Day 267: The Ambassadors of Death Episode 3

I bumped into a friend of mine yesterday whilst having lunch, and during our conversation, I mentioned that I was due to watch The Ambassadors of Death over the course of that day. He praised the story, and pointed out to me that the image of malevolent spacesuits is one that has appeared in Doctor Who on a couple of occasions, most notably in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. So what actually makes these things scary? It's not that we have some sort of cultural mistrust of astronauts, far from it. We acknowledge them as pioneers and travellers to the stars, who go forth and discover a whole new world up there in the sky. Personally, I think that it's in the face. Or to be more precise, the lack of a face. We can't see the inside of the helmets, leading mistrust as we don't have the basic human ability to see the familiar. Instead, we see a suit, with no sense of familiarity attached. This can be compared with the Library two parter, where the unfamiliar is made more so by the addition of a skeleton inside, revealing the bitter truth of what lies beneath. Or indeed, we can compare to the Impossible Astronaut two parter, where the unfamiliar is made suddenly familiar by the addition of a small girl within the suit, allowing for the juxtaposition of the two presences to make for a more creepy experience. But the major thing to take away from this is that The Ambassadors of Death is providing us with a remarkably creepy monster, showing us that this new series is certainly able to bring us a strong ability to terrify children.