The Ambassadors of Death was a very strange serial to me. I had a decent time of it, reminding me of a combination of the Silence of the Library monsters and a bit of the tone taken with the Impossible Astronaut two-parter, both from the modern age.

This story, however, meanders a lot more in comparison to the New Who stories. I found it very watchable and easy to get through, but not to much purpose. The story is pretty standard and while I found there was a lot of creativity in the production early on (including some fun with Bessie and the astronauts looking pretty creepy) that sort of fizzled out after a while as we got more and more confined to a handful of contained sets.

One thing I do admire about Ambassadors of Death is how they take advantage of the then current status quo of Doctor Who. With the Third Doctor confined to Earth, him going up to space does actually become a big deal. It's a good use of the situation that helps salvage this story and let it take on a somewhat unique tone. But the other characters are just kind of there. It is nice Liz Shaw gets to be a scientist a bit more here, but her character really just winds up being a hostage and making confused/grumpy/annoyed faces. The others aren't much better, although the Brigadier stands out as always. Even the Doctor is a bit flat here, in my opinion.

All told, I didn't have a bad time with this serial, but am not left overly eager to revisit this one any time soon, either.