What's Wrong With... The Ambassadors of Death

 

The biggest issue with this story is its convoluted genesis - which manifests itself on screen. 

There were three main writers involved, the credited one being the one with the least input as far as the finished product is concerned.

After Spearhead From Space, the remaining stories of Season Seven suffered from their length. To save money three of the stories were set at a seven episode length. This reduced the number of new guest artists, sets and costumes that were required. 

This lengthening of the stories meant that sub-plots had to be introduced to keep things going. With The Silurians this was the plague sub-plot, and with Inferno it was the trip to an alternative universe. Here it is the Doctor's conventional trip into space by rocket. However, Ambassadors is so disjointed in places that the sub-plot doesn't really stand out as actually being one.

The story began its life as a Patrick Troughton story, commissioned by Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin from former Story Editor David Whitaker and known as "The Carriers of Death" / "Invaders From Mars". 

The basic premise survived through to the version as broadcast - a First Contact scenario which goes wrong as the alien ambassadors are highly radioactive - but little else. As Bryant took more of a back seat and Sherwin took on more of his duties, Terrance Dicks also got involved as Assistant Script Editor.

Bryant then left the programme and Sherwin became full time producer. Dicks was promoted to full Script Editor and he took on an assistant of his own - Trevor Ray (he's the ticket collector at Marylebone Station who falls foul of the plague in The Silurians).

All this personnel movement coincided with the departure of  Troughton and the whole shake-up of the format of the series. The Doctor would now be exiled to Earth, working alongside UNIT.

As an "invaders from Mars" type story, Whitaker's scripts should have been easily adapted to fit the new format - but this wasn't the case. The production team weren't happy with Whitaker's first three scripts and asked for rewrites. These weren't acceptable either. Several attempts were made to get Whitaker's story to match what Sherwin and Dicks wanted. Trevor Ray rewrote Episode One and this was sent to Whitaker, to show him what was required.

Even with this, Whitaker wasn't getting the new format so the decision was made to pay him off and get someone else to write the story. Dicks blamed his own team for the problems, feeling Whitaker wasn't properly advised and supported. Whitaker was paid for the full seven episodes, and allowed to retain the credit, and he then left the country to live and work in Australia for a bit. This was to be his final association with television Doctor Who.

Malcolm Hulke, fresh from writing The Silurians, was asked to completely rewrite the story, although Ray's Episode One was retained intact.

The story therefore has two authors, neither of which is the one named in the credits.

Sherwin had always considered the programme to be set in the "near future". Here the UK has an advanced space programme, one that has successfully landed at least two manned missions on Mars - Probe 6 and Probe 7.

This is all contradicted by many other stories, where the progress of the UK's space programme matches harsh reality. E.g. why does UNIT have to rely on a Russian rocket in The Invasion?

These Probe missions comprise only two astronauts, which is a very big risk if one of them falls ill or is otherwise incapacitated. This is exactly what happens on Mars Probe 6, where one of the astronauts is killed - inadvertently - when he comes into contact with the highly radioactive aliens who are visiting the planet.

Even more of a risk is that Recovery missions comprise only a single astronaut - so no back-up at all if anything happens to him.

The Mars Probe ships take several months to get to Mars, and about the same length of time to get back, and presumably the astronauts spend some time on Mars rather than just coming straight back home again. We don't see the ship which takes them there, but the one that brings them back is just a small capsule. How can it possibly contain enough food and water for two for eight months?

Regarding the journey times of Mars Probes 6 and 7, and Recovery 7, the story seems to suggest that the distance between Earth and Mars remains relatively constant over an 18 month period, which totally ignores the reality of planetary orbits. Cornish seems to think he can just launch a rocket anytime,  forgetting all about launch windows.

What exactly are the aliens doing on Mars for all this time anyway? They are only supposed to be passing through on their way to Earth.

Why do the aliens wait until the day they are due to arrive to send the instructions for making a communications device. Shouldn't they have sorted this out a lot sooner? They have met humans before and know they can speak, and they speak themselves, so why communicate initially in such an obscure manner?

The survivor of Mars Probe 6 - Carrington - decides not to inform the authorities back on Earth what happened to his colleague. Instead, out of a need for revenge, he elects to formulate a convoluted plan to turn the Earth authorities against the aliens, provoking a war in which they will be destroyed.

Carrington would have had to travel back from Mars, a journey of months, all on his own, having seen his only colleague die. This would surely have affected his mind, and a very long period of rest would have been prescribed, with all manner of psychological tests. Instead, within a few months, he is made head of security for the entire UK space programme.

He's the latest in an increasingly long line of wholly inappropriate people to place in charge of important projects.

If Carrington is head of security, what are UNIT even doing there in the first place?

Why does he allow the journalist to broadcast from Space Control, when his plan might not necessarily go to plan?

He starts referring to the astronauts as "aliens", when he's still trying to convince everyone that they are the human astronauts who have been infected and quarantined.

Carrington has a deputy in the first couple of episodes who simply vanishes, and is replaced by Reegan, who just turns up out of nowhere and acts as if he's been part of the plot all along. There's another deputy named Collinson - the one played by the pathologist from Taggart - for whom Carrington goes to all the bother of springing from UNIT custody, only for him to also vanish from the story.

Dr Lennox is later held in the same cell - despite UNIT knowing that someone has only recently simply walked into it and freed a prisoner.

And who kills Lennox with the radioactive isotope? There's actually one school of thought that it was Sgt Benton, who turns up in the last few episodes acting like he's been in it from the start, just like Reegan. It's as though a new writer suddenly started working on this after the first couple of episodes...

Is there anything that Reegan can't do? For a hired mercenary he seems to know a lot about radioactivity, rocket fuel and electronics.

Talking of rocket fuel, the M3 Variant is labelled "M3 Varient". Why are the controls for the fuel out in the open, and not held within a secure building?

Reegan has gone to the trouble of coming up with fake documents, yet he hits the soldier who wants to check them without waiting to see if they are OK - thus drawing attention to himself.

What does Prof. Taltalian have to do to get arrested, or at least thrown out of Space Control? He pulls guns on people and carries out acts of sabotage, and he's back at work the next day as though nothing had happened.

His French accent disappears in the scene where he stops Liz from escaping from the bunker.

His booby-trapped briefcase kills him and wrecks the room, yet all the Doctor requires is a small sticking plaster on his cheek when he was standing right next to the Professor when the bomb went off.

For this story, and no other, the Doctor has the skill of "transmigration of object". He can make huge things vanish and reappear - things far too big to slip up your shirt sleeve. It looks like magic, rather than science.

Why does Carrington not recognise the Doctor when he's playing a doddery old man when Bessie has supposedly broken down. Surely he would have gathered intelligence about the Brigadier and his team if he's going to go up against them? And why does the Doctor not recognise Carrington as one of the two men who he got stuck to Bessie?

A behind-the-scenes thing that went wrong with the ambush sequence on the convoy was that one of the stuntmen lost control of his motorbike and it crashed into the director's assistant, injuring her leg.

In the Part One fight in the warehouse, Derek Ware is clearly shot but reappears seconds later unharmed to get shot again.

He's not the only one to make a miraculous recovery. Another soldier - played by Max Faulkner - gets zapped by the ambassadors, but is back at his post a couple of episodes later.

One of the alien ambassadors appears to be wearing National Health prescription spectacles under his helmet.

This is the first episode to have the TARDIS console operating outside the Police Box shell. How did the Doctor get it out through the doors? He didn't dematerialise it as it doesn't work properly. How can it work at all, if the entire power of the ship is supposed to be trapped beneath it.

It's a good job the Doctor and Liz swap positions around the console when they vanish, otherwise they would reappear inside each other.