Doctor Who Rewind - The Ambassadors Of Death

The British Space Programme (don't laugh), has run into a spot of trouble. On route to Mars, several astronaughts have mysteriously gone missing, and a new probe, Recovery Seven,has been sent into Earth orbit to try and figure out what happened.

The pilot of Recovery Seven makes contact with the missing probe but is then silenced by a strange unearthly sound. The Doctor and Unit head over to the space centre to investigate. Analysis of the sound reveals that it is a message of some kind and that a reply was sent from an abandoned warehouse on earth?

There then follows a stand off in the warehouse, involving Unit men and the troops of General Charles Carrington. I understand from watching the extras on the disk that this sequence took a couple of days to film and was organised by members of a members of a crack team of stunt men, especially pulled together to work on shows like Doctor Who. The name of this in house A Team? Simply, Havoc.

Havoc put on a good show and things quickly turn very nasty with broken glass and wood and bullets whizzing around all over the place. The poor brigadier is spoiled for choice in his targets.

Then, Recovery Seven returns to Earth and while Unit are transporting it, Carrington's men stage an ambush. The Doctor manages to pull off a little trick of his own involving his car Bessie becoming trapped by a force field when he gets two of Carrington's men, who are driving the transporter, to help him when he feigns his car being broken down. The Doctor nabs the transporter and drives it to safety.

When communication with the astronaughts inside the pod fails, Unit cuts open the space ship to find nothing inside. Carrington has already taken the space men out of the capsule and kept them alive by feeding the radiation.

The Doctor is spoken to by the head of space security, who tells him the astronaughts have been exposed to radiation and are being kept safe, the public were not informed with this information in order to avoid a panic.

The Doctor is taken to see the astronaughts but a criminal named Reegan has already abducted them. The Doctor and Liz Shaw work out that there is no way the astronaughts could have survived such a lethal dose of radiation, meaning the space suits must instead be housing some kind of alien.

Liz is abducted by Reegan, in order to look after the needs of the aliens, by monitoring there radiation levels. Together with Reegan's scientist, Lennox, they build a crude communications device so messages can be sent to the beings. The aliens are then instructed to go and kill various members of Space Control.

Another mission to Mars is launched, this time with the Doctor volunteering to man a solo trip, and despite an attempted sabotage by Reegan, eventually the ship rendezvous with an enormous craft orbiting the red planet. Inside the Doctor finds the missing astronaughts, seemingly oblivious to there surroundings, they think they are back on earth undertaking some king of decompression after the mission.

The Doctor discovers that the aliens had made a deal with Earth to exchange the crew for the ambassadors, but this agreement was now broken due to their kin being held against their will. The Doctor promises to help get the aliens back, and to avoid a war between the aliens and Earth.

When the Doctor returns to Earth he is kidnapped by Reegan, who takes him to see Liz and sets them to work on an improved communications device. General Carrington appears and reveals he is behind the attempt to lure the ambassadors to earth in order to expose their plot to invade, on national TV.

Carrington it seems is driven in his fiendish plot by an encounter he had with the beings some years ago. His co-pilot being killed on contact with one of the aliens.

The Doctor is rescued by the brigadier. With Carrington about to go live on TV with the aliens, Unit soldiers force their way into the base and the Doctor and Leftbridge Stewart apprehend Carrington just in time.

The Doctor then arrangers the return of the ambassadors in return for the missing astronaughts.

At seven episodes this is a bit of a long haul. But, in its favour it does have some very good action set pieces thanks to the resource that Havoc supply.

A lot of the exterior shots of the rocket launch area were recorded at Southall Gas Works in Middlesex, so there's lots of pipes, smoke, and things to climb on, and of course fall off!!

There's some very nice use of narration in some of the episodes to explain the plot exposition, this is done by setting up a fictitious tv programme about the launch and have the presenter tell the audience what is going on.

Again, Pertwee is his usual suave self throughout and never gets riled by anything that is thrown at him.

The finale does come a bit quick and seems a bit like an after thought, it's almost as if the Doctor's in a rush to sort things out so he can get on with the next adventure, he doesn't even have time to stick around and tidy up a bit, just walking off after politely telling the brigadier and the control centre captain to send the ambassadors back.

Next time on Doctor Who Rewind we get a little hot under the collar as the world is threatened by something at the Earths core.