Having related the tale of the first fright that I’ve experienced from Doctor Who (In the blog post: Shop Dummies … and a dummy), I wrote in the post that the experience was one of two frights that I’d ever had from the programme. At the time I wrote the post, the intention was – at some point – to relate the second experience as well and so here it is: The Ambassadors of Death: Scare No. 2.
The Ambassadors
The year (again) is 1970. The Ambassadors of Death is a seven part serial, broadcast between March and May 1970 (just two months after my first fright!). As recounted in the earlier post, I was 9 years old and clearly went through a period (albeit short) of being scared witless by Doctor Who!
The Ambassadors of Death is the tale of some astronauts launched into space on a recovery mission (as part of the British Space programme), only to have their communications cut off abruptly. The capsule is recovered (but found to be empty) and the location of the astronauts unknown. The astronauts have been abducted and kept in a warehouse, fed on radiation to keep them alive. The upshot of the story turns out to be some aliens that were wanting their people (the “astronauts”) back, The Doctor strikes a deal and saves the day.
All in all The Ambassadors of Death is a pretty standard story penned by one of the absolute masters of Doctor Who writing – Terrance Dicks (Uncle Terrance) – and indeed watching the story now doesn’t really reveal any particular nuances that makes it stand out from a usual Doctor Who story. Entertaining: yes, good story: yes, scary: not as such.
Radiation!
But to my 9 year old self, the The Ambassadors of Death themselves – the astronauts – were absolutely terrifying!! I don’t know whether it was the fact you could never see their faces through the space suit (an effect that was very well executed) or whether it was the fact that they had to be kept alive with radioactive isotopes, or whether they were just frightening by their lack of activity – just standing stock still, waiting.
I certainly remember not knowing what a radioactive isotope was and asking my Dad to describe it to me. Of course, having never seen a radioactive isotope, or knowing where to get one from, I do recall thinking at the time that it might be handy to have one, just in case one of those Ambassadors came calling. (Of course, I never did attempt to buy one. Boots didn’t sell them, for a start!)
I also recall not being able to sleep all that well during that episode run – or indeed for several weeks afterwards. I just laid awake at night wondering if one of those Ambassadors really would pay me a visit and inflict some electric death on me. I also remember being cautious at school, making sure that none of those astronauts were waiting for me in the toilet, for example!
I still don’t know to this day why there were so scary! No other Doctor Who monster or alien ever came as close as “That Auton Experience” or those astronauts to scaring me so much – not Daleks, Silurians, Primords (Inferno was the next serial) and even the Autons in the serial after that (the one with the troll doll that caused so much upset with Mary Whitehouse) ever got close to scaring me so much as those astronauts. Perhaps I was going through a period of “beingscared-ness” at the time? Who knows (but he’s never told me. Ha!).
Epilogue
I wrote this blog post some years ago (for another website of mine), but re-reading and updating it for this website actually reminds me of a film that I’d watched that scared me much in the same way (despite it not being a very scary film). The film is called The Divide, released in 2011. Starring Lauren German and Michael Eklund (amongst others), it’s mainly a character-driven piece about a group of people trapped in an apartment block’s nuclear shelter, after a nuclear bomb is detonated. It’s meant to be a post-apocalyptic thriller and it doesn’t fall short of that one little bit.
It was a disturbing film, not helped by the elements of radiation and radiation sickness which (I think) are the bits that freaked me out in both this film and The Ambassadors of Death. The very last scene in the film was the one that did it for me. And when I watched it, I was 51.
I might as well have been 9 again.