It makes a change for it to be our heroes doing a classic slow cutting through a door instead of the baddys, but that's how they get into Recovery 7. They find out that it is empty except for a tape recorder that has been playing the messages to them - advanced technology for the era! No wonder UNIT were fooled.
It turns out that the baddys were not after Recovery 7 but the astronauts who were inside it, and they have now been kittennapped off-screen when UNIT weren't looking. Liz sees another clue - the inside of the spaceship is radioactive.
Carrington has the three astronauts at his new base, but they are having sleeps. He is now a general (presumably so that he can deny the Brigadier some reinforcements at some point later in the story) and says to his new scientist henchmannys "you must feed them radiation."
The Brigadier finds out that the kittennappers were soldiers, and they go to speak to Sir James about it. He introduces them to Carrington and says that he is the "head of the newly formed Space Security Department."
Suddenly they are all friends, and Carrington tells them a lot of exposition. When asked why he didn't tell them all this before, he says
"UNIT is an international organisation and the government wanted to keep this in its own hands."and
"We believe this radiation to be a different kind. We believe it to be self-sustaining and highly contagious, and that it could spread like a plague, contaminating the entire planet."to which Sir James adds
"We don't want the public to become panic-stricken."(Excuse me while I add 'politics' to the list of tags attaching to this post.)
The Doctor asks to see the astronauts and even Sir James agrees that this would be a good idea. Carrington doesn't like it, but he has to go along with it.
Back at the base, the astronauts have woken up and been kittennapped from the kittennappers, led away from Carrington's scientists by some mannys with guns, who then shoot the scientists just to make sure that we know they're baddys. Bessie drives up right after they leave in their van - a classic dramatic ploy last seen with Masters in only the previous story.
The mystery deepens yet further as the mannys in the van with the astronauts have died, and their boss buries them (along with their guns) under a lot of stones for UNIT to find later.
The boss is Regan, who acts like a baddy from a James Bond film - although his van that can change its appearance is more like something Bond himself might have.
From the amount of radiation they have been leaving behind them, the Doctor and Liz conclude (using science!) that the astronauts aren't mannys, so the real astronauts must still be in space. From the amount of sleeps they seem to need, I wonder if the astronauts may be cats. They are now having sleeps in Regan's base, where he has Lennox (played by none other than the Shapmeister himself, Cyril Shaps) as his own scientist henchmanny.
Professor Cornish wants to go and rescue the manny astronauts, but Sir James is a politician and therefore says it would cost too much moneys. Professor Cornish says he will call a press conference, because he knows bad publicity is a politician's one weakness - or at least it used to be, back in the olden days of the UNIT era.
One of the alien astronauts wakes up and tries to escape, but it is too weak and falls over. Regan's mysterious boss telephones him and tells him they need more radiation, and then Regan gets sent photographs of the Doctor and Liz and is told to "deal with them."
Liz gets lured away by a fake message from the Brigadier, and she drives about in Bessie wearing a big hat, the better to hide when her stunt-double takes over.
There is a car chase, which would never have been allowed to happen without the Doctor in later seasons of Jon Pertwee's era!
After they have had enough of driving, Liz runs around being chased by two mannys, until they catch up with her in time for the cliffhanger when it looks like Liz might get wet. Oh noes!
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