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.