Doctor Who: The Ambassadors of Death [DVD]

"The Ambassadors of Death" has a somewhat chequered history in more ways than one.

The credited writer, David Whitaker, had written for Doctor Who regularly during the Hartnell and Troughton eras, most recently in the latter's Cyberman tale "The Wheel in Space". However, despite his experience he was unable to present the production team with a script that satisfied them this time round and after a number of unsuccessful rewrites, they decided to cut their losses, pay him off and hand the task over to other writers.

The result was a number of writers becoming involved - Malcolm Hulke, Terrance Dicks and deputy script editor Trevor Ray. Two of these receive their overdue recognition on the sleeve of these discs.

The story shows the hand of Malcolm Hulke in some of its themes - such as zenophobia and characters who are not truly evil, but believe what they are doing is good. It also taps the current interest in space travel, driven by real-life current events.

Characterisation is good. Pertwee's Doctor is not wholly likeable - witness the way he chews Cornish's head off in episode one. This abrasive streak was very noticeable in most of his stories, particularly early on. Liz is just fine as an assistant - brave and resourceful and not "over the heads" of the viewers as feared by producer Barry Letts. Sad Caroline John only got a year in the role, but if Letts hadn't chosen to terminate her contract she would have had to do so anyway due to her pregnancy (which he was unaware of). She was of course replaced by Katy Manning, who was also excellent in different ways. Nick Courtney's Brigadier is in fine form, sharing the action scenes with the "other ranks" - no desk-bound issuer of orders !
John Abineri is believable as General Carrington, who is genuinely fearful of the aliens and believes it is his moral duty to expose them and declare war on them on behalf of Earth. His main henchman, Reegan, is an impressively resourceful mercenary, who seems to be quite an athlete and also to understand rocket technology ! And despite his utter amorality, he somehow has a charm about him. Unusual, but good, that they both live at the end.

I said earlier this had a chequered history in more ways than one. Sadly, and unforgiveably, the BBC wiped the master tapes of many colour Pertwee stories. This one existed with a pristine colour episode one - one of the best of the entire Pertwee run - but the rest was represented only by black-and-white telerecordings and a rather dismal home recording made in the USA which was wrecked by long periods of bad interference throughout. Through a mixture of superimposing the colour onto the black and white for those segments of the US tape not ruined by interference, and the more recent "chroma dot" technology for the rest - along with a lot of manual tweaking by the brilliant Restoration Team - this story can now be seen in colour from start to finish. It's not perfect - as is the case with the recently-released "The Daemons" the fact that one episode is taken from the original masters shows up the shortcomings of the rest - but it's pretty damn good to these eyes. Almost like watching a new story.

The special features are a bit small in number, but good. Mary Whitehouse and others like her were beginning to turn their attention to Doctor Who at the time and some negative publicity resulted, as the Tomorrow's Times feature (well presented by former companion, and Blue Peter presenter Peter Purves) recalls.

The "making of" documentary focuses on the stunt team, appropriately so since they were featured so heavily in this show and rose superbly to the challenge. Fans of Eastenders will recognise Derek Martin on the commentary track - more recently he appeared as Charlie Slater for many years. The other thing about the commentary is that Caroline John, Nick Courtney and Peter Halliday are now sadly departed and it is poignant to listen to it and realise that.

The trailer for the story was recorded in audio at the time, by the sound of it it was done by pointing a mike at the TV speaker. This has been painstakingly synchronised to the restored picture.

Coming soon - an upgrade to the Claws of Axos, another classic Pertwee, but personally I think they should be concentrating on unreleased (on DVD) stories for now - top of my list being the story's predecessor, The Mind of Evil, which also requires the colour to be reconstituted from chroma dots (and entirely manually for episode one, which I gather Babelcolour is undertaking currently), and Terror of the Xygons from the Tom era.

Thoroughly recommended.

I have some faint memories of Patrick Troughton's Doctor, including one recurring nightmare that originated from one long-lost serials that was explained many years later ("Power Of The Daleks" actually). However Jon Pertwee's cracking start to his tenure with shop display dummies breaking through windows in "Spearhed Ferom Space" left a deep impression and his fixing them meant I adopted him immediately to become "my" Doctor. I've long since believed that after going over to colour. the idea of three seven-parters after "Spearhead" in the 1970 series was meant to reduce the total number of sets required - a 25-week series could stretch to six different stories after all.

A bit of filler here and there is inevitable - as others note particular script difficulties with "Ambassadors" may have contributed to that - but to this fan of DW it isn't overly apparent. It's only much later I found out its turbulent history. David Whitaker first developed this story well into the future for the Second Doctor, plus of course his then-companions Jamie and Zoe, but when they all departed Whitaker re-wrote it for the new-start colour series. And again, then some more until, fed-up and unable to do it justice he was paid-off in full and effectively 'written-out' of DW in every sense of the term. Terrance Dicks, Malcolm Hulke and Trevor Ray contributed to the finished article, but whitaker's name was left as sole credit, considering his being mucked about as he was. It might have worked better with an episode or two less but as ever time was not on their side back then. Despite that, the result is a testament to his original idea and the persistence of the subsequent writers to realise it into a full adventure.

Knowing all this now, I wondered if this new DVD outing would retain much of an impact, especially having bought and played the VHS three times since purchase. Well, it does, and shows how David Whitaker's original idea was worked into a good story essentially by committee without us viewers noticing. I watched it all in one evening! It was helped no end by the picture quality being very good in the main, and being in colour all the way was an unparalleled joy. The first storyline twist is that it is non-volatile aliens who are taken prisoner by an ex-astronaut-mow-army-general, the genius move though is that they are used sparingly in this adventure and it's a real case of 'less is more'. The very brief unmasking of one when it comes was genuinely horrifying, and still could unnerve young children today who buy into watching it. Other tense scenes make up for any perceived languishing of the story here and there. A critical friend of mine and fellow DW enthusiast watchied this story for the first time thisn year and after prevous negative reports found it surprisingly enjoyable.

Caroline John is excellent as Liz Shaw and action stunt team Havoc bring some grit to fight sequences, especially in the opening episode once they have located where the signal transmissions to the aliens are coming from. UNIT are getting into their stride in this adventure. After two serials with different recruits in the UNIT ranks, recently-promoted Sergeant Benton's re-appearance heralds his becoming a core family team member that would characterise the Pertwee years which, in conjuction with more earth-based stories, greatly appealed to me. Nothing scares more than bringing danger and fear to your own doorstep, rather than alien worlds artificially-created on a budget - Nigel Kneale, the creator of Professor Quatermass to whom this period of Doctor Who owes a debt understood this very well. The resultant 1970 series of Doctor Who to my mind achieved an edge of realism that would be watered-down in later years and "The Ambassadors Of Death" bringing a slightly-futuristic Space Age in on the deal - if you suspend the disbelief - was ambitious and very credible to the young audience hooked on the "Apollo" missions at the time.

The viewing experience was slightly marred on the few softer, less detailed sections where recovered colour is of a poor-quality and has been cleaned up and amplified within an inch of its life by the Restoration Team. I put any disappointment I initially felt down to my incredibly high expectations bestowed upon it with such excellent restorations of "The Daemons" and "Terror Of The Autons" still fresh in my mind. And it's entirely forgiveable considering the RT's efforts in developing the Colour Recovery technique, an amazing achievement. By the way, the cost is probably one reason CR hasn't been used on much outside of "classic Doctor Who" (yet). Then again, the ITV engineers in the 1970's appear to have consistently used the chroma dot filter when telerecording colour series to achieve a leave a slightly cleaner picture. That the BBC's engineers didn't bother as much is all to our benefit forty years later! The audio deserves a mention too, taken from the domestic colour tape it is very clear, far superior to the telerecordings' optical tracks. Another RT result.

It was therefore a shame to find all seven episodes squeezed onto on disk - this wouldn't have helped the MPEG2 compression which is less tolerant of interlaced television pictures compared to the steady progressive frame-by-frame of film or filmised video. The second disk containng the extras was therefore rather underused - two episodes of the serial should have been put onto this second disk, the distribution of items would have made for a sharper picture overall. Only my opinion of course, but having fought MPEG2 myself in making my own DVD's it is rather obvious to me. Ah well.

If you haven't seen this story before, or have been put off by its seven parts, give it a go. And watch out for a copuple of history moments, such as the quirky, shortened, opening titles and theme, then the teaser from last week, then on the cliffhanger appears the remiaining opening titles sequence with an added sting on the serial name appearing - totally unique to this serial. episode 1 also features the first appearance of the electronic "scream" preceding the end title theme over the end credit sequence.

1970's often overlooked 7 parter "The Ambassadors of Death" is a classic Jon Pertwee UNIT serial with some great sets and convincing aliens thrown in to boot! When I first watched this story some time back, I was very impressed with how well it stands up today, the sets and the costumes are very "real" and one can actually imagine that the Martians were threatening to destroy the Earth in the early 1970's. Jon Pertwee, on only his third outing as the 3rd Doctor is sublime, his penchant for leadership and intelligence shines through wonderfully here, especially the scenes aboard the Martian craft. As with all other stories of the 7th series, UNIT is largely involved with events. Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart is on hand to assist the newly regenerated Time Lord. I always adored the love / hate relationship that the Brig and the Doctor had, they always played off one another brilliantly. Jon Pertwee and Nic Courtney had by now figured out how they were going to play both respective characters and I am certainly glad that they figured it out so well.

Series 7 companion Liz Shaw as played by the ever-lovely Caroline John is another factor to the success of this mammoth story, she certainly is as much a part of this escapade as Jon and her acting is electric throughout. I always felt it a shame when series 8 opened and Liz was nowhere to be seen, having departed the Doctor's company and run off back to Cambridge, still, the softener to this upsetting knowledge was the effervescent Katy Manning's new companion Jo Grant.

In the end then, I have nothing bad to say about this story, I know at 7 episodes some people might be put off, but I must say that after expecting to be disappointed with this unknown giant, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I now love it, The BBC DVD release of this tale is to follow in a few weeks with Digitally Remastered FULL COLOUR episodes 1,2,3,4,5,6 + 7. Thank god the money is there these days. 10/10.

Many thanks to all of you who read my reviews. Its greatly appreciated.

M.B.