Story 316: Lucky Day

In which Ruby Sunday finds love - but is new beau Conrad Clark all that he seems...?

The Doctor and Belinda visit London on New Year's Eve, 2006, as part of the scheme to get the TARDIS to May 2025. They are spotted by an 8 year old boy - Conrad Clark - who witnesses the Police Box vanish into thin air. When he tries to tell his abusive mother about what he has seen, he is disbelieved.

As Conrad grows up, he begins collecting information about sightings of the blue box and its owner.

In 2024, he comes across it once again in an alleyway behind a closed down London department store. He enters the shop and spies on the Doctor, who is travelling with Ruby at this time. They are hunting a vicious creature called a Shreek. It uses a pheromone to mark Conrad as future prey.

He captures an image of Ruby and the TARDIS on his phone before it dematerialises.

The following year, Ruby is no longer travelling with the Doctor - wishing to stay behind to get to know her birth mother with whom she has only recently been reunited. She is troubled by her experiences with the Doctor and wants someone to talk to about them. Conrad is a successful podcaster on the subject of extraterrestrials, and she agrees to go on his show to discuss her personal experience of alien life. He is particularly interested in hearing about UNIT, a representative of which he has been trying to get on his podcast for some time.

The pair continue to meet afterwards and are soon dating. Conrad lets Ruby know of the incident in the department store, and she explains that the Shreek was seen again recently, but was captured by UNIT. It would have returned exactly a year after marking him in order to kill him. She gives him an antidote which prevents the creatures from tracing their prey.

Some time later, she agrees to spend the weekend with him at the village where he grew up, meeting some of his old friends. On getting off the bus, Ruby notices the indicator display going haywire.

That evening, the lights in the pub begin to go on and off, and Ruby decides to give UNIT a call.

Kate Stewart reports no anomalous activity in her area, and confirms that the Shreek is safely locked up.

Conrad's friends are asking Ruby about her experiences with the Doctor and UNIT when a customer rushes into the pub claiming to have seen a monster outside.

Ruby goes to the window and sees a Shreek prowling in the shadows. A second one is then spotted.

Conrad reveals that he never took the antidote, wishing to experience what it would be like to be the Doctor, confronting alien creatures.

UNIT are summoned and arrive quickly on the scene. With Kate are Shirley Bingham and Colonel Ibrahim, and a junior operative named Jordan. Jordan reports that there is still no anomalous activity registering, which Kate and Shirley find odd.

The two Shreek unmask themselves as friends of Conrad in costume. He reveals a T-shirt with "Think Tank" written across the chest - an on-line outfit which has been accusing UNIT of lying to the general public about aliens in order to justify public money being poured into it.

Conrad and his friends are all members, out to discredit the organisation - and he has exploited Ruby's love for him to get to them.

They take video footage on their phones, which is soon all over the internet, making UNIT out to be liars at best, and a danger to democracy at worst.

Conrad is arrested for stirring up public disorder, but released 24 hours later as social and mainstream media take his side.

Ruby is forced to shelter at UNIT HQ, where the Skreech is about to be transferred to Geneva.

Conrad has published a list of all UNIT personnel, and Kate wants to know where he got this information. Shirley points out that he could only have got it from someone within the organisation.

Downstairs, Jordan stuns a guard and lets Conrad into the building, picking up the guard's gun as he enters. Jordan is unhappy at the use of weapons and the pair struggle - the gun going off and shooting the UNIT operative. His treachery has been identified upstairs as his computer and phone records are accessed, and he is found to follow conspiracy theorists and right-wing content.

Conrad ascends to the command centre in a lift, demanding that Kate reveal the secret of their deception about aliens to the world. He believes all the recent alien activity to have been faked, with actors dressed in costumes.

Kate unseals the containment cube and the Skreech is released, so that Conrad can see for himself what alien creatures are really like.

He runs in panic, whilst UNIT allows his many thousands of followers to follow his live feed.

Cornered by the creature he admits his own lies about UNIT. Ruby saves his life by tasering the Skreech, but it suddenly lashes out and bites into Conrad's arm.

By morning, public opinion has swung away from Conrad and his like. He and Jordan are in hospital, and Ruby can return to her family.

Some time later Conrad is in a prison cell when the TARDIS materialises around him. The Doctor attempts to make him alter his mindset about alien life, but also to vent his anger at him for what he did to his friends.

Conrad is unrepentant, however.

After the TARDIS departs, he is confronted by the Governor - Mrs Flood - who has come to free him...

Lucky Day was written by Pete McTighe and was first broadcast on Saturday 3rd May 2025.

McTighe currently handles the specially filmed mini-episodes which help trail The Collection Blu-ray boxsets, having previously written episodes for the Thirteenth Doctor - Kerblam! and Praxeus. The themes of ocean pollution in the latter would be carried over by him into an entire spin-off serial - The War Between the Land and the Sea.

The idea for this episode came from Russell T Davies, however. Millie Gibson had left the series after only one season, which many fans were unhappy about as the character hadn't been allowed to fully develop. RTD2 had stated, however, that this wouldn't be the last viewers saw of Ruby. She had made a very brief cameo in the 2024 Christmas Special, but would have a better role to play in Series 15.

This episode was made back-to-back with The Robot Revolution, which is why Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu feature so little. McTighe wanted his story to concentrate on Ruby and on Kate Stewart, whilst examining the potential toxicity of social media, disinformation and conspiracy theories.

He claimed he wanted to do a story that looked at what happened to a companion after they had left the TARDIS - though this had already been well handled in School Reunion, and we have also seen what Rose, Martha, Mickey, Graham, Ryan and Captain Jack have all done - being inspired by the Doctor to carry on the fight against alien threats after parting company with him.

So far this year, so Series 14. 

RTD2 seems to think he has a winning formula for how to structure a season on his hands. Start off with a disposable sci-fi romp, then have a story featuring one of the Pantheon of Discord. Make the third one a story involving space soldiers on a hostile alien planet. 

The fourth should be a contemporary story, Doctor-lite, which focusses on Ruby Sunday. It should have elements of folk horror about it - spooky things happening around a quiet village pub, where the locals pull her leg - before suddenly doglegging into something more political. UNIT get to feature, and the villain is a bit of a fascist.

It's 73 Yards again...

The episode is built on a rather stupid premise - Ruby electing to go public and talk about UNIT and the Doctor on a podcast. She has a direct link to UNIT, a member of which is the Doctor's former travelling companion Mel Bush - yet she doesn't have anyone to talk to about her experiences? Then there's Graham's companions support group, of which Mel and Kate Stewart are members...

There then follows a rather bland courtship between her and Conrad, which goes on a little too long.

Things only pick up with that sudden dogleg, when we discover that he isn't what he purports to be and the Shreek in the village are just his friends dressed up.

It's also revealed that he is a nasty piece of work who exploited Ruby emotionally, purely to get at UNIT. He lures the organisation into a trap which will allow him to expose their lies. Aliens are all faked, say Think Tank.

In this he proves successful, but then it's his turn to do something really stupid. He has UNIT on the run, discredited in the public's eyes and about to be scrutinised by the government, who may well withdraw funding and even confiscate their technology. It's surely everything he wants - but he embarks on a reckless mission to break into the high security, well defended, UNIT HQ - helping himself to a gun as he does so - supposedly just to get Kate to admit on camera that he was right. He's waving a gun about in a building full of soldiers. Why put yourself at such risk when you've already gotten everything you set out to achieve? McTighe needs an ending and Conrad needs his comeuppance, but plot logic has left the (UNIT HQ) building.

Apart from seeing that his mother wasn't very nice to him, we never really get to understand the motivation behind Conrad. The Doctor claims he's simply a pathetic little man out to make a name for himself at the expense of others, but that doesn't quite justify such extreme actions.

There's an earlier Doctor Who story I can see behind Conrad as a character, and it's one of RTD2's own - Love & Monsters. Conrad is basically a negative version of Elton. 

Yes, he's the anti-Pope.

Childhood encounter with the Doctor which influences his future life - developing an obsession with him / aliens in general. Goes on-line to discuss this obsession. Adult encounter with Doctor and companion as they pursue a savage reptilian creature in a deserted building. Joins group of like-minded people who share his obsession. For Elton exploiting Jackie Tyler's affections to get to Rose, read Conrad's exploitation of Ruby's affections to get to UNIT. Doctor turns up late in the day to berate him, after not featuring very much at all in the episode.

The scenes set in the village - up until you find out about the fake monsters - is probably the most effective part of the episode. We see the Skreech moving around in the shadows, or silhouetted against misty nocturnal skies, creeping around the village churchyard. As with 73 Yards, the best bit turns out to be a bit of a dead end and things take a political turn, and it spins off into quite a different type of story.

The main guest actor - the only one actually - is Jonah Hauer-King, who plays Conrad. The British-American actor is best known for playing the prince in Disney's live remake of The Little Mermaid, and more recently he featured in the remake of slasher pic I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In 2024 he took on the main role in TV drama The Tattooist of Auschwitz. 

It was already announced before the series aired that he would play Ruby's boyfriend, and that Conrad would feature in more than one episode.

The only other guest of note is Kareem Alexander, who plays Think Tank's UNIT mole Jordan.

The UNIT regulars appear, with mention that Mel is away in Australia. Ruth Madeley is back as Shirley, having temporarily been replaced as Scientific Advisor by Morris in the Series 14 finale.

Ruby's family members also make a return, including Faye McKeever as her mother Louise.

When Conrad does the round of chat shows etc, we see a few minor celebrities play themselves, and Lachele Carl makes a return appearance as news anchor Trinity Wells.

Anita Dobson makes her latest appearance as Mrs Flood, this time appearing as the prison governor who releases Conrad at the conclusion of the episode.

Overall, I actually quite enjoyed this on first watch, but have gone off it since - mainly because I know where things are heading. Unfair, I know, but there you go. Kisses to the past are all very well, but the parallels with Love & Monsters and 73 Yards are too many to ignore - especially the latter, as it had only been broadcast 12 months before.

Things you might like to know:

• This is the third time that something known as 'Think Tank' has featured in the series. The first was the "frontiers of science" institute which turned out to be a front for the fascistic Scientific Reform Society in Robot. The name reappeared in the unfinished Tom Baker story Shada - the space station on which Skagra drained the minds of its leading scientists. There's no stated connection between Conrad's group and the SRS outfit, other than the right-wing ideology they share, and the fact that both are brought down by UNIT. The writer did claim this to be a deliberate reference to Baker's first story.
• He also claimed that the village was inspired by Devil's End, which is the setting for The Daemons.
• Playing the pub landlord is Paul Jericho, who appeared in the classic iteration of the series as the unnamed Castellan in both Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors.
• The mannequins in the department store, for adult Conrad's first sighting of the Doctor and Ruby, were a deliberate nod to the Autons in Rose. The location used for this sequence was Howell's Department Store in the centre of Cardiff - which had been Henrik's in that 2005 episode. 
• According to McTighe, the Skreech were inspired by a childhood nightmare about dog-like monsters which lurked in the dark.
• In order that the fake Skreech looked a little artificial, the actual design was shown to another designer who then had to replicate it from memory.
• The creatures were first mentioned in a 2024 Doctor Who novel - Caged, by Una McCormack.
• In terms of timescales, young Conrad is meeting the Doctor and Belinda after The Well, whilst his encounter with the Doctor and Ruby in the department store follows on from The Devil's Chord. The Doctor's visit to the prison takes place, for him, before The Robot Revolution - which is why he mentions a "he" telling him about Belinda in that episode.

Q is for... Quill, Mr

A technician working with Euro Sea Gas at its distribution centre on the south coast of England. He and his colleague, Mr Oak, were the first to be mentally enslaved by the Seaweed Creatures which had been stirred up by the gas drilling operations. As technicians, they knew the layout of the complex and its systems, and so were ideally placed to sabotage any attempts to hinder the weed from taking over.

In appearance Quill was tall and cadaverous, in stark contrast to the short, corpulent Mr Oak. He rarely said anything - letting Oak do all the talking for the pair.

As well as taking over their minds, the weed slowly transformed the bodies of its victims. They could breath under water and seaweed-like fronds began to sprout from their skin. They could also produce a toxic gas on which the weed thrived - exhaling it through their blackened mouths.

Quill was recognised by Victoria as the person she had earlier seen tampering with oxygen supplies and so Jamie pursued him. In a violent struggle, Quill attempted to overpower him with his toxic breath - but Victoria's screams caused him to collapse. The weed was susceptible to sound of a particular frequency. 

The Doctor later checked on him in the centre's medical bay and found that he was now free of the weed - confirming his theory that sound could be used to repel it.

Played by Bill Burridge. Appearances: Fury from the Deep (1968)

• Quill and Oak were based on Laurel & Hardy, whom writer Victor Pemberton had once met in the 1950's during one of their British tours. 
• He had hopes of reusing the characters at some point, believing them worthy of a spin-off.
• Burridge had been a background artist on Doctor Who for a number of years, beginning with The Romans in which he plays a palace guard. There then followed roles in The Savages and The Underwater Menace (as the executioner in episode 3). Later, he was one of the Master's followers in The Daemons, and his final appearance was as a Draconian in Frontier in Space.
• It was claimed by a fellow actor that Burridge fell seriously ill due to some adverse reaction to the Draconian make-up resulting in him having to retire into a nursing home, and he died soon after.

Q is for... Quill

The Quill were a humanoid species which inhabited the planet Rhodia. In their natural form, females had crested craniums and porcupine-like quills sprouting from their reddish-brown skin. 

Confined to a small southern continent, they became involved in a long-running civil war with the more human-like Rhodians.

There's was a matriarchal society. Female Quill had two wombs, and their children would often eat the mothers after birth. The children were very competitive and would try to kill their nest-mates.

The war arose when the Rhodians were accused of spoiling the planet's resources, leaving little for them. The Quill then became subservient to the Rhodians to obtain what they needed, and this resentment flared into open conflict. The Quill were eventually defeated, and their leaders were forced to accept a small parasite into their brains, known as an Arn, before each being partnered with a Rhodian noble. The Arn prevented them from ever taking any hostile action against their partner, or even wielding a weapon. As such, they became little more than their servants or slaves - even having to take on their human-like appearance.

Beings called the Shadow Kin invaded the planet soon after the war and wiped out the entire populations of both species. Only one Quill survived, partnered by a Rhodian prince. The Doctor relocated them to early 21st Century London for safety. The Quill adopted the alias of a Coal Hill School teacher - Miss Andrea Quill - whilst the prince took the name Charlie and became one of her pupils. Andrea Quill's real name was Andra'ath.

The Quill had worshipped a being known as the Quill Goddess, which was in appearance a more primordial version of the species. Originating in their version of the Underworld, it was supposed to have emerged from the very first Quill nest.

In order to free herself of her Arn, Miss Quill embarked on a quest to locate a number of supposedly mythical items, belonging to a range of deities. The Goddess' head was required. It was killed for her by Ballon, a shape-shifting mercenary who accompanied her on the quest.

The operation to remove the Arn was successful, but Miss Quill did not take revenge on Charlie as an uneasy truce had formed between the pair. She had also discovered that she had become pregnant by Ballon, who she had been forced to kill as part of the quest.

Prior to this, Miss Quill had encountered an alien plant which took on the appearance of people who were significant to its victims, exploiting their grief as it fed off them. In her case, it was her dead sister. She knew this to be a fake, however, as she was too nice.

Played by: Katherine Kelly (Miss Quill). Appearances: Class: For Tonight We Might Die to The Lost (2016).

• The Quill Goddess was played by Spencer Wilding, who performed a number of monster roles in Doctor Who before being cast as Darth Vader in Rogue One - A Star Wars Story.
• Katherine Kelly was best known for a long-running role in Coronation Street, playing Becky McDonald. Other TV work has included The Night Manager and Mr Selfridge.

Q is for... Quell

Hector Quell was the captain of the space-going Orient Express - a recreation of the famous train which journeyed between Paris and Istanbul from 1883 to 2009. This now travelled on tours amongst the stars, but maintained the same levels of luxury as its historical counterpart.

The Doctor took Clara Oswald on its final trip, arriving soon after an elderly passenger had died during dinner from some unknown cause. Other passengers and crew were then struck down - in each case claiming to see something attacking them which was invisible to everyone else. 66 seconds elapsed between them first seeing this and dying. Faced with potential disaster, Quell prevaricated and lacked the confidence to take decisive action, for which the Doctor berated him.

Despite the Doctor having no permission to be aboard, Quell eventually invited him to help solve the mystery. He was able to work out that each of the victims had some form of illness, and they were being picked off one by one by a creature known as the Foretold. This appeared to them as a decaying mummified being.

Quell had previously served with the United Galaxy Force, and had been the sole survivor of a massacre which wiped out the rest of his unit. As such, he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This made him a target for the Foretold. When the time came to face it, he was able to remain calm and give the Doctor as much information as he could about the creature - after first shooting at it, as any good soldier would do. He thanked the Doctor in his last moments of life for restoring his old confident self, and counted his death an honourable one.

Played by: David Bamber. Appearances: Mummy on the Orient Express (2014).

• A popular character actor, Bamber's TV appearances have included playing Cicero in the series Rome, and Justice Shallow in The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part II. He first came to prominence as clergyman Mr Collins in the 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice - the same year he won an Olivier Award for My Night With Reg. (He went on to play the same character, Guy, in its TV adaptation).
• He has guested in most British TV detective series, including three different roles in Midsomer Murders over the years.
• Film appearances include Valkyrie, Gangs of New York, The Bourne Identity and The King's Speech.

Q is for... Queen Bats

Creatures which inhabited the planet Androzani Minor, they resembled terrestrial bats but were the size of a man. They nested in structures composed of raw spectrox - a substance which could only be found on this world. The bats were immune to the substance, whereas mammalian life developed a disease called Spectrox Toxaemia. This was fatal to humans and Time Lords alike, but a scientist - Professor Jackij - had previously discovered that the milk from a Queen Bat could provide an antidote.

The Doctor and companion Peri Brown contracted the illness after she fell into one of the nests, and he helped her remove the adhesive spectrox strands.

The rebel scientist Sharaz Jek, who had previously held the pair prisoner, informed the Doctor of the antidote when he learned that both were dying. The Queen Bats had retreated to the lowermost galleries of the planet to die, a region with very little oxygen. The Doctor risked his life to descend to their lair, despite an imminent scalding mud-burst threatening to erupt.

There was only sufficient milk for Peri, and the Doctor was forced to regenerate.

Appearances: The Caves of Androzani (1984)

• The visual effects team were very unhappy that the Queen Bat was hardly seen on screen, after spending so much time working on it.
• The head was later sold 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...