Inferno

7 episodes
Aired between 9th May 1970 and 20th June 1970

Written by Don Houghton
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Douglas Camfield and Barry Letts

Synopsis

The Doctor has travelled with UNIT to a top secret base that houses the Inferno project; a government funded experiment to drill through the Earth's crust to obtain a theoretical new source of energy known as Stahlman's gas.  Professor Stahlman who is leading on the project believes that the gas will provide unlimited energy to the world.

UNIT are there to oversee the project and the Doctor has tried to give advice to Stalhman on the undertaking of this project but has been spurned by the ill tempered scientist, so he's decided to keep out of it and siphon off some of the nuclear power used for the drill to power his own experiments on getting the TARDIS up and running again.

The Doctor isn't the only one with concerns about the Inferno project.  Sir Keith Gold, Executive Director of the project has called in an expert on oil drilling, Greg Sutton, to advise Stahlman as he feels the Professor is taking far too many risks.  Sutton tries to ingratiate himself with the Professor, but he gets short shrift from him, and from Stahlman's Assistant, Petra Williams.

Sir Keith's concerns about the safety of the project aren't altogether unwarrented.  Strange green slime has been leaking back out of the drill shaft.  Sir Keith brings in an engineer called Slocum to tighten up the shaft.  He touches the slime and it steadily mutates him into some kind of green werewolf called a Primord (never mentioned on screen, but that's what the script calls them).

Soon afterwards, Slocum kills one of his coworkers with a wrench which is incredibly hot for hours after the event.

The Brigadier sends out Sgt Benton and his men to investigate and find Slocum whilst the Doctor continues with his experiments (with Liz's help of course).  As the experiment gets underway, Slocum goes into the reactor room and attacks a worker called Bromley.  Once he's out of the way, Slocum increases the reactor to full power, dangerously overheating the drill and pushing too much power into the TARDIS console.

Liz panics as the Doctor disappears with the console, being trapped into some kind of limbo.

 Luckily, Liz manages to shut off his power locally and he returns.  Over at the drill head, Greg Sutton is going banana's as Stahlman is trying to keep the drill going instead of shutting it down.  He chastises Petra for rushing in to try and cut off the power and is forced to follow her and lend a hand.
Now back in the real world, the Doctor and Liz rush off, joining the Brigadier and Sgt Benton at the reactor room where they find the Primord.

The Doctor tries to distract the monster but a UNIT soldier called Wyatt shoots it, causing it to attack and wound the soldier before it finally dies.  The Doctor uses the butt of the Brigadiers pistol to knock the red hot lever and lower the power level to normal once more, averting a meltdown.

The Brigadier takes the Doctor outside and asks him what he thinks to the developing situation.  The Doctor is worried about the fact that there's a mutated monster with such power knocking about and he says he's heard the screeches that the monster has made elsewhere.  He claims to have heard them during a volcanic eruption at Krakatoa.  Benton rushes up to them both and tells them that the scientist Bromley and the Wyatt, the soldier have both disappeared before they could be taken for first aid.

The Brigadier takes his leave of the Doctor, and as the latter is returning to his workshop, he sees one of the fugitives on top of a nearby cooling tower.  He gives chase and comes face to face with Pvt. Wyatt who is now himself a mutated green werewolf.

The Primord lunges for the Doctor, but he dodges it and sends the creature falling to the ground below, killing it. The Soldiers run to the creature and the Doctor yells down to them not to touch it.

The Doctor heads off back to the control room where he finds that the emergency on the drill has ceased but there are other concerns.  They are presented with a jar full of the hot green slime and Professor Stahlman is told that it has been leaking up from the outflow pipe and could be related to the drilling problems.

He scoffs at the idea and refuses any attempts to slow down the drill.  Seeing that the glass container it's in is cracking, Stahlman grabs it with his bare hands and puts it back in the carry case it came in; ordering it frozen.

The Doctor tries to get Stahlman to at least look at the computer readings that are saying this project is in serious danger, but he refuses.

As he walks off, he rubs at his burnt hand that is turning a distinct shade of green.  He hides it with a pair of white gloves.  when no one's looking, Stahlman goes back into the control centre and steals one of the circuits for the computer and takes it into the Brigadier's empty office.  He is about to smash it when the Doctor catches him in the act and uses some Venusian Karate on him, paralysing the Professor.  The Brigadier walks in and demands to know why the Doctor is assaulting the Professor.

A blustered Stahlman demands that the Doctor is removed from the facility and refuses him access to any more nuclear power.  He then storms off.  Once he's gone, the Doctor explains what Stahlman was trying to do.  The Brigadier and the Doctor confront Stahlman together and demand that he empty his pockets - neither contains the circuit.  The Doctor storms off in a huff back to his workshop, secretly switching on his power supply as he leaves.  Once the Brigadier is gone, Stahlman crushes the circuit underfoot.

Over at the workshop, the Doctor asks Liz to go over to the main complex to put some calculations into the computer.  She obeys, only to find that the computer is broken (due to the missing circuit).  She quickly realises that the Doctor sent her on a wild goose chase on purpose and she rushes back to the workshop with the Brigadier.

As they enter the old room, they see the Doctor clinging to the TARDIS console disappearing along with "Bessie".

Liz tries to regulate the power, but finds that it's been disconnected, trapping the Doctor wherever he's ended up.  She goes with the Brigadier back to the control room and they tell Stahlman what's happened and demand that he reconnects the power.  Stahlman is only pleased that the Doctor is out of his hair and he point blank refuses to divert any power away from the drill.

The Doctor recovers from his sudden dematerilsation to find himself still in the workshop.  As he goes outside to find the others, he is shot at by UNIT soldiers.  The Doctor is forced in a frantic chase around the complex as he flees for his life amidst UNIT personnel including Benton attempting to kill him.

He goes up on one of the cooling towers and is also attacked by the Primord versions of Bromley and Wyatt (who is somehow alive again).

The Doctor eventually finds a good hiding place but risks exposing himself when he sees Liz walk past.  Only Liz now has brown hair and she's wearing a military uniform with the letters RSF on her sleeve.  As the Doctor calls to her, she pulls a gun on him and summons the guards.

Sgt Benton and his guards take him with Liz to the Brigadiers office.  The bemused Doctor is not getting any answers as to what's going on.  When they get there, he tries to get some sense out of the Brigadier only to find that he now sports a massive scar, an eyepatch, and doesn't have a moustache.  He insists on being called Brigade Leader and he is part of the Republican Security Forces (RSF).

The Doctor eventually works out that he's hopped over to a parallel universe where everything is slightly different.  In this case, it seems that UNIT doesn't exist and the UK was overrun by the Nazi's in WW2.  The Royal family have been shot and everyone toils under a fascist puppet government.  There is still the Inferno project in this timeline, but it is run by using slave labour and is quite a few hours ahead of the "normal timeline".

As the Doctor tries to relate his predicament, Section Leader Liz Shaw denounces him as a spy.

The Doctor pleads with them to take him to Stahlman whom he can explain his theory to.  They reluctantly agree, given his level of knowledge on the subject.  Stahlman (now called Stahlmann) is just as stubborn in this world too and dismisses them.

The Doctor is put under the guard of Benton but as another drilling emergency occurs, the Doctor is forced to use Venusian Karate on him too in order to escape.  Once in the control room, the Doctor forgoes true escape and instead tries to fix the computer until he's discovered by Benton.

The evil Liz stops Benton from shooting him, and allows the Doctor to continue to work on the machine.  He gets it running again and it spews out ticker tape warnings of what's to come.  That doesn't stop him getting interrogated afterwards by Liz and the Brigade Leader.

Nobody believes the Doctor's story, instead they are convinced he's a spy.  They decide to lock him up until they can make him talk.

Back in the normal universe, Sir Keith Gold confronts Stahlman and is adamant that unless he can give assurances that the drilling will be slowed down, then he will go to the Minister and reveal his misgivings about the scientist.

Stahlman is as scathing as ever, and tells Sir Keith he can do what he likes.  Sir Keith has no choice but to go.

Things turn out bad for the Doctor as it's revealed that Bromley, the scientist attacked in the nuclear power room is in the next cell.  He's mutated into a Primord, and he comes after the Doctor, bending the bars to slip into his cell.

The Doctor manages to escape from Bromley's clutches and runs to the control centre.  Once there, he yells out for them to stop the drilling, but it's too late.  Stahlmann pulls a gun on them and they all watch in trepidation as the countdown goes to one.  At that instant, a huge tremor shakes the entire base and green slime begins to ooze out of the pipe.

The Doctor and this reality's Sutton (who still has the same personality) try to contain the problem, but it's too late. Stahlmann attacks them both with a metal pipe and ends up getting trapped in the drilling room when the heat shields are lowered.  He immediately grabs hold of the workers who were knocked out by the catastrophic events and he rubs their faces into the green goo, turning them into Primords.

The survivors turn to the Doctor for advice but he says its gone too far.

Now the Earth's crust has been penetrated, nothing will be able to seal it back up.  The world will soon be burnt to a crisp.  The only saving grace is (he tells them) that they can help him warn the alternate reality so they don't make the same mistake.  The Brigade Leader is skeptical, but he insists that the Doctor takes him to see the TARDIS console.

Back in Earth 1, Sir Keith starts to question the directions his driver is taking him.  The Driver confesses that he was ordered by Stahlman to take Sir Keith well outside London and then fake a break down so that he is delayed from speaking to the minister until the Inferno Project pierces the Earth's crust.  Sir Keith orders the driver to take him straight to London and in return, he won't mention his involvement.  The driver obeys, but as they are rushing he ends up crashing the car into another.

On Earth 2, once the Doctor has drained the reserve power on the console by demonstrating the TARDIS abilities, the Brigade Leader demands that the Doctor should take them all with him.  The Doctor regrets that he can't because it will cause a paradox.  The Brigade Leader chooses to be spiteful and takes them all back to the control centre.

Once there, the Primords attack and force the group to shut themselves into the Brigade Leaders office.

They get hold of Platoon Underleader Benton in the process though and turn him into a primord.

The Doctor comes up with a plan to escape, but the Primords attack again, smashing through the office window.  The Doctor grabs hold of a fire extinguisher and "shoots" the attacking Primords with it.  They use the extinguisher and fight their way out into the main room once again.

They disable the Primords and then send Petra, the Brigade Leader and Section Leader Liz to the atomic power room whilst Sutton and the Doctor fix the wiring that will pass the power through.

After many tense moments of fending off Primords with extinguishers whilst Petra does her work, they try to connect the power but it fails.  They go and tell the Doctor who is waiting with Sutton at the TARDIS console, and the Brigade Leader freaks out.  Petra decides to rush back to the Atomic Power room and give it one last shot.  She finally succeeds and the Doctor is about to take off when the Brigade Leader pulls a gun on him.

They argue and the Brigade Leader ends up getting shot by Liz who tells him to take off.  At that instant, the ground erupts and huge torrents of Lava are unleashed.

Thankfully, the Doctor makes it back with 3 hours until penetration, but the trip puts him in a coma.  Liz and The Brigadier try to bring him around and get him to explain where he's been.  He tries to warn them about some of the faults that have been coming up and advises them to reverse all systems immediately.  Liz delivers the message and despite Stahlman being absolutely against the idea, Sutton convinces Petra to help him implement the Doctor's advice.  A crisis is averted, but Stahlman is as stubborn as ever.

Over with the Doctor, Sir Keith gold turn up with a bandaged arm and explains about his accident.  This gives the Doctor the understanding that whilst the two worlds run parallel, they are not linked together by having the same cause and effect.  Knowing this, the Doctor rushes out to the control centre and starts to smash the equipment up.  Stahlman gets him ejected from the room so the Doctor tells Liz to fix the computer and it will show them.  Liz and Sutton decide to ignore Stahlman's insistence that everything will work, and they fix the computer,  It tells them to stop the drilling immediately.

The drill is almost at penetration and Stahlman orders everyone out of the drilling room then he locks himself in.  Once alone, he grabs some of the green goo and rubs it into his face, finally becoming a full blown Primord.

The Doctor is being taken away by UNIT soldiers, and he uses his Venusian Karate to nerve pinch them so he can escape.  He runs into the Primord version of Bromley, He disables the monster and then rushes back to the control centre.

Stahlman opens up the heat shield and then attacks the workers.  Sutton the Doctor and the Brigadier manage to kill him and the drill is finally stopped.  Everyone cheers and the Doctor tells Sir Keith to fill the shaft in as soon as they can.

Some time later, Sir Keith and the Brigadier pay the Doctor and Liz a visit.  Sir Keith tells them that the project is being abandoned and the centre is getting shut down.  The Doctor arranges to use a little bit of remaining atomic power to try and get away with the TARDIS once more.  The Brigadier is scornful of his reckless attempt to use the TARDIS which gets the Time Lord's back up.

He calls the Brigadier a few horrible names, flips the switch and disappears.  Seconds later he reappears at the door.  It turns out the TARDIS console sent him to the rubbish tip.  He sheepishly asks the Brigadier to help him retrieve the console and tries to brush over all the horrible names he called him.  Liz thinks this is hilarious and laughs at them as they leave.

Trivia

• Douglas Camfield's wife, Sheila Dunn played Petra Williams

• Douglas Camfield was taken very ill at the end of filming episode 1.  He was rushed to hospital and found that he had abnormal heart murmor.  Barry Letts had no choice but to step in and take on the roll of Director for the rest of the story (luckily, he'd lots of experience as a Director - see Enemy of the World).  He still gave Douglas the credit though because the Director feared that if people knew of his condition, they wouldn't give him work.

• There is an infamous eye patch story that's done the rounds of many conventions.  The story (as I understand it) goes that when Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier) first put on his eye patch and swung around in his chair, everyone was wearing an identical eyepatch to put him off his lines.  A consummate professional, Courtney carried on like everything was normal and it ended up with everyone else bursting out laughing.

• Although Jon Pertwee did all his own stunts, he actually suffered really badly from vertigo.  He only got through the scene on the high tower by keeping his eyes on Derek Ware at all times.

What worked

• The scenery is great

• Chasing around the complex is pointless, but nice to have the Doctor doing actual action sequences

• Stahlman is so pig headed as to be infuriating - just the reaction they wanted from the audience

• The bit where Stahlmann rubs the crews face in the goo is actually quite disturbing

• The chance for Nicholas Courtney, John Levine and Caroline John to play the bad guys really gets us to see a different side of them and it's great.

What didn't work

• Why has Sir Keith got less authority than Stahlman when this is a Government project?

• Why does Stahlman grab the container of goo when there's a guy with heavy duty gloves standing right by his side?

• The convenient placement of fire extinguishers on the top of towers

• So the complex is the epicenter of the Earth's destruction but it survives at least 40 minutes past the eruption

• Sorry, but I can't let it slide.  Who's ever looked at the Primords and thought, god they're scary?

Overall Feelings

So the final story in Season 7 comes and we're in yet another Government facility with yet another pioneering prjoect that's bound to go wrong.  The only thing is I can't believe there is another Government project run like this.  think about it,  People go around borrowing nuclear power and bringing in experts willy nilly into a top secret area.  Also, Stahlman is ordering Sir Keith around as if the Government wasn't the main funder of this project and could pull the plug at any time.  Why would the Government send someone as soft as Sir Keith when this is of vital importance?  Surely they'd have someone as self opinionated as Mr Chin (see the Claws of Axos).

Suspending any disbelief, this story tries to do good and suspenseful things, but at seven episodes long, we get a whole lot of people arguing with the bull headed Stahlman, interrogating the doctor who gives the same answers.  When we finally get to the good stuff, it comes in episode 6, which means that there's a bit of an anti-climax when the Doctor returns to Earth 1.

I want to like this story, and there are significant bits of tension in there (e.g. the Doctor's vain attempts to convince everyone that the world is going to blow up and especially when he knows he can't take anyone back with him when it does).  The problem is that they come at the wrong moments.  On top of this, to make the story a bit more interesting, the production team threw in a rather lame explanation for the Primords and came up with possibly the worst special effects until Alpha Centauri (see The Curse of Peladon).  Inferno is always a fan favourite, and it's one I've come back to more than once, but you really have to take a large pinch of salt to enjoy it.

Rating

7 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• Fury From the Deep

• Dr Who and The Silurians

• The Hungry Earth (Doctor Who Series 5)

• 1984 by George Orwell

Consulting the Matrix

Do you think there should have been more parallel universe stories?

The Ambassadors of Death

7 episodes
Aired between 21st March 1970 and 2nd May 1970

Written by David Whitaker
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Michael Ferguson

Synopsis

Following the apparent slaughter of the Silurians, life at UNIT has seemingly returned to normal.  The Doctor is at UNIT HQ tinkering with the Time Vector Generator with the help of Miss Shaw (and accidentally sending her forward in time a couple of seconds).

The Brigadier meanwhile has gone to the UK space agency to provide security for the mission to launch Recovery 7, a manned space capsule sent up to intercept Mars Probe 7, a ship carrying crew who have returned from a successful mission to Mars.  Why are they sending up Recovery 7?  It's because the Mars Probe crew lost contact with mission control some months back, and the ground control, led by Professor Cornish, want to find out if they're still alive.

As a nation (and the Doctor) watch on live TV, the pilot of Recovery 7, Van Lyden, docks with the Mars Probe and opens the hatch.  All of a sudden, a powerful screeching static-like noise emits from the probe and contact is lost with Van Lyden.

Hearing the sound over the live TV feed, the Doctor tells Liz that he's sure he's heard it before, but he can't remember where.  He insists that they jump in "Bessie" and go on over to mission control ASAP.

Professor Cornish and the rest of his staff are baffled and panicked by the situation.  The Doctor's arrival does nothing to help alleviate that fact, especially when he refuses to stop and produce a pass, and is quite off hand with everyone.  Cornish tries to get him kicked out, but the Brigadier suggests he could help them.  The Doctor predicts that the noise was a signal and it will be repeated.  Sure enough, it is.

The Doctor orders the sound recorded and begins to make arrangements to decode it, when some sort of signal is given in reply.  Between himself and the Brigadier, the Doctor manages to pinpoint the source of the response signal down to a warehouse seven miles from mission control.  The Brigadier takes his men off in jeeps to find the place.

Over at the warehouse, some shady characters are sending a periodic response signal.  They become aware that UNIT soldiers have arrived and their commander orders that the men should engage with UNIT but not kill them.

The soldiers enter the warehouse and a big gun battle erupts.

The criminals focus on scaring the UNIT soldiers, or shooting to wound, but the UNIT troops are taking no chances.  It's not long before one of the men gets the chance to shoot the Brigadier, dead, but he chooses to surrender instead.  This makes the Brigadier suspicious, but he arrests the guy anyway..  Upstairs in the warehouse. the ringleader escapes through a window.

Back at mission control, the Doctor and Liz get hold of the recording of the space message and head off to analyse.  When they get to the office of Dr Taltalian, the man who could help them, he pulls a gun on the Doctor and Liz and demands the reels.

The Doctor pulls some strange parlor trick he calls transmigration of object and makes it disappear.  With no way of getting to the object, Taltalian decides to escape.

Once the Doctor hears about the result of the shootout at the warehouse, he goes and meets with the Brigadier to interrogate the man they arrested.  As he thought, the man is acting like a tough guy and refusing to talk.

The Doctor catches him off guard, yelling in his face to stand to attention and call him sir.  Instinctively, the man obeys, revealing that he is conditioned to the military life and therefore is some kind of soldier.  The Doctor just needs to work out who he works for.  Shortly after the Doctor and the Brigadier leave the holding cell, someone dressed as a soldier arrives and releases the prisoner.

The Doctor returns to mission control with Liz and tries to decipher the recording of the space message.  Things aren't working out and it's not long before he deduces that Taltalian has sabotaged the decryption computer.

Professor Cornish lets the Brigadier and the Doctor know that Recovery 7 has separated from the Mars Probe and is making its way back to Earth, still with no contact from the pilot, They track its descent to somewhere outside London and UNIT send a recovery team who find that the probe is locked from the inside.  The Brigadier orders the probe to be strapped onto their truck and taken back to the centre.

The Doctor aims to follow them but is delayed when Bessie has trouble starting up.

On their way back, the UNIT truck is attacked by men in a helicopter, using hand dropped bombs and stun guns.

The masked men who jump out of the helicopter take over the truck and begin to drive it away. A little down the road they come across the Doctor who's parked Bessie across the road.  He pretends to be an old man with a broken down banger and gets them to help him push the car off the road.  As they touch Bessie, the Doctor switches on his homemade anti-theft device (a force field that magnetises thieves hands to the car) and steals Recovery 7 back.

With the spaceship back at base, the Brigadier and the Doctor go and see the head of the space program, Sir James Quinlan.  They tell him about the attempted hijack and Dr Taltalian's confrontation, but he seems unhelpful at best.

Frustrated, they return to the Recovery pod and see that it is still locked from the inside.  Professor Cornish hooks up a microphone and tries to contact them, but all they keep repeating is a request to land.

The Doctor realises something is really wrong and demands that Cornish gets the hatch cut open.  They do so and find that it's empty, manned only by a recording keyed to respond to requests on the main line of communication.  The interior is recorded to have dangerously high levels of radiation inside.  The Doctor concludes that Recovery 7 actually contained aliens, but they were removed by whomever attacked the truck.

The Doctor and the Brigadier confront Sir James Quinlan with the news, and are introduced to General Carrington, the newly appointed head of space security for the British space programme.

Carrington reveals that it was actually him behind the stealing of the astronauts and he gave the order for Taltalian to threaten Liz and the Doctor.  Carrington explains that the astronauts inside Recovery 7 were taken out of the shuttle and held elsewhere by his men as they have been exposed to a contagious dose of radiation.  The whole situation has been kept under wraps so that it didn't want to panic the public.  The Doctor demands to see the astronauts and heads off with Carrington to the secret location,

Whilst they are en route, a criminal called Regan gets a couple of his henchmen to turn up at the secret location and take the astronauts away, killing the soldiers and scientists guarding them.

As they escape, Regan orders the men to jump in the back of their getaway van to guard the astronauts.  Unfortunately for the henchmen, the astronauts are giving off an extremely high dose of radiation and the grunts are killed before they even make it back to base.  Regan seems to know this would happen however, as he is wearing a radiation suit and the van is presumably lead lined.  He stops off by a Hertfordshire gravel pit and burries the dead henchmen under piles of rocks before using some kind of advanced technology to switch the van signage.

When he gets to his hideout, we see that a special quarantine room has been prepared for the astronauts and he's working with a disgraced scientist called Dr Lennox.  Through their misguided attempts at dispersing the radiation, the astronauts try to attack, only to grow very weak and collapse.  They realise that these astronauts need radiation to survive.  Regan decides that Liz Shaw might be able to help them.

Elsewhere, the Doctor and Liz are convinced more than ever that the astronauts are really aliens.  As they examine the secret location where the aliens were kidnapped, they are given a message from the Brigadier to come down to the hospital and examine the recently discovered corpses of Regan's henchmen.  Liz goes and the Doctor stays.  Minutes later, the Brigadier turns up and knows nothing about any request.  The Doctor realises that Liz is being lured into a trap.

Sure enough, as Liz drives "Bessie" towards the hospital, she is pursued by a couple of thugs.

They force her to stop and flee on foot.  They catch up to her on a gangway, where she nearly falls over the side in the ensuing struggle.  Eventually, the henchmen haul her back over the railings and take her to Regan and Lennox.  She recognises the disgraced Professor and is scornful towards him.  Lennox is clearly an uneasy ally of Regan, and she is made to work with him to try and stabalise the aliens using radioactive isotopes.

The Doctor is distraught when he learns that Liz has been kidnapped, and he is even more so when Regan gives him an anonymous phone call, threatening him to stop interfering or else Liz will be killed.  The Doctor ignores the threat and tries to use the space signal to create some kind of translation device.  He is reunited with Taltalian to do so, and he is very mistrustful of the man.  He gives him an ultimatum to help him find Liz and reveal all he knows or the Doctor will uncover the details and take him down.  He leaves Taltalian to decide how he wants to play it.

Back at bad guy HQ, Liz somehow convinces Lennox that he is doing the wrong thing and that he can help her escape.  She does indeed escape the research room, but as she makes her way to the road, she flags down a passing car only to find it's Taltalian.  He re-captures her and takes her back to the criminal hideout.  Lennox passes the escape off as Liz snatching the door key and his involvement remains hidden.  Regan is skeptical however and takes the key off Lennox.  Taltalian then hands Regan a portable communication unit that can be used to issue simple instructions to the Ambassadors that they can obey.  He tells Regan that the Doctor is trying to build one too and he must be stopped.

Regan agrees and provides Taltalian with a time bomb and gives him instructions to set it and leave.  When Taltalian's back is turned however, Regan alters the time and shortens the fuse.

Back at the Space Centre, Professor Cornish seems to be having trouble arranging another rescue probe to go up to the orbiting Mars Probe 7 and confirm that the astronauts are still up there.  The Doctor offers to man the probe seeing as the only fuel left would generate too much G-Force for a human to withstand.  Cornish reluctantly agrees and starts preparing the launch.

Taltalian goes back to mission control and tells the Doctor he's been considering his offer to testify.
 He makes an excuse and goes to set the time bomb but it blows up in his face, killing him instantly.  thankfully the Doctor survives.  When UNIT soldiers check the scene, the Doctor discovers one of the alien communicators in Taltalian's possession.  The Doctor confronts Sir James Quinlan with this evidence once more and he relents.  He tells the Doctor to go and see Quinlan who will spill the beans.

Once again, whilst the Doctor is en route, the alien astronauts are dropped off at the Space Centre and go on a killing spree, giving all the soldiers around them fatal doses of radiation every time they touch them.

Needless to say, Quinlan is attacked and killed.  The Doctor walks into the room as the alien is behind the door and he checks over Quinlan as the astronaut draws closer.  Luckily for the Doctor, the Brigadier enters just as the astronaut is about to kill him.

The Brigadier fires at the astronaut but the bullets are useless, stopped by some form of force field.  The astronaut beats a hasty retreat, killing one of the UNIT soldiers in the process.

Once the aliens are returned to the villains base, Lennox see's that they've been used to kill people.

Liz manages to convince him to go and defect to UNIT and tell them everything.  Lennox leaves and runs straight to the Space Centre, and demands that UNIT put him into protective custody.  As it happens, the Brigadier is securing the area after the attack and doing a full security sweep, so Lennox is placed in a holding cell.

In light of the astronauts assault, the Doctor insists that they step up preparations to send him up in Recovery 7 to find the missing astronauts.  General Carrington protests this, saying it's better to send up an atom bomb instead and kill the aliens, but he's overruled until a successor is appointed to Quinlan's position.

Regan learns of Lennox's defection and soon after, a soldier pays him a visit, bringing him some food.  As the door closes and Lennox lifts the cover from the tray, he recoils in shock - it's a radioactive isotope!

The Doctor gets suited up for his mission into space and makes all the necessary preparations.

Regan gets a call from his mysterious superior and is ordered to sabotage the mission.  He goes out in his magic van and bluffs his way past UNIT security.  He then goes to the fueling towers and changes the mixture of rocket fuel to include a high percentage of M3 Varient, a highly volatile fuel.

The Doctor's lift off goes according to plan, but the M3 Varient sends the rocket up with much more velocity than they intended to the point where Cornish fears that the Doctor may burst through Earth's orbit and fly on a collision course with the sun. This is averted by the Doctor's insistence in premature jettison of the main rocket booster carrying the M3 varient.

Once in orbit, the Doctor pilots Recovery 7 to link up with the Mars Probe 7.  He finds that empty too, but as he investigates, he spots a huge alien spaceship approaching.

The spaceship swallows up the Recovery 7 and Mars Probe 7.  The aliens communicate with the Doctor and coax him outside the ships.

He is directed to a chamber where he finds the three human astronauts watching a strange buzzing screen which they believe is a televised England football game.  The Doctor tries to make them see that they're on Earth, but the aliens put them in suspended animation, and explain that they have been kept from the truth to keep them sane.  An alien figure appears on a nearby monitor and says that the astronauts on Earth were their Ambassadors.

They are obviously a bit miffed that the humans have imprisoned them and are manipulating them and so they demand that the ambassadors are returned to the alien ship ASAP.  The Doctor convinces the aliens that he will do so, in exchange for the safe return of the human astronauts.

The Doctor returns to Earth and has a safe landing.  He warns the Brigadier that he needs to explain the situation but not over an open channel where the press can hear.

Regan once again gets a call to go to the Space Centre and dispose of the Doctor.  He goes and takes some knock out gas with him.  He attaches it to the ventilation pipes in the Doctor's decontamination room and once the Doctor is unconscious, he kidnaps him and takes him back to the hideout where he's reunited with Liz.

The mysterious boss calls Regan and asks if the Doctor is dead.  Regan tells him yes, but when he puts the phone down, he orders the Doctor to help him make a device that can communicate with the ambassadors both ways.  He intends to double cross his employer and strike a deal with the ambassadors to go on a massive crime wave.  The Doctor reluctantly agrees.  Once Regan has left the room however, General Carrington turns up and pulls a gun on the Doctor saying that he ordered him dead.

Regan returns and convinces Carrington that the Doctor should be allowed to finish the two way communicator.

The Doctor asks Carrington to explain why he's holding the ambassadors.  Carrington reveals that he met the aliens when he went into space on the previous Mars mission.  They killed his fellow astronaut (accidentally as it turns out) and that drilled some kind of Xenophobia into him.  He's now convinced it's his "moral duty" to destroy the aliens.  He signed some kind of contract with them and lured the aliens to Earth where he could use the ambassadors to convince the world they were malicious just as he knew they were.  The next phase of the plan is for Carrington to take one of the ambassadors and have him reveal the aliens nefarious plan live on national TV.

Carrington takes one of the ambassadors and leaves Liz and the Doctor prisoner.  The Doctor uses his quick thinking and the components before him to send a Morse code signal to UNIT.  Sgt Benton picks up the signal and orders his men to triangulate the source.

Carrington arrives at the Space Centre with the ambassador and puts him in a protective glass chamber.  He also relieves all UNIT personnel and replaces them with his security staff.

The Brigadier is given the location of the Morse code, but he finds it difficult to send his men in as they don't have the transport (the UNIT truck was disabled in all the fighting).  In the end, he sends his men into action using "Bessie" as an APC and they assault the secret hideout, rescuing the Doctor and Liz.  They both explain Carrington's plan and it becomes a race against time to get to him before he can cause global panic by making the aliens out to be hostile.  The group race back and get the ambassadors to agree to helping them break into the Space Centre.

The Brigadier gets to Carrington just in time and UNIT shuts down the transmission and arrest the General.

With the threat over, the Doctor arranges with Cornish for the astronauts and the ambassadors to be exchanged and he wanders off back to his experiments on the TARDIS.

Trivia

• Although David Whitaker is credited with writing the story, the reality was that he came up with the original draft but couldn't amend it to the point where the production team were happy with it.  This carry-on had being going on for quite some time now.  In the end, Terrence Dicks made the decision to just pay Whitaker off and he sat down with Malcolm Hulke and reworked it until it was what we saw.

• This story is the first instance where the high pitched screech is used on the cliffhanger, although it won't be used at the moment of highest tension until Terror of the Autons, it's a very welcome addition to the show regardless.

• If you're wracking your brain to try and figure out where the hell you've seen Professor Cornish before (just like I did), let me save you the effort.  He played Rago the Dominator.

• This is the first major story where the stunt team - Havoc were used.  From this point on, you will be seeing a lot more of Derek Ware and his boys until Philip Hinchcliffe takes over in 1975

• Needless to say, with all the balls to the wall action and CSO (greenscreen) going on, this story overspent significantly.  Barry Letts approached Director Michael Ferguson about it as he was filming episode 2.  It's reported that Ferguson shrugged his shoulders at the lavish expenditure and said that as Producer, it was Barry's job to stop him spending all the budget!

What worked

• The warehouse fight in episode 1 is great because we get to see UNIT fighting an enemy that's not impervious to bullets

• As a matter of fact, the entire of episode 1 is full on action and very intriguing.

• The look of the ambassadors was really creepy

• The futuristic stun guns and masks that the criminals wear looked awesome too, but it's a shame they're only used in a couple of scenes.

• The disposal of dead bodies was a very dark scene to say it was a family show, but I appreciate it's no holds barred depiction of the bad guys

What didn't work

• The musical interlude when the ships are docking is unashamedly taken from 2001, but this music is more like a cocktail lounge version of "Whiter Shade of Pale" and it totally kills the tension

• The way the Doctor just saunters on into Mission Control is pretty unbelievable

• Derek Ware (the head of Havoc) trying to be five different UNIT soldiers in the same story, all getting shot or hit through piles of boxes

• Transmigration of object,,,give me a break!

• The most ineffective bomb ever.  It didn't even blow up the table!

• I love the Pertwee era music, but it seriously falls short of the mark on this one

Overall Feelings

My initial thoughts on this story is that it's a little confusing.  No, it's not just the plot, but now you mention it, the plot is quite hard to follow when a lot of the reasons why things happen aren't even revealed until episode 7.  On top of that, the Doctor and Brigadier don't seem to necessarily act in a predictable or logical way.  I mean, even when confronted with clear evidence that there's someone inside the Space Centre actively working against them, never once is there mention of locking the place down or investigating; the Brigadier is just happy to carry on trying to recover the spacemen and whatever the saboteur does next, so be it.

The other reason why I mention it being confusing is because I think it's actually unclear who is being pitched to.  On one hand there's full on action for the kids, but then there's nice scenes of Liz Shaw running around in a mini skirt for the dad's, and of course the complicated plot for whoever can understand it.

For me, the story try's to be everything to everyone and therefore is diluted or illogical.  Take for instance the premise that this is a manned mission to Mars.  It's been a well known fact that the UNIT stories were intended to be near future, but when you compare this story to any that comes before or since, the technological advancements here stand out like a sore thumb.  This makes it kind of hard to reconcile the stuff occurring and that's assuming you have a huge ability to suspend your disbelief i.e. accept that General Carrington came back to Earth from Mars Probe 6, and nobody ever questioned why his colleague was dead, and moreover, he never told anyone that he happened to meet with an alien race and sign a treaty whilst he was up there.

In summary, this story tries to be unique, but it tries a little too hard.  I'm grateful for the effort, but it would have been better if the Production Team had scrapped the story and took some of the exciting elements for future use.

Rating

5 out of 10

A convoluted hodge podge of a futuristic crime caper with aliens thrown in the mix

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Lots of creepy bits with the ambassadors attacking the space centre, but other than that it's a little too slow paced for me

Watch this if you liked...

• The Space Pirates

• The Mind of Evil

• The Claws of Axos (more for the spaceship than anything else)

• Time Flight

• The X Files (Season 1, episode 9 - "Space" to be exact)

Consulting the Matrix

Do you think there should have been more shootouts featuring UNIT in the Pertwee stories?