Story 315: The Well

In which the Doctor and Belinda find themselves in the middle of a space drop onto a storm-wracked planet...

The TARDIS had materialised aboard a space marines ship just as the troops were about to make their jump, and the Doctor and Belinda find themselves forced to accompany them, saving explanations for when the reach the surface. The Doctor immediately sets up the Vindicator, which should help the TARDIS reach Belinda's home time on Earth. As the troopers train their weapons on the pair, the Doctor employs his psychic paper to give them both clearance to be here. They now believe it to be part of some unannounced test.

They learn that the platoon leader is Shaya Costallion. Cassio Palin-Paleen is second-in-command of the unit. Shaya informs them that this is planet 6767, and the atmosphere is charged with galvanic radiation, which means that their ship will have to follow them down slowly, taking some five hours to reach the surface. There is a mining colony on this world, and contact was lost some fifteen days ago - which is the reason for them coming to investigate.

They enter a domed structure nearby, which has a breathable atmosphere inside.

As they explore, they discover that the mining personnel all appear to be dead. Some have broken necks, whilst others were the victims of gunfire. Oddly, all of the mirrors have been smashed.

They reach a central area and find that there is one survivor - a young woman named Aliss who is deaf. She is sitting alone in the centre of the chamber.

The Doctor is able to communicate with Aliss using sign language, whilst the troopers employ screens which project text messages. She explains that she killed a woman named Sal, whose body lies close by - but she did this in self-defence. She goes on to say that one day all of her colleagues went mad. She does not know why and has no explanation for the broken mirrors. Belinda administers first aid to her.

Shaya tells Cassio that she does not believe that this frightened woman could have snapped the necks of half the colonists. On hearing where Shaya comes from, the Doctor enquires if it is now in federation with Earth - and is shocked when the commander tells him she has never heard of it.

Belinda hears the same thing from one of the troopers. She thinks she sees something behind Aliss out of the corner of her eye, but dismisses it as imagination.

The Doctor, Shaya and Cassio have found the control room but the colony records have been erased. The Doctor uses his sonic to restore them and they hear the final message from the commander. He talks of something behind them which has emerged from the Well - a huge shaft drilled down into the bowels of the planet.

Troopers Mo, Hanno and Kai are with Belinda and Aliss and question her about seeing something in the chamber. Aliss insists there is nothing behind her, but they then see her hair move, as though touched by someone.

Hanno is ordered to move around behind the young woman to take a look, despite Aliss' warnings.

Some invisible force launches her into the air and throws her lifeless body against the far wall.

When the Doctor questions Shaya and Cassio about the source of the galvanic radiation, he is informed that this planet once had an Xtonic sun, which collapsed some 400,000 years ago. The planet was rich is carbon, in the form of diamonds, which is why it was fought over and later mined.

On hearing this, the Doctor realises that this is the planet which was once known as Midnight...

He rushes back to the chamber in which Aliss sits. She admits that there is indeed something behind her back, something which cannot be seen.

Belinda points out that everyone is safe if they do not go directly behind her - likening it to a clock where midnight is the fatal position.

Half of her colleagues killed the other half just to try to stop the entity. She is only alive as she is the only one left. If its current host is killed, it transfers to the killer. She confirms that, whatever it is, it came from the Well.

Cassio, who has been questioning Shaya's instructions to listen to the Doctor, decides to take action against the entity - only for the troopers who go behind Aliss to be killed in the same manner as Henno. Aliss instinctively turns as the troopers move - killing more as her back turns towards them. 

Cassio is also killed.

Shaya decides that they must abandon the mission, leaving Aliss behind. The Doctor and Belinda want to take her with them - if they can manoeuvre onto the marine spaceship without anyone going behind her - but Shaya is not prepared to risk the entity getting off of this planet.

The Doctor knows that getting away from here is its intent and is forced to agree with her - but not to abandon her.

He decides to address the entity itself. They hear faint whispers, and the Doctor realises that this is how Aliss survived - she cannot hear it.

He realises that it destroyed all the mirrors as it cannot face itself, and orders Shaya to shoot out a couple of vents as he opens others. This chamber processes mercury. When a pipeline is ruptured, a wall of mercury falls behind Aliss - a substance which will reflect the entity.

Aliss is pulled free and everyone runs. The entity stalks them.

On reaching the outer airlock, Belinda discovers that the entity has latched on to her. Shaya sacrifices herself to shoot her, knowing that the Doctor will be able to save her life but the entity will move to her. She then goes and throws herself into the Well as the others get to the spaceship.

After the TARDIS departs, Mo reports to their senior officer - who appears to be Mrs Flood. She is interested in the Doctor's Vindicator. 

Later, trooper Val thinks she sees something behind Mo...

The Well was written by Russell T Davies and Sharma Angel-Walfall, and was first broadcast on Saturday 26th April 2025.

It takes the brave decision to present itself as a sequel to the highly rated Series 4 story Midnight. Sequels very rarely work, and seldom improve on the original. In movies we have a handful of them which are often regarded more highly than the first - The Godfather 2, The Empire Strikes Back, The Bride of Frankenstein, for instance. These work because they do not simply offer up more of the same.

Another sequel which some prefer to its original is Aliens - and this is the obvious inspiration RTD2 and Angel-Walfall have drawn on. The Well is to Midnight what Aliens was to Alien.

We have an atmospherically hostile planet which was once the source of a terrible alien threat, but years later people have come and colonised it. Communications are cut off, and a military force is sent to investigate. Amongst the group is someone who knows all about the alien threat - the Doctor here taking on the role of Ripley in Aliens. The planet has been renamed, so the "expert" only finds out too late that it is the place where they first encountered the alien.

Whilst James Cameron's film had a whole army of Xenomorphs, here we just have the one entity - that which the Doctor encountered in his Tenth incarnation on his ill-fated Crusader 50 tour.

The entity's modus operandi has changed, however. Before, it simply possessed its victim - inhabiting them in order to conceal itself to enable it to escape the planet. This change causes a problem.

Its original way of working was surely far more likely to succeed, and you have to wonder why - if the planet has been fought over and colonised for centuries, presumably with spaceships coming and going all the time - it never managed to take anyone over and get away before now. The talk of it emerging from the Well may mean that it hibernated for a very long time, but then the Well isn't brand new.

What it is doing now seems sadistic for the sake of it, and it is diminishing the chances of getting away by killing off half of its potential hosts. Having a sole survivor is obviously going to trigger an investigation, and it can't seem to help killing people who simply get behind it. How can an invisible entity not want to be seen?

This invisibility seems to come and go. In Midnight, the mechanic - Claude - spots something moving just before the Crusader's shutter comes down - so the entity did have physical form. However, when it got into the vehicle it could not be seen as it possessed Sky Sylvestre. Here, it is said to be invisible once again, yet we do catch the briefest of glimpses of something following the party as they run for the airlock. (This was movement co-ordinator Paul Kasey in a grey, featureless mask).

Did Midnight need a sequel? On balance, I'd say no. It was a fantastic, claustrophobic chamber piece which utilised sound design to the fullest. But if we had to have a sequel, was this the way to go about it? It is certainly not simply more of the same, and I suppose going down the Aliens route was the way to do it - so in my opinion it is a qualified success. If it had to have a sequel, then this works okay.

The guest cast is led by Rose Ayling-Ellis, who plays Aliss. She is best known for playing the character Frankie Lewis in EastEnders - and for winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2021. She stars in police drama Code of Silence, which she also executive produces, and has written children's books.

Shaya is Caoilfhionn Dunne. Her work has mostly been in her native Ireland and on the stage, though she has featured in the horror film Saint Maud and TV dramas Chernobyl, Industry and A Thousand Blows.

Australian actor and singer Christopher Chung plays Cassio. He first came to prominence for British viewers in the school-based drama Waterloo Road, which he joined in 2013. He has more recently been seen alongside Gary Oldman in Slow Horses. He had previously auditioned to be one of the flatmates in Knock, Knock.

Bethany Antonio plays Mo. Another actor / singer, she appeared in RTD's Nolly. Her first TV appearance was in Doctors, and more recently featured in the GoT prequel series House of the Dragon. She has also worked with Big Finish.

Anita Dobson once again features as Mrs Flood - this time a senior officer based back at the troopers' HQ. This forms part of the series' story arc, along with the Doctor's continued attempts to get Belinda back home to May 2025 using the guitar-like Vindicator.

Overall, it gets away with it. We'd much rather they left Midnight alone, but if we must have a sequel then this will do. I say this partly because you don't actually have to have seen the Series 4 story to appreciate this.

Things you might like to know:

• RTD2 leaked in advance that this story was going to be "an unexpected sequel", but didn't actually say what to. As well as Midnight, fan speculation centred on The Water of Mars or The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit. The latter does feature a similar deep shaft drilled into a hostile world.
• It wasn't originally going to be a sequel - hence RTD2's "unexpected". Ncuti Gatwa wanted a story featuring the Orisha, gods of Nigerian mythology. RTD2 tried to fit this into his Pantheon of Discord but was reluctant to use deities people worshipped for real, for fear of causing offence. As the story developed, it was only then that he spotted the potential to make it a sequel to Midnight.
• The episode's working title was "The Thirteen", as the Doctor and Belinda's arrival took the landing party up to that unlucky number.
• Aliss only became a deaf character in the script after Rose Ayling-Ellis had been cast - which is why her deafness isn't really significant to the plot.
• She dons a Sanctuary Base spacesuit to leave the mining complex - though one dyed grey instead of the usual orange.
• The actors playing the troopers had to attend a military boot camp prior to filming.
• Paul Kasey was credited as "It has no name".
• Co-writer Sharma Angel-Walfall was so busy on other projects that she didn't see the finished episode until it was broadcast.

DWM 629

I know a lot of people have given up on DWM but if you are one of those people who still buy the occasional one because there's something specific in it, then I'd recommend the latest issue. Too late to be included in last month's, other than a small news item, this one has a major amount of material about the return of the two missing episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan. 39 pages of it as a matter of fact. As well as the story behind the recovery, and the work done to conserve the episodes, we have an interview with Peter Purves as well as a piece about how he came to see them again recently - tricked, in a nice way, into thinking he was going to be discussing something else - and reviews of the episodes. A number of Doctor Who figures also give their reactions. Quite a few screengrabs from the episodes illustrate the articles, as well as images we may have seen before - though a number of these have been colourised.

If you're a fan of the classic era in general, and the monochrome years in particular, then I'd certainly seek this one out.

Inspirations: The Return of Doctor Mysterio

This one wears its inspirations very much on its sleeve: Doctor Who does comic book superheroes in general, and DC Comic's Superman in particular.

Steven Moffat came up with the idea as the Doctor hadn't ever met a "real" superhero before - only the fictitious Karkus in The Mind Robber. He felt the idea would be good for a festive special due to the popularity of movies of this genre, especially the blockbusters of the Marvel and DC universes.

He loved the notion that nobody recognised Clark Kent as Superman just because of a pair of glasses - mentioned by the Doctor in Grant's bedroom - and also the fact that Superman movies involved a love triangle with only two people in it.

The principal inspirations given by Moffat were Superman (1978) and the TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which ran for four seasons between 1993 - 1997.

It had been hoped to film in New York City itself, as had happened back in 2012. New York City was the inspiration for both Metropolis and Gotham City.

The story starts with the Doctor in the Big Apple attempting to counter the problem which arose in The Angels Take Manhattan, where all of the temporal paradoxes generated by the Weeping Angels have resulted in it becoming a no-fly zone for the TARDIS (though how he got here now, if that's the case, is anyone's business).

His gizmo to resolve this requires an ultra-rare alien crystal, but young Grant - who is a comic book fan judging from his posters and Marvel-themed wallpaper - inadvertently swallows this, thinking it medicine.

This crystal won't pass through the body, but will instead cause the boy to develop superpowers.

He goes on to adopt a superhero alias - The Ghost - who is masked, wears a cape, and has an initial emblazoned on his chest as part of his costume.

Abilities include super-strength, X-ray vision and the power of flight.

The costume was designed to incorporate elements of both Superman and Batman.

Grant later grows up to be a mild-mannered, bespectacled young man, who works as an au pair for Lucy Fletcher, a reporter just like Superman's Lois Lane. Her surname was originally going to be the alliterative Lombard, but this became her married name which she no longer uses. Lucy is the name of Lois Lane's sister.

Clark Kent and Lois worked for the "Daily Planet" newspaper, whose building sported a huge globe on its roof. The HQ of the Harmony Shoal Corporation here has a similar globe on its roof.

During a press conference there, attended by Lucy, there's mention of individuals named Shuster and Siegal. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegal were the creators of Superman.

The villains this time are related to characters seen in the previous Christmas Special. Then known as the Shoal of Winter Harmony, here they represent the company Harmony Shoal. Both are humanoid in form but with a scar running diagonally across the face, and can open up their heads. Here, we learn that they are human, with a parasitic brain-like creature inserted into their skull.

Also from The Husbands of River Song comes Nardole. The Doctor has fashioned an artificial body for him, after being beheaded by King Hydroflax's robot host on their first meeting. Nardole was introduced to give the Doctor someone to talk to and explain things as he didn't interact with Grant much in the second half of the episode.

At one point we see The Ghost stop a spaceship from crashing into New York, holding its nose in his hand. This same imagery appears in 2006's Superman Returns where he stops an aircraft crashing into a baseball field during a game.

When The Ghost first rescues Lucy, he tells her he hopes the experience hasn't put her off journalism - just as Superman had said to Lois in the first Christopher Reeve movie, after rescuing her from a crashing helicopter.

A roof top date is also arranged here and in Superman.

The Doctor at one point uses the phrase "With great power comes great responsibility", which is synonymous with Spider-Man.

Justin Chatwin (Grant) opted to use a deeper voice when in his Ghost guise - something he picked up from Michael Keaton's performance as Batman.

Though not mentioned on screen, Grant's surname was Gordon according to publicity materials. This is another example of the alliterative names often associated with comic book characters, and is also the name of the police commissioner who works with Batman.

When the young Grant floats up to the top of the Empire State Building, the set was actually constructed horizontally - a nod to the famous sequences, usually involving a celebrity cameo, of Batman and Robin walking up the side of a building in the 1960's series starring Adam West and Burt Ward.

The Doctor distracts the employees of Harmony Shoal in Tokyo by generating Pokémon characters in the vicinity. This obsessive virtual collection phenomenon first came to prominence in July 2016.

The title of this story came about during the world tour undertaken by Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman and Steven Moffat for Series 8, where they learned that the programme was titled "Doctor Misterio" in Mexico. Capaldi loved this and kept repeating it in a deep voice, impersonating the TV announcer.

The movie theatre across the road from Lucy's apartment is showing a film called "The Mind of Evil", title of a Season 8 Jon Pertwee story.

Next time: new companion Bill meets the ultimate stalker, a girl with stars in her eyes who wants to take her away from all this...

Episode 205: The Wheel in Space (2)

Synopsis:

On the Wheel, Commander Jarvis Bennett tells his crew that they are about to witness a rare event - the destruction of a vessel in space...

The X-ray laser is ordered to be made ready as attempts to contact the drifting rocket continue to prove negative.

Dr Gemma Corwyn wishes to have a private word with Bennett first, urging caution - but he is determined to proceed.

Unaware of this threat, Jamie attempts to signal with a light - but pulls the cable too far and the crew cabin is plunged into darkness. He then notices a glow beside the comatose Doctor and realises that the Time Vector Generator may be able to attract the attention of those on the nearby space station instead. He aims it out of a porthole in the direction of the Wheel. 

He is unaware of its power, however, and this is received as a burst of deafening radio static interference by the communications crew. One radio operator - Rudkin - is rendered unconscious by it. 

However, as Jamie covers and uncovers the device, they see a man-made pattern emerging and realise that there may be someone alive on the Silver Carrier after all.

Two crewmen are sent to investigate the rocket, spacewalking over to it. Jamie welcomes them and tells them of the injured Doctor.

A short time later Jamie is being examined by Gemma whilst the Doctor lies in the medical bay. Crewman Chang reports to Leo Ryan that there have been a number of small magnetic anomalies detected along the Wheel's hull, followed by momentary drops in air pressure. Leo discusses these with Tanya Lernov, telling her that Bennett has dismissed them out of hand. 

They then speculate about the two strangers.

After giving Jamie a full medical check-up, Gemma offers to let him look around the Wheel. She sends him to the Parapsychology Library where he will find someone named Zoe. After he leaves, she contacts Zoe and lets her know he is on his way, and that she should study him discreetly. She has concerns about him which she will take to Bennett.

Jamie finds the library and meets Zoe, a diminutive girl with dark hair. She is just completing a report about a star going nova in the Messier 13 group, following a similar event in the Perseus cluster the week before. She calculates the effect this will have in terms of radiation and other factors.

She finds Jamie's outfit amusing.

They begin their tour, starting with the Power House which is presided over by Bill Duggan. He has an interest in flora, and has plants grown from seeds which have floated through space from Venus.

A glass dome covers a complex piece of equipment and Duggan explains that this is their X-ray laser, without which the Wheel would be relatively defenceless. Anti-magnetic field generators can repel small items of space debris, but anything larger would smash through.

Gemma explains her concerns to Bennett. Jamie gave a false name for his companion - read off a piece of medical equipment, she noted. He also declined a glass of water - something a trained astronaut would never do as they always took advantage of any air and water offered to them. Additionally, his blood chemistry does not support that of someone who has been in space for any length of time.

She suspects he may be a stowaway, but Bennett thinks more likely an agent or saboteur. There exists a "Pull Back to Earth" faction, opposed to space travel and exploration. He dislikes any sort of mystery and this fits with his own ideas about how the Silver Carrier came to be so far off course.

Jamie's tour takes them next to the main communications room, where he learns that the rocket is scheduled for destruction by the laser as soon as the Commander gives the order. Concerned at this news, he slips out of the room before Bennett arrives looking for him. On learning he had just visited the Power House, he has Duggan follow him there.

Tanya tells Leo of a strange intuition she has about the rocket - there is something sinister about it...

On the Silver Carrier, reacting to a prearranged signal, two large egg-like pods begin to glow with energy and huge bipedal figures begin to stir within each. 

A three-fingered metal hand smashes out of one...

Data:

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

Recorded: Friday 12th April 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC3

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 4th May 1968

Ratings: 6.9 million / AI 60

VFX: Bill King & Trading Post

Designer: Derek Dodd

Director: Tristan De Vere Cole

Additional Cast: Kenneth Watson (Bill Duggan), Michael Goldie (Elton Laleham), Derrick Gilbert (Armand Vallance), James Mellor (Sean Flannigan), Kevork Malikyan (Kemel Rudkin), Peter Laird (Chang), Jerry Holmes (Cyberman)

Critique:

When it came to creating the new female companion, Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin looked to have her as different from Victoria Waterfield as possible. The new companion would be from the future rather than the past, and have considerable scientific knowledge. Despite this, she would still be young and inexperienced. As mentioned last time, it was writer Peter Ling - then developing The Mind Robber - who suggested the name Zoe, which Sherwin accepted. 

Work to find the next companion began in January 1968. Frazer Hines attempted to get his then girlfriend Susan George the part, but Peter Bryant was attempting to get Pauline Collins back into the series in a regular role. She had previously played Samantha Briggs in The Faceless Ones. However, she still wasn't interested in a long-running TV role at this time.

Bryant saw more than a hundred actresses, some of whom were then invited to Lime Grove to give readings. Wendy Padbury was finally offered the role on Tuesday 27th February. She had been up for another part at the same time - as a schoolgirl in the film adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - but turned that down as she wanted to work with Patrick Troughton, after seeing him play Mr Quilp in the 1962/3 BBC TV adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop. (Coincidentally, her first TV appearance had been playing Little Nell in the arts series Monitor). 

She had previously appeared in a stage production with Deborah Watling and, at only 5 foot tall, was often called upon to play children. She was 20 when cast as Zoe.

Padbury was announced to the press on Thursday 14th March, with a photocall arranged in Hammersmith Park. These images were to be used by the press to advertise her debut in this episode.

As far as the original script was concerned, Bill Duggan was described as the big, amiable security officer - though he comes across more as a technical expert from what we can see and hear. Laleham and Vallance were listed as technicians, and Rudkin and Casali were specified as communications officers.

The two Cyberman pods were to have been seen to be connected by leads to the control panel in the rocket's control cabin, and were activated when the countdown clock reached a certain point. (On screen, there will be no sense of scale or location).

Jamie got the Doctor's made-up name from an electronic stethoscope box in Dr Corwyn's office. This had a label of "John Smith & Associates". The name 'John Smith' will come to be adopted as an alias by the Doctor himself on numerous occasions from Spearhead From Space onwards, though here we see that it was originally given to him by someone else.

Jamie gave his full name for the very first time as James Robert McCrimmon - his middle name presumably honouring Robert I of Scotland - Robert the Bruce.

This episode was structured to omit the Doctor as it was known that Patrick Troughton would be on holiday during the week of production. Being unconscious in the medical bay, there had been no need for him to record any filmed material at Ealing that could be edited in, as was often the case with regulars taking breaks.

The actor would be spending a week in Norfolk where he had bought a riverside cabin. He informed his family during this break that he was now finding the scripts predictable.

The scene in the Power House was rewritten by Sherwin on Wednesday 6th March. The story editor was now assisted by Terrance Dicks, an old friend from their days writing scripts for the Midlands motel soap Crossroads. Sherwin did not intend to stay on Doctor Who for long, and Dicks was being lined up as his successor.

Filming for this episode included more model work in the Puppet Theatre at TV Centre. This included the deployment of the X-ray laser extending from the Wheel's hull. Model work took place on Thursday 21st March. More shots of the small globes touching the space station's hull, were filmed this day.

Earlier in the week, at Ealing, Jerry Holmes had filmed the sequence involving the gloved hand of a Cyberman breaking trough the pod. These were initially weather balloons, with Holmes then punching up through a curved wax panel. 

For this episode, studio recording returned to Television Centre once again, for the first time since The Gunfighters (on which director Tristan De Vere Cole had worked as Production Assistant). This specific studio - TC3 - had last been used by the programme for The Daleks' Master Plan.

Padbury's costume was a jumpsuit made from a jersey material, in pink and white. Her hair was quite short, so she wore a hairpiece to give Zoe her distinctive bob.

With Troughton away, Chris Jeffries acted as stand-in for the unconscious Doctor in the rocket crew cabin scenes. 

During the afternoon a photo session was conducted for the new Cybermats, even though they do not feature in this episode. Similar in design to the ones previously seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen, they no longer sported antennae and had no pupil or patterning in the eye.

An extra 15 minutes recording was allocated for the episode.

A new effect was used for the opening credits for this instalment - where captions were fragmented (though fragmentised may be a more apposite epithet, considering this is a Cyberman story) over one of the establishing model shots of the Wheel.

Peter Laird's Chang is rather too obviously a Caucasian playing an Asian character with eye makeup.

Both the communications room and Dr Corwyn's office had TV monitors which could act as "visi-phones". 

The X-ray laser prop was our old friend known as the Morok Freezing Machine - its first ever appearance in the show being in The Space Museum. It had been used again since - as can be seen in the recently recovered Devil's Planet, third episode of The Daleks' Master Plan, as well as in The War Machines. It had originally been constructed for the 1965 British sci-fi film Curse of the Fly.

On hurriedly leaving the set at the end of one of her scenes Anne Ridler (playing Gemma) felt a sharp pain. The next day she had difficulty walking and discovered that she had trapped a nerve in her leg. This resulted in her being on strong painkillers for the next few weeks - the duration of her performance in this story.

The end credits ran over the image of the Cyberman hand breaking through the pod, which then faded to black.

So the Cybermen finally make themselves seen this week - though it's only a hand smashing through the egg-like pod, after first catching a glimpse of their glowing figures within these spheres. The general silhouette is unmistakable.

I have to admit that I always found this sequence somewhat confusing, as it always looked like they came out of small balloons which then grew...

We'll talk about the Mark III redesign next time, once they feature more prominently.

As mentioned above, the Doctor doesn't feature at all in this episode and so it concentrates mainly on Jamie and the introduction of Zoe, and Whitaker sensibly pairs the two as she gives him a guided tour of the space station. Thus, they are brought together and their relationship can start to build - though it is an uneasy one to begin with. She is bemused by his appearance and behaviour, and initially he seems to see her as a bit of an annoying little miss know-it-all. (A view which will be seen to be shared with some of the Wheel's crew, like Leo, who know her a lot better). It's a different sort of relationship to the protective big brother dynamic which existed between him and Victoria.

One of the first things Jamie says to Zoe, after she has offended his national pride, is: "... watch your lip or I'll put you across my knee and larrup you" - to which she gleefully responds: "Oh this is going to be fun. I shall learn a lot from you". That's quite an introduction between the pair...

As well as the companion and companion-to-be, the episode also introduces a few new crew members and we get to know the ones we've already met a little better. Tanya and Leo are already destined for romance, if they make it to the end, though at the moment she seems to be keeping him very much at arms length. The characters are rather stereotypically drawn. She's Russian, so is a bit of an ice queen, whilst he's Australian and is more outgoing and is a bit of a charmer.

And Bennett is already shaping up to be yet another of those leaders who should never have been allowed anywhere near the command of a vitally important base, be it at the South Pole, on the North Sea coast, or in outer space. His problem lies in his very disciplined nature. He forms an idea and sticks rigidly to it, ignoring the advice of Dr Corwyn who is as much a doctor of the mind as of the body. He simply can't countenance anything which doesn't fit with his view of events - including facts. Corwyn points out the obvious that if the rocket was simply on autopilot, then it would have gone on to its intended destination - station W5 - and not here, but Bennett has already decided on what has happened and won't let logic get in its way.

Trivia:

• The ratings see a small dip this week, but the appreciation figure rises out of the 50's for the first time since Flashpoint, the final episode of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
• Zoe is said to be working in the Parapsychology Library. That's the scientific study of (alleged) psychic phenomena, which might include extra-sensory perception, telekinesis, precognition, or mind reading. The suggestion is that she is a "hot house" child, mentally conditioned and possibly genetically modified in some way, to either develop such abilities or to enhance existing talents in this area. If this is indeed the case, it's a great shame they never developed this background further. (Oddly, it is Tanya rather than Zoe who exhibits some precognitive skills as "her nose" tells her there is something sinister about the rocket).
• Whilst Zoe claims not to know anything about "pre-century history" - giving us a 21st Century date for this story - she thinks Jamie may be Scandinavian, rather than the more obvious Scottish. "Kiltie" is an Americanism.
• Bad Science: Zoe talks about meteorites in space. Pieces of rock in space are meteoroids. They become meteors when seen as "shooting stars" passing through the atmosphere. It's what's left after it hits the ground which is the meteorite. The size of the objects Zoe describes would also classify them as asteroids.
• Tuesday 16th April saw Padbury interviewed by the Daily Express at her home, which was published the following day. In this she stated that she played a "Space Age super-girl" who is a "human computer". The Mirror and the Mail carried similar pieces, seemingly cribbed from the Express article.
• This episode was discussed at the BBC's weekly programme review meeting on Wednesday 8th May, in which it was praised - as usual - by fan Huw Wheldon, whilst a colleague highlighted the emergence of the Cybermen as "superb".
• Still fresh in the public's mind as a Doctor Who companion, Debbie Watling had appeared on Junior Points of View the evening before broadcast of this episode, answering viewers' questions alongside her sister Dilys.
• Two cast members introduced this week share something Dalek-related in common. Michael Goldie had appeared in the series before, playing Craddock in the aforementioned The Dalek Invasion of Earth. When this was adapted for the big screen as Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150AD, the same role was played by Kenneth Watson, here playing Duggan.
• James Mellor will return to the series as the warlord Varan in The Mutants.
• Some of the scripts for The Wheel in Space have an umlaut above the "e" in Zoe's name.
• Radio Times included a photo of Wendy Padbury from the Hammersmith Park press call to accompany the programme listing for this episode:

Q is for... Quarks

Diminutive but powerful robot servants of the Dominators, a war-like race of people who claimed to be the Masters of the Ten Galaxies.

Quarks were squat box-like bipedal machines, with spiked, spherical heads. Their arms folded into their bodies and were designed to hold a variety of tools and weapons. They could communicate verbally, having a shrill, child-like voice.

One drawback to the robots was that they had limited energy levels and had to recharge frequently. Quarks could distribute power between themselves to equalise their energy levels.

The Doctor and his companions encountered a party of Quarks when a lone Dominator spaceship landed on the tranquil world of Dulkis, determined to assess its population as suitable for slave labour. Probationer Toba used them to kill a party of young thrill-seekers who had wandered too close to the island where their ship - and the TARDIS - had landed. This angered his commander, Rago, as it used up valuable power and deprived them of natives to interrogate. Toba repeatedly went against Rago's orders to further kill prisoners and destroy infrastructure on the island - to the point that the Quarks' energy levels were threatened. When it became clear that the pacifist Dulcians were unfit to be enslaved, it was decided to destroy the planet by transforming it into a radioactive mass - fuel for the Dominator war fleet. Quarks were instructed to prepare drill sites around a central borehole. They were also used to oversee Dulcian prisoners who were forced to assist this work.

Jamie and a rebellious young Dulcian named Cully were able to use a laser weapon from a war museum to destroy a Quark, whilst others could be easily overcome by blinding them - throwing a cover over their head - or tripping them up - tying a rope round their legs. Clearly they did not have all-round vision.

Later, the Doctor developed an explosive which was used to deplete the Quark force further. Those remaining were called off search-and-destroy work to finish the drilling - the plan being to trigger a volcanic eruption into which an atomic seed capsule would be dropped.

The Doctor was able to slip this capsule onto the Dominator spaceship just before it took off - destroying it along with the remaining Quarks and their Dominator masters.

Played by: John Hicks, Gary Smith, Freddie Wilson. Voiced by: Sheila Grant.

Appearances: The Dominators (1968)

• It was an argument over the commercial exploitation of the Quarks which led to writers Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln finally falling out with the Doctor Who production office, after the BBC had allowed them to feature in TV Comic without consulting them. They had created the robots specifically with the intention of exploiting them financially themselves, having seen what Terry Nation had earned through the Daleks.
• In these comic strips, the Quarks are a fully autonomous force of aggressive invaders, no longer under the control of the Dominators.
• The Quark performers were all schoolboys.
• Voice artist Sheila Grant would later be seen on screen as Jane Leeson in Colony in Space.
• We see two different techniques used for the Quark weapons. The first is when they kill Cully's friends, where the flesh appears to burn and melt momentarily. This sequence was achievable as on film, but in studio the simpler and quicker method of pumping smoke through the victim's costume was used. At one point Cully is wounded by a Quark, but only suffers a temporary paralysis. 
• A Quark featured as one of the cards that came with Weetabix packs as part of their first Doctor Who promotion:

• The replica Quark which featured in the Doctor Who exhibition at Peterborough Museum in 2025:

P is for... Pyroviles

Huge rock-based creatures with a molten magma core, who formed a bridgehead in the Campania region during the height of the Roman Empire, following the loss of their home planet Pyrovilia. They could kill with an incinerating blast from their mouths.

Their intention was to boil away the Earth's oceans and make the planet more habitable for them as a new home. They were susceptible to the cold water, and sufficient quantities could cause their exoskeleton to solidify and shatter.

On first arriving on Earth, they crash-landed their escape capsule and were reduced to dust.

The earthquake of 62AD in the Pompeii area triggered their awakening.

Their dust could infect human beings, causing them to slowly turn to stone themselves after first becoming their mental servants. They had the ability to psychically affect certain individuals with latent abilities in this area. Through a human agent named Lucius Petrus Dextrus who was a powerful local official in the city of Pompeii, they commissioned rock-based circuitry which would help them harness the energies of Mount Vesuvius in order to further their plans. 

The High Priestess of the Sibylline Sisterhood was also infected with their rock dust, and was now almost fully composed of stone.

In order to stop the Pyroviles, the Doctor was forced to trigger the devastating eruption of the volcano in 79AD, knowing it would kill thousands of men, women and children - their deaths being the price to pay to save the entire planet. This was a fixed point in time, which he could not alter.

It would later transpire that Pyrovilia had been taken by Davros to power his Reality Bomb, and the Doctor and Donna Noble were able to return it to its proper place and time.

Appearances: The Fires of Pompeii (2008).

• The design of the adult Pyroviles was based on that of a Roman soldier, whilst that of the Sisterhood priestess was based on the plaster casts of the victims of the volcanic eruption which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.
• If Pyrovilia was put back where it came from, then these Pyroviles would never have fled from it and so come to Earth and tried to conquer it - so there would have been no reason for the Doctor to deliberately trigger the eruption of Vesuvius and destroy Pompeii. As it is historic fact, however, this must surely mean that it was simply a natural disaster.

P is for... Pye, Reginald

Projectionist at the Palazzo Movie Theatre in Miami, Florida, in 1952. He alone had survived the sudden disappearance of 15 audience members during the screening of a Mr Ring-a-Ding cartoon short.

Though the cinema had now been boarded up by the police, the Doctor and Belinda Chandra discovered that Reg remained inside, playing movies to an empty auditorium.

When they broke in, he tried to warn them into leaving. The reason he stayed to run the features was because he was enslaved by Lux, God of Light, who fed on the projections. He had taken on the form of the cartoon character, and sought to gain corporeal form in order to leave this place.

Reg had lost his wife Helen in a car accident a short time ago, though she was preserved on celluloid, captured from his old home movies. Lux threatened to destroy these memories of her if he failed to obey, but would be rewarded by him recreating Helen in 3-D form from the images.

He attempted to help the Doctor and Belinda by running the cartoon, knowing that Lux was compelled to sing along - distracting him long enough to allow them to escape. However, they were caught and turned into celluloid figures themselves. After escaping, Belinda encouraged Reg to help destroy Lux and, inspired by Helen, he agreed - sacrificing himself to set light to the mass of flammable film stock. This blew out one of the walls, which allowed Lux to be swamped by sunlight - eventually drawing him away from Earth towards the sun.

Played by Linus Roache. Appearances: Lux (2025).

• Linus is the son of Coronation Street icon William Roache, who has played the character Ken Barlow in the soap since its very first episode in December 1960.
• Between 1972 and 1975 Linus played Ken Barlow's son Peter in the series, before returning in 2010 as a different character.
• His first big film role was as the conflicted title character in Priest, in 1994, who struggles with his sexuality.
• Genre appearances include Batman Begins (as Bruce Wayne's father) and The Chronicles of Riddick.
• On screen he has played Vincent Van Gogh (Omnibus), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Pandaemonium) and Robert F Kennedy (in Oliver Stone's JFK).

P is for... Purcell

Jim Purcell was the bullying and obnoxious landlord of Alex and Claire, who lived with their son George in a high rise flat. Purcell lived alone with only bulldog Bernard for company. George was really an alien child who possessed remarkable abilities. Terrified of rejection, he was constantly afraid and could banish the objects of his fears - containing them within an old dolls house in his bedroom cupboard. Purcell represented one of these terrors for the boy, and he found himself suddenly sucked down into his carpet one evening, as though into quicksand. He then found himself in the dolls house where he was attacked by the wooden Peg Dolls which inhabited it. He was transformed into one of the creatures.

Once George overcame his fears, everyone was returned to normal, including Purcell. The experience would hopefully have made him a less unpleasant individual.

Played by: Andrew Tiernan. Appearances: Night Terrors (2011).

• An early film role for Tiernan was as Piers Gaveston in Derek Jarman's 1991 film of Marlowe's Edward II.
• He played doomed astronaut Victor Carroon in 2005's live remake of The Quatermass Experiment.
• Other film roles include 300 and its sequel, Interview with the Vampire and The Pianist, whilst TV appearances include Jonathan Creek, Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War and Dalziel & Pascoe.

Time Museum Bookazine

The next bookazine from DWM, due in June, is The Time Museum, which considers the history of the series in 100 objects. It promises many rare photographs.

What's Wrong With... Battlefield

When a story's own author - Ben Aaronovitch - says there's a big issue with it then you really can't argue about the problems of Battlefield. (He even struggled with the novelisation and someone else had to step in and write it).

Season 26 suffered from a particular problem throughout - and that was poor work on the part of Andrew Cartmel. A good script editor knows how many characters to have, how many sets / locations are needed, and that the story then has to fit into the allotted time slot on the day, ensuring that all the salient plot points needed to satisfy the viewer are present and correct. Robert Holmes and Terrence Dicks understood this, as did most of Cartmel's predecessors. (They also knew not to use the exact same plot twice in the same short season, less than a month apart).

Just about every episode of Season 26 over-ran in terms of the scripts and rather drastic cuts had to be make to ensure the episodes fitted their evening time-slot. (We've now seen a lot of this material as "Special Editions" of the stories).

This had been going on since Cartmel arrived. At a DWAS convention following Season 24, one writer answered almost every question put to him by telling the audience to read the novelisation. If the episodes as broadcast can't tell you what you need to know, and you have to rely on buying a book to understand the plot, then there's something very wrong with how the story was structured and presented.

And a lot of that is down to the script being edited efficiently in the first place.

Battlefield's main issue was that it just about worked as a three-parter, but Aaronovitch had to stretch it to four. It's not just a case of dragging out or padding the plot, this upsets the whole story structure.

As for that plot...

There are far too many characters included for a start. As well as incorporating Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart we have to introduce a second Brigadier, an archaeologist, the archaeologist's assistant, a pub landlord, the pub landlord's wife, various UNIT underlings, a demon, a heroic knight from another dimension, a villainous knight from another dimension... and his mum.

There's so many characters but we can't have them all meeting at once, so some can only appear in the first half then be shunted out of the plot, and the more significant characters have to wander about a bit so that they don't meet up too early, because they're needed for the climax.

It is high summer by the looks of it, yet a scenic location with lake, forest and ruined castle isn't teeming with tourists.

We visit the pub a couple of times and yet it doesn't appear to get many visitors - local or tourist. Warmsley and Shou Yuing appear to be about the only customers. 

Whilst the landlady, Elizabeth, gets a small part to play in the plot - a bit of character development for Morgaine - there is absolutely no point of including husband Pat in the story.

We know how Morgaine and her knights get through to our world, but how exactly did Ancelyn manage it, and why didn't he bring any support with him?

Attempts to discuss the concept of military honour are another inconsistency. The scene between Morgaine and the Brigadier at the war memorial is very good, but she kills the unarmed Laval, before then restoring Elizabeth's sight just to pay for a round of drinks. 

Brigadier Bambera fails to have the Doctor and Ace instantly locked up when they try to access a restricted area with outdated UNIT passes. It's only afterwards that she's told about the mysterious scientific adviser from Lethbridge Stewart's time. How did she ever achieve that rank without knowing about the Doctor anyway? Why are UNIT doing mundane military work when they were set up to deal with alien threats in the first place?

Being a great fan of Time Team, the archaeological dig bears little resemblance to fact. The idea that a single individual, with just one assistant, would undertake a site of such a scale (and supposed importance) is unrealistic. The site really ought to be crawling with student volunteers, or at least a few local ones. There are groups all over the country.

Vortigern does not necessarily mean "High King". Vortigern was a king who, according to Bede and other early chroniclers, invited the Saxons into Britain to help repel attacks by the Picts and Scots, rewarding them with land in Kent.

The Doctor deduces that the spaceship will open at his command as his future self would have programmed it to obey his voice - and yet he doesn't think to tell the automated defences to stop attacking him. And what exactly do these snake-like defences do, apart from bumping into people?

And if he arranges all this in the future, why doesn't he remember then to make sure not to do something silly like endanger his earlier self who is going to blunder into this?

You can see the notorious crack in the glass when Ace almost drowns.

The script is inconsistent on the effectiveness of the knight's armour. Bullets bounce off when the script needs them to, but the knights die from ordinary gunfire when it doesn't. 

And just how does 1980's UNIT manage to defeat a warrior class of knights, armed with futuristic weapons, anyway?

Does the Doctor know that he's going to meet a demon who is susceptible to silver? How does Ace know about the bullets' significance?

The Destroyer is one of the most impressive monsters ever seen in the series, yet he doesn't get to do a lot. Maybe a bit of destroying might have come in handy to make his inclusion more worthwhile.

One of the biggest issues for me was what happens to Morgaine at the end. She can summon demons, traverse dimensions, teleport around, and bring down helicopters with her fingers, so I hardly think Holloway Prison is going to hold her for long. Was it too much to ask to see her and Mordred banished back to their own dimension at the end, instead of that painful sit-com walkdown at the Brig's house? They could have been honour-bound not to return to this dimension, just to draw a line under their involvement.

Episode 204: The Wheel in Space (1)

Synopsis:

Jamie watches as Victoria's image recedes on the TARDIS scanner. Upset by her departure, he cares little about where they will end up next. The Doctor reminds him that he was fond of her too.

The ship materialises and the Doctor detects that they are surrounded by metal. The scanner, however, shows a tranquil outdoor scene. The image changes and suddenly it is a night scene. As other pictures appear, the Doctor realises that the TARDIS is trying to tempt them away from here because of some threat it has detected.

He asks Jamie to check the fault locator and it indicates an issue with the fluid links.

A section of console suddenly explodes and the room begins to fill with toxic mercury fumes. The Doctor quickly opens a panel and removes a metal rod from the compartment within as he pushes Jamie outside.

After emerging from the TARDIS, the Doctor informs his companion that the rod is the Time Vector Generator, and its removal has caused the internal dimensions to reduce to match those of its external shell. 

They find themselves in the corridor of a spacecraft and go in search of mercury to replenish the faulty fluid links.

The spaceship has a number of locked doors, including the one leading to the control cabin. Operating a monitor which shows the cabin interior, they realise that the vessel appears to be deserted and they are drifting aimlessly through space. There are odd rectangular tracks on the floor.

They can find no mercury and so go to the crew room to look for food - unaware that a squat Servo Robot has just been activated in the control cabin.

It begins to operate pre-programmed settings, indicated by a clock-like display on the control panel. A countdown commences.

From the number of bunks, the Doctor deduces that this ship ought to have a crew of four - two on duty and two resting. They enjoy a meal from the automated food machine, unaware that the Servo Robot has left the control cabin and moved along the corridor. It welds shut the door to the motor room in which the TARDIS stands, before returning to the control cabin.

Having heard sounds, the Doctor leaves the crew room as Jamie sleeps on a bunk. He spots fresh tracks and follows these to the control cabin, but the monitor now only shows static. The Servo Robot has plugged itself into the vessel's computers and activates the engines. 

As the ship makes a sudden movement, the Doctor stumbles and hits his head. The movement has woken Jamie, who sees the Doctor stagger in and collapse.

The Servo Robot has opened the airlock door in the cabin, and from a large metal box a number of small white globes emerge and begin to float out into space. It then moves back along the corridor where Jamie finally sees it. He throws a blanket over it, blinding it temporarily. The Doctor is still dazed but is able to instruct him in using the Time Vector Generator to unseal the motor room door.

The Servo Robot throws off the blanket and moves towards Jamie, who is forced to use the Generator as a weapon to destroy it.

The Doctor has now lost consciousness.

Jamie is looking out of a porthole and spots a large structure floating nearby - a wheel-like space station...

Commander Jarvis Bennett and his command team - Dr Gemma Corwyn, Leo Ryan and Tanya Lernov - are observing the spaceship closely. It is the Silver Carrier, a supply vessel which was reported overdue at Station W5 several weeks ago. Attempts to contact its crew have proven unsuccessful, and Bennett is sure that no-one can be left alive on it due to the timescale and distance it must have travelled to get here. He is concerned that its motors may have guided it here automatically - and they could fire again without warning, putting it on a collision course with this station. 

This is W3, known simply as "The Wheel" to its crew.

The crew note small drops in pressure as the white globes reach the Wheel's hull before being absorbed into it. Bennett suspects that some small objects have been cast adrift from the Silver Carrier, but Corwyn reminds him that they would be drawn to the ship and not to them. Bennett, however, dislikes anything which cannot be explained rationally.

He then orders the X-ray laser be made ready, and informs his crew that they are about to witness a rare event - the destruction of a vessel in space...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker (from an idea by Kit Pedler)

Recorded: Friday 5th April 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 27th April 1968

Ratings: 7.2 million / AI 57

VFX: Bill King / Trading Post

Designer: Derek Dodd

Director: Tristan de Vere Cole

Guest cast: Michael Turner (Bennett), Anne Ridler (Gemma Corwyn), Eric Flynn (Leo Ryan), Clare Jenkins (Tanya Lernov), Donald Sumpter (Enrico Casali), Freddie Foote (Servo Robot)

Critique:

With the Daleks having been withdrawn by their creator Terry Nation, the Cybermen had become the new popular recurring monsters in the series. However, during 1967 a dispute had arisen between the production office and writer Kit Pedler over the rights to the creatures. This was resolved in September when Pedler was awarded an equal share in the Cybermen with the BBC.

Nation's attempts to establish the Daleks in their own series had failed, and so he was approached through his agent to see if they were available to return to the series this year. The idea of a story which featured both them and the Cybermen was also mooted.

Nation responded that he had no problem with the Daleks being used once more, but with conditions. He should be given first refusal on writing any new stories, and under no circumstances were they to appear with the Cybermen. He was too busy to write anything himself at present, however. Additionally, he was not keen on David Whitaker handling the Daleks any more as he had been unhappy with certain aspects of both The Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks.

The Daleks were put on the back-burner for now and Pedler was asked to come up with a new adventure pitting the Doctor against the Cybermen - one which would act as the final story of the season. As such they would top and tail the season.

Previously Pedler had collaborated with Gerry Davis but he had now moved on from the series. As he wasn't an experienced writer himself, it was felt necessary to partner him with an old hand - Whitaker. Pedler proposed the space station setting, as well as certain scientific elements such as an X-ray laser and neutron field barriers.

The prominence of the fluid links and a search for mercury, mention of the fault locator, plus a scene revolving around a food machine clearly represent input from Whitaker. All had featured in The Daleks, which he had story-edited, and two of these also featured in The Edge of Destruction, which he wrote. 

Discussions between Pedler and Whitaker took place before Derrick Sherwin joined the programme as Story Editor, and he was unhappy with the story which Peter Bryant had already commissioned.

Sherwin's priority was the introduction of the new companion in this story. It was Peter Ling, then working on a story provisionally titled "Man Power", who came up with the name Zoe. More on her next week.

In the original version of this episode, there was more dialogue about the TARDIS scanner sequence. The Doctor told Jamie that he had accidentally switched on the automatic defence network - "an optional extra on these models". He usually had this disconnected as he would never leave the ship otherwise.

The Wheel crew had different names. Dr Corwyn had the forename Nell, and Leo Ryan was Tom Stone. Tanya had the surname Lerner. Radio operator Harry Carby became Enrico Casali, and a character named Ken was renamed Chang. These changes were the input of director Tristan de Vere Cole, who wanted the space station to have a more international make-up.

The robot was simply known as "the Servo" and the Time Vector Generator was described as being a gold rod with black tips at either end.

Originally planned for studio, it was decided to pre-film a lot of the solo Servo Robot material on the Silver Carrier set at Ealing. This may have been to reduce the pressure on Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines, who would have to carry the bulk of the opening episode alone. There were some laser effects, such as when the robot welded shut the door, which were also more manageable at Ealing.

Playing the robot was 15 year-old Freddie Foote, from the Barbara Speake Stage School. The fibreglass shell of the prop had been constructed by freelance contractors Jack and John Lovell and included flashing lights. The Lovells would also provide the new Mark III Cybermen - more of which later when they turn up.

This material was filmed between Monday 18th and Wednesday 20th March.

The white globes were balloons, manipulated on fine wires.

The set was dressed with distinctive large metal circles. These were commercial kitchen dish covers.

The BBC VFX department were particularly busy at this time and unable to work on the programme, so another of their external contractors was called upon to help out. Bill King's company Trading Post were responsible for the model work seen in this episode. This included the Silver Carrier rocket and the Wheel itself. 

The model filming took place at the BBC's puppet theatre on Thursday 21st March. This small studio got its name from having been the one in which Muffin The Mule had been produced. It was notorious for having a structural pillar in the middle of the workspace, but would come to be used by the VFX team for much of the model work seen on Doctor Who throughout the 1970's.

Also recorded were the Servo Robot exploding, close-up shots of the food machine in operation, and the mercury leak in the TARDIS. Shots of the "eggs" were also filmed, emerging from a model of the control cabin airlock and moving through space.

The Lovells were annoyed when only Bill King and his company were credited on the programme.

Most of this story's guest cast had worked with de Vere Cole before on episodes of Z-Cars.

Rehearsals began on Monday 1st April, when Troughton expressed his dissatisfaction with the scripts. During the afternoon of recording back at Lime Grove, he and Hines posed with Foote in the Servo Robot costume for publicity images.

The episode began with footage taken by Hugh David for the previous story, of Victoria on the beach as filmed from a helicopter. This would be shown on the TARDIS scanner. Debbie Watling was credited on the episode for this one sequence, as new companion Wendy Padbury wouldn't be making her debut until Episode 2.

The other images which appeared on the TARDIS scanner comprised various items of stock footage, including a yawning hippopotamus from a David Attenborough wildlife film.

A flash charge was detonated on the TARDIS console and the first recording break allowed Troughton and Hines to move from that set to the Silver Carrier motor room. This entailed the pair emerging from the Police Box prop in which a smoke machine had been set up. Hines burned his arm on this, which caused a delay while it was attended to.

A TV monitor in the corridor set was fed still pictures of different sections of the spaceship, including the control cabin.

A recording run-on allowed for the welded-shut door to be replaced with an open one, with smoke effects added.

The episode ended with a close-up of the unconscious Doctor's face. 

After completing recording, Troughton embarked on a week's holiday as the Doctor did not appear in the following week's instalment.

This episode is unusual in that for much of its running time we follow only the Doctor and his companion, with just the non-verbal Servo Robot for company. The crew of the Wheel are only introduced around the 19 minute mark, to set up the cliff-hanger as they prepare to destroy the Silver Carrier with the TARDIS travellers on board.

The TARDIS tries to warn its occupants of danger but in a cryptic manner - just as it did in The Edge of Destruction (Whitaker again). The scanner throws up images of more attractive locations.

Quite what the danger is, we're not entirely sure. Is it the proximity of the Cybermen, the Servo Robot, or is it simply the imminent technical fault with the fluid links? We no longer have this episode, and there are only a handful of telesnaps from the opening TARDIS scene, but the dialogue seems to suggest that the fault locator is now incorporated into the console, contained in a black box with a lid according to the script.

One thing which is odd is that instead of stating that the interior is now the size of a Police Box, the Doctor suggests that it has reverted to its original Police Box interior - which implies that the TARDIS used a real one as a shell rather than simply disguising itself as one. Did Whitaker think that it had somehow materialised within a Police Box back in November 1963?

Apart from the glimpse of Victoria on the beach at the start of the episode, this is the first time in a long time that the TARDIS has left Earth. It was last on an alien planet - Telos - in The Tomb of the Cybermen. Since then we've had four six-parters, all Earthbound. We won't actually visit another alien world until the start of the next season. Here, we are about to be spacebound for the entirety - something which was actually rare for the series in its early years.

As you can see below, Radio Times had already flagged up that this was going to be another Cyberman story, but they won't be along for a while. Instead we are introduced to the Servo Robot which, thanks to a number of publicity pictures (two of which appeared as full page posters in DWM's 1982 Winter Special), has become better known than it really ought to be - as it only features in this one episode.

It looks like a stereotypical man-in-suit robot, like many seen in movies and TV shows since the 1950's - and yet there's something especially endearing about it. I think it's the relatively small size, which gives it a certain childlike quality. 

In terms of the story, we don't actually know the Robot's origins. Do they come as standard machines on these spacecraft, and it has been reprogrammed by the Cybermen? Or is it actually an early example of their own developments in robotics? We will see them employing androids in a later story after all. The designation "Servo Robot" does suggest the former.

Jamie seems to have picked up some anachronistic phrases on his travels, such as describing a meal as coming "with all the trimmings". His choice of meal is roast beef with potatoes and cabbage, followed by fruit cocktail, whilst the Doctor opts for pork, potatoes and carrots, followed by ice cream.

"Trimmings" as pertaining to a meal only came about in Victorian times, and the invention of the traditional Christmas dinner. Interestingly, he says "potatoes" and not "tatties" like a good Scot would.

Jamie also knows the phrase "a square meal". Whilst long thought to refer to meals being dished out on square wooden plates on sailing ships, the earliest known recorded mention of the phrase is in the 19th Century - so after his time.

Trivia:

• The ratings get off to a good start, with a small rise on the previous week's episode, and the appreciation figure remains healthy.
• In the run-up to the return of the Cybermen, presenter David Coleman revisited the controversy about the violence in Tomb of the Cybermen on the Talkback programme. The TV review series was coming to an end and this was part of an overall round-up of previous items.
• Early fandom would have had you believe that Eric Flynn was the son of the Hollywood movie star Errol. His dad was in fact a government official - a customs officer in Hong Kong - and Eric was born in China in December 1939. Prior to his only Doctor Who appearance he had played Alan-a-Dale in A Challenge for Robin Hood (which starred Barrie Ingham in the title role), and Germanicus in The Caesars. 
• Like Flynn, Anne Ridler was also born in China, in 1930. She had been a regular on Dixon of Dock Green.
• Clare Jenkins had previously played Nanina in The Savages.
• Donald Sumpter will be back as the submarine commander in The Sea Devils and more recently as Rassilon in Hell Bent. He also appeared as Erasmus Darkling in The Eternity Trap, one of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
• Radio Times gave the game away as to the nature of the threat in this story, by including artwork depicting a Cyberman doing a Tommy Cooper impression, and a Cybermat. Spoilers weren't so much of a thing back then - it was more important to advertise the return of a popular monster to attract the viewers.

• The original Servo Robot prop, minus its legs and feet which have been lost over the years, featured in an exhibition in Bradford, Yorkshire, which I visited in February 2014: