Category: Complete Review
Doctor Who episode 270: The Ambassadors of Death – Episode 6 (25/4/1970)
This is the first Doctor Who episode to actually utilise colour for effect: when the Doctor is taken aboard the UFO to meet the captive human astronauts, he’s lit by bursts of pink, green and blue light. It’s a marked contrast after the wintry greys and muted shades of the space centre. Later, Liz comes literally face to face with one of the alien ambassadors and Michael Ferguson uses a strange repeated zoom as the alien removes its helmet to reveal a lumpy and bright blue face.
Doctor Who episode 269: The Ambassadors of Death – Episode 5 (18/4/1970)
The focus of the episode is on the unravelling conspiracy’s increasingly murderous attempts to maintain its cover up, facilitated by Reegan’s cruel self-interest. It’s best illustrated in the exchange between Liz and Lennox (Cyril Shaps), when Liz essentially accuses him of being an accessory to murder, prompting the fussy little worm to turn and sell out to the Brigadier and UNIT. In response, the conspiracy arranges for a mystery UNIT member to lock Lennox in a cell with a radioactive isotope, ironically turning his own work against him in a way that has all the hallmarks of Reegan’s sadism.
Doctor Who episode 268: The Ambassadors of Death – Episode 4 (11/4/1970)
The conspiracy begins to unravel as Carrington is spooked by the Doctor’s continual questioning, and Reegan continues to eliminate weak links and loose ends: after last week’s unfortunate henchmen this time it’s the turn of the unlikely-accented Dr Taltalian, who falls victim to a bomb in a briefcase that looks like something Q-Division might have thought up, and of Sir James Quinlan, whose willingness to tell all to the Doctor makes him too dangerous to live.
Doctor Who episode 267: The Ambassadors of Death – Episode 3 (4/4/1970)
The colour recovery process, while miraculous, works better on some episodes than others. This one has a slightly nicotine-stained patina which actually suits the seedy nature of the the villains introduced here (disposing of bodies in a gravel pit), with grey grass and a washed-out sky giving a properly wintry feel to the location filming.
Doctor Who episode 266: The Ambassadors of Death – Episode 2 (28/3/1970)
This is about as Quatermass as Doctor Who ever gets: a space capsule lands in the middle of the British countryside, its occupants incommunicado; a conspiracy has reached the highest levels of the military and civil service; an overbearing genius rails against the Establishment. If they’d cancelled the series in 1969 and decided to do a Nigel Kneale show it might have looked quite like this.
Doctor Who episode 265: The Ambassadors of Death – Episode 1 (21/3/1970)
Season Seven has an ongoing interest in being “down to Earth” and current, which is reflected in the fact that reporters have featured in every serial to date: badgering the Brigadier at the cottage hospital in Spearhead from Space, and somehow obtaining his number at the Wenley Moor research centre. Now, we have Michael Wisher playing John Wakefield, reporting directly to us from British Space Control, and filling in the background of a mission to Mars that has lost contact. Behind him play black & white images from the rescue capsule – all of which must have seemed pretty familiar to viewers in 1970. Meanwhile, the space programme management is fretting about public opinion,
Doctor Who episode 264: Doctor Who and the Silurians – Episode 7 (14/3/1970)
In the end, right until the last couple of scenes, this is a bit of a disappointment. There’s some drama around the Doctor having been kidnapped before he can reveal the formula for the cure to the plague, until Liz finds it written down on a bit of paper. Then, to create some drama for the final episode, the Silurians reveal they have another genocidal plan – to use a gizmo to remove the Van Allen Belt and roast humankind – that can only be foiled by the Doctor fusing the control of the neutron flow in the cyclotron.
Doctor Who episode 263: Doctor Who and the Silurians – Episode 6 (7/3/1970)
The focus of the episode is the spread of the Silurian plague and the Doctor’s attempts to find a cure. As such, there’s nothing much for the Brigadier and UNIT to shoot at, and for the majority of the episode the Doctor is out of his velvet and into a lab coat testing samples while the Brigadier has lots of urgent phone calls.
Doctor Who episode 262: Doctor Who and the Silurians – Episode 5 (28/2/1970)
All the effort Timothy Combe has gone to so far to make the Silurians credible is thrown away in a tsunami of what Gary Gillatt calls “squabbling rubber”, most preposterously from Nigel Johns as the Young Silurian. His arrogant hot-headedness is indicated by the way he vigorously wobbles his head to emphasise he’s the one talking, and dramatically pointing to his third eye when he’s threatening the Silurian Scientist with death. It highlights the limitations of these costumes, and perhaps got Barry Letts, producing Doctor Who for the first time, thinking about how to tackle talkative aliens more effectively. It’s heresy to say it, but the prosthetics and half-masks of the 21st Century Silurians work a lot better.
Doctor Who episode 261: Doctor Who and the Silurians – Episode 4 (21/2/1970)
Brilliantly, the resolution to last week’s “monster reveal” cliffhanger is the Doctor extending his hand and asking, ‘Hello, are you a Silurian?’ This feels like the first indication that some thought has been put into making the new Doctor a different flavour than the old one: reaching out the hand of friendship to alien life forms rather than darkly contemplating corners of the universe that have bred the most terrible things.
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