Day 265: The Ambassadors of Death Episode 1

Today's entry is the convolution of so many things. Some of you may notice that it's remarkably close in time to yesterday's entry, and there's a reason for that. My general technique for watching episodes is to go about my day to day business, then at 10 o'clock pm (Australian Time) I'll go to the TV and put on the episode. I'll spend some time writing the blog entry and then post it by 11 o'clock. Sometimes, however, I will be aware that I won't be at home late at night, and so I have to watch the episode during the day. And sometimes I'll be equally busy during the day, so I'll have to watch it at night. Today, the Venn diagram of business reached the point when I was at a loss, and considering getting up early in the morning to sit down for some Pertwee fun. Until I realised that I had given myself a 24 hour period to watch each episode. So it came to pass that at midnight, I went across and put on The Ambassadors of Death Episode 1 and sat down for some 1970's action.

Action is the key word here, in particular Action by HAVOC. They're the new stuntmen for Doctor Who and they represent the new era that the series is going into. It's no longer acceptable to just have monsters bursting into rooms or ray guns pointing at people to intimidate them. Audiences need to be satiated with properly set-out action. It has to be exciting and packed full of danger. HAVOC are more than able to provide in this regard. Their scene about halfway through this episode consisting of UNIT performing a raid on a warehouse is remarkably well set out. Each moment is filled with tension as we, the audience, truly believe this both to be realistic, but also exciting. Guns being fired and people falling into boxes may not seem like much, but compared to what's come before and cpupled with some excellent direction from Michael Ferguson, then we've got a remarkably exciting scene, hopefully the first of many.