The Ambassadors of Death

We demand that you return our ambassadors or we will destroy Earth.

Spearhead From Space firmly established that the Third Doctor era was going to be much more action oriented, but it was The Ambassadors of Death that took the full plunge into the James Bond-ian world of cloak and dagger mixed with raw action. Conspiracy reigns along with some actually rather brutal action at times. The story was enjoyable but not without some flaws inherent to this type of story.

Plot Summary

A rescue capsule is preparing to dock with a capsule that made an emergency take-off from Mars seven months ago. No contact has been made with the two astronauts inside and when rescue capsule docks, a strange high pitched signal is emitted and contact is lost with the rescue astronaut. The Doctor and Liz, observing on television, hear the signal and the Doctor heads to mission control immediately.

Inside mission control, under the eye of Ralph Cornish, the Doctor is given clearance by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and accurately predicts a response high pitched signal. He, Liz and the Brigadier monitor things and try to triangulate the response signal. When a second one comes, it is pin-pointed to a warehouse only a few miles away.

UNIT storms the warehouse. Inside a group of men are holed up with their commander ordering them to delay UNIT without killing if possible. They hold them back but are eventually overrun. The sergeant in charge of the squad has the chance to kill the Brigadier but surrenders instead. The men in charge then flee, destroying their communication equipment.

Back at mission control, the Doctor tries to get computer time from Dr. Taltalian, but he pulls a gun on them as he is allied with the warehouse group. He flees when the Brigadier shows up and they lose him in the base tunnels. The Brigadier and the Doctor then interrogate the sergeant. He tells them nothing but they do learn he is military. After the Doctor and the Brigadier leave, a mysterious figure knocks out the guard and frees the sergeant.

In space, the recovery capsule, spurred by news of an impending solar flare, detaches from the Mars capsule and returns to Earth. After landing, the mission control team tries to open the hatch but find it locked from inside. The group then prepares to move it back to mission control to open. However, they are waylaid and the capsule is stolen by the same group from the warehouse.

The Doctor, following at a distance, pretends to be an old man having car trouble which causes the truck to stop. While moving Bessie, the Doctor activates a force field which prevents the thieves from letting go and the Doctor resteals the truck, taking the capsule back to Mission Control.

After getting it back, the Doctor and the Brigadier go to see Sir James at the ministry. He promises to start and inquiry. The Doctor is unsatisfied but leaves. Afterwards, Dr. Taltalian emerges and reports how the Doctor has thwarted their efforts.

Liz manages to make contact inside the capsule but the astronauts inside only ask about reentry. After not responding to common questions, the Doctor urges the team to cut the capsule open. Upon doing so, they discover it empty with a tape player running a message over the radio. The Doctor surmises that a group within the military pulled the astronauts out during an unauthorized inspection. The Doctor also surmises based on the radiation readings, that the real astronauts are still up in the Mars capsule and that something else was brought down.

The Doctor and the Brigadier go to see Sir James who introduces them to General Carrington who has been overseeing the interference. He tells them that the Mars capsule ran into a strange batch of radiation affecting the astronauts and that they are keeping them under wraps as they are now generating radiation which could be used as a weapon. The Doctor insists on seeing the astronauts and Carrington agrees.

Before the group arrives, a man named Reegan breaks in and steals the three spacesuited men. The two observing scientists are killed when they try to stop them. Reegan also kills his two accomplices by having them sit back with the three astronauts and dying of radiation poisoning. He dumps their bodies in a local quarry. The three astronauts are put into a new room with radioactive rods to keep them alive and under the care of a rogue scientist named Doctor Lennox.

The bodies of the two accomplices are discovered and the conspirators become more concerned about the progress the Doctor and Liz are making in deciphering the coded message and about getting a new capsule up to rescue the men believed to be in the Mars capsule. Reegan is dispatched to capture them. He sends a fake note from the Brigadier summoning the two to the quarry to look over the bodies of the accomplices but only Liz goes as the Doctor is trying to help Cornish prepare for the next launch.

Liz is waylaid by Reegan and taken to the hideout to assist Dr. Lennox. Lennox takes pity on her and tries to help her escape. However, she is caught again by Dr. Taltalian who had come by to warn the group of the Doctor's progress in deciphering the message, despite the threat to Liz's life.

Cornish is also ruffling feathers among the conspirators as he is pushing hard with preparations to launch another rescue capsule. The Doctor volunteers to go up, clearing the last obstacle being thrown in their way.

Reegan sends Dr. Taltalian back with a suitcase bomb. He told Taltalian that it has a 15 minute delay but he has reset it to go off instantly. Taltalian arms the bomb but takes most of the blast and the Doctor is only lightly injured. In the wreckage, he finds a device similar to the one the Doctor is trying to build.

Learning of the bomb's failure and the Doctor's plan to return to the Mars capsule, Reegan takes one of the astronauts to Sir James' office. He kills several workers and Sir James. He nearly kills the Doctor but the Brigadier comes upon the scene and distracts him. The astronaut heads back to Reegan's truck who takes him back to the hideout.

Cornish and the Doctor take advantage of the chaos of Sir James' death and prepare to launch. General Carrington tries to stop them but Cornish ignores him. Meanwhile, learning of what Reegan did, Dr. Lennox escapes with Liz's help to tell the Brigadier what is going on. Lennox is placed in a cell for his own safety until the Brigadier can come see him personally.

Reegan, learning of what has happened, sneaks on to Mission Control himself. He sabotages the rocket fuel by flooding it with too much booster. He then breaks in to Dr. Lennox's cell and locks him in with a radioactive isotope rod. Lennox dies from radiation poisoning.

The Brigadier discovers both the murder and the sabotage to the rocket. He tries to stop the launch but is too late. The Doctor takes off but the excess booster in the fuel causes the rocket to accelerate too rapidly and will take him out of Earth's orbit. The Doctor early jettisons the stage 1 booster and his rocket levels off. He then rendezvouses with the Mars capsule. However, before he can board, both capsules are swallowed by an alien spacecraft.

On board, the Doctor finds the three astronauts, hypnotized to think they are back on Earth and in a decontamination process. An alien comes on to the screen who demands the return of their ambassadors. The Doctor convinces the aliens that a third party has intervened and he will find and return their ambassadors. The aliens agree, although they will keep the astronauts as hostages and threaten to attack Earth if the Doctor fails. The Doctor agrees and his recovery capsule is sent back to Earth.

Back on Earth, Liz discovers the "astronauts" are in fact aliens and with their strength returning are becoming more aware of their imprisonment. Reegan admits to killing Lennox and offers Liz the chance to be his replacement. He then gets a call ordering him to head back to Mission Control and kill the Doctor. Reegan does sneak back on to the base and fills the decontamination chamber with gas, knocking the Doctor out. Reegan takes the Doctor back to the hideout.

General Carrington returns from Geneva, desiring to destroy the alien ship with nuclear missiles but does not have clearance from the Council. He also accuses the Doctor of being behind it, although the Brigadier rebuffs him. Carrington leaves the base and turns up at the hideout where he prepares to shoot the Doctor. Before he does though, Reegan enters are argues that the Doctor should be kept alive to build a machine to communicate with the aliens. Carrington reluctantly agrees.

Carrington believes that the aliens are preparing to invade and wants to use the ambassadors to convince the world to attack first. He had previously encountered them when he was on a previous Mars mission and they accidentally killed his co-pilot. Believing the death was deliberate, Carrington invited the ambassadors to create the attack trap.

Carrington takes one ambassador to Mission Control while Reegan takes the other two to steal supplies of radioactive isotopes. Carrington prepares to reveal the ambassador to the world on television. Before he broadcasts though, a signal is received from the alien spacecraft demanding the return of their ambassadors or they will attack.

The Doctor builds the machine to communicate with the aliens and uses it to send an SOS signal to UNIT. He then successfully communicates with the ambassadors who protest their captivity. Reegan commandeers the machine and orders them to obey him or be killed.

Carrington arrests the Brigadier and places the base on lockdown. The Brigadier manages to escape his guards meets with the UNIT soldiers who located the SOS signal. They assemble what few men they have and attack the hideout. Reegan is arrested and the Doctor appeals to the ambassadors to help them stop Carrington.

The Doctor and the Brigadier take the ambassadors to Mission Control and they open the gates for them. The Doctor asks them not to kill anyone and the soldiers flee when they find their bullets have no effect. Freeing the arrested UNIT soldiers, the Brigadier and his men burst into the control room and arrest Carrington before he can broadcast and appeal for an attack. The Doctor frees the last ambassador and leaves Ralph Cornish and Liz to arrange an exchange with the alien spacecraft: the ambassadors go up and the aliens will send the astronauts back in the same capsule. The Doctor then leaves for his own lab.

Analysis

There is an odd quirk with The Ambassadors of Death in that not all the surviving footage is in color. So it fades from color to black and white at various points. That is a rather odd thing although it doesn't really affect the enjoyment of the overall story.

This one is pretty good from a storytelling angle. It is fairly well acted as well. It is however, too long. There is a lot of back and forth between the hideout and Mission Control, so much so that it makes the Mission Control security look like a bunch of bumbling fools. I realize that Carrington was supplying Reegan with false documents, but it is hard to imagine that any one man could go through the gate so much without being detained at least once.

The story itself was enjoyable and I especially like the fact that the ambassadors themselves are fairly peaceful. It is only the General's paranoia, fueled by remorse over his dead colleague, and Reegan's greed that make for the conflict. There is however a bit of a plot hole in that once communications are established, it becomes clear that the ambassadors are aware that they being used to kill humans. It seems odd that they continue to go along with this as they are on a peaceful mission. It makes it seems as though the ambassadors are a bit weak-willed. If a communication had been established earlier and Reegan was deliberately withholding radiation from them to compel them, that would have made their actions a bit more understandable. However we are shown that complex communications are not established until after they have been used on an attack mission.

Another aspect of this story that I really enjoyed was the music. UNIT's jaunty little theme is enjoyable and also a bit ironic given that they are often being sent out on rather dark adventures. Even better though is the ethereal theme for the ambassadors themselves. I find it strangely compelling and it offers an almost mystical quality to the air whenever it plays. I would like to have that piece isolated for my own listening pleasure.

Aside from the small plot holes noted earlier, the principle downside of this story is that it can get slow. A few of the back and forths are not really needed and there are a couple of side storylines (such as Dr. Lennox's escape and murder) that don't really offer anything other than creating the opening for the Doctor later on. I'm pretty sure this could have been tightened to six parts, possibly five, although I think the story might have suffered in the other direction if it had been cut that far down.

One other thing that I would have liked to have seen changed was the exposure of General Carrington's plan a little earlier. His exposure at the end of Episode Six made for a nice cliffhanger but it then led to the big exposition dump at the beginning of Episode Seven. I think the story might have been better serviced if Carrington had been shown as the boss earlier with his motivation rolled out over the course of two episodes rather than compressed into one three minute back and forth with the Doctor. I don't think it hurt the story directly, but it would have clarified things a bit more.

Interestingly, for as long as this story is, there is not a whole lot to say about it. It was entertaining but without overly memorable moments. There was very little that stood out as either overly impressive or as overly terrible. I guess that puts it more in the middling camp for me. It was definitely on the positive side and I wouldn't have a problem watching it with someone else who wanted to watch it, but I also probably wouldn't take it as my first choice when presented with Third Doctor options. But for the sake of the music, I'll tick it a half point higher than my original thought.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5