“The Ambassadors of Death” is an adventure of the seventh season of “Doctor Who” classic series, which aired in 1970. It follows “The Silurians” and it’s a seven parts adventure written by David Whitaker and directed by Michael Ferguson.

The story

The astronauts on the Mars Probe 7 mission aren’t answering the radio contact attempts from Earth and the only hope that remains is in Recovery Seven mission, launched to carry out a rendezvous in space. When the two spacecraft come into contact and the rescuers go to see what happened to their fellow astronauts, a piercing sound is transmitted to Mission Control too.

The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Liz Shaw (Caroline John) assist mission control in its attempts to recover the astronauts of both spacecraft. Recovery Seven returns to Earth but has broken off contact too. After landing, someone tries to take possession of the spacecraft despite the fact that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) and UNIT are escorting it.

Extras

This DVD contains a limited amount of extras. There are typical contents such as production subtitles, a gallery of pictures from this adventure, the Radio Times Listings and a promo of the “Doctor Who” DVDs soon to be published.

There are various comments in the adventure alternative audio track by actors Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney, Geoffrey Beevers and Peter Halliday, director Michael Ferguson, script editor Terrance Dicks, stunt coordinator Derek Ware, stuntmen Roy Scammell and Derek Martin moderated by Toby Hadoke.

Mars Probe 7: Making the Ambassadors of Death. A documentary a little more than 20 minutes long about the production of this adventure focused in particular on the creation of the action scenes and the stunts.

Tomorrow’s Times – The Third Doctor. An overview of the Third Doctor era presented by Peter Purves.

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David Whitaker had already written a number of scripts and even novelizations of some “Doctor Who” TV serials in the ’60s. He started developing the story that became “The Ambassadors of Death” with the Second Doctor together with Jamie and Zoe but some time after the BBC began the show’s transformation.

The change of the protagonists and the UNIT introduction led to the need of a substantial revision of the story. Derrick Sherwin, who was the “Doctor Who” script editor when the script was commissioned to David Whitaker, soon realized that the author’s approach wasn’t suited to the new show’s characteristics.

Initially, assistant script editor Trevor Ray revised the script of the first episode to give the story the right setting but the rewriting of subsequent episodes didn’t satifsy the production. In the end, the solution was radical: David Whitaker was credited as the author but the episodes 2-7 were rewritten by Terrance Dicks, who had since become script editor, and Malcolm Hulke, who wrote “The Silurians” therefore knew the new show’s characteristics.

In the end, “The Ambassadors of Death” is the story of an out of the ordinary first contact with an alien species. Initially, there’s a mystery that concerns the astronauts of the Mars Probe 7 mission after contacts with them get lost. The plot becomes progressively more complex when contacts with the rescue mission get lost too and the spacecraft returns to Earth with mysterious aliens aboard.

The subsequent developments show an intrigue with ramifications that are revealed slowly over the episodes. Because of the various rewrites the plot ends up being convoluted with a conspiracy developed on various levels. For this reason, in every episode there are some twists that can change the perspective and the way in which we see one or more characters.

The story isn’t always entirely consistent but for an adventure so long and with a such a troubled completing of the script those are really little problems. The plot convolutions end up making “The Ambassadors of Death” an adventure good more for its moments than in its entirety.

Despite the limited production resources, there are many action scenes reminiscent of James Bond movies and are generally made with good quality. In particular, there are scenes with various stunts in which these resources are taken full advantage of giving a good impression also from a visual point of view.

The scenes in space with models of spaceships are a little less successful. The classical music that accompanies them is inspired by the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” but that also stresses the differences between “Doctor Who” and Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece’s productions. Don’t get me wrong, those are standard quality scenes for the TV show, unfortunately the comparisons show its limits.

A positive consequence of the rewriting by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke is that the protagonists are at their best and the characters created for this adventure are well developed too. In the course of the episodes the audience can learn about personality traits and motives of the most important characters, which also help to understand what lies behind the conspiracy. The generally good performances of the cast stress these developments giving even more strength to the characters.

The part of the plot concerning the aliens end up being a bit sacrificed and only in the final part of the adventure we can understand who they are. This helps to interpret the rest of the story but the first contact ends up being almost an excuse to develop everything else around it.

Despite its flaws, in my opinion “The Ambassadors of Death” is overall a good adventure with a development that also gives it a good pace for the standards of those years, in which such long serials sometimes had episodes that were too slow. It’s a shame that the DVD edition contains just a few extras while it’s composed of two DVDs but I still recommend it at least to those who appreciate the Third Doctor.