206 The Wheel in Space: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Wheel in Space: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 206
STORY NUMBER: 043
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 11 May 1968
WRITER: David Whitaker from a story by Kit Pedler
DIRECTOR: Tristan de Vere Cole
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
RATINGS: 7.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
TELESNAPS: The Wheel in Space: Episode Three

"Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority"

At last, after 8 missing episodes, an episode that exists!

The white spheres each contain a Cyberman. Jamie is caught spraying quick setting plastic into the X-Ray laser. He says the Doctor told him to protect the ship. An alert is declared and side-arms issued. The Cybermen report to their Planner that phase one, the launching of the Cybermats, is complete. Phase two, their undetected infiltration of the rocket, is also complete. It is now time to institute phase three. Zoe is concerned about the Hercules 208 star in the Messier 13 cluster. Bill assesses the damage to the laser and finds a small silver creature, which is found to have eaten the bernallium stocks that power the X-ray laser. The Cybermen are informed that a star has been ionised and meteorites will strike the Wheel. Seeking replacement bernallium in the stores Kemel is cornered by several of the creatures. He sprays plastic on one but the others kill him. Zoe examines it, and the Doctor suggests X-raying it revealing a Cybermat. Bill is put on report for failing to reveal the creature's existence. Two crewmen board the silver carrier and are brought under the Cybermen's hypnotic control and instructed to take them to the wheel where they will help the Cybermen.

I was hoping for an improvement now the Cybermen are awake but they spend almost the entire episode sitting down talking to the Planner! Fortunately the Doctor's awake again and Troughton's back on form especially during his bedside exchange with Zoe:

DOCTOR: So what's your theory?
ZOE: Well, there's a record of the last contract with the Silver Carrier rocket. It had seven million miles to touchdown and enough fuel for twenty million. Well, it couldn't have drifted here off course in the time involved. It must have been driven and piloted.
JAMIE: Oh, a right wee space detective.
ZOE: There's only one solution. That rocket was re-fuelled in space. Provided with at least with another twelve fuel rods.
DOCTOR: Well, it's an interesting theory.
ZOE: Oh, it isn't a theory. You can't disprove the facts. It's pure logic.
DOCTOR: Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority!

Unfortunately he doesn't get very much further than his hospital bed all episode!

An odd exchange earlier in the episode hints at something slightly odd about the Doctor's new friend:

LERNOV: Leo, what we going to do if Bill can't repair the laser in time?
RYAN: Well, we've got the convolute force field.
ZOE: The neutron barriers won't help us. A star of this magnitude when it goes nova, deflects meteorites with a mass of two hundred tons each.
LERNOV: Two hundred
ZOE: At least.
RYAN: Aren't you ever wrong?
ZOE: Rarely.
RYAN: No, it's all a problem in solid geometry to you, isn't it. Don't you care what happens here?
ZOE: Well, of course. I'm only telling you what's going to happen.
RYAN: Just like a robot. Fact, calculations.
LERNOV: Leo!
RYAN: Proper little brainchild. All brain and no heart!

However the main news this episode is that the Cybermen are back and once again look a little different. It's not as major as their redesign between Tenth Planet and The Moonbase, which was essentially reused in Tomb of the Cybermen but nevertheless it's noticeable:

They now have their chest units on the other way up which means the round panel, a feature derived from the gun in Tenth Planet, is now at the top of the chest. You can tell this is the previous chest unit mounted a different way: you can see the holes for the gun at the top now, but come back in episode 6 where someone doesn't quite get the message about hoe the chest units should be worn! The bodies have lost the practice golf balls and vacuum cleaner tubes from their limbs which are now replaced by stiff rods. Their fingers, previously pointed, now have flat stumpy ends. Their heads have been altered too: the eyes gain the now familiar tear drop with a similar design being added bellow the mouth.

Most of these changes will carry over into the next couple of designs and eventually influence the 1980s redesign. They also gain a new electronic voice which, if anything, is harder to hear than the previous one. I still prefer the Tenth Planet sing song voices!

The Cyber Controller seen in the previous story is gone replaced by The Planner a collection of rods and tubes that uses the previous Cyberman voice.

What does return from Tomb of the Cybermen are the essentially unchanged Cybermats. The scene where they en masse attack and kill Kemel is really quite disturbing and not for the first time I'm wondering if this section of an existing episode ended up on the cutting room floor of the Australian or New Zealand censors!

The Tenth Planet spacesuits are also back for another appearance this episode. They're almost certainly in the previous episode too, but I can't be 100% certain as the telesnaps aren't clear.

The suits are modelled on the Windak High Altitude Pressure Suit and first appear onscreen in the 1964 version of The First Men in the Moon, which Kenneth Watson, playing Bill Duggan, appears in as a journalist!

They're used throughout this story and then are put into storage until being used for the filming of the Star Wars cantina sequence during 1976. They're probably the things that have been in Doctor Who that have been seen by the most people because they pop up in all three original Star Wars films as BoShek and Bossk's costumes!

Back to the cast, as we get a much clearer look at several of them this episode!

Michael Turner, Wheel commander Jarvis Bennett, seems to have avoided science fiction series. I have seen him in Cry Freedom as Judge Boshoff.

Kevork Malikyan plays Kemel Rudkin, the victim of the Cybermats. I can see two episodes of The Professionals on his CV where he plays Hanish, Mr. X in Blind Run and a Sniper in Backtrack. He also appears as Fahid in Day Dreams, an episode of Press Gang, a series written by Future Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat.

James Mellor appears as Sean Flannigan. He later returns as Varan in the first four episodes of The Mutants and appears in the film version of Doomwatch as 1st Man

Derrick Gilbert plays Armand Vallance. He'd been Z-Cars Should Auld Acquaintance Part 1 and Part 2, playing Len Wandle, which were both directed by Tristan de Vere Cole, here helming his first and as it turned out only Doctor Who story.

Amongst the uncredited crew members we have a final Doctor Who appearance for Chris Konyils who was previously a Saracen Warrior in The Crusade 2 & 3, The Knight of Jaffa & The Wheel of Fortune plus the African ISC Officer in The Tenth Planet.

And to the left of the picture, restraining Jamie, is our old mate Harry Fielder who we last saw in Enemy of the World 2 & 3 as Central European Zone guard and is next back for Revenge of the Cybermen as a Vogan. It's a first appearance for Gordon Pitt who returns in The Time Warrior Part One as Eric. Somewhere in the crew members is Ken Sedd who returns in The Invisible Enemy as a Bi-Al Member and The Leisure Hive as a Argolin Guide / Attendant. He spends a large part of his career working with and stunt doubling for Benny Hill but he also appears in Doomwatch as as an uncredited man in You Killed Toby Wren, Flight Into Yesterday, The Inquest, The Logicians and The Killer Dolphins plus credited as the Barman in High Mountain. Some of these episodes survive and can be found on The Doomwatch DVD.

In April 1984 an anonymous letter was printed in Doctor Who magazine saying there was a missing Troughton episode, featuring the Cybermen & Cybermats, in the Portsmouth area. It had become known in fan circles that David Stead had acquired a copy of Wheel in Space 3 from a dealer. He'd been trying to return it to the BBC and had indeed already spoken with them but illness and other real life events had prevented him handing it over. Stead had already been persuaded to make a video copy of the film and that had then been copied and passed round fans. One person who had seen a copy was Gary Russell, then a write for Doctor Who magazine and now script editor on Doctor Who, who wrote the "anonymous" letter to spur Stead into returning it little knowing that he already was in the process of doing so.

Wheel in Space episodes 3 & 6 appeared on video as part of Doctor Who: Cybermen the Early Years with The Moonbase 2 & 4 along with some extra material including an interview with Roy Skelton. The same episodes later all appear in Doctor Who - Lost In Time.