What's Wrong With... The Wheel In Space

Oh dear - where to begin?

The Wheel in Space has the most convoluted Cyberman scheme of all time. It's not just dramatically improbable, it's scientifically impossible.

First of all, the story opens with the TARDIS breaking down again. It needs mercury - something which happened once before, so you'd think that the Doctor would make sure he always had a supply to hand. The ship shows images of dangerous things as a hint that it's not safe where they are. Why does it not do this all the time - as there's constant danger in every location it ever lands at? If the ship's so smart, why does it not just avoid unsafe locations?

The Doctor removes the Time Vector Generator as he and Jamie exit the TARDIS. This is supposed to shrink the TARDIS interior down to the same dimensions as the Police Box shell.

The Doctor now has the same problem he left the Meddling Monk with in 1066. How do you fix the ship if everything's shrunk to tiny size?

Last time we spoke about how Chief Robson was completely unsuited to manage the ESGO gas refinery. Jarvis Bennett, who commands the Wheel, is even less suitable. Anything which doesn't fit with his world view gets dismissed out of hand. He won't even listen when his most trusted friend and adviser attempts to warn him that recent strange occurrences might be related.

His attempts to absorb other happenings outside his limited range of experience result in a complete mental breakdown. He starts off pig-headed and stubborn, then descends into paranoia, then becomes almost catatonic, shutting down emotionally before ultimately committing suicide by going after the Cybermen unarmed.

The Cybermen have a thing called a Planner. They should ask for their money back. 

They need a radio signal to act as a homing beacon in order that their invasion fleet can reach the Earth. They intend to capture the Wheel and use it to provide this, because Cybermen can't find planets any other way. 

Here's how they go about it:

• Blow up a star in the Hercules Cluster, which is 22,180 light years from Earth.
• The radiation effects of this explosion will cause the Perseid meteoroids to change course towards the Wheel.
• Five weeks before the meteoroids are due to hit, capture an Earth cargo ship (the Silver Carrier).
• Stock the ship with boxes of bernalium and refuel it.
• Use a Servo Robot to guide it towards the Wheel.
• Don't capture a spaceship from closer to the Wheel, that could conceivably have drifted there - you want people to get suspicious and draw attention to yourself.
• Once in close proximity to the station, have the Servo Robot jettison a number of pods containing Cybermats into space.
• Have the Cybermats break into the Wheel, hunt down any stocks of bernalium and destroy them.
• Hope that a random passing Scotsman will sabotage the Wheel's X-ray laser before it can blow up the Silver Carrier as a navigation hazard.
• Make sure that the humans discover that the Silver Carrier was carrying some bernalium, and will send a couple of astronauts over to collect it.
• After mentally subjugating the astronauts, hide in bottom of the bernalium box.
• Get carried over to the Wheel.

All this, just to get two Cybermen onto the Wheel. They would have had to have started their work on this back in prehistoric times. And how can something happening 22,180 light years away influence something in our local area?

Throughout the story constellations are talked about as though they are distinct galaxies, whereas they're just shapes as viewed from Earth, which could comprise stars from different galaxies.

The Cybermen don't breath air, so why not just blow a few holes in it and kill the crew, or use the Cybermats to do this.

Some of the VFX are a bit woeful. The Perseids are perfectly spherical, and apparently composed of tin foil. The Cybership looks like a giant kazoo. 

The Cybermen who get ejected into space are just paper cut-outs. They also look different to the ones who've been seen on the Silver Carrier and the Wheel.

(The reason for this is that yet another new design was prepared, but proved impractical. The new helmets were retained, but the costumes were replaced with diving suits painted silver. All that remains of the original rejected design is the filmed sequence of the Cyberman spacewalk).

The Cybermen have their chest units on upside down.

In Episode Three, the device which created the Cyberman voices broke down in studio, so they sound different as the episode progresses.

When Vallance broadcasts mental images of people on the Wheel for the Cybermen, he hits upon the Doctor rather quickly - considering that Vallance could hardly have met him.

Spacewalking is the same as swimming, requiring no artificial methods of propulsion, and you can easily nip backwards and forwards. You don't even need to be roped up.

Instead of the obvious Scottish, Zoe thinks that there are people called Kilties, and they come from Scandinavia - possibly Denmark.

Dr Corwyn explains that all the crew are protected from brainwashing by special drugs. The Cybermen easily brainwash the crew. Also, just how common is brainwashing in space for them to have felt the need to protect all crews from it?

Lastly, the Doctor decides to show Zoe a repeat of Evil of the Daleks. Why does he start by showing her the end of Part One?

Some weird and wonderful dialogue:

Jamie (to Zoe): "... just you watch your lip., or I'll put you across my knee and larrup you".

Zoe's response: "This is going to be fun! I shall learn a lot from you".

And Troughton famously refers to the "sexual air supply", instead of the sectional air supply.