 "The Ambassadors of Death" is a much maligned story, by many fans of the show, where the aliens aren't the villains.
This story is similar to The Quatermass Experiment, where a returning astronaut was also replaced by an alien.
It is the earliest story originally made in colour for which much of the colour footage is lost; only the first episode was retained in its original colour format – making it the earliest episode that survives in the show's original videotaped format, either in colour or black and white.
The working title for this story included: "The Invaders from Mars". This became the title of a Big Finish Productions audio story.
This story was initially developed to feature the Second Doctor and his last companions, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. As such, it was set well into the future, and did not include UNIT. When all three actors left the programme at the end of Season Six, it was rewritten to fit the consequential revamp of the show.
Though David Whitaker is credited as the writer he only penned draft scripts through to episode 3. Trevor Ray penned the final version of the first episode and Malcolm Hulke finalized the scripts for the remaining six episodes. This story was David Whitaker's last, and least favourite, Doctor Who story. It was also the last Doctor Who story with his name on it and is amongst his final BBC work.
Unlike "Doctor Who and the Silurians", in which new producer Barry Letts had experimented with the recording pattern, "The Ambassadors of Death" employed the traditional studio schedule of completing one episode every seven days.
The opening title sequences of this story are unique for the show. The opening titles of this story start with the normal music and graphics, yet immediately they fade after the Doctor Who title caption. There is then a short "teaser" for episode one, and episodes 2-7 feature a reprise of the previous episode's cliffhanger before resuming to display the story title, writer and episode number captions. For the story title the words ‘The Ambassadors’, appear first on screen followed by ‘of Death’ zooming into view accompanied by a musical "sting". This experiment was not repeated after this story.
For episode five the production team decided to replace the role of the scripted sergeant (whose surname was apparently West) with John Levene as Sergeant Benton. This was to be his first regular appearance as Sergeant Benton. The character had been introduced as a Corporal in the previous season's "The Invasion", the story which had introduced the UNIT concept, and had already been invited back for "Inferno", the next story in production.
Caroline John's husband, Geoffrey Beevers played the part of Private Johnson. This story also features a guest appearance by Ronald Allen.
Actor Michael Wisher also appears in the role of John Wakefield, a television reporter. Michael Wisher later became best known for playing Davros in the Season Twelve story "Genesis of the Daleks" and made numerous other appearances in the show.
During this story it is revealed that The Doctor’s yellow roadster, Bessie, is fitted with an 'anti-theft device' which sticks the villain to the car.
This story is another example of the UNIT dating controversy. In this story, the UK is already engaging in manned space missions to Mars and Jupiter, yet this would seem to contradict "The Christmas Invasion", where it is revealed that the UK has only just sent out its first unmanned probe to Mars in search of life.
The Brigadier is arrested by a superior for the second time in three stories. Also there is a different UNIT lab - indicating that UNIT has more than one HQ.
Apart from The Brigadier, who retained his regular uniform, all UNIT ranks wore new futuristic-looking uniforms which only ever feature in this story. The usual velcro-fastened jacket, shirt and tie were replaced on this occasion with a zip-up jacket without lapels worn over a polo-neck sweater.
The Doctor it seems is still nursing a grudge against The Brigadier for blowing up the Silurian hibernation chambers in the previous story "Doctor Who and the Silurians".
One interesting scene is where The Doctor is fixing the TARDIS's time vector generator, which sends Liz Shaw 10 seconds into the future.
Unusually, to save on costs, the Recovery 7 set was a co-financed venture between the Doctor Who production office and the BBC drama series Doomwatch, for which it served as Sunfire One in the episode "Re-Entry Forbidden".
The Mars Probe space program appeared in two of Virgin Books' Doctor Who novels. "Who Killed Kennedy" revealed that the shuttles were developed from technology taken from International Electromatics. While in the Virgin Books' The New Adventures story "The Dying Days" it was revealed that the program was abandoned when Mars Probe 13 accidentally encountered the Ice Warriors and it was agreed that Earth would stay away from their territory. The Tenth Doctor story, "The Christmas Invasion", also involves aliens attacking Earth after they intercept a probe sent to Mars and the Big Finish Productions audio story "Red Dawn" also features a manned mission to Mars.
This story includes some excellent model sequences of Mars Probe 7, Recovery 7 and the alien spaceship, accompanied by some unusual and highly effective incidental music courtesy of Dudley Simpson.
This was the first story to credit on-screen the Havoc stunt organisation, though this group (managed by Derek Ware) had been employed on the show since the 1966 First Doctor story "The Smugglers".
A trailer created specially for this story exists on the master tape of episode 7 of the previous story, "Doctor Who and the Silurians".
All seven episodes exist as 16mm Black & White telerecordings, and episode one also exists on PAL 2" colour videotape. Syndicated NTSC versions were sent abroad prior to the wiping of the original colour videotapes but these could not be found. An early domestic video recording, made from a US transmission in the 1970s, was later found to exist (in episodic form) and made available to the BBC in hopes of a re-colourisation. However, faults in the colour signal (a rainbow-coloured pattern of interference) were deemed to great to allow re-colourisation of episodes 2-4 and 7. PAL D3 colour restorations of episodes 5 and 6 have been made even though episode 6 still has many of these colour faults and so is not considered broadcastable.
In May 2002, a restoration project for the story's VHS release combined the usable colour information from the domestic recordings with the black and white picture from the film prints, creating a high-quality colour picture. Over half of the story's running time is presented in colour, including all of episodes 1 and 5, and sections from episodes 2, 3, 6 and 7. The remaining footage, including all of episode 4, was deemed unsuitable for restoration, and so remains in black-and-white.
A novelisation of this story, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in May 1987 and was the final Third Doctor story to be adapted. The Third Doctor's era was, as a result, the first to be completely adapted by Target Books, to be followed over the next few years by the eras for the First Doctor, Seventh Doctor, and Second Doctor, plus the single televised Eighth Doctor story, in that order.
| |
|
The Firsts:
John Levene's first full story as official companion, Sergeant Benton.
The first story to include an on-screen credit for the Havoc stunt organisation
The first Doctor Who story to be written by Trevor Ray.
|
|
(Position = 73 out of 159)
(Position = 90 out of 200)
