A rescue party from Earth travelling in a Superswift, an interstellar vessel equipped with a faster-than-light drive system, has arrived on the Moon.
At this time, a team of Alphans—Alan Carter with nuclear physicists Jack Bartlett and Joe Ehrlich—have travelled uncountable light-years and are approaching Earth in the Superswift's compact pilot ship.
Three days previously while flying a reconnaissance mission, the Commander seemed to lose control of himself and, in his demented state, crashed in the vicinity of the nuclear-waste domes.
With severe concussion, Koenig was given treatment with an Ellendorf quadrographic brain complex, an experimental machine designed to electronically treat neurological trauma.
Unable to see the aliens as anything but friends, his own staff believed him to be unbalanced, sedated him, and placed him in restraints in the Medical Centre.
As the staff listens to the gleeful reports from the pilot-ship crew, an alien (who the Alphans see as 'Doctor Shaw', Helena Russell's medical-school tutor) enters the care unit with the mission to kill Koenig once and for all.
Helena recounts a conversation with Vincent; he was aware of Koenig's plight during Sandstrom's murder attempt, but it did not register until his fiancée 'Louisa' was distracted.
Maya herself witnessed Tony Verdeschi's drawing of names for the pilot-ship crew, which occurred under the close scrutiny of his older brother, 'Guido'.
During this, Carter, Bartlett and Ehrlich happily believe the pilot ship has arrived at Earth and has landed at the New York City spaceport.
Maya takes out the guard with a stun-gun blast and she, Koenig and Helena plot to render the entire Alpha population immune to the aliens' control.
Helena suggests the use of 'white noise', a sonic anaesthetic she uses when drugs are contraindicated; it effectively blocks nerve paths and synapses in the brain.
Koenig knows this is no victory and calls up a picture of the atomic fuel store, where Carter and Ehrlich have cut through the door's lock with a thermal lance.
Maya surmises that, as the functioning human brain produces electrical energy, they must be drawing on these emissions to keep going at survival level.
To reduce this energy source, Koenig orders Helena to render the entire staff unconscious, excluding herself and the chief engineer.
Bartlett is immobilised by this seductive spiel when Carter breaks free, overwhelms Koenig and actually inserts the fuel core into the access port.
The jelloid leader scornfully tells Koenig what a primitive organism he is, throwing away the eternity of happiness they could have experienced in those seconds before dying.
The Commander good-naturedly grouses about running the base with his unconscious staff of 'sleeping beauties' just before the events of the last three days catch up with him and he, too, is slumbering in his chair...
5 in C minor' is heard during Bartlett's illusion of listening to the piece on his hi-fi system, while in reality he was preparing the waste domes for detonation.
[4] Attentive viewers will note that there were only three alien "jellies" (as they were known in the script) constructed for the production; for crowd scenes, life-sized photographic cut-outs were employed.
Cast from latex, the costumes were painted with grease for the slime effect and had artificial blood pumping through fine transparent tubing.
Actor David Jackson, who had appeared earlier this series under considerable latex appliances as 'Alien Strong' in "The Rules of Luton", was relieved that there was no special make-up for this role.
Many publicity shots of Nick Tate and the unidentified actress playing his illusory companion were taken in the Pinewood Studios gardens and surrounding grounds during the shooting of their scenes.
[4] Ian Fryer, who regards the two-part The Bringers of Wonder as the "key episode" of Space: 1999's second series, argues that the plot of Part Two is stretched out with some unnecessary fight sequences.
The author would make the jelly aliens the psychically-synthesised minions of a massive non-corporeal space amoeba (which was also the unseen antagonist in the previous segment "The Lambda Factor").
[8] In the 2003 novel The Forsaken written by John Kenneth Muir, it is stated the events of this story were one of the consequences of the death of the eponymous intelligence depicted in "Space Brain".