The Wheel in Space

The TARDIS makes an emergency landing on a seemingly abandoned space ship floating near a giant space wheel near Earth in the far future. Taken on board by the Wheel's crew, they Doctor and Jamie meet an astrophysicist named Zoe who believes that the ship was not a derelict just drifting in space and has been brought here on purpose. Zoe is right, and the ship is revealed to be containing an infiltration force of Cybermen and they have infested the Wheel with Cybermats and weaken its defenses.

It's a simple enough story really, although the Cybermen's motivation is a bit hard to pin down. Invasion is, of course, the goal but it just seems a bit odd that the Cybermen resort to such extravagant methods of subterfuge and infiltration to achieve it. Physically they have changed again and it is the debut of the "tear drop" eye in their helmets, and they have a more solid look to their fingers as opposed to the pointed fingers in The Moonbase and Tomb of the Cybermen. They Cybermats themselves have changed and no longer have antennae and pupils in their eyes, which actually makes them look a lot more dangerous. And the Cybercontroller is back, although it's no longer a humanoid structure, just a machine with a brain stuck in it which appears over a video link. Same voice as before even if the Cybermen doing the dirty work on the Wheel sound different.

So with Victoria departed, Zoe is presented to the viewing audience as the next female companion. The differences between them are many, they come from different time periods (Victorian age vs space age), they have very different backgrounds (high society girl who comes from money vs working girl) their education levels are vastly different (Victoria being more intuitive and Zoe a genius who could tell logic a thing or two) and their relationships with the Doctor are worlds apart (substitute father figure vs "The Doctor's almost as clever as I am,") Does Zoe have an ego? It might seem like she does; she's the youngest person on the Wheel and she's arguably the smartest, but her smarts and logic have come at the price of her more human side; Jamie pegs it right away and routinely ribs her for being a computer herself without feelings. In fact a few people tell Zoe off for being cold and she just shrugs, nonplussed, like she doesn't know why it matters. None of her brains have gone to her head, so to speak. Zoe is just a reminder of the old saying "Nobody likes a smart ass,"

Wheel, like so many other episodes of its time, is missing several episodes and only episodes 3 and 6 are available to be seen on the Lost in Time DVD. Enjoying this one was another exercise in media hopscotch going between the BBC Radio Collection CD and the DVD to complete it, but as I have said before it's better than nothing. The novel of the story was published in 1988 which is when I first got to experience the adventure, and although the cover art is striking it gets the design of the Wheel, unfortunately, wrong. The one pictured is actually far more interesting than what was put on TV. The novel itself is something of a rarity; reportedly only 23,000 copies were printed and a warehouse fire destroyed a lot of them, so the book goes for a good chunk of change on eBay as a collectible. I had no idea I was sitting on a goldmine, but all things considered, I will keep mine just the same.

As one might expect, the TARDIS leaves the Wheel with Zoe on board looking for a new purpose in her life. Still wary from Victoria's departure and her reasons for it, the Doctor decides to show Zoe some of what she might be in for and an unusual rerun of Evil of the Daleks followed on BBC in the weeks afterwards, although it was meant that the Doctor was telling Zoe the story himself.

So while the Doctor tells Zoe a story, back to the aspiring Colonel Lethbridge Stewart and his final audio adventure for my project...

NEXT EPISODE: LETHBRIDGE STEWART - MUTUALLY ASSURED DOMINATION