Season 7@50 Often viewed as the least successful of this atypical season, the fact
that `The Ambassadors of Death` was ever
made at all is remarkable given the behind the scenes politics. That it turns
out to be as coherent as it is when it was written by four people is equally surprising.
Trevor Ray is a bit of a mystery character but David Whitaker, Malcolm Hulke
and Terrance Dicks are such different types of script writers, it is tempting
to speculate which aspects of the story they each penned. You can possibly best
see Hulke’s work in the themes. There is a moral clash, a cultural
misunderstanding at the heart of what is happening and we are given both sides
of the argument so we can see what drives the antagonist. Whitaker is supposed
to have supplied the overall concept and it may be his intricately detailed
technical script that dominates the first third. As for Dicks it is likely he
introduced more peril- I may be wrong but surely the whole Liz escaping and
nearly falling into the water is his? I bet he spiced up the drier aspects of
the story with some runarounds. We’ll probably never know but the end result is
that the script appears to be the work of one writer. It may lack some pace at
times, though some events are unbelievably truncated (how long does it take to
prepare a rocket?) but it is never found to be wanting in interest.
