Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ambassadors OF DEATH Episode Seven

Long story is looooong!

Regan King of Space comes back in and talks Carrington out of shooting the Doctor, saying they need his help to make the machine for talking to the aliens. The Doctor and Liz learn that Carrington thinks the aliens are baddys who are invading the Earth because they killed an astronaut when he and they were on Mars (and maybe because he has watched too much science fiction, although that bit is left as subtext so as to not tank the viewing figures). The Doctor thinks they did it by mistaik:

"They didn't know their touch would kill human beings."

Carrington isn't listening to the Doctor though. He goes on to explain his plan:

"...And now they've walked into my trap. I knew that once I got them here I'd make them reveal their true natures."

Seeing as this is the last episode, the Doctor and Liz ask him to explain all the loose plot threads, such as

"Was Sir James Quinlan in on this?"
"No, he just wanted the political glory of being the first to arrange contact with an intelligent alien species. He didn't know of my plan to save the world. He wouldn't have understood."

And he talks about "moral duty" a lot again. The Doctor pretends to go along with Carrington's plan.

Carrington wants to take one of the aliens away with him, and gives more orders to Regan before he goes - but there are cracks showing between those two ever since Regan disobeyed an order and didn't kill the Doctor, now they don't like working together.

Regan takes the other two aliens with him in his van so that they steal more radiation. When policemannys come to try and stop them, Regan gets the aliens to electric them.

Carrington is getting ready with Davros to go on TV - I should have known that Davros would be on the side of the baddys! Davros is worried that seeing the alien's scary face on TV could "create world panic" but of course that is exactly what Carrington wants.

The Brigadier tells Carrington about the robbery, and Carrington accuses mannys who are on the side of the aliens of being "traitors, collaborators, like your friend the Doctor" (he probably thinks the same thing about Remoaners or, for viewers in Scotland, Yoons). Yes, Carrington is such a dick that he accuses the Doctor of being a "traitor" even though he secretly knows that he has the Doctor locked up and W-wording for him. He also says

"I shall call on the nations of the world to unite in an attack on the aliens and their spacecraft. It must be obliterated!"

Meanwhile the Doctor and Liz have built a machine, which the Doctor uses to secretly send a SOS message to UNIT, where Sergeant Benton hears it.

Just think, if they hadn't needlessly killed off Captain Hawkins in Doctor Who and the Silurians then we could have had a picture of Paul Darrow in there, mew.

There is a clever moment where it looks like Davros and Carrington's TV broadcast has started, but then we find out it is just Davros rehearsing, lol. Professor Cornish tries to talk Davros out of helping Carrington, but it isn't easy to talk Davros out of doing something.

With Regan watching, the Doctor tries to make his machine work for reals. When the aliens respond, Regan snatches the Doctor's microphone and says

"You will obey my orders. If you don't, we'll let you die."

At the Space Centre, they receive a broadcast from the aliens warning them to return the ambassadors or else they will blow the planet up. Carrington says

"Now we know where we stand, gentlemen. We must attack first!"

which might sound reasonable if you didn't know that he was responsible for the whole thing in the first place. What a total dick he is.

When the Brigadier wants to answer the Doctor's SOS, Carrington doesn't just deny him reinforcements, he has him arrested! But when the soldiers take him away, the Brigadier Blakes it

and escapes. He gets to where Benton is still trying to find the source of the SOS signal and rounds up his own reinforcements - only enough to fill Bessie, but at least the incidental music is still on his team.

They get to Regan's base and have a gunfight with two of the henchmannys. The Brigadier must be loving this episode, he even gets to have a fistfight with one of them. He bursts into the base, shoots the last henchmanny and then shoots the gun right out of Regan's paw.

Reunited with the Doctor and Liz, they discuss what to do about Carrington. Regan suggests they use the two aliens they have there to help them rescue the other one. Regan knows he's beaten so switches sides, he is obviously angling to come back in a sequel, which I think would have been good because he is a great baddy - one of the most competent ever seen in Doctor Who, and a large part of what makes this story so successful.

The aliens get our heroes into the Space Centre/TV studio in much the same way they got Regan into his robberies, only without killing loads of mannys while about it.

Davros and Carrington have just started their TV broadcast (for real this time) when they hear gunshots from UNIT's attack. The aliens come in and Carrington shoots all of his bullets into them, to no effect. Then the Brigadier comes in and arrests him - the tables having now turned.

On his way out, Carrington doesn't Blake it, instead he stops and says to the Doctor

"I had to do what I did. It was my moral duty. You do understand, don't you?"

The Doctor replies compassionately with

"Yes, general, I understand."

although he is lying - all he understands is that Carrington is a dick.

The Doctor explains to Professor Cornish how he has to exchange the three ambassadors for the three astronauts who are still in space, then says goodbye.

This is a bit of a sudden ending, so what happened next?

Well, we had to wait until the 1990s to find out, when ITV made a spinoff to show us what happened to Carrington and the ambassadors. Despite its short length, this is actually the most successful Doctor Who spinoff to date, debuting during Doctor Who's 30th anniversary year and repeated many times since then, including remakes that (alas) don't have John Abineri reprising his role as Carrington in them. But here is the original in its entirety, courtesy of the Yousual place:



What's so good about The Ambassadors OF DEATH?

The greatest strength to The Ambassadors OF DEATH is also its greatest weakness, and is that it is so unlike any other Doctor Who story. It starts out looking like a copy of homage to Quatermass, but very quickly goes its own way, and everywhere you would expect to find a 'typical' Doctor Who trope, this story seems to do the opposite:

• The aliens aren't evil or invading, and their hypno-eyes are used for good
• The baddys are competent and have multiple contingency plans in place
• Even the Brigadier is competent, and manages quite well when the Doctor isn't around
• Most members of the sinister conspiracy aren't proper baddys but just misguided
• Regan, King of Space or otherwise, is a proper baddy, but his motivation is to steal moneys and get rich, not world domination or blowing up planets (although, given he fancies himself as a Bond Villain, he probably would have progressed to that sooner or later)
• The Doctor goes into space but not using the TARDIS
• There is a lengthy chase sequence that the Doctor isn't involved in
• The goodys are the ones who do a classic slow cutting through a door, not the baddys
• There's a bomb with a countdown timer that doesn't get stopped with seconds to spare
• The main baddys end up captured instead of ded

This means that if you watch The Ambassadors OF DEATH expecting a typical Doctor Who story, you'll be disappointed. But taken as its own thing, it stands alone and is great.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ambassadors OF DEATH Episode Six

"It's closing in too fast, I can't..."

The Doctor is cut off mid-sentence as the alien spaceship captures him.

"You are not in danger."

says the aliens, somewhat undermining the carefully built-up sense of tension, but maintaining the mystery at least.

"Where am I?"

is the Doctor's first question, because he's a fan of The Prisoner too. The Doctor gets some exposition from them:

"You are on board our spacecraft. Open your hatch and leave the capsule."
"What's happened to our three astronauts?"
"They are unharmed. Open your hatch and leave the capsule."

I think these aliens would get on well with Professor Cornish, since they also like repeating themselves.

"You will not need your life support systems. An environment has been prepared for you."

CSO! Has the Doctor arrived in Barry Letts's Heaven?

The Doctor goes into a room where the missing astronauts are sitting watching space television, where there isn't really anything on but they think there is (a bit like us cats when Blakes 7 isn't on). This saves the BBC some moneys from not having to pay for the rights to show the clips of whatever it is they think they're watching.

The mannys have all been hypno-eyesed by the TV (I know that feeling) into thinking they are safe on Earth. We see a glimpse of the aliens when one of them talks to the Doctor through their space window.

"Why have you taken them prisoner?"
"Why have you not returned our ambassadors?"
"Ambassadors?"
"An agreement was made. You have betrayed us. Unless our ambassadors are returned, we shall destroy your world."
"Ambassadors!"

Back on Earth, Carrington wants to attack the alien spaceship with "missiles with atomic warheads." No surprises there, he is such a dick. When he leaves, Professor Cornish says

"The man's mad."

The Brigadier says

"Not necessarily. We don't know what that thing is there."
"Then surely we should find out?"
"Perhaps someone's found out already?"
"What do you mean?"
"I have a feeling that General Carrington knows a great deal more than he's telling us. He went on a Mars Probe himself, remember. Perhaps he discovered something?"
"Then why doesn't he tell us?"
"I don't know."
"Are you supporting his plan to attack blindly?"
"No. I think we should wait."

This exchange shows interesting layers to the Brigadier's character that will soon be lost in future stories. Also that Professor Cornish is a good foil for the Brigadier.

In space the Doctor has had some more discussions with the aliens in between scenes, so we don't know everything he has found out from them. He promises to get their ambassadors back, so they will let the Doctor go, but will keep the astronauts until their ambassadors are returned.

The Brigadier finds out that Lennox has been killed off screen since we last saw him. Professor Cornish points out all the things that have been going wrong:

"The astronauts are still missing, Miss Shaw kidnapped, Dr Taltalian killed, and now this man Lennox murdered under your very nose."

but the Brigadier says some things that he does know about the baddys, proving that UNIT isn't completely useless without the Doctor:

"We've identified the two radioactive bodies that were found in that gravel pit in Hertfordshire. They weren't foreign agents at all, they were petty London criminals. And the explosive that killed Dr Taltalian was the new H37 compound which hasn't even been issued to the army yet."
"Then our own people could be involved?"
"That was the Doctor's theory. Also forensics have analysed the mud that was found on the shoes Lennox was wearing."
"And what does that tell you?"
"Well, it could tell us where he'd been recently. You see, there were elements of insecticide in that mud. We're now checking all the areas where that insecticide is used."
"This isotope that killed Lennox, have you checked on that?"
"It was part of a consignment sold some months ago."
"Who was the buyer?"
"A bogus company with an address that doesn't even exist."
"You've been very thorough."

Professor Cornish seems apologetic for having doubted the Brigadier and UNIT, but even with all that the Brigadier concludes

"It doesn't seem to have got me anywhere."

The Doctor makes contact with them and tells them he is coming back, but doesn't tell them much else in case the baddys can overhear them - which seems likely given how well-organised they have been.

Liz is giving the alien ambassadors their radiation noms (and I thought that ambassadors only ate Ferrero Rocher, mew) when they start making loud noises and one of them takes its helmet off to show its scary blue face.

Regan comes in and tells Liz he is planning to betray his secret boss and use the aliens to do what he wants, not what the boss wants. He offers Liz a job - oh noes, Liz might have to do the W-word, no wonder she is reluctant. She asks

"What's the alternative?"
"I kill you and buy myself another scientist."

The boss telephones Regan and tells him to have another go at killing the Doctor after he comes back from space. So Regan goes to the Space Centre (again) and knocks out the newly-landed Doctor with gas - again knowing exactly where to go and what to do - he then goes in and kittennaps the Doctor, escaping in his van just in time before the Brigadier finds out the Doctor is gone and raises the alarm.

Carrington tries to put the blame on the Doctor:

"Did it occur to you that all these troubles only started when this Doctor came on the scene?"
"With respect, sir, that is simply not true."

responds the Brigadier, who has clearly had enough of Carrington's bullshit by this point. If only more stories had moments like that, where characters trust and defend somebody who has been on their side time and time again instead of acting stupid just to serve the momentary needs of the plot, as so often happens.
Professor Cornish asks Carrington what he thinks they should do about the alien spaceship, receiving the reply

"Arm every available missile with atomic warheads and blast that thing out of our skies!"
"Isn't that a bit extreme?"

A bit?

"It's our moral duty."

Carrington then leaves, so the Brigadier can now say what he really thinks about him:

"I think the general's a bit overwrought."

He's too polite. Professor Cornish says what we're all really thinking:

"I think he's insane."

Regan, who is now in costume as the King of Space (dress for the job you want), tells his boss the Doctor is ded, but he is actually just captured. Regan wants the Doctor to make him a "translation machine" so he can talk to the aliens.

Regan leaves the Doctor and Liz locked in his base, then Carrington comes in with a gun and reveals himself as Regan's secret boss the whole time, to the surprise of nobody. He intends to shoot the Doctor, again saying it is his "moral duty." Cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ambassadors OF DEATH Episode Five

The Brigadier runs in and shoots at the alien, then another UNIT manny runs in. Guess which one of them gets electriced?

The alien leaves, taking the time to close the door behind it on its way out and then electric it locked so that the Doctor and the Brigadier can't follow it. They get rescued in time for their next scene by...

...Benton. Benton! Oh Jesus Christ, Benton. (etc.)

Regan boasts to Liz and Lennox about what he has been doing with the alien:

"Bullets just bounce off them. With these three you can do anything - walk into Fort Knox and help yourself."

He really does fancy himself as a James Bond baddy, doesn't he?

Carrington doesn't want the Doctor to go into space, and says their spaceship should carry "a nuclear warhead" instead of the Doctor. Maybe he'd get his way if this was Nuclear Warhead Who instead? But Professor Cornish is on the Doctor's side and intends to "blast off in two hours time."

Liz and Lennox bluff Regan's henchmanny into letting Lennox go from their base, not knowing that he is secretly on Liz's side now. Lennox meets with Sergeant Benton and gets put in prison until the Brigadier can come to speak to him, since he won't tell anybody else about what he knows. I'm sure he's definitely not going to get murdered before that happens, mew.

The Doctor is now dressed up as an astronaut and says goodbye to the Brigadier.

Regan finds out that Lennox has escaped and gets angry. Things look scary for Liz who is still a prisoner, but she manages to defuse some of the scariness by saying to Regan's henchmanny

"It's all right, I won't hurt you."

This sort of quip gets tiresome when a character says things like it all the time, but in this case the seriousness with which the scene is otherwise played makes it more effective, not less.

Regan telephones his mysterious boss, and then he goes off to the Space Centre to try to kill the Doctor in disguise. I mean Regan is in disguise, not the Doctor, although the Doctor is still dressed up as an astronaut which is a sort of disguise for him. Mew.

Regan goes around attacking UNIT mannys and getting them to do gratuitous HAVOC stunts until he finds a pipe or a valve or somesuch thing to sabotage. He somehow seems to know all the right ladders to climb and the right wheels to turn, or maybe he's just climbing and turning all of them in the hope of getting one that will somehow kill the Doctor?

Carrington (also in disguise) comes in and gives Lennox some radiation to nom, but radiation is alien noms, not Lennox noms, so he is scared. We are not meant to know this was Carrington because we don't see his face, but it was obviously a baddy who we would recognise if we did see, but not Regan.

The Brigadier is driving around when he sees one of his mannys that Lennox attacked, so the Brigadier immediately runs off to investigate - by himself, or at least with only the incidental music to back him up. He sees that something is wrong, and runs into the Space Centre studio to tell Professor Cornish to

"Stop the countdown!"

but of course he is too late - he never uses the telephone when it's important, does he?

The Doctor makes a face while there is a lot of talk about all the things going wrong because of Regan's sabotage. This would have seemed very topical in 1970 with all the real space missions going on around that time, and it is a creditable recreation of a NASA space launch (scaled down to a BBC budget, naturally), but even streamlined to try and keep things dramatic these scenes are very slow-moving - and not just by today's standards! Still, I expect this would have been very exciting for cats and little mannys in 1970 to see the Doctor actually going into space... er, except not in the TARDIS.

The Doctor makes it to space and gets to do lots of model shots as his spaceship links up with Mars Probe 7. An "unidentified object" appears and flies towards the Doctor's ship - I'd say send for Commander Straker but we're 10 years too early for him and SHADO.

The Doctor looks out of the window and sees an alien spaceship - cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ambassadors OF DEATH Episode Four

The mannys seem to change their minds and capture Liz instead of killing her (as the cliffhanger seemed to indicate was their intention). Liz is taken to Regan's base.

Carrington is convinced the baddys are "foreign agents, with enormous resources behind them" but the Doctor is not so sure, especially since everything Carrington says makes him sound increasingly like a Columbo murderer trying to get the Doctor and the Brigadier to believe his prepared story.

Lennox helps Liz escape from Regan's base. I think the incidental music is trying to help her as well, it certainly sounds like it's on her side.

In Liz's absence the Doctor works with Taltalian in trying to decode the alien message, but doesn't trust him because he thinks Taltalian might be working for the real baddys.

He's soon shown to be right, because Taltalian goes straight to Regan's base, pausing only to capture Liz (again) on the way. Regan and Taltalian argue, and it seems that not only do they not trust one another, but also neither of them is totally in charge of the other - we still don't know who is top cat in their organisation.

Regan gives Taltalian a bomb

to blow up the Doctor with, but he secretly changes the countdown timer to try and blow up Taltalian as well.

Professor Cornish can't get any more astronauts to go into space to rescue the other astronauts. I can't tell if this is because of interference by the baddys or because they are worried they might all get Tintin-Planned. I find it hard to believe that cats or doggys would refuse the chance to go into space, maybe Professor Cornish forgot to ask them? The Doctor volunteers, saying

"I've spent more time in space than any astronaut on your staff. Not, I'll admit, in the rather primitive contraptions that you use, but I'll manage."

Taltalian comes in, and he is so nervous about the bomb that he gives himself away. But when the bomb explodes right away it kills only him and not the Doctor - this scene is a clever subversion of our expectation that there would be a classic Terry Nation-style countdown that the Doctor would stop in the nick of time, as good as that would have been.

Carrington and Sir James plot together. They still know a secret truth that they're not telling anybody else about - Sir James wants to tell the Doctor, but Carrington talks him out of it for the moment. This resembles the way Dr Quinn and Miss Dawson conspired together in Doctor Who and the Silurians, which is not in itself a bad thing, but that was only the previous story.

Regan gets Liz to show him how to use the remote control for the aliens that Taltalian gave him.

Regan makes one of the aliens walk up to a UNIT soldier, who shoots at it repeatedly. This is so stylishly directed that it almost makes you overlook how stupid the UNIT manny is acting. The alien electrics him and then carries on walking until it gets into the computer room studio where it electrics some more mannys.

Sir James telephones the Doctor to ask him to come and visit him so that he can tell him "the whole truth," but before the Doctor and the Brigadier can get there...

...an alien comes in and electrics Sir James too. It then electrics the safe and the things that were inside it. The Doctor comes in and sees Sir James, but he doesn't see the alien because it is behind the door. Curiously he doesn't hear the loud hissing sound effect it makes either.

The alien closes the door - I think this remote control that Regan has must be similar to the one that Dr McCoy had in Spock's Brain since it allows for an amazingly fine level of control - then it sneaks up on the Doctor from behind.

While this creates an iconic image for the cliffhanger, the Doctor does have to maintain that pose for rather a long time - he must be having trouble listening for Sir James's heartbeat over all the noise the alien is making.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ambassadors OF DEATH Episode Three

It makes a change for it to be our heroes doing a classic slow cutting through a door instead of the baddys, but that's how they get into Recovery 7. They find out that it is empty except for a tape recorder that has been playing the messages to them - advanced technology for the era! No wonder UNIT were fooled.

It turns out that the baddys were not after Recovery 7 but the astronauts who were inside it, and they have now been kittennapped off-screen when UNIT weren't looking. Liz sees another clue - the inside of the spaceship is radioactive.

Carrington has the three astronauts at his new base, but they are having sleeps. He is now a general (presumably so that he can deny the Brigadier some reinforcements at some point later in the story) and says to his new scientist henchmannys "you must feed them radiation."

The Brigadier finds out that the kittennappers were soldiers, and they go to speak to Sir James about it. He introduces them to Carrington and says that he is the "head of the newly formed Space Security Department."
Suddenly they are all friends, and Carrington tells them a lot of exposition. When asked why he didn't tell them all this before, he says

"UNIT is an international organisation and the government wanted to keep this in its own hands."

and

"We believe this radiation to be a different kind. We believe it to be self-sustaining and highly contagious, and that it could spread like a plague, contaminating the entire planet."

to which Sir James adds

"We don't want the public to become panic-stricken."

(Excuse me while I add 'politics' to the list of tags attaching to this post.)

The Doctor asks to see the astronauts and even Sir James agrees that this would be a good idea. Carrington doesn't like it, but he has to go along with it.

Back at the base, the astronauts have woken up and been kittennapped from the kittennappers, led away from Carrington's scientists by some mannys with guns, who then shoot the scientists just to make sure that we know they're baddys. Bessie drives up right after they leave in their van - a classic dramatic ploy last seen with Masters in only the previous story.

The mystery deepens yet further as the mannys in the van with the astronauts have died, and their boss buries them (along with their guns) under a lot of stones for UNIT to find later.

The boss is Regan, who acts like a baddy from a James Bond film - although his van that can change its appearance is more like something Bond himself might have.

From the amount of radiation they have been leaving behind them, the Doctor and Liz conclude (using science!) that the astronauts aren't mannys, so the real astronauts must still be in space. From the amount of sleeps they seem to need, I wonder if the astronauts may be cats. They are now having sleeps in Regan's base, where he has Lennox (played by none other than the Shapmeister himself, Cyril Shaps) as his own scientist henchmanny.

Professor Cornish wants to go and rescue the manny astronauts, but Sir James is a politician and therefore says it would cost too much moneys. Professor Cornish says he will call a press conference, because he knows bad publicity is a politician's one weakness - or at least it used to be, back in the olden days of the UNIT era.

One of the alien astronauts wakes up and tries to escape, but it is too weak and falls over. Regan's mysterious boss telephones him and tells him they need more radiation, and then Regan gets sent photographs of the Doctor and Liz and is told to "deal with them."

Liz gets lured away by a fake message from the Brigadier, and she drives about in Bessie wearing a big hat, the better to hide when her stunt-double takes over.

There is a car chase, which would never have been allowed to happen without the Doctor in later seasons of Jon Pertwee's era!

After they have had enough of driving, Liz runs around being chased by two mannys, until they catch up with her in time for the cliffhanger when it looks like Liz might get wet. Oh noes!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ambassadors OF DEATH Episode Two

It's an unusual format choice, to have the cliffhanger recap and then the title.

Taltalian wants the Doctor to hand over his tape with a recording of episodes two to seven of this story in colour the alien message. The Doctor holds it out, but then makes it vanish with his first use of never-before-seen Dramatic Editing powers. Then the Brigadier comes in and Taltalian runs away, with the Brigadier giving chase.

The Doctor returns the tape in the same way he made it vanish. He puts it down to "transmigration of object" but we all know he did it with a jump-cut.

The Doctor leaves Liz with the tape and goes with the Brigadier to talk to the prisoner, Carrington's henchmanny. They don't find out much, but the Doctor does deduce that the manny is a soldier who was "acting under orders." They are then called away by, in the words of Davros (who is still sitting-by to give exposition direct to camera when needed), "another extraordinary development in the mystery of Mars Probe 7."

The prisoner gets rescued, while Liz and the Doctor discover that Taltalian has sabotaged the computer so they can't use it to translate the alien message. The baddys seem very competent and well-organised so far, no wonder this is a seven-part story.

All of the goodys' attentions are occupied with getting the Recovery 7 spaceship safely to Earth in some long, slow scenes of tension-building. Even stock footage is called in to assist with this. Davros tells us the spaceship will "land somewhere in the south of England" because it would be too expensive to film it landing anywhere else.

When Recovery 7 lands, UNIT races out to get to it. Professor Cornish tries to speak to the spacemannys inside while they are being watched secretly from afar by Carrington. When there is no response, the Doctor suggests they take it back to the Space Centre. Carrington is able to listen in on the Brigadier's telephone call as he makes the arrangements, and thus finds out their plans.

The incidental music warns us that something dramatic is about to happen. A helicopter flies over the Brigadier and his truck with the spaceship on it, and then drops bombs on UNIT to make them stop.

Then there is a HAVOC fight where the baddys have pewpewpew guns so they win and steal the truck by making the Brigadier and all his mannys have sleeps, and one of the UNIT mannys does a stunt to no purpose other than to make the scene look even more dramatic.

The Doctor missed the fight and is driving along in Bessie when he sees the truck going the wrong way, alerting him to what has happened. He cleverly blocks the road and pretends to be a harmless old manny to get Carrington and his henchmanny to help him.

Holy Anti Thief Device, Batman!

When they touch Bessie, the Doctor activates his convenient anti-thief device that sticks them to the car so he can drive off with their truck.

By the time the Doctor gets Recovery 7 back to the Space Centre, the Brigadier has found Bessie but the mannys that were stuck to it have managed to escape. Liz has started to "crack the code" of the alien message, but who would have thought Taltalian's assistant would also be a baddy? Clearly not anybody in UNIT. He telephones his secret superiors to warn them.

The Doctor and the Brigadier go to "talk to the top man" Sir James...

No, that's Sid James, not Sir James.

Sir James is also in league with the baddys and as soon as they have left him alone, Sir James meets with Taltalian.

When they finally get to talk to the mannys inside Recovery 7, they just say the same things over and over again. It takes a while for Professor Cornish to get suspicious, because saying the same things over and over seems to be the main part of his job.

"Hello Space Control, this is Recovery 7. Will you clear us for re-entry?"
"Charlie, this is Ralph Cornish. You are back at Space Control, open the capsule."
"We are not cleared for re-entry."
"Charlie, you are back at Space Control. What's wrong? Open the hatch."
"Hello Space Control, this is Recovery 7. Will you clear us for re-entry?"

But the Doctor soon realises the replies they are getting are non-sequiturs:

"Let me try. Hello, Van Lyden? What is the capital of Australia?"
"We are not cleared for re-entry."
"How many beans make five?"
"Hello Space control, this is Recovery 7. Will you clear us for re-entry?"
"Van Lyden?"
"We are not cleared for re-entry."

"Right, cut it open!"

Cliffhanger!

It may not sound like a great one on paper, but the way Jon Pertwee delivers that last line, it is actually really powerful.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ambassadors OF DEATH Episode One

The Ambassadors OF DEATH is a seven-episode story from season seven of Doctor Who, first broadcast in 1970. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Caroline John as Liz Shaw, and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. It was also responsible for the most successful Doctor Who spinoff ever made.

It starts with a manny called Charlie, who is in space in an old-timey spaceship (although it must have been cutting-edge back when this was made, when mannys had only recently been going from the Earth to the moon). He uses his space telephone to talk to mannys still on Earth, and we learn he is about to dock his spaceship with "Mars Probe 7" which has been to Mars and taken off again.

Charlie says...

No, that's Charley, not Charlie.

Charlie says "Something took off from Mars."

Cue titles!

Actually we had already seen some of the titles, so that doesn't count as a proper pre-titles sequence, but they saved the episode title, number and writer's credit for after this dramatic moment.

We now see that the Brigadier is there with the mannys on Earth.

Davros (Michael Wisher), who is for some reason in disguise as a BBC broadcaster - it's a very cunning disguise, as he fits right in and it is easy to imagine him guest-presenting an episode of Have I Got News For You - fills us in on the story so far, since we seem to have joined in media res. Some spacemannys have already gone missing while in space and... hang on, isn't this just the beginning of The Quatermass Experiment?

The Doctor is watching the same programme as us, but he isn't interested and turns it down to carry on trying to fix the TARDIS. He makes Liz disappear by mistaik, and then himself. This is a komedy bit that goes on until they both reappear. Clearly wanting to get on with the plot, Liz turns the sound up on the TV in time to hear some more exposition from Davros:

"The two craft will be linking up in a moment or two. And then we shall know the answer to the mystery that has baffled the world's scientists for seven months."

The Brigadier is there to make sure it is really Mars Probe 7, and not some naughty aliens attempting an invasion by stealth.

Charlie's spaceship links up with Mars Probe 7 in slow motion, so that we have plenty of time to enjoy the nice model shots and to be reminded of how much more expensive the effects were in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Charlie begins to open the door between the two ships. Again this is done really slowly, but now it is to build the tension, and Charlie says "I can hear something."
He thinks the door is also being opened from the other side. The Brigadier looks concerned.

When Charlie goes through the door (upside down, to remind us he is in space) he is met by a sound effect that makes him, and all the mannys listening back on Earth, make an 'oh noes' face. When at last it stops, Charlie says... nothing more. So it's true what they say about not being able to hear you scream in space - because the SFX are too loud, lol!

The Doctor has recognised the sound effect (I'm not that surprised, the BBC are bound to have used it somewhere before) but he can't remember exactly from where, so he and Liz go to the "Space Centre" - writer David Whitaker taking lessons from the great Terry Nation here, I wonder?

The Brigadier suggests sending another "recovery capsule" spaceship to investigate the disappearance of this one, which is just asking for them getting Tintin-Planned by whatever aliens are out there. Luckily for them they don't have another one to send right now.

Davros interviews Dr Taltalian who, with his outrageous French accent, is obviously just Inspector Clouseau in disguise - this is a crossover I was not expecting!

The Doctor arrives and predicts they will hear the sound effect again, and then he annoys the manny in charge (Professor Cornish, played by Ronald "Uncle Quentin" Allen) until they do. Everyone makes an 'oh noes' face again, except for the Doctor who just listens to it. He knows it is a coded message, and he wants to decipher it so they can reply.

But before they can even make a start, there is a third sound, much shorter than the ones before, and the Doctor recognises it as a reply to the first two. Now the Doctor wants the Brigadier to help track where it came from.

They achieve this when the the reply too is repeated, and - we could probably have guessed this - it came from London, only "seven miles from here." Is it just me or are there a lot of sevens in this seven-part story?

UNIT race into action, with multiple jeeps full of mannys on location, and incidental music that sounds considerably less... er, less eccentric than what was used in Doctor Who and the Silurians. There are mannys inside the building, who are led by Carrington (John "Rimmer's Dad" Abineri). He has been expecting UNIT to arrive sooner or later, and he tells his henchmanny to keep them away for as long as possible, but not to kill anyone "unless absolutely necessary." He needs time to "send the final transmission."

There is a big HAVOC fight scene of UNIT and the baddys shooting at each other, with the Brigadier clearly enjoying himself tremendously, until Carrington's henchmanny is about to shoot the Brigadier, but instead he surrenders. They are proper baddys, who even have a self-destruct for their base. After triggering the countdown, Carrington escapes.

The Doctor goes to see Dr Taltalian about using his computer for decoding the message, but when he and Liz get there, Dr Taltalian pulls a gun on them. We didn't even know he was a baddy, so this is a surprise cliffhanger!