The Doctor enters the alien spaceship. (The Ambassadors of Death Episode 6) ©BBC |
And down on planet Earth, tensions at Space HQ remain high. "The American space agency are now preparing to launch an unmanned capsule to observe the unidentified object," says one of the technicians, glancing repeatedly at the camera every time she has a close-up. When the Doctor finally returns, he refuses to tell anyone about what happened while in orbit until he's face-to-face with them -- which ends up being a problem when he's gassed by Reegan and taken back to where the ambassadors are being held. General Carrington then insists, bizarrely, that the Doctor might have staged his kidnapping: "[The gas] could be a blind to make us think he'd been kidnapped." He also states that they should blow the alien spaceship out of the skies, insisting it's their "moral duty". "I think the General's a bit overwrought," the Brigadier comments. "I think he's insane," Cornish replies, and it's growing increasingly harder to disagree with him.
And then no sooner is the Doctor brought back to consciousness in Reegan's bunker when General Carrington appears; it turns out he's Reegan's boss. "You're not surprised to see me?" Carrington asks the Doctor. "Not particularly, no," the Doctor replies. Carrington then pulls a gun on the Doctor, ready to kill him and once again claiming it to be his "moral duty".
It's only Reegan's insistence that the Doctor could still be useful, combined with the Doctor's sweet-talking of Carrington, that saves the Doctor's life. Carrington's rabidly xenophobic plan, and his reasoning behind it, are finally revealed: when Carrington was on Mars Probe 6, they made contact with the aliens, and one of the aliens accidentally killed his fellow astronaut Jim Daniels (an incident which apparently escaped the attention of anyone in the British space programme). Now Carrington intends to unmask one of the ambassadors on live television as a pretext for declaring war on the aliens, to prevent, in his eyes, an alien invasion of Earth.
General Carrington places the Brigadier under arrest. (The Ambassadors of Death Episode 7) ©BBC |
So that's two Earthbound stories in a row that aren't about mad scientists or alien invasions -- in fact, this is a story about a friendly alien encounter gone wrong because of narrow-minded humans, rather than about alien monsters come to enslave us all. In that sense it turns the idea of an alien invasion on its head, with the aliens among us explicitly identified as ambassadors, with all the connotations of the word, and it's only the actions of one xenophobic man that lead to the derailment of an official first contact between these aliens and humanity (even if, admittedly, this element is pretty far down in the mix, with lots of action sequences and standard thriller moments given more prominence). The Ambassadors of Death is another success: an exciting, well-paced thriller with space travel, action-packed battles, and lots of memorable images.
So that's two seven-part stories in a row that have more than justified their length. Can the production team keep it up?