Holistic Review: Promising, but disappointing. The basic plot idea is interesting, but it's bogged down with an excruciatingly slow pace, unremarkable characters, and aliens that would be pretty scary if they only had more to do.

It took me just about six years to get this site put together, during which time I watched every story (or read the script, if that was all that was available). The very last one that I watched, owing to a lack of good-quality video until it was released commercially in the US, was The Ambassadors of Death. Given that I probably hadn't watched it since I was about eight, I hardly remembered anything about it - not even from the novelization. Therefore, I went into it with high hopes and an open mind.

To my distress, I have to admit that those hopes were pretty well dashed.

What's funny is that the reviewers who have compared this story to an episode of The X-Files were absolutely right - what we've got here is a before-its-time story about a government conspiracy involving aliens and the military, with two leads, one of whom is a redheaded scientist who can run in heels. Unfortunately, the X-Files episode that it most resembles is "Space", in which a manned shuttle is sabotaged by an alien force which may be from Mars, and the action is interspersed with many long scenes involving the control center at NASA. It usually makes the top of any list of the worst X-Files episodes, and rightfully so.

That's not to say that The Ambassadors of Death is a total failure; like any episode of Doctor Who (or any episode of The X-Files, for that matter), there are always things to appreciate. The regulars give enjoyable performances, although they seem to have somewhat less to do than usual. The Doctor's anti-military attitudes are particularly strong here, and I always enjoy watching him deflate self-important officials. Liz, meanwhile, gets to show off her proficiency in all things science, as well as her moral backbone and her utter lack of fear or intimidation no matter how much she's threatened. And of course you can't review The Ambassadors of Death without mentioning that tense scene of Liz being chased across the weir. I'm really impressed that she fights back, and even bests her first opponent, before being caught by the second man. I love her boots, and the silver belt that lots of people (including even Reegan, I think!) seem to be wearing; but her hair seems awfully big here. Maybe Liz needed to use more conditioner. The Brigadier also gets some nice moments, notably his role in the overlong UNIT fight in the warehouse, where he demonstrates his very good aim.

The conspiracy is portrayed well, too - even though the audience is a little more clued-in than the Doctor about who exactly is involved, it's still unsettling to watch them anticipate every move the Doctor makes, and come out of the woodwork like roaches to stop him as homicidally as possible. And there's no doubt that when they get to be a part of the action, the astronaut-suited ambassadors make a very memorable impression, with their reflective face-plates, and those gloved hands reaching out to irradiate your body...! The revelation that they're actually peaceful is a very nice one; season 7 seems to do very well with monsters that turn usual Doctor Who morality on its head. (But I still think it's a great shame that the ambassadors didn't get more to do. They basically only get two scenes across seven episodes in which to inspire fear; the rest of the time, they stay cooped up in their little isolation ward, usually flailing about from a lack of radiation.)

Behind the scenes, I think the incidental music is the most impressive part of the production. Quite a few scenes have a very melodious soundtrack, and sometimes it's their only saving grace. Sometimes it comes across as inadvertently funny, too, which I'll discuss later. Not all of the audio effects work well; the very first scene features a very irritating noise in the background of the control center, and similar irritating noises recur throughout the story. But overall the music and sound effects are a pleasure.

The effects are hit-and-miss... on the positive side, we have the Doctor's magically transmigrating analog tape, which works without a hitch or a judder, and the... uh... well, we have a successful transmigration! On the negative side, we have a bad CSO videophone (the image stays still while the monitor is lowering - a very definite pet peeve of mine, which could have been easily solved by a fade in and out, as it does when it first appears), an uninspiring and comic-book-like red flash when the ambassadors kill their victims, and unless I'm mistaken, that's the bright blue CSO background we see reflecting off the door of the space capsule when the Doctor opens it and steps out into the alien spacecraft.

I should also mention the stunts, which are impressive throughout. The warehouse fight and the theft of the lander, in particular, feature some very nice stuntwork. I was a little surprised, though, by the realism of some of the violence. There are a whole lot of gunshot victims in this story and it wasn't usually softened.

And now I can't delay talking about it any longer: this story is just interminably slow. Bear in mind, I'm not the sort of person who requires nonstop action to enjoy a story; in fact, I usually prefer a carefully-plotted intellectual tale, and the seeds of that are certainly here. But these seven episodes are so full of padding, they're the television equivalent of an overstuffed sofa. The scene in which the launcher is recovered alone takes up almost three minutes of screen time (although at least it's accompanied by some of that great incidental music)! If you pared down the long fights, and that lander recovery scene, and removed most of the dull control room scenes, you'd probably have a reasonably tight five-parter.

Adding to the problem is the fact that the guest cast is almost uniformly unimpressive. Looking back on the story, the only one who really stands out is Ronald Allen as Cornish. If I'm being really generous, I might also include Cyril Shaps as Lennox and Robert Cawdron as Taltalian the Over-Accented. I do appreciate John Abineri as Carrington, whose motives are basically sympathetic even if he's utterly misguided, but I don't think he really comes into his own until episode 7. It's mainly Cornish who made an impression, and I'm honestly not even sure whether that's because he made the most of his role, or because he was filmed like a 1940s glamour movie star, all dashing and intense and bright-eyed. A lot of the other actors just seemed wooden, and they certainly didn't help to make the story any more interesting.

My final general criticism: three out of the first four cliffhangers are, well, boring. Fortunately the others redeem themselves, and I also really like the pre-credits teaser (particularly the way the episode number appears right on cue). I'm glad they tried it for at least one story, and I think it was a distinctive and fun move, particularly for the time.

Minor points:

• It's funny, I could have sworn that the first TARDIS scene, in which Liz is sent a few seconds into the future, was a part of Inferno. And I found out I'm not the only one! It makes me wonder if PBS re-edited the stories. Or maybe it was mass hallucinations.

• I mentioned earlier that sometimes the incidental music can be funny - well, take a look at the scene in which the recovery shuttle is linking up with Mars Probe 7. The beautiful orchestral score makes it all seem rather epic and lovely, until the moment when they actually start approaching each other to dock. Then suddenly it starts sounding more like the soundtrack to a sappy romance, as two lovers prepare to kiss... Well, it made me laugh, anyway.

• When Wakefield, the reporter, is narrating to the camera, it appears that he's actually doing a live broadcast. But if that's the case, how on earth does he fill up time between interviews? I mean, I was watching that control center, and it was not all that exciting in there.

• Love the following exchange:

  Cornish: (re: the Doctor) "Brigadier, who is this?"
  Brigadier: "He's one of my associates."
  Cornish: "Will you kindly get one of your associates out of here?"

  It's almost Buffy-worthy.

• It's nice that Liz gets to show off her French-speaking abilities on camera. But why is she speaking English ("From where?") in the middle of her conversation?! (To clue the audience into what she's talking about, no doubt!)

• During the warehouse fight, one of the soldiers decides to break cover and run forward wildly, not even aiming his gun. And, surprise surprise, he gets shot! What did he expect?

• This story sure tends toward that great television tradition, the deadly bomb that blows up almost nothing. I count two. The one in the warehouse pretty much just blows itself up (I imagine some man running up to the scene, horrified, crying "My bomb!") although it does get a nice detonation sound effect. And then there's the one that Taltalian sets in the computer room, which also pretty much just blows itself up. That one's even worse, because it was designed to be placed in the same room as the Doctor and therefore kill him. Well, it was in the same room as the Doctor, but it only just managed to kill Taltalian. And that briefcase. Clearly it wasn't all that powerful.

• Speaking of the computer room... there's a sign on the door that says "Computer Room". And it seems to have exactly one computer in it. Which takes up the whole room. Hee hee. I love the 1970s. (see: Green Death comma The)

• The infamous wobbly set makes an appearance when a button on one of the panels in the control room is pressed, and the entire panel flexes inward.

• The Doctor's anti-thief device is a great trick! And cleverly used, too.

• When the Doctor discovers the tape recorder inside the recovery probe, he says its playback was triggered by their speech. So... why doesn't it start running while they're standing there talking about it? Does it only respond to speech relayed over the communication circuits?

• Reegan gets in a real corker of a line, holding out photos of the Doctor and Liz: "Hey Lennox, you're a kind of a scientist. Do you know these two?" Well, of course Lennox would know them. I mean, everybody knows the sciences are so tight-knit that anyone who's, say, dabbled in chemistry knows all the marine biologists, and so on. This amusing portrayal of science is continued later, when he offers Liz a job and she asks what the alternative is. His reply: "I kill you and buy myself another scientist." I think his next one should be a mycologist. I mean, they'd surely be as well-qualified to study radioactive aliens as an aerolithologist like Liz, right? (Then again, what with all her myriad scientific degrees, I suppose Liz is actually overqualified to study them.)

• The first time that the Doctor, Liz and the Brigadier are veering through the countryside in Bessie, Liz keeps a tight grip on her hat. But when she's zipping off by herself, even when trying to outrace her pursuers, her hat stays firmly planted on her head without any assistance! Nice.

• Love the stuntfall off the weir, too. It looks really great.

• Don't ask me why, but I love watching people in Doctor Who handle radioactive material, particularly when it comes in isotope form. Actually, the hydromel in Terminus is treated in much the same way. I wonder why this is? I think it has a lot to do with the sound effects.

• It's a good thing that Reegan never thought to put a bug in the laboratory, otherwise Liz and Lennox would have given away their plan several times over.

• Liz gets a great line:

  Flynn: "Don't try anything."
  Liz: "It's all right, I won't hurt you."

• Unless the covered dish containing the isotope that kills Lennox was shielded, I don't quite see why Lennox was safe until he uncovered it. If it was shielded, why didn't he cover the isotope right back up? And if it wasn't shielded, it seems like the flunky who delivered it should've been getting a fatal dose of radiation, too. And speaking of all this, that isotope must have been awfully powerful. Apparently death from radiation poisoning can be pretty near immediate if one is exposed to more than 5000 rad, so I'm not going to say it was impossibly fast, but it sure startled me.

• Before the Doctor's rocket takes off, the Brigadier races to the control centre and tells Cornish to stop the countdown. Instead of doing so, Cornish looks around for the three seconds that remain, and then tells the Brigadier it's too late. What?! Why didn't he act right away! Oh wait, I forgot - he was a slave to the plot.

• ALIEN SPACECRAFT: "Go to the light."
  ME: "No, Doctor, come away from the light!"

• Ohhh, the scene with the astronauts on board the alien spacecraft is like a breath of fresh air. It's the first really interesting scene in the whole story.

• Scratching my head over this one.

  Carrington: "I intend to have this Doctor investigated!"
  Brigadier: "You shall have to find him first, sir."

  Since when do you have to have someone in your custody in order to investigate them?

• And this exchange made me want to run away in terror.

  Liz kneels over the Doctor's prone body as he regains consciousness.
  Liz: "Doctor, are you all right?"
  Doctor: (reaching up to caress Liz' cheek) "Yes, I'm getting better by the minute."

• When the Doctor taps out his SOS, he does so VERY loudly - loud enough, in fact, that anybody in the room probably could have heard the rhythm of his fingers. I don't think that was exactly surreptitious of him.

• As slow as the whole story was, the ending somehow feels rushed! On this viewing, I decided that it isn't actually rushed, it's just accomplished so skilfully, and with all the unnecessary padding removed, that it only feels quick in comparison with all the rest!

In summary, I do think this story had a lot of potential, and there are things to admire, but overall it's just too plodding for me to really be able to enjoy. It's not a story I'm going to feel a great urge to rewatch anytime soon.