Synopsis:
The Doctor and Jamie have gone to the loading bay of the Wheel to confirm the theory that the Cybermen have been smuggled aboard. After finding the Bernalium crate with its false bottom, they hear a sound and see a Cyberman descending the steps into the bay...
They take cover and the Cyberman moves on. The Doctor uses the visiphone to inform Gemma and the others in the communications centre that his suspicions have been confirmed: the Cybermen are indeed on the Wheel.
He has realised that they do not want to destroy the space station, but their next step is likely to kill its crew. The most obvious means would be to suffocate everyone as they do not need oxygen, so he advocates sealing all the airlock doors. Gemma gives the order.
The Doctor is then interrupted as he sees movement in the corner. It is a Cybermat. A second one then appears, and they move towards them. The Doctor asks the crew to quickly set up a variable audio-frequency on the visiphone.
He and Jamie cover their ears as best they can as a high pitched whine fills the loading bay. The Cybermats begin to lose control and are destroyed, one exploding as it careers into the wall.
The Doctor picks the other up to show the crew, to let them see what they are up against. He and Jamie then head back to the communications centre.
Leo and Tanya then detect an energy emission coming from the Power House, but it doesn't belong to the station. A Cyberman is operating its own transmitter device there, consulting the Planner and its spaceship.
It reports the loss of the Cybermats, and the Planner states that someone on the Wheel must be familiar with their technology. The Cyberman also reports that the X-ray laser is now fully functioning, and the station is unable to contact Earth.
The crew discuss the situation, realising that Earth won't know they have a problem for another two hours, when they fail to make their regular check-in call.
One of the wrecked Cybermats has been brought to the communications centre, where Zoe shows it to Bennett. However, he has completely withdrawn and even refuses to accept what he is seeing. The Doctor advises Gemma that she will have to take over command.
Jamie and Zoe are also discussing their predicament. She feels frustrated that she cannot help more with this emergency as it's one that she was never trained for. She has come to accept that she relies too much on facts and logic because that is all she has ever had pumped into her brain all her life.
Leo is trying to contact other sections of the Wheel.
Flannigan goes to the Power House where he finds Vallance and Laleham, who are ignoring Leo's calls. When he tries to answer, the two men attack him. In the struggle Vallance fires at him, but hits and kills Laleham instead.
A Cyberman then enters and subjects Flannigan to its hypnotic beam. It is told that the communications centre is protected by its own forcefield, operated only from within the room itself.
As Zoe tends to Bennett, Leo and Casali get a fix on the approaching meteorite shower and learn that it is bigger than they thought.
A call suddenly comes through from the Power House, and Flannigan reports that the X-ray laser is now fully operational.
The weapon is deployed and tested.
The Doctor then explains the Cyberman plan to Gemma and the others - of how they ionised a star to deflect the meteorites and then used the Cybermats to wreck the Bernalium supplies in order that the rocket would be searched for more. Whoever went across would then be hypnotised into smuggling them aboard the Wheel. They clearly do not wish the station to be destroyed, so have some other purpose for it. Their goal is the invasion of Earth, in order to plunder it of its resources.
He then asks Jamie for the Time Vector Generator, but is told that it was in his coat pocket. It must have fallen out when he was brought over unconscious from the rocket, and must still be there. No-one can be spared to fetch it, and the Doctor is needed here - so Jamie is told to go and get it as only he knows what it looks like.
On learning of the forcefield around the communications centre, the Planner gives fresh orders to the Cybermen, and one of them leaves the Power House with Vallance.
It has been agreed by Gemma that Zoe will go with Jamie to the rocket, and she escorts them both to be suited up.
When Leo discovers that the pair are about to make a spacewalk just as a meteorite storm hits, he rounds angrily on the Doctor for allowing this. Not only will there be debris from the meteorites but there is a radiation risk as well. He is also unhappy that Gemma will have to find her way back to the centre alone.
Gemma, Zoe and Jamie are passing through the Oxygen Supply area when they find a dead crewman.
After the youngsters have passed through the airlock to begin their spacewalk, Gemma spies a Cyberman enter with Vallance. The hypnotised crewman explains how the air supply system operates. The Cyberman gives him some ozone capsules, which should be fed into each section's supply. This will prove fatal to the crew.
The X-ray laser begins firing on the meteorites. Gemma contacts the Doctor by visiphone and tells him to ensure Leo switches the centre's air supply over to its own self-contained system as the Cybermen are about to poison the main supply.
The Doctor then sees a Cyberman appear on screen behind Gemma, and urges her to run. She fires on it, using the dead crewman's blaster, but to no effect. It shoots her dead as she tries to escape.
Outside the Wheel, Jamie and Zoe can see the destruction of some of the meteorites - but others are hurtling towards them...
Written by David Whitaker (from a story by Kit Pedler)
Recorded: Friday 3rd May 1968 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 25th May, 1968
Ratings: 6.8 million / AI 57
VFX: Bill King & Trading Post
Designer: Derek Dodd
Director: Tristan De Vere Cole
Episode 5 of The Wheel in Space is the last of Doctor Who's missing episodes for which we have telesnaps. Most of Season 6 survives in the archives, but the lost episodes of The Invasion and The Space Pirates were never captured visually in this way.
Whilst the Cybermen in Episode 4 were stated to have hand weapons in its original script, for the death of Nell, as Gemma was then named, it was a blast from the chest unit which killed her. A square of light superimposed over the chest unit was suggested by Whitaker.
The Cyberman Planner was said to glow with power.
The scene between Zoe and Jamie, where she discusses her frustration about her reliance on logic and facts was not present in the original script. This was added by Derrick Sherwin in early March to help develop further the character of the new companion.
A scene was cut late in the day, of a crewman in the Oxygen Store attempting to use the visiphone. A Cyberman attacked him but he was too late to draw his blaster and was killed. Instead, Gemma, Jamie and Zoe simply find the man already dead when they arrived in the room.
Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines filmed their spacewalk at Ealing on Friday Friday 22nd March. Hines wore a black Windak pressure suit, whilst Padbury donned a yellow version. This was her first work on the series. Suspended on kirby wires in front of black drapes, smoke and lighting effects were employed to indicate the destruction of the meteorites going on around them.
Model footage of the meteorite shower had taken place at Television Centre's Puppet Theatre the previous day.
These had small explosive charges within them, detonated electronically via the wire on which they spun. Also filmed for this episode were some effects shots of the Cybermats going out of control.
For the firing of the X-ray laser, each frame of film was individually scratched to give the jagged line effect.
The day following the recording of the fourth instalment, Sunday 28th April, had seen Hines once again filming on location for The Dominators, and both he and Padbury were taken out of rehearsals on Wednesday 1st May for more work at Ealing.
Recording on the story moved studios once again - this time returning to Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, which had been home to the series almost continuously from The Dalek Invasion of Earth to The Moonbase.
As this episode was going into studio on the eve of Zoe's first on-screen appearance, Peter Bryant organised another photocall for Padbury, which would help advertise her arrival in the following day's broadcast. They are an odd assortment of images. In some, Padbury is seen having her feet massaged on set by her producer, whilst another batch of images were taken outside the studio at a nearby demolition site, with Padbury posing in front of rubble and a bonfire. Publicity material now described Zoe as a "fifteen year old astronaut", though the actress had earlier told one newspaper reporter that her character was seventeen. Both the Mirror and the Mail carried items next day, the former concentrating on Zoe's space age fashion.
The material needed for the cliffhanger to Episode 3 was finally remounted during a special insert session between 5.30 - 6pm. This had been due to the problems encountered with the Cyberman voice distortion device on Friday 19th April. This remount required only the two Cybermen and the actors playing Vallance and Laleham in their spacesuit costumes, which they would not be wearing during the main evening session.
It was decided to record this episode on 35mm film instead of the usual 625-line video, so that it would be easier to edit.
The recording began with a restaging of the closing sequence from the previous week, with the Doctor and Jamie discovering that a Cyberman was approaching.
Only two Cybermats were used in studio for the attack on the Doctor and Jamie. The one which crashed into the wall and exploded was pulled along on a nylon thread. It was then removed from the set as a light flare was superimposed on the picture, to make it look as if it had completely disintegrated. Smoke was pumped through the other prop.
Much use was made of TV monitors on both the loading bay and communications centre sets - with Troughton looking to left or right to make it appear as if he could see people on either side of the camera at the opposite end. This would become a frequent bit of business for Troughton.
The oscilloscope wave effect was used again this week - both for the hypnotising of Flannigan but also for the blaster shot as Vallance accidentally kills Laleham.
Anne Ridler, who was suffering from a trapped nerve in her leg, swapped costume with a stunt woman - Dorothy Ford - as Gemma had to fall down a short flight of steps on being shot by the Cyberman. Still images of Ridler lying on her back on the floor were taken, to be made into photo-captions which would be used the following week for POV shots of her body - this being her final work on the story.
The credits rolled over a shot of the spinning meteorites.
This is the very first episode of Doctor Who which I clearly recall having watched, so I have a bit of a soft spot for it. Long before Revenge of the Cybermen came along, I could remember an episode in which there were Cybermen and Cybermats on a space station, and this is the only episode which fits the bill. I even remembered people floating in space.
It's such a pity I can't watch it again - maybe one day - as I think it is the best of the six episodes. We have a lot less of the personal politics of the Wheel crew (Bennett quite literally sits this episode out), the Doctor is up and about and getting involved, and the Cybermen are more active. It's also one of only two episodes of this story in which the Cybermats actually pose a menace as well.
The death of Gemma, who has become a friend to the Doctor and a mentor figure for Zoe, stands out as a truly shocking moment. You would have bet money on her surviving this story to the end, but presumably Zoe has to have little or no reason for wanting to stay on the Wheel after all this - so her friend has to die. She dies bravely, blasting away at a Cyberman after being able to warn her colleagues about the plan to poison the air supply - only to then be shot in the back and she tries to escape.
The Cybermen will never again be quite as ruthlessly inhuman as they are here.
This instalment also moves Zoe's story along, as she opens up to Jamie about her feelings of inadequacy when having to face anything which she hasn't been trained for. He has come across as mildly irritated by her up to this point, but acts to reassure her after she has offloaded her concerns to him. He begins to see that behind her serious "brainbox" façade, she is as human as he is.
There's a controversial moment when the Doctor coerces Jamie into fetching the Time Vector Generator from the rocket. The Doctor basically accuses his companion of losing it in the first place, and so it's his fault they don't have it. He then does what Leo gets so angry about - sending the two youngsters on a hazardous spacewalk smack dab in the middle of a meteorite shower, and Gemma has to leave the safety of the communications centre to get them on their way. The Doctor claims that he is needed here, which is why he can't go himself - but what, pray tell, does this entail? He just stands about watching the crew deal with the meteorites with the laser. He could easily have gone with Gemma to make sure she got back safely - so it can be argued that the Doctor is indirectly responsible for her death..
- The ratings continue their rollercoaster ride, dropping by almost 2 million on last week's figure. The last weekend in May 1968 was the Spring Bank Holiday in Britain, which probably explains this - people being away or otherwise out and about enjoying the long weekend.
- Only three very short clips exist from this episode - all part of the fight between Flannigan, Laleham and Vallance. These were Australian censor clips, recovered in 1996.
- There appear to be Cybermats unaccounted for. We saw one get sealed in quick-setting plastic, and the Doctor causes two to be destroyed in this episode - but according to the telesnap from Episode One below, there were six despatched across to the Wheel, and the Cyberman reports to the Planner that all have been destroyed. There ought to be three more still at large - unless the variable audio-frequency business was broadcast beyond just the loading bay.
- Wendy Padbury was photographed sitting in a distinctive silver padded chair this week. It had first been seen in the third episode, in a corner of the medical bay beside the Doctor's bed. This is known as an Elda chair, designed in 1963. We will see it again, with black upholstery, being used by the European Controller in Day of the Daleks, and it also furnishes the office of Morgus in The Caves of Androzani. Even a second-hand Elda can command several thousand pounds at auction.
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