals his actions have been prompted by xenophobia driven by his own encounter with the alien beings when he piloted Mars Probe Six some years earlier. His co-pilot, Jim Daniels, was killed on contact with the aliens and the General signed the treaty with the aliens to lure three of their number to Earth, where he hoped he could unveil their real agenda of alien invasion. The use of the ambassadors to kill people was similarly done to arouse public opinion against them. The next phase of his plan is to force the Ambassadors to confess their plot on public television. Leaving the Doctor and Liz working on a new and improved communication device to translate the aliens, Carrington departs for the Space Centre, where he aims to unmask the alien Ambassador before the eyes of the world – and then call on the powers of the Earth to blast the spaceship from the skies.

UNIT soldiers raid the secret base and rescue the Doctor and Liz, apprehending Reegan and his thugs. The Doctor races to the Space Centre and he and the Brigadier apprehend Carrington before he can make his broadcast. Sadly, he is taken away, protesting he was only following his moral duty. The Doctor arranges for Cornish and Liz to send the Ambassadors back to their own people, after which the three human astronauts will be returned.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Cast notes

[edit] Continuity

  • Sergeant Benton makes his first appearance since The Invasion, having been promoted from Corporal, and would appear in every UNIT story until 1975's The Android Invasion.
  • This is another example of the UNIT dating controversy. The UK in this story is already engaging in manned space missions to Mars and Jupiter, however this would seem to contradict The Christmas Invasion, where it is revealed that the UK has only just sent out its first unmanned probe to Mars in search of life. A possible solution to this has been offered in the spin off novels, where it has been suggested that much of the information about the space programs of the UNIT era was actively suppressed by governments at the time so as to prevent wide scale panic. This explains why the scientists who constructed the Guinevere one probe in the early part of the 21st century had no knowledge of the manned Mars probes and similar space programs of the 70's and 80's. It must be noted that the cannonicity of the spin off media is unclear.

[edit] Production

  • This story was initially developed to feature the Second Doctor and his last companions, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. As such, it was set well into the future, and did not include UNIT. When all three actors left the programme at the end of the sixth series, it was rewritten to fit the consequential revamp. Original script editor David Whitaker proved incapable of writing for the incoming new format and cast, hence the contributions of Trevor Ray and Malcolm Hulke. All concerned parties agreed to leave sole credit to Whitaker, and this was the last Doctor Who serial with his name on it.
  • Working titles for this story included The Invaders from Mars (later the title of a Big Finish Productions audio drama, Invaders from Mars) and The Carriers of Death.
  • The opening titles of this story start with the music and graphics but fade immediately after the Doctor Who title caption. There is a short "teaser" for episode one and the episodes 2-7 feature a reprise of the previous episode's cliff-hanger. Starting with the "scream" followed by a zoom of the titles "The Ambassadors" and then the words "of Death" follow with the "zap" effect. The experiment was not repeated after this story.

[edit] Outside references

  • The Mars Probe space program appeared in two of Virgin's Doctor Who novels. Who Killed Kennedy revealed that the shuttles were developed from technology taken from International Electromatics. In The Dying Days, the program was abandoned when Mars Probe 13 accidentally encountered the Ice Warriors and it was agreed that Earth would stay away from their territory; however, a 1997 Mars Probe mission precipitates a Martian invasion and takeover.

[edit] In print

Doctor Who book
Book cover
The Ambassadors of Death
Series Target novelisations
Release number 121
Writer Terrance Dicks
Publisher Target Books
Cover artist Tony Masero
ISBN 0 491 03712 0
Release date 21st May 1987 (Hardback)

1st October 1987 (Paperback)
Preceded by The Romans
Followed by The Massacre

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in May 1987 and was the final Third Doctor serial to be adapted. The Third Doctor's era was, as a result, the first to be completely adapted by Target Books, to be followed over the next few years by the First, Seventh, and Second Doctor eras, plus the single televised Eighth Doctor story, in that order. (Due to licensing difficulties involving several serials, the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Doctor eras remain incomplete, while no plans exist for novelisations based upon the Ninth or Tenth Doctor stories. Novelisations based on spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures starring the Third Doctor's companion Sarah Jane Smith have now been released, however.)

[edit] Broadcast and VHS release

  • Although the entire story was made on colour videotape, only the first episode is retained in this format; in fact, it is the earliest episode that survives in the series' original videotaped format, either in colour or B&W. It is not, however, the first to exist in colour: Spearhead From Space, the first serial of that season, was (uniquely for the series) produced on 16 mm colour film and survives in that format. The remaining six episodes survive only as black and white film recordings and poor-quality domestic colour recordings made from a US transmission in the 1970s. This recording is severely affected by a rainbow-coloured pattern of interference that at times overtakes the entire picture.[1]
  • In 2002, a restoration project for the story's VHS release, in May of that year, combined the usable colour information from the domestic recordings with the black and white picture from the film prints, creating a high-quality colour picture. In total, more than half of the serial's running time is presented in colour on the VHS release, including all of Episodes 1 and 5, and sections from 2, 3, 6 and 7. The remaining footage, including all of Episode 4, was not deemed suitable for colour restoration, and so remains in black and white.
  • Episodes 2,3,4,5,6,& 7 exist in color on tape recorded in Buffalo, New York. The first 9 minutes of those episodes can be seen at youtube.com.[2]
  • All 7 off-air recorded episodes from the U.S. have since been placed on the internet.

[edit] External links

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Target novelisation

v • d • e
Doctor Who season 7 serials
Spearhead from Space • Doctor Who and the Silurians • The Ambassadors of Death • Inferno
v • d • e
Doctor Who: UNIT television stories
Second Doctor
Third Doctor
Fourth Doctor
Seventh Doctor
Tenth Doctor
Minor appearances
Torchwood
See also