The Ambassadors of Death

When all communication is lost from Mars Probe 7 shortly after it begins its return to Earth, a second craft is launched to investigate. As Recovery 7 docks in space, its communication ceases as well, but it returns to Earth as planned.

The Doctor and UNIT are given the task of investigating the mystery when Recovery 7 arrives back on Earth. Before they can interview the taciturn astronauts, the space capsule is hijacked from its UNIT convoy in a surprisingly professional attack.

What has happened to the missing astronauts? The Doctor has a theory he’d like to test. As he prepares a daring space mission of his own, his assistant Liz Shaw goes missing. Is all this connected to a secret invasion from Mars, or is the enemy much closer to home?

This video features over 90 minutes in color, with the remaining material in black-and-white. Due to the archive nature of the story, the picture quality does vary slightly.

• Episodes 1 and 5 are in color, the other episodes are a mixture of black & white and color.  This is because the story was junked back in the late 70's along with many other stories from the first 11 seasons.  As luck would have it, all of the Pertwee episodes have been recovered, but not all of the recovered copies were in color.  Ambassadors was recovered in a black and white format.  

• A color version of Ambassadors was recorded by a fan living in America in the late 70's.  Unfortunately, the TV signal was weak for much of the story causing rainbow bands to appear randomly.  As a result, only episode 5 was well enough off to be colorized completely from the existing color copy.   Portions of the other episodes have been re-colorized, with a running total of roughly 90 minutes of restored color footage.

• Similar color recordings of junked Pertwee episodes exist for "Doctor Who and the Silurians," "Terror of  the Autons" and "The Daemons" but sadly not for "The Mind of Evil" or episode 3 of "Planet of the Daleks" or episode 1 of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs."

• Episode 1 was never colorized, as it was recovered in its original color format. 

• The VHS release will also feature a short intro trailer filmed by Jon Pertwee as well as a short feature at the end highlighting some of the restoration work done for this release.

• Elements of this story are reminiscent of "The X-Files" and other conspiracy type shows.

• This is the last story penned by the late, great David Whitaker.

• A variation of the opening credits was used in this story.  The opening credits begin as normal.  Then, a brief reprise of the previous episode is seen.  Finally, another cut back to the credits to flash the story title and episode.  This variation was never used in any other story.

• The actor playing reporter John Wakefield is none other than Michael Wisher.  He appeared frequently in Doctor Who over the years.  After his role in "Ambassadors" he returned the following year to play Rex Ferrel in "Terror of the Autons."  He went on to play Kalik in "Carnival of Monsters" and did the voice of the Daleks in both "Planet of the Daleks" and "Death to the Daleks."  Next up was probably his most memorable role as Davros in "Genesis of the Daleks."  He returned in the very next story, "Revenge of the Cybermen" as Magrik.  His final appearance came one year later in the minor role of Morelli in "The Planet of Evil."