The third Doctor gets a second chance to broker inter-planetary peace after the massacre in The Silurians...

Season Seven’s quite a rarity in the Doctor Who pantheon. When it comes to quality, most reviewers regard the Lucky Seven as having no duff stories. Four helpings of top-quality, albeit gritty and downbeat Who, it’s only the mid-70s seasons that command such respect too.

The only problem is deciding which story is your favourite, and that’s a more difficult task. Spearhead From Space with its scary monsters and brand new Doctor? The Silurians with its moral complexity and impressive character development? Inferno and its gritty realism and parallel universe hi-jinks? Tough call, although my personal favourite is actually the one that no one plumps for, and that’s The Ambassadors Of Death.

Ambassadors tends to get lumped with Image Of The Fendahl or Frontios in the pile that time forgot. They’re regarded as good stories, but not necessarily ones that you’d dig out to show potential Who converts. There’s also the charges that Ambassadors is too long; too padded; too difficult to follow. Even Uncle Terrance was presumably quaking in fear on discovering that he’d have to tell the Who bank manager about Michael Ferguson’s ideas of producing a cheap action sequence. And yet for all of that, Ambassadors hits the spot for me every time I see it.

The story is essentially a modern-day thriller laced with subtle undertones about the horrors of xenophobia. If The Silurians explored this theme in a fair amount of detail, then Ambassadors takes it one step further, and examines how one man’s xenophobia leads him into madness. General Carrington, the main protagonist of Ambassadors, blames the alien astronauts for the death of his ex-colleague Jim Daniels, when the two were involved in a past Mars probe expedition. Rather than acknowledge that the astronauts were innocent and ignorant of the fact that their touch could kill human beings, Carrington proceeds to set an elaborate trap to convince the human race of their evil ways.

"If there’s one fault of Ambassadors, then it’s that the overly complicated plot is a bit off-putting"

I say elaborate - that’s actually putting it mildly. Carrington’s trap is so convoluted that the average episode of Lewis resembles a Join-The-Dots book by comparison. Basically, three alien astronauts are captured for use by Carrington for Heldorf’s use. They are then captured by Reegan via Carrington, while framing a couple of thugs with haircombs and foreign papers. Reegan then acts on Carrington’s instructions to make them carry out targeted raids on various high-security locations, killing innocents in the process and making them look like evil alien thugs. Not only that, but one of the astronauts is kidnapped and subjected to a terrifying Jeremy Kyle-esque fate by appearing on national TV as a public hate figure. To muddy the water further, there seem to be about a million and one co-conspirators including Collinson, Quinlan and (well, you’d never guess it), Bruno Taltallian.

If there’s one fault of Ambassadors, then it’s that the overly complicated plot is a bit off-putting. There are so many detours and twists that seeing Ambassadors again is a bit like navigating your way around Hampton Court Maze while working out Sudoku puzzles at the same time. What I like about the serial though is that when it comes to revealing the mastermind behind the whole thing, it throws you off the scent. And here’s the thing – Carrington is seen to be a blatantly obvious candidate, and yet, Ambassadors throws you off the track with so many red herrings that his ‘surprise’ reveal at the end of Episode Six still works. Over the six episodes, we see a man whose sanity is gradually stripped away to the point where his crazed rants prompt Cornish to proclaim that “I think he’s insane”. Wow, there’s no getting past Cornish, is there?

"John Abineri’s pitch-perfect performance means that this is a three-dimensional baddie rather than a stock cliché"

Carrington’s insanity is very well portrayed by John Abineri in what’s probably the best of his four Who appearances. Starting off as a shifty but apparently four-square military man, Abineri convincingly plays Carrington as a walking time bomb of a character. By Episode Four, he’s already suggesting that the aliens are at fault, despite The Doctor’s protests. By Episode Six, his rantings are already paving the way for what’s to come. And by the last instalment, he’s using his authority to get his own way, no matter what the consequences. He arrests The Brigadier. He commandeers the TV coverage of the Mars Probe. And he even fails to acknowledge that what he did was wrong, instead claiming that it’s his “moral duty”. Carrington isn’t so much a baddie, more a seriously misguided fanatic who’s abused his power to distort the facts on a lunatic scale. In The Face Of Evil, The Doctor comments: “The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views.” Well, that sure sums up Carrington, but Abineri’s pitch-perfect performance means that this is a three-dimensional baddie rather than a stock cliché.

Again, the seven-episode format of The Ambassadors Of Death allows for some great character development. The story has something of a chequered writing history. The credit is given to David Whitaker on screen, but allegedly, there were behind-the-scenes problems, resulting in rewrites from Malcolm Hulke. Both men have a notable history for providing strong characterisation, so it’s hard to tell where Whitaker’s influence begins and Hulke’s ends. Take the stock baddie for example, Reegan the thug, a man who must surely win the ACME award for Record Amount Of Devious Schemes In One Story. Reegan is an amoral bad guy, with no scruples whatsoever. All he’s concerned about is making as much dough as he can for himself, and keeping in with the big boss. He’s even content to kill countless people in the process, even the ones that work for Carrington. And despite this, Reegan is still vaguely likeable. He has a nice line in sarcastic humour. He even has the nerve to take the claim for turning the Ambassadors against Carrington at the end in a desperate bid to keep him out of the slammer. William Dysart is again excellent as Reegan, and brings the character to villainous life, but the sharp writing and witty quotes also do the job.

Other notables include the nervy Lennox, a man who’s probably afraid of his own shadow. Cyril Shaps always seems to play these sorts of characters, but you can’t deny that he plays them very well. Ironically, he’s brought down by his own over-cautious nature in that he’s locked in what he thinks is the safety of his own cell – when it turns out to be a death trap containing the less-than-palatable meal of an isotope. Not something you’d serve to the judges on Masterchef then.

"Great acting and great writing combine to make the characters in Ambassadors totally believable"

There’s also the rock-steady Cornish, who’s played excellently by Ronald Allen. Cornish and his super-quiff somehow manage to remain rock-steady in the face of disaster. He manages to just about keep his cool when the initial Mars Probe goes awry. He keeps on the straight and narrow when The Doctor is pushed to the limit on the next Mars Probe, whether it’s at the hands of too much G-Force or mysterious flying lips in space. And let’s not forget Michael Wisher, making his on-screen debut as ahead-of-his-time news reporter John Wakefield, again totally calm and collected in the face of a national crisis. We even get a brief insight into minor character Collinson, who isn’t a thug, but a soldier acting on instructions. It only takes a trick by The Doctor to fool him into submission. Again, great acting and great writing combine to make the characters in Ambassadors totally believable.

About the only two who don’t work are Quinlan and Taltallian, who are too stereotyped to be convincing. Quinlan is one of the less effective pompous old fools for The Doctor to yell at, simply because he just refuses to listen to reason. Even when he does have a change of heart, he’s so full of himself that it’s almost a relief when the astronaut zaps him to death.

Taltallian of course, is hampered by a ridiculous fake French accent that makes the cast of ‘Allo ‘Allo sound authentic. “Eye m ecteeeng ooondair eenstweckzeeeons phleghm shenerail cerreeeengtuuhhn” seems to be Taltallian’s mantra. He presumably repeats this to himself every night before he goes to sleep, before a shrine to the General. The only problem is that his accent is as fake as his comedy beard. When he’s driving along in his car, his voice reverts back to a standard middle-class English accent, and yet by the time he’s back with Reegan it’s back to cod-French again. That said, Robert Cawdron gives one of the most pitiful death screams ever. The sequence in which Taltallian is killed by the booby-trap briefcase is one of the most brutal of the Third Doctor’s era. It’s oddly rather short, but Michael Ferguson’s short, sharp scattergun editing and Cawdron’s piercing shriek really makes an impact. Almost makes up for the bad impression of ‘Allo ‘Allo’s Officer Crabtree.

It’s fascinating to see how The Doctor reacts to all this. He’s certainly in a foul temper in Episode One, treating Cornish like a thick kid, hounding off security guards and acting like an arse at the Mars Probe Control Centre – the events of The Silurians are still fresh in The Doctor’s mind (we get a mention at the start of the serial) and relations between The Doctor and The Brigadier are even frostier than Tony The Tiger. However, there’s a rather sweet scene in which The Brigadier goes to see The Doctor off personally before he goes up in the Mars Probe to investigate. Although things aren’t back to normal, you get the impression that the handshake between the two goes a long way to repair the damage.

"The third Doctor is very much an intergalactic Sherlock Holmes, picking up on all the clues at his disposal and using his formidable brain to work out what’s going on"

Pertwee’s on cracking form, whether he’s starting on at any pompous Earth imbecile or whether he quietly allows General Carrington to leave with dignity at the end. The Third Doctor is very much an intergalactic Sherlock Holmes, picking up on all the clues at his disposal and using his formidable brain to work out what’s going on. Again, he’s very much a mediator between races, as in The Silurians. The difference is that this time, he successfully brokers a deal with the aliens, and this time walks away a happy man.

Heady stuff, but just as important is Michael Ferguson’s direction. It’s something really special, with inspired camera choices, unusual effects and some fantastic action sequences that could pass for one of the better James Bond films any day of the week. The fight sequences and the hijacking of the Mars Probe with helicopters and lorries are very impressive. But let’s not forget the studio sequences. The rapid cuts between pained faces when the alien signal kicks in. The aforementioned death of Taltallian. And that unnerving shot of the reveal of the aliens. Really weird, trippy zoom-ins into Liz’s horrified face and then a blink’n’miss it shot of the alien’s head. All to the strains of the equally freaky Dudley Simpson music.

Mention of Simpson reminds me that Ambassadors – even by Simpson's own high standards – is one of his very best. It’s a mix of the surreal (the ethereal astronaut theme) and 60s TV Spy Thrillers. Those jazzy cues really sum up those old programmes like The Champions or The Avengers, but surely that UNIT theme must rank as one of Simpson’s greatest accomplishments. It’s effective, it’s dramatic and it’s also annoyingly catchy. Absolute aural brilliance – just a shame that it would be tainted by the Mind Of Evil version that sounds like a toddler jumping up and down on a plastic toy keyboard.

You can’t ask for more than intelligent, dramatic and well-written Who produced to feature film standards. That’s what’s achieved in The Ambassadors Of Death. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly scores high on my Desert Island Pertwee list and probably on my Desert Island Who list too. It’s lavishly directed. Well thought-out. And it also rings true, even in today’s society. Plus, it also heralds the debut of the closing theme music sting. Still my favourite of a very strong season.

John Bensalhia limbered up for this mammoth task with a full four-series review of Blake's 7, and writes professionally and recreationally all over the web. Check out his portfolio of work at Wordprofectors.

Check out John's previous Doctor Who review, Doctor Who And The Silurians