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 Claws of Axos (more for the spaceship than anything else)
- 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?
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