We watched the restored colour DVD from 2012. It is somewhat smeary and variable.
The themes in this story are Britain's manned space flight programme (wha-a-at?), xenophobia, security and fascist subversion of the common good, or alternatively, gangsters and those who should know better being seduced into criminal activity by a misguided sense of duty. These are not compelling ideas and they are dealt with separately and better by both the preceding and the succeeding stories.
The first 2 eps are quite good. The story nosedives in ep3 with a specious line about the astronauts being removed 'when the guard turned out for that security detail'. WTAF? This is very poor plotting and poor exposition. It takes quite a leap in credibility suspension to get over that and keep watching.
The stuff about 'more radiation' not less and infectious radiation is scarcely believable. The safe handling techniques on display are comical.
The bit where the 2 goons who get zapped by 'radiation' in the van and are buried at the gravel pit by Reegan is just nasty but there are questions. I do not understand why the van itself is not contaminated, why Reegan is not irradiated and why no one else seems to suffer any radiation sickness of any kind throughout any other part of the story. I guess it is not stated (merely implied) that the 2 goons were killed by radiation exposure. Maybe the Ambassadors killed them? For what reason?
Plot holes abound in ep3 and 4. (examples?)
The production history of this story is arse-wipingly perverse. It started as a commission from Peter Bryant to David Whitaker about a modern day story featuring first alien contact. It was rejected and rewritten about 3 times under Bryant and Sherwin.
When Dicks picked it up under Letts, he says he paid Whitaker off and then tried to rescue rewrite it with Mac Hulke and Trevor Ray.
Well there's a reason it had trouble. It's pants. This script probably should have been rejected. Perhaps Dicks and Letts were worried about a script drought developing like the previous year?
Why were the production office still struggling with getting decent scripts? They're gone from 10 stories a year to 4 and the ep count is nearly halved yet the Series 6 disease is back. This is very worrying suddenly.
Performances are gangster-ey from William Dysart as Reegan, stilted from Dallas Cavell as Quinlan, reticent from John Abineri as Carrington, ridiculous/bizarre/awful from Robert Cawdron as Taltalian, but surprisingly good from Ronald Allen as Cornish, and very Cyril Shaps (nervy and anxious) from Cyril Shaps as Lennox. There's an interesting on screen debut (he'd done some voice work on Seeds of death before this) from Michael Wisher as Wakefield.
The regulars are good. Pertwee has asserted some confidence in the role as the Doctor, Caroline John is relaxed and seems to be enjoying the work. Nick Courtney is clipped and curtly efficient. As yet no sign of the lazy, dad gags that developed in later series.
This has a very male dominated cast (only Caroline John as Liz and a couple of Space Control staff to break this duck). There are very nil non-white cast members. (This is not the first DW like this but when you realise, it looks like an unarguable mistake.)
The direction is competent from Michael Ferguson. This is the 3rd of his 4 DW's. (He directed War Machines and Seeds of Death. He'll be back for Claws of Axos.) In the next 30 years he be doing Colditz, The Bill and a lot of Eastenders. Michael Ferguson is 'famous' for being the props assistant who held the sucker stalk that menaced Barbara in the cliffhanger to The Dead Planet.
Model work in Ep1 is great. Very realistic looking and even Michael F admits he was stealing from Kubrick's 2001. The model work in ep5 is risible. He is stealing from The Seeds of Death here. The very tacky looking rocket model which failed in Seeds is abominable in colour. In all subsequent 70's attempts at rockets the show uses NASA stock footage.
Incidental music in this is by Dudley S again. After the luminous, Stravinksy-esque Spearhead from Space he back to the string of themes approach that worked in The War Games. The music is all conventionally realised and scored as marches or 4:4 time signatures. It's going to be improved a lot in the next few years as writing to the time code becomes technically possible. But for now it's write several longish themes and play bits of it into the studio or post dub them imprecisely when seems appropriate.
Overall Ambassadors of Death is a murky and confused story, shot very conventionally at a time when the money for action sequences was available but the budget not well controlled. I think the producers imagined they were trying for action adventure to get away from studio bound DW sci-fi. Unlike the previous 2 stories it looks, sounds and feels messy. The result is less than impressive.
After a strong start to the series, this is clearly the weakest Series 7 story by some margin.
ABM Rating 2.15/4.00
LJM Rating 2.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.30/10
No. 38 (out of 53)
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