Episode 209: The Wheel in Space (6)

Synopsis:

Jamie and Zoe are making a hazardous spacewalk between the Wheel and the Silver Carrier rocket. The space station's crew have begun destroying the approaching meteorites and they are in danger of being caught in the explosions...

In the communications centre, Leo Ryan is angry and accuses the Doctor of sending the youngsters to their deaths. He insists that this was a risk which had to be taken as there is something on the rocket which he needs, then sadly informs him of Gemma's death which he has just witnessed on the visiphone.

Jarvis Bennett has been sitting quietly in his chair for some time in a near catatonic state, seemingly oblivious to all that is going on around him - but he suddenly snaps out of this on hearing of his friend's death. With everyone preoccupied, he gets up and quietly slips from the room after switching off its protective forcefield.

The Doctor tells Leo of Gemma's final warning - to switch to the sectional air supply. She gave her life to give this information as the Cybermen are about to poison them all.

Leo complies, and then Bennett appears on the visiphone advising that they should reactivate the forcefield. He is in a corridor nearby, determined to get revenge for Gemma's death.

A Cyberman appears and Bennett launches himself at it. It proves a futile gesture as, after a brief struggle, it throws him across the corridor then blasts him with its chest unit. His death is witnessed by the others on the monitor.

Vallance has been instructed to inject ozone into the air supply, but the procedure fails. The Cyberman he is assisting contacts its Planner, which deduces that someone on board the station knows their ways. Vallance is ordered to look into the Cyberman's communications device and picture in his mind everyone on the Wheel, so that this person might be identified.

Jamie and Zoe, meanwhile, have safely made it to the rocket. He tells her about the object they have come to find - the Time Vector Generator - and they quickly locate it and prepare to make the return journey. Zoe uses the rocket's communications equipment to try to contact the Wheel to provide them with an update - but accidentally breaks into the Cybermen's frequency. 

They see the mental images produced by Vallance. When it comes to the Doctor, he tells them that he doesn't know this recent arrival - but the Planner recognises him as a known enemy. He must be lured out of the communications centre and destroyed.

In the centre, something large is spotted on the radar. It is seen to change course and move towards the station, and the Doctor deduces that this is the Cybership. Leo asks Casali if he is able yet to contact Earth for assistance, but the technician responds that he needs spare transistors to finish repairs - and these will have to be fetched from the Power House. 

Someone will have to go and get them.

Jamie and Zoe depart from the rocket, in order to warn the Doctor of the planned trap for him.

Leo and Tanya study blueprints of the Wheel's layout and realise that the only way to get to the Power House without going through the corridors is through an emergency air shaft.

Flannigan then appears on the visiphone to tell them that he has locked the Cybermen in one of the workshops, but doesn't know how long he can keep them there.

The Doctor then insists that he will go to fetch the spares. Flannigan will meet him in one of the corridors.

As the Doctor is about to leave, he warns Leo and the others to seize Flannigan as soon as he comes into the centre through the forcefield. He advises they check the back of his neck for a metal plate.

A Cyberman orders Flannigan to go to the communications centre and destroy the forcefield as soon as he is admitted.

The Doctor arrives in the Power House through the air shaft, and immediately spots a bottle of mercury which he pockets. He then starts looking through the electronic equipment, a plan forming in his mind...

Jamie and Zoe arrive back on board - to be greeted by the sight of Gemma's body.

As they leave the Oxygen Store they meet Flannigan, who agrees to escort them to the communications centre.

Vallance is accompanying the other Cyberman, and they realise that the Doctor has not come by the expected route. Vallance then recalls the emergency air shaft.

As soon as Flannigan enters the centre with Jamie and Zoe, the crew overpower him and a metal plate with transistor is applied to the back of his neck, breaking the Cyberman hypnotic influence. He quickly recovers, vowing to get even with the monsters.

The Doctor appears on the monitor to report that he has found the spares they need, and Jamie informs him of the plan to trap him. He asks Jamie to use the air shaft to bring the Time Vector Generator to him - then has to break transmission as he reports that company has arrived...

The two Cybermen have entered the Power House.

The Doctor is able to get them to confirm some aspects of their invasion plan before one of the creatures steps forward to kill him. However, he has rigged up a powerful electric field just inside the door, and this destroys the Cyberman. The other attempts to shoot him, but the field blocks its weaponry.

It is forced to withdraw.

Jamie then emerges from the air shaft with Flannigan, who arms himself with a bottle of quick-setting plastic. The Doctor gives them a metal plate to use on Vallance when they find him, then sets about making adjustments to the X-ray laser. As Flannigan and Jamie leave, they ask him to contact Leo.

The Doctor calls him and tells him that he is going to boost the power of the laser, and is told that the Cybership is fast approaching.

Donning spacesuits, Jamie and Flannigan go to the loading bay where the last Cyberman is to be found with Vallance, also in a spacesuit. Flannigan pretends to still be under hypnotic control, claiming to have captured Jamie.

A group of Cybermen have begun to spacewalk from their ship towards the open outer airlock doors. Jamie quickly overpowers Vallance and fits the plate to his neck, whilst Flannigan destroys the Cyberman by spraying the plastic into its chest unit.

The Cybermen reach the airlock door and begin to push their way in as Flannigan tries to close it. 

The Doctor fits the Time Vector Generator into the laser's capacitor bank and notifies Leo that it is ready. He opens fire, and the Cybership is destroyed.

Flannigan then activates the neutron forcefield - and the Cybermen are sent hurtling off into space.

A short time later, Leo is contacting Earth to inform them of what has happened, having assumed temporary command of the Wheel. Zoe has gone to escort the Doctor and Jamie to the Silver Carrier to retrieve the TARDIS. Left alone with Jamie, she is curious as to why they won't explain anything about their craft. He bids her goodbye.

The Doctor is refilling the fluid links with mercury when Jamie enters the TARDIS. They are about to depart when the Doctor spots the lid of a large chest gently closing. Inside they find Zoe, who asks to go with them. She wishes to experience life after years of simply studying it, and recent events have opened her eyes to how cloistered her own life has been. Jamie is quick to dismiss her request but the Doctor is willing to accept her - so long as she knows what she is letting herself in for. He removes a headset from a wall panel and puts it on, telling them that he is going to present mental images on the scanner. He will weave these into a complete narrative, and asks Zoe if she has ever heard of the Daleks. He begins to relate to her their last encounter with them...

Next time: The Dominators...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker (from a story by Kit Pedler)

Recorded: Friday 10th May 1968 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 6.05pm, Saturday 1st June 1968

Ratings: 6.5 million / AI 62

VFX: Bill King & Trading Post

Designer: Derek Dodd

Director: Tristan De Vere Cole

Critique:

This was the last time Doctor Who used the credit 'Story Editor'. From Season 6 the title would become 'Script Editor'.

Dialogue about how the Doctor would get to the Power House without going through the corridors was added in amendments made in early March.

Whitaker advised that a woman's legs, wearing Gemma's distinctive uniform, could be shown, without revealing the face (which would be seen using the photographs taken during the recording of the previous episode).

The final scene in the communications centre, with Casali establishing radio contact with Earth, was only added during rehearsals for this episode.

Zoe did not hide in the wooden chest originally. The Doctor was to have spotted her crawling into the TARDIS on her hands and knees before hiding behind a chair.

This episode affords us our only glimpse of the Cybermen as they were originally designed for this story.

The main difference between filming and studio recordings was the suit. This was designed by Martin Baugh to be a lightweight vinyl material, light grey in colour, attached to which were small rectangular junction boxes, two of which were mounted on the shoulders. Thin rods were connected to these along the arms and legs.

During the filming at Ealing on Friday 22nd March of the spacewalk in this episode, it was found that the rods kept coming loose, and the thin vinyl wrinkled easily and was in danger of tearing. Unhappy with the costumes, De Vere Cole requested that they be redesigned before the story went into studio.

Some elements constructed by Jack and John Lovell such as the helmets and gloves were retained but the main suit was replaced entirely by two-piece diving suits sprayed silver. The shoulder-mounted junction boxes were moved to the upper arms.

The material already filmed of the Cybermen spacewalking and trying to force their way through the airlock doors was retained for broadcast - so this is the original design's only appearance in the programme, as you can see below. The Cyberman ranks were swollen by having a third costume, worn by Tony Harwood, at the rear. This was one of the old Mark II versions, unmodified. The footage was also mirrored to double their numbers.

It should be noted that the Cybermen on film wore their chest units - actually Mark II versions - mounted the correct way up with the circular weapon at the bottom, which was how the Lovells intended them to be worn.

Apart from model shots of the Wheel, rocket and Cybership, filmed at the Puppet Theatre for use throughout the serial, the shots of the Cybermen being flung off into space were also filmed on Thursday 21st March. These were simply photographs of the creatures, cut out and mounted on cardboard.

Studio recording returned to Riverside and like the previous episode it was decided to use 35mm film rather than 625-line videotape. This was due to the fact that the episode was to be recorded out of order, thanks to some of the cast having to change in and out of spacesuits for parts of the action. For instance, Jamie is seen to be wearing his at the beginning of the episode, and again later in the loading bay, but with his normal gear in between and then again at the very end - necessitating three costume changes over the course of the evening if the episode was made in story order. All the scenes of people wearing the suits could be recorded together.

Hines recorded both of his spacesuit sequences first, ending with the struggle in the loading bay. A break then allowed him to go off and change into his usual costume for his mid-episode scenes and the final TARDIS sequence.

Other recording breaks included one to replace the radar scanner in the communications centre, and another to fix kirby wires to Michael Turner for the sequence where he is picked up and thrown by a Cyberman. Perhaps recalling how bad this physical effect had looked in The Tomb of the Cybermen, this was only to have been seen on the visiphone screen. During the struggle, we can also see a piece of the Cyberman's piping coming loose.

As in previous episodes, a halo of light was superimposed over the Cyberman's chest unit and the screen alternated between positive and negative. This same over-exposure effect was used for when the Cybermen are blasted off into space by the forcefield. The oscilloscope wave was used as Vallance was hypnotically given fresh orders, and superimposed over still images of the cast which represented Vallance's mental images of the crew.

A spark was superimposed over the shot of the Cyberman killed by the Doctor's trap.

The final recording break was to set up the TARDIS scene, which used only a minimal set of console, wooden chest and two walls, one of which was a photographic blow-up in a poor state of repair.

The end credits rolled over a close-up of Zoe's face as she concentrated on the Doctor's mental projections.

The closing sequence was designed to lead into a repeat broadcast of The Evil of the Daleks which began the following week - which we'll look at separately in the next post. The clip chosen came from the cliffhanger to the first episode, rather than starting from the very beginning with the theft of the TARDIS from Gatwick Airport - chosen as it is the first time a Dalek appears in the story.

It is usually referred to as a fluff from Troughton, but knowing his mischievous nature one suspects that his reference to the "sexual" air supply instead of "sectional" - that's what it sound like - was probably deliberate.

Unwinding in Studio 3 - the pub across the road from Riverside - after recording, Troughton expressed his dissatisfaction with the recent stories to Peter Bryant. He felt the scripts to be repetitive and lacking in depth, and he wanted to see new monsters introduced - though he did like the Cybermen, which he was pleased to hear would be back next season. He was told about the plans Bryant and Derrick Sherwin had about reformatting the series, basing it in the England of the near future. It would be more action-orientated, with the Doctor working alongside Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and Professor Travers in their fight against the Cybermen.

It's a disappointing ending to the story, with the threat of the Cybermen and their invasion fleet dealt with far too abruptly. The VFX leave a lot to be desired as well, what with flimsy cardboard cut-out Cybermen and the comic book style explosion of the Cybership. Things aren't helped by the frantic cutting of these sequences.

It's certainly not one of Whitaker's better scripts, and is generally regarded as the weakest of the 1960's Cyberman stories. The writer did once state in an interview that he didn't think there was enough material to fill six episodes, and the opening instalment is almost a self-contained one wherein the Doctor and Jamie have an adventure with a Servo Robot on a derelict spaceship. It was this concern about the lack of material which caused Whitaker to make the story more of a character piece in its first half, with the Cybermen only getting onto the Wheel at the midpoint of the story.

Character pieces only work, however, if those characters are people we can invest in, in one way or another. Leo and Tanya are very thinly sketched, whilst Bennett - who should be the most interesting character - descends into a form of manic-depression seemingly out of the blue. He goes from being annoyed about other people's theories to acting as if everything is going well, to catatonia in the space of an episode. Even Gemma, an ally of the Doctor in particular and whose death comes as a complete shock, can be a bit of a cold fish - advising Zoe but incapable of empathising with her when she starts questioning her conditioning and how she actually fits into this society.

The only really true human beings on the Wheel are Duggan and Flannigan, the former of whom is killed off relatively quickly and the latter of whom spends some time under hypnotic control. They are the only 'real' characters we see.

We've already mentioned the problematic dating for this story - complicated by Zoe's later talk about the Hourly Telepress of the year 2000 in The Mind Robber. The Cybermen recognise the Doctor in this episode purely from his appearance, but The Moonbase is specifically dated to the year 2070, and events on Telos were said to occur after the Cybermen had not been active in the galaxy for five centuries. The Telepress business definitely suggests an early 21st Century dating for Zoe's time, so before the attack on the Graviton base. When we take into account the Doctor's additional knowledge about the use of neuristors as defence against Cyber-hypnotism, it becomes increasingly more likely that there has been some unscreened Cyberman adventure during the Second Doctor's lifetime - which might go to explain the reference to 'Planet 14' in their next encounter...

This episode survived because it was retained by the BBC as an example of Doctor Who's fifth season, along with the third instalment of The Enemy of the World.

It brings the fifth season to a close - a run which has since become known as the "Monster Season". It began with the Cybermen and ended with them as well, and in between we had Yeti - twice - Ice Warriors and Seaweed Creatures. We even segue into a repeat run for the Daleks.

Only The Enemy of the World stood out from the rest with its James Bond trappings and purely human antagonists, but it at least had the novelty value of the chief villain being a doppelganger of the Doctor to help it stand out.

It had been another year of relative stability, both on-screen and off. Innes Lloyd had passed on the Producer baton to Peter Bryant in a smooth, planned fashion, having groomed him for the role for some time before stepping down. After the slight hiccup of Victor Pemberton as Story Editor, this role had been quickly filled by Derrick Sherwin, who had brought his own assistant - and intended replacement - onboard in the shape of Terrance Dicks, whose association with the television series will continue on and off for the next 15 years.

As for the TARDIS crew, Debbie Watling had appeared as Victoria in every story, thanks to her brief glimpse on the scanner and a credit in the first episode of the final story. This introduced new girl Zoe, but she is technically just a guest character up until the closing moments when she elects to stowaway on board the ship. Watling had also given plenty of notice regarding her departure, only ever intending to stay for a year. Though increasingly unhappy in his role as the Doctor, Patrick Troughton had agreed to stay on for one more season, by which time he would be financially comfortable, and Frazer Hines was happy to carry on a little longer as Jamie, despite pressures from his agent to get into films.

These weren't the only clouds on the horizon of Season 6. The ratings were falling overall, and the audience appreciation figures were only matching the peaks of Season 2 right at the very end.

William Hartnell had always insisted that Doctor Who would last 5 years. It would, though sadly without his presence. His departure at the end of The Tenth Planet had been the biggest upheaval to date for the series, but even bigger changes would lie ahead before the decade was out...

Trivia:

• This story ends on a high appreciation index figure of 62, beating Episode 2's score - but we also see the lowest viewing figure for this story, more than 2 million down on its peak for the fourth instalment.
• This episode was scheduled for the later time of 6pm due to an England-Germany international football match on Grandstand, but went out five minutes later than planned.
• The BBC commissioned an Audience Research Report for this episode, which highlighted the performances by Troughton and Hines as well as the spacewalk scenes. However, there were a number of negative comments about the lack of variety in the monsters and the use of complicated technical jargon. It was felt that the series was becoming repetitive.
• Junior Points of View on Friday 7th June echoed the complaints about the overuse of Daleks, Cybermen and Yeti in the series - though one youngster suggested the Doctor for Prime Minister.
• Tristan De Vere Cole was never invited back to direct Doctor Who. Peter Bryant was unhappy with him discussing the scripts with Whitaker, Pedler and Sherwin during the planning stages - arguing that such discussions should go through him as producer. He complained about this in his Director's Report, which was a document completed after every production and sent to his boss Shaun Sutton. As well as his complaint about his direct dealings with the writing team, he also claimed that De Vere Cole had gone over budget. This latter issue automatically led to a director being barred from returning to a series. In actual fact, the story did not go over budget.
• This would prove to be Peter Hawkins' final work on Doctor Who - though he would be heard again by viewers when The Evil of the Daleks was repeated over the summer. He had first joined the series in December 1963 for The Survivors - the second instalment of The Daleks - working alongside fellow voice actor David Graham and Brian Hodgson of the Radiophonic Workshop to develop and perfect the Dalek vocals - with input from directors Christopher Barry and Richard Martin. What they came up with helped popularise the monsters - and thus the series - as they could be easily impersonated by children. A variation of what they helped create continues to this day, Hawkins being the stated inspiration for Nicholas Briggs' performance. As well as his Doctor Who work, the actor is fondly remembered for classic children's series such as Captain Pugwash and Bill and Ben. Hawkins was forced to retire in 1992 due to ill health and died, aged 82, in 2006.

• Wendy Padbury and Eric Flynn would be reunited on screen in 1971 when they both joined the cast of children's adventure series Freewheelers. She was a regular across several seasons, skipping the seventh to have a child, whilst he only featured in a handful of episodes.
• We will meet Tanya Lernov again, and revisit the Wheel, for Zoe's departure scene in the final episode of The War Games.
• A clip of the confrontation between the Doctor and the Cybermen in the Power House was used for the flashback sequence in Earthshock (2), though the Cyber-Leader's dialogue describes the events of The Tomb of the Cybermen - that story still being missing in 1982.
• One of the photographic portraits taken of Patrick Troughton, as used by the Cyberman Planner to identify their enemy, was employed by the BBC for publicity purposes - made into cards which could be sent out to fans requesting autographs.

• It is, of course, a coincidence too far that the rocket's communications system could just happen to intercept an alien transmission, sent by alien technology - and not an ordinary message at that, but a mental projection...
• The Mark III Cybermen never reappeared in the series, but they do have a sort of afterlife - or at least the helmet does. This has turned up in a number of exhibitions, invariably attached to the wrong body, such as at Blackpool in the 1970's when it was paired with a Mark II suit and later with a Revenge version (images below from the Blackpool Remembered 7485 e-book - highly recommended):

• Helmets on their own could be seen at the MOMI exhibition on London's South Bank in the early nineties, as well as at the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff and in the current Worlds of Wonder touring exhibition:

• And a mixed costume Cyberman was photographed for the Radio Times in 1969, with a Mark III helmet on a Mark II body (and with a Mark IV chest unit). This even made it onto the Troughton variant cover for the magazine's coverage of the 50th Anniversary:

Episode 208: The Wheel in Space (5)

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...

Data:

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

Critique:

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..

Trivia:

• 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.

Episode 207: The Wheel in Space (4)

Synopsis:

Crewmen Vallance and Laleham have spacewalked from the Wheel to the Silver Carrier, where they have discovered a large crate of Bernalium. They are suddenly confronted by two Cybermen who place them under their hypnotic control - instructing them to take them to the Wheel...

In the space station's medical bay, the Doctor is trying to convince Bennett of the threat, showing him the X-ray which revealed a Cybermat buried in the mound of quick-setting plastic found beside crewman Rudkin's body.

Bennett dismisses the warnings out of hand, even accusing them of having faked the X-ray. The Doctor tells the Controller about the Cybermen, how they were once men but have had their bodies replaced with cybernetic parts and their brains conditioned, leaving them as inhuman killers.

On the rocket, the two crewmen have hidden the Cybermen inside the crate, which has a false bottom. Bernalium rods are then packed on top.

Gemma Corwyn also tries to get Bennett to accept the Doctor's warnings, but he insists he will only take orders from Earth control. She does agree with him, however, that the Cybermen can't simply walk onto the Wheel - unaware that Vallance and Laleham are at that moment spacewalking back to the station towing the crate behind them. They are cleared to enter through the loading bay.

Gemma orders that Duggan be sent for to see the X-ray, to confirm that this is the "space bug" that he encountered in the Power House. He is able to do this, relieved that he will now be believed.

Zoe goes off to make calculations about the approaching meteorite shower, which poses a threat to local space traffic.

In the Power House, Leo Ryan is working on the laser with Flannigan when Bennett arrives to tell them him that he will have Duggan to lend a hand, reasoning he might as well make himself useful until sent back to Earth. Duggan will work on the device with crewman Chang, giving the other two men a much needed break.

Gemma is giving the Doctor the medical all clear, and they are able to chat for a time. She tells him of how her husband had been killed three years ago in the asteroid belt, and the Doctor questions her about Bennett. Both agree that his rigid mindset is a cause for concern. How will he react when he finally realises the truth about what is happening here, after dismissing everything else as the fantasies of others?

At that moment, Bennett is touring the Wheel, satisfied that everything is running smoothly. Returning to the medical bay, he is pleased that the Doctor is well again and dismisses the guards who had been placed on him and Jamie. It is as if he has blanked everything out of his mind, and Gemma is alarmed by this behaviour.

Duggan sends Chang to the loading bay to fetch some of the Bernalium which has just been brought on board. There, he discovers the false bottom in the crate - but the compartment beneath is empty. The Cybermen appear and kill him. Vallance and Laleham are sent away with some of the rods, whilst the Cybermen dispose of Chang's body in the incinerator - the energy use of which registers in the communications centre.

Vallance and Laleham bring the Bernalium to the Power House, where they inform Duggan that it is imperative the laser be functional. He fails to note the lack of emotion in their voices.

The Cybermen enter, and Duggan is also placed under hypnotic control. He is sent to the communications centre with a task to perform.

Zoe reports to Gemma that Bennett has ordered her to forget her calculations about the impact of the approaching meteorites. The medic speaks to her about her apparent lack of emotion, a by-product of her mental conditioning as a child.

The Doctor is getting a tour of the station and is in the communications centre. Zoe arrives with Gemma to tell them about her calculations. The Doctor learns that the two crewmen brought a crate of Bernalium over from the rocket and lets everyone know that he now believes that the Cybermen are on the Wheel - carried here in the crate. 

Gemma questions how the men could have co-operated with this and the Doctor claims they must have been hypnotised. Gemma points out that they have equipment which registers if any of the crew have had their minds tampered with - the Silenski circuit.

She agrees to activate it and they begin scanning - starting with this room. Duggan has quietly arrived and ignores Zoe, going straight to the communications panel. The circuit detects that someone present has been hypnotised, but they are too late to stop Duggan smashing the panel. He is electrocuted.

The Doctor instructs that a small metal plate with a transistor be fitted to the back of everyone's neck, which will prevent them from also being hypnotised.

He and Jamie then go to investigate the loading bay.

They find the false bottom in the crate, confirming the Doctor's suspicions. They hear a sound, and see a Cyberman descending the stairs into the bay...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker (from a story by Kit Pedler)

Recorded: Friday 26th April 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC3

First broadcast: 6pm, Saturday 18th May 1968

Ratings: 8.6 million / AI 56

VFX: Bill King & Trading Post

Designer: Derek Dodd

Director: Tristan De Vere Cole

Critique:

Bennett's rather odd behaviour, after he suddenly becomes quite detached from proceedings, was to have been picked up by other members of the crew in a communications centre scene. All but Tanya were to have shrugged this off.

Later, seeing how the crew were busy taping transistors onto metal plates, Zoe was to have felt somewhat excluded - realising that she lacked the skills to adapt to situations which were beyond her rigid training.

The Doctor was to have mentioned his previous encounter with the Cybermen on Telos as well as their origins on Mondas. On screen he will only mention them coming from Mondas.

The Cybermen were to have been armed with hand weapons - metal rods which had a light at one end (as appear in Gerry Davis' novelisation of The Moonbase).

The only filming required for this episode was the spacewalk of Laleham and Vallance as they returned to the Wheel with the crate, with the actors once again hanging on kirby wires against a black backdrop at Ealing. This took place on Friday 22nd March.

So far, no two consecutive episodes have been recorded in the same studio. For this episode the series remained at Television Centre, but returned to TC3.

The day before recording, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury had been taken out of rehearsals to film some location work on the next story - The Dominators. As agreed earlier in the year, Troughton would be excused some of the location work and his usual double - Chris Jeffries - would attend in his place.

Recording began with an re-enactment of the closing scene of the previous episode, with the Cybermen ordering the crewmen to take them to the Wheel.

Padbury and Hines had earlier pre-recorded the taped voice material (see Trivia).

Once again an oscilloscope wave was superimposed over the picture to indicate Duggan's hypnotism. 

When Chang is killed, a light halo effect was superimposed over the Cyberman's chest unit and the screen went into negative - the same technique employed since 28th December 1963 for the Dalek extermination effect. The same camera overexposure technique was used for Duggan's electrocution.

His spanner striking the radio panel was a cutaway shot, accompanied by a flash charge detonation, 

and a recording break allowed for a damaged version of the panel to replace the unbroken one.

As mentioned last time, it had been decided to remount a Cyberman sequence from the previous episode this week, after the failure of the voice distortion device. However, recording on this episode was already threatening to run beyond the studio cut-off time of 10pm and so this was deferred for another week.

Looking at Zoe's introductory episode, I speculated about the background to the character. Here it is confirmed that she in indeed a "hot house" child, educated at the "parapsychology unit" in The City. It is often the case that its pupils do not fully develop their human emotions - something which Zoe is now beginning to accept as a problem for others, such as Leo. The seeds of her electing to stow away in the TARDIS later are being sown.

It is interesting that the Wheel has a specific apparatus for detecting mind tampering amongst the crew - the Silenski circuit. This would imply that this is hardly a rare occurrence. It's certainly clear from Gemma's role that staff based on these remote stations do suffer a number of mental health conditions, but the circuit is designed to deal with external interference of the mind.

It may be that the human race has encountered alien beings who affect the mind, or it may simply be that, as such techniques exist on Earth, enemy factions employ them. Perhaps it's a weapon employed by the "Pull Back to Earth" group previously mentioned, as a way of undermining space exploration.

There's a suggestion of an unseen Cyberman story here, with the Doctor seeming to know all about their hypnosis trick and how to deal with it - the metal plate at the back of the neck (referred to in a later story as a neuristor). To date we had only seen the Cyberman Controller use this technique on Toberman, but he had undergone partial conversion.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has a quiet moment with Gemma, when she tells him a little of her background - the death of her husband a few years ago in the asteroid belt. We've spoken before about the way in which the Second Doctor seems to relate well with more mature female characters - such as Astrid Ferrier and Anne Travers. It may well be the case that he enjoys having someone older to talk to, after being surrounded by youngsters all the time.

Though he had a paternal relationship with Victoria - accepting responsibility for her as her father had sacrificed himself to save his life - Troughton's Doctor doesn't really ever play the father figure with his companions. He's more the somewhat irresponsible favourite uncle sort of character.

When the BBC first published the telesnaps from this story on the old BBC Cult / Doctor Who website, they stated that Leo shot Duggan to prevent him causing any more damage, and this also appeared to be the case in Terrance Dicks' novelisation. This is due to this action being included in the original stage directions.

However, thanks to the scene being one of the Australian censor clips, we now know that the unfortunate man is electrocuted in the act of sabotage. This certainly makes far more sense. The idea that Leo would shoot someone, a colleague whom he may have been friends with for some time, in the back - just because of an act of apparent vandalism - doesn't sit right.

The clip was returned to the BBC in 1996, and is the only existing material from this episode.

Chang's death, and the gruesome disposal of his corpse in an incinerator, made it past the censor - mainly because the latter act is only mentioned and not seen.

Trivia:

• The ratings see a big improvement this week of over a million viewers. The ITV channel serving Wales had closed down due to bankruptcy and its replacement - Harlech TV - wouldn't begin operating until Monday 20th May. The main competition for Doctor Who on other ITV channels was a music programme hosted by DJ Tony Blackburn.
• This episode was broadcast at the later time of 6pm due to BBC coverage of the FA Cup Final, taking the slot normally reserved for The Dick Van Dyke Show.
• Trying to explain the nature of the Cybermen to Bennett, Zoe quotes mathematician Norbert Wiener - "The study of a system of control and communication in animals, and devices such as cybernetic machines". He first coined the term "cybernetics" in 1948.
• Troughton calls the Cybermen "inhuman killers" - which is exactly how he will also describe them in The Invasion.
• The year in which this story is set has always been problematic, but Bennett claiming never to have even heard the name "Cybermen" before is odd. They invaded the Earth in 1986, and Hobson claimed that as of 2070 every schoolchild had heard of Cybermen. This may simply be a symptom of Bennett's mental deterioration.
• There's an odd little scene between Jamie and Zoe revolving around her making a tape recording, which appears to be included purely as padding. Jamie seems not to have ever come across someone recording their voice before - despite Victoria's screams having only recently been recorded to vanquish the Seaweed Creature.
• The Daily Mirror published an article about Doctor Who on the day of broadcast - a piece entitled "The Men Behind The Monsters". Costume designer Martin Baugh and VFX designer Bernard Wilkie were interviewed, and the yet-to-be-seen Quarks were amongst the monsters discussed.

The Art of... The Wheel in Space

The Wheel in Space was novelised for Target by Terrance Dicks and first published in August 1988. The cover art is by Ian Burgess. The Cyberman image he has used as reference comes from Tomb of the Cybermen (see below), though he has adapted the helmet to match the Mark III version that was seen in this story.

The space station, however, appears to have come straight from the James Bond movie Moonraker...

This was not Burgess' original design for the cover, however. He came up with three drafts, as can be seen below - as reproduced in The Target Book (Telos Publishing). One attempt featured Troughton's Doctor as well as three Cybermen and the Servo Robot. Another had a trio of Cybermen along with Cybermats. The other image is less developed. Personally I prefer the top left image best, over what was finally used, though perhaps the number of Cybermen was the issue. (By this stage, artists were allowed to use the image of previous Doctors on the covers again, so that wasn't the issue).

This was the last book to have the neon tube logo on its cover. Thereafter the McCoy logo was employed.

The book was re-released as part of the first Essential Terrance Dicks collection in 2021.

Target never got round to commissioning a reprint with a new cover during their initial run, but in 2025 it was reissued, in slightly edited form. This was to tie in with the 2023 release of the novelisation of the repeat screening of The Evil of the Daleks, written by Frazer Hines, which follows on directly from this story's ending. The artist this time is Dan Liles, who has more accurate reference material to work from. This book was given away free with DWM 617. The Hines book had also been given away free by DWM previously.

The original soundtrack was released on CD as part of the BBC Radio Collection in May 2004. The linking narration was by Wendy Padbury, and it features the usual cluttered photo-montage cover, mainly of publicity stills but also using a telesnap of the Wheel as reference. This was re-released as part of a collection in August 2012.

The two orphan episodes were first released on video on the Cybermen: The Early Years VHS in 1992. This had on its cover the photograph which Burgess had used for reference for his novelisation artwork. One of the publicity images of the Cybermen with Zoe featured on the reverse.

Colin Baker presented, and was filmed at the MOMI Doctor Who exhibition on London's South Bank, sitting in front of a Cyberman mask display which featured a Mark III looking over his right shoulder as he delivered his links.

These two episodes, plus the Australian censor clip from the fourth episode, later appeared on the Lost in Time DVD set in 2004.

A large section of the opening episode was animated to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the "Missing, Believed Wiped" events, in December 2018. This got fans' hopes up that the full story might be released shortly in animation form, but so far nothing has come of it. You can find it as an extra on the DVD / Blu-ray of The Macra Terror. It is hoped that the work will be completed for the Season 5 Collection Blu-ray set when it eventually materialises, as all the other episodes from this season either exist in the archives or have already been animated.

A version of the story also exists on DVD which marries the soundtrack to the telesnap images, but this was only ever available on the Region 1 NTSC format. The image above is how it is advertised on Amazon, where it is currently unavailable.

The Target novelisation was released as an audiobook in August 2021. As you can see, it was read by David Troughton, with Nick Briggs providing the Cyberman dialogue. It uses Burgess' original artwork but we get to see a bit more of Hugo Drax's space station...

The soundtrack, with Wendy Padbury's narration, was released by Demon Records on "Bernalium Blue" vinyl in February 2026. The cover features a Cyberman and the Wheel, whilst Cybermats adorn the reverse of the sleeve.

Finally, the moviedb website uses another colourful photomontage to illustrate this story, in the absence of a genuine DVD cover. They have the Cyberman egg floating through space. Now if only the Cybermen had simply done this in the actual story it could have been a much tighter four-parter...

Episode 206: The Wheel in Space (3)

Synopsis:

On the Silver Carrier two huge bipedal figures stir to life within a pair of egg-like pods, and a metal fist punches its way out...

Jamie has returned to the Wheel's Power House, determined to stop its crew from destroying the rocket as the TARDIS is still on board. He looks for a way of sabotaging the X-ray laser and sees a cannister of quick-setting plastic. He is spraying this into the machine's innards when Bennett and Duggan arrive to stop him.

Duggan informs his commander that they are too late and the damage is done. The unit affected will have to be stripped out for repairs, which could take hours. In the meantime, the Wheel is defenceless.

Zoe is speaking to Gemma about Jamie when they are alarmed to hear Bennett announce a security alert, and for crew to arm themselves.

The two figures which have appeared on the rocket are Cybermen. In the control cabin they report to a cybernetic creature on a monitor - their Planner - that the first stage of their scheme has been accomplished.

On learning what Jamie has done, Zoe warns that another issue is developing in Messier 13 which could have a serious impact on them. A star is about to go nova.

Jamie has been escorted to the medical bay where the Doctor has recovered from his injury, though still confined to bed. He is a little annoyed that his companion took the action he did as it has put them both under suspicion.

The blow to his head means that he cannot recall what happened on the rocket, except that he detected some threat...

In the communications centre, Zoe is telling everyone about Messier 13, but Leo Ryan is annoyed at her seeming lack of concern about the implications - simply reeling off facts and statistics like a computer.

In the Power House, a pair of technicians take away the damaged component and Duggan is left alone when he spots movement. A small metallic creature appears, scuttling across the floor. He opens the cupboard it came from and finds pieces of corroded metal on the floor - a substance called Bernalium - and wonders if the creature did this. Bernalium rods are used to power the X-ray laser.

Just then radio operator Rudkin appears, returning to duty. He has been sent to help out, and Duggan asks him to go to the stores and check on their Bernalium supplies.

He fails to notice that there is a second Cybermat lurking in the corner.

Gemma is checking on the Doctor, who assures her that he and Jamie never intended any harm towards the station, which she accepts.

Zoe then arrives, with questions as to how they were able to pilot the Silver Carrier here with insufficient fuel to manage the distance. As far as she is concerned, logic dictates that the rocket must have been refuelled at some point.

On the rocket, the Cybermen continue to consult their Planner. A star has been ionised, sending a meteorite shower towards the Wheel. The Cybermats will destroy the station's Bernalium stocks but it will be discovered that there is a supply on board this vessel. The control overriding the Cybermats is switched off, so they will now act independently.

Duggan goes to speak with Gemma and tell her about his discovery of the metal creature, and the damage it has done to the Bernalium.

Rudkin has returned to the Power House, where he is confronted by a group of Cybermats. They attack him. He is able to use the quick-setting plastic to smother one before being killed.

Gemma and Duggan hear his screams as they come along the corridor. They are also heard in the medical bay, but crewman Flannigan refuses to let anyone leave as the Doctor and Jamie are under guard.

A short time later, Zoe has brought the lump of plastic to the Doctor to see what he makes of it. The crew had to cut away a floor plate to remove it.

Whilst Zoe thinks it impossible to see what is inside as the material cannot be cut, the Doctor points out that they have an X-ray machine handy. He is curious to learn that the Bernalium had been destroyed - the one thing which the laser depends upon to power it.

Duggan, meanwhile, is being disciplined by Bennett for not having reported the corrosion of the Bernalium immediately. There has been no evidence found of his metal "space bug", and he is disbelieved about ever having seen it. He will be sent back to Earth on the next relief ship and is confined to quarters until then - with Ryan given his duties to perform.

Gemma meets with Bennett to discuss what is going on. She sees a pattern forming, with all of the recent incidents such as the pressure drops, increased meteorite activity and the arrival of the rocket with its two strangers onboard being somehow connected. Bennett refuses to accept this, dismissing it as imagination and fantasy. He tells her that he is sending two men across to the Silver Carrier to investigate it properly.

In the medical bay, the X-ray scan of the plastic lump has been completed - and the Doctor recognises the form of a Cybermat within. The Cybermen must be near - and the only place they could be is on the rocket.

Crewmen Laleham and Vallance have just reached the vessel and find a large box of Bernalium. They are confronted by the two Cybermen who emit a hypnotic ray which puts them into a trance. 

The Cybermen instruct that they will take them to the Wheel...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker (from a story by Kit Pedler)

Recorded: Friday 19th April 1968 - Television Centre TC1

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 11th May 1968

Ratings: 7.5 million / AI 55

VFX: Bill King & Trading Post

Designer: Derek Dodd

Director: Tristan De Vere Cole

Additional cast: Gordon Stothard (Cyberman), Peter Hawkins, Roy Skelton (Cyberman voices)

Critique:

In his original treatment, David Whitaker had the Wheel crew travel between the station and the Silver Carrier in a "space buggy".

The Cyberman Planner was described as being an ordinary Cyberman but with various leads and cables attached to its head. It was seated in a chair.

Having no sense of scale or context, what we actually see on screen is difficult to interpret. It could be the head of some totally new design of Cyberman, or it could equally be some sort of communications device. It has a sort of heart-shaped core, surrounded by a rectangular metal bracket, behind which sits a circular frame of coiled wires. For all we know there could be a pair of shoulders just below camera level - or it might only be a few inches in height. Something which fulfils a similar function will appear in The Invasion - the Cyber-Director - and that is simply a machine, though with organic components. As that was written by this story's script editor, I will hazard a guess and say that the Planner is more likely just a device of some sort.

It wasn't just the Cybermats' eyes which were to glow - their whole bodies were to have done so when they attacked.

Filming for this episode included the dramatic sequence of the attack by Cybermats on crewman Rudkin. This was filmed during the week commencing Monday 18th March at Ealing. There were four Cybermat props constructed, only slightly modified from the versions seen in Tomb of the Cybermen as mentioned last time. All were radio-controlled.

Friday 22nd March then saw the spacewalk by Laleham and Vallance, wearing RAF Windak pressure suits - see below - which had been adapted for the movie First Men in the Moon in 1963. (There's a whole post on these and their various appearances in both Doctor Who and Star Wars elsewhere on this blog, back when I covered The Tenth Planet episodes). The actors were suspended against a black backdrop on kirby wires.

New model work for this episode was a shot of the Cyberman spaceship, seen only briefly before the Planner appeared on the rocket's monitor screen. Unlike the saucers seen before, this had a longer, segmented appearance, with a radar dish on top. Model filming took place on Thursday 21st March in the Puppet Theatre at TV Centre.

It's the third episode, and we are in our third different studio - this time the main one at Television Centre.

The two new Cyberman costumes made for this story appear in studio for the first time. Playing them, as well as Jerry Holmes - whose hand had been filmed punching through the surface of the pod at Ealing - we have Gordon Stothard, who had previously played a Yeti in The Web of Fear. He is best known to fans as King's Champion Grun in The Curse of Peladon, under his other name of Gordon St Clair.

During the afternoon rehearsals, publicity images were taken of Wendy Padbury with Frazer Hines, and with the Cybermen. These depict encounters between Zoe and the monsters on the rocket, which never occur in the programme.

Producer Peter Bryant arranged for one young viewer to visit the studio that day to help alleviate his dread of the Cybermen - with one of the actors unmasking himself to show they weren't real.

Michael Turner (Bennett) pre-recorded his tannoy announcement about the security alert, and a monitor was added to the rocket control cabin set for the Cybermen to consult with their Planner.

Joining Peter Hawkins on Cyberman voices was Roy Skelton, who had last been heard as the Base computer in The Ice Warriors, but who had previously voiced Cybermen and Daleks. Skelton also provided a tannoy voice.

There were problems with the sound box used to distort their voices so a normal microphone was used instead, but this proved unsuccessful. It was decided to remount the final scene during recording of the next episode because of this. In the event, this would not take place until the making of the fifth instalment due to time constraints.

One recording break was arranged to set up the Cybermats on the Power House set. An oscilloscope wave was overlaid to represent the Cyberman hypnotic ray used on Laleham and Vallance - a technique that had been used in the previous Cyberman story.

The episode ended with a fade to black over the two Cybermen confronting the astronauts.

During editing, the opening of a communications centre scene was cut - Casali picking up radio signals from the Hercules Cluster. Also cut was a whole scene after Rudkin first arrived back in the Power House to find Duggan gone. He answered an intercom call from Vallance about the current state of the Bernalium stocks, confirming the only supply was that which had been transferred to the Power House, which Duggan should have known about.

The new design of Cybermen make their debut, generally known as the Mark III version. A collaboration between the costume designer and Jack and John Lovell, they are based on a two-piece diving suit, sprayed silver. The masks were created from the same moulds as the Moonbase / Tomb versions, but had the metallic trimming around the eyes and mouth removed. These have instead a "teardrop" slot added. This was to aid ventilation for the performers but have since become iconic, having been retained for the eyes ever since. Though designed purely for practical purposes, they have come to symbolise the tragic fate of those converted.

The chest unit is more compact, and the flexible corrugated tubing along the arms and legs has been replaced with rigid rod-like structures - suggestive of hydraulic pistons - which fit into junction boxes.

The hands have three fingers, with the performers having to pair their fingers together to fit into gloves ending with thimble-like tips.

The Lovells later pointed out that the BBC dressers had put the chest units on upside down. The lamp-like weapon was supposed to be at the bottom, as with the original Mondasian Cybermen (parts of whose costume they had also built).

As far as the body of the costume is concerned, this was not the intended design, however - as we'll discuss when we get to the sixth and final episode...

Episode Three of The Wheel in Space is the first of only two instalments of this story which we are able to watch, thanks to it having been found by a film collector and returned to the archives. At the time of its discovery, this was the only episode known to survive featuring the Troughton era Cybermats.

The sequence wherein Rudkin (Kevork Malikyan) is attacked and killed by them has taken on some notoriety after featuring as an example of surrealism - or just plain old oddness - in the series, after its inclusion in the 30th anniversary documentary (More Than) 30 Years In The TARDIS. This is mainly due to the rather exaggerated body and facial movements he makes. He is a very good actor, as anyone who has seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and many other TV programmes and movies can testify, but presumably being attacked by Cybermats just wasn't on the curriculum at drama school when he attended.

We can't put it off any longer. It's time to discuss the Cyberman plan, I'm afraid, as it really is a most convoluted scheme and one which makes little scientific sense.

The plan is roughly as follows:

1. Hijack the Silver Carrier and secrete a couple of Cybermen and some Cybermats aboard.
2. Pilot it in the direction of the Wheel.
3. Send over the Cybermats to infiltrate the station and destroy the Bernalium.
4. Ionise a star.
5. This will direct a shower of big meteorites towards the Wheel, thus forcing the crew to look for another supply of Bernalium.
6. Crew will therefore visit the rocket and find a box of it there. 
7. Hypnotise them into smuggling the Cybermen onto the Wheel hidden in the box.
8. Make sure that the laser, which they have taken great pains to disable, is actually working - as they need it to stop the meteorites they caused in the first place from destroying the Wheel.
9. Kill the crew and take over the station.
10. Use it to guide in their invasion force towards Earth.

Basically, the whole of the first part of this plan is a complicated way to get two Cybermen onto the Wheel unnoticed. However, what if Bennett had simply blown up the rocket when it first approached the Wheel, as he intended? The Cybermen couldn't possibly have foreseen the arrival of the Doctor and Jamie, who would prevent the rocket being blown up, first by being found on it and then by sabotaging the X-ray laser. What if they had disabled the Servo Robot before it had the chance to despatch the Cybermats?

Then there's the whole issue of the ionisation of stars. In order for a supernova to have an impact on local Earth space, the explosion would have to have occurred in the very distant past - assuming its effects could even travel that far. These stars Zoe mentions are light years away. (Messier 13 is nearly 25,000 light years from Earth). A supernova occurring last week could not possibly have any impact on meteorites in the Wheel's vicinity this week. The Cybermen would have had to initiate this scheme in prehistoric times, even if it was scientifically possible.

(See also last week's trivia about the definition of what a meteorite is. I'm using the term here only as that's what the dialogue repeatedly calls them).

David Whitaker seems to think that all these stars are very close to each other - and that a spaceship can manage to find its way to a small space station but not to a great big planet. Story consultant Kit Pedler was a scientist, but he specialised in ophthalmology rather than astrophysics.

The relationship between Jamie and Zoe continues to be slightly argumentative, with her determined not to allow the young Scot to go one better on her. She's very glad that he didn't think of x-raying the lump of hyperoxide plastic, as that would have been really annoying. The recovered Doctor also indulges in a little verbal sparring with her, gently questioning her reliance on scientific fact and logic. As he tells her: "Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority". However, even he has to accept her opinion that the rocket could not possibly have travelled the distance it did without having been deliberately refuelled at some point - though interestingly he does so only grudgingly: "Well, it might have done".

Ryan also has a go at the girl for her lack of empathy, describing her as "a little brainbox" when she enthusiastically tells everyone about the effects of the star going nova, without thinking about the human implications.

Bennett's complete lack of imagination is more noticeable, as he dismisses Duggan's claim to have seen a metal space creature and refuses to accept Gemma's linking together of the various recent incidents. This one's heading for a nervous breakdown...

One thing which is never properly explained is the Doctor's recollection of some threat he perceived whilst on the rocket. It wasn't the Servo Robot, as he specifically tells Jamie he doesn't remember it. So what was it? In the first episode, he is simply standing by the closed control cabin door, listening to some electronic bleeps. Was he able to interpret these, or did he see the two pods in the corner and know what they represented? We never do find out.

Trivia:

• The ratings are in a state of flux for this story. We have a significant increase in viewers, of more than half a million, yet the appreciation figure dips to the mid 50's again.
• This episode was found in response to a newspaper advert placed by David Stead in September 1983, asking if anyone had any old films they wished to sell. A collector in Southampton provided him with this 16mm film copy, and it was returned to the BBC archives in May 1984.
• Bernalium is spelt with a capital 'B' throughout the script - suggesting it is less a new chemical element or alloy but a trade name for the substance.
• Frazer Hines featured on the front cover of pop magazine Fabulous 208 on the day of broadcast. It had a feature on Sheila White, who had been a contemporary of his at stage school. (Her career ranged from playing Messalina in I, Claudius, to the Confessions of a... sex comedies):

• The replica of the Mark III Cyberman on display at the Peterborough Museum exhibition in 2025:

• And finally for this week, the Windak pressure suit which is on display at the Science Museum in London: