Practical Diplomacy starts with a celebration, as Chrístõ is rewarded for his efforts on the Regia Omnia space station, much of which he still doesn’t remember, but he accepts the medal. What else could he do? That is about the last point in which diplomacy has any part of the proceedings. The title comes from a comment at the beginning about this trip being an exercise in ‘practical diplomacy’.

Before the main part of the story resolves itself, there are two sequences that are not especially relevant to it. First, the scene in which Chrístõ learns that his stepmother is pregnant and is taken on an emotional memory trip to when he was newborn. The idea that his mother wanted to call him Martin was one I thought of just one the spot, but it does have an echo in the Unfinished Business story, Mauve and Dangerous, when The Doctor mentions that his mother like that name. I put that in retrospectively having written this story already. But why not? I later altered this story when I started to write the Kristoph and Marion stories, so that Marion calls her husband Kristoph rather than Chrístõ Mian, as he is known to everyone else.

The second section is Terry and Sammie seeking audience with the Ambassador to discuss their suspicions about his son’s supposedly safe TARDIS preset destinations. The Doctor has always been a trouble magnet. And it always seems random or coincidental, but the evidence that the two young men bring is undeniable. The Ambassador promises to look into it.

Except before he does, word comes that Chrístõ and Penne have both been shot at, and are both in the infirmary. And the puzzle is, which was the target, the Ambassador’s son or the ruler of two planets?

In this instance it was the second. And the upshot of it all was that Penne ended up being ruler of three planets, in fact the whole Adano-Ambradan solar system and gains a significant amount of power. He has grown enough since meeting Chrístõ and his father to cope with that, though, and big things are to be expected of him.

Meanwhile – what of those presets? More later….