Doctor Who: The Wheel in Space

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The Wheel in Space is the seventh and final serial of Season 5 of the classic Doctor Who series. Originally broadcast in six weekly episodes from 27 April to 1 June 1968, It was written by David Whitaker, based on an idea by Kit Pedler, and directed by Tristan de Vere Cole. it stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot, and Michael Turner as Jarvis Bennett.

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Jamie to a rocket drifting near a space station called the Wheel, where strange faults and meteor storms hide a secret Cyberman plan to invade. Rescued aboard the station, the Doctor quietly pieces together clues while Jamie fights to protect the crew and Zoe shows sharp, controlled logic that clashes with human fear.

The serial is a science fiction space-based adventure and marks the return of the Cybermen, who plot to invade Earth. Episodes 3 and 6 survive in the BBC archives, with others reconstructed through telesnaps and animation.

Episode 1

The TARDIS drifts to a halt inside a silent cargo ship, the Silver Carrier. The Doctor and Jamie step out into empty corridors, emergency lights pulsing, crumbs still on a table as if the crew vanished mid-meal. A squat servo-robot lurches to life and stalks them with a cutter arm. Jamie fends it off while the Doctor puzzles out the ship’s course. Through a porthole floats a gleaming space station (the Wheel) busy with antennae and docking spines.

On the Wheel, Commander Jarvis Bennett distrusts all anomalies; his team (Dr Gemma Corwyn, comms officer Tanya, and a brilliant, precise astrophysicist named Zoe Heriot) track the derelict with rising concern. Jamie triggers the Silver Carrier’s beacon, forcing the Wheel to notice them; the servo-robot surges again, smashing panels and starting a fire. A boarding party snatches the travellers to safety under Jarvis’s scowl and orders quarantine.

The Doctor, concussed by smoke and a blow, slips into uneasy sleep; Jamie insists they’re harmless and begs to help. As technicians trawl the Silver Carrier for supplies, a small crate bumps free in microgravity and cracks open. Something sleek and metallic uncoils and skitters into a vent. On the Wheel, Zoe plots a meteor stream on collision course. The station will need its X-ray laser: and luck.

Episode 2

The Doctor wakes to bright lights, clipped questions, and Zoe’s cool curiosity. Jarvis wants trespassers locked down while he follows the computer’s procedure. Dr Gemma argues for listening to the Doctor. Jamie learns the Wheel’s X-ray laser depends on bernalium fuel rods that are almost spent. A meteor surge bears down; the station may be blind when it hits. To force action, Jamie secretly sabotages the laser’s focusing array so a salvage run to the Silver Carrier becomes unavoidable.

Zoe catches the statistical oddities piling up (two faults in one day, a derelict right on their path) but Jarvis refuses leaps beyond the rulebook. On the Silver Carrier, searchers gather crates. One spills to reveal a nest of glittering, beetle-sleek “mats” that flow like quicksilver. Back on the Wheel, storage alarms chirp; bernalium rods show unexplained losses.

The Doctor examines a scorched panel from the cargo ship and mutters about an old enemy. When he asks about the word “Cybermen,” Jarvis explodes and threatens arrest. In the stores, a technician reaches for a fuel rod and gasps as a metal shape ripples up his sleeve. By the time Zoe finishes her projections, it is too late for caution. The meteor swarm is hours away and the Wheel is being eaten from within.

Episode 3

The salvage team returns with bernalium and a stowaway danger. Cybermats spill into the Wheel’s ducts and storerooms, drawn to the fuel that will keep the laser alive. The Doctor rigs an electrified mesh and a sonic lure; the mats swarm, arc, and fall still in a stink of burned metal, but more keep coming. He shows Zoe the bite marks on the rods and the residue they leave: proof of a targeted sabotage.

Dr Gemma becomes his ally, braving Jarvis’s temper to keep him in play. Out by the Silver Carrier, two crewmen investigate a sealed bay and find a compact transmitter beating like a heart. In the hush between beeps, a panel slides. Tall silver figures unfold from hidden compartments and step into the dark. On the Wheel, Jamie is accused of wrecking the laser; he admits it and points to the incoming meteors.

Zoe’s numbers say they have one chance: get the bernalium fitted and fire at maximum to punch a gap. The Doctor, jaw tight, says they must also expect boarders. The station’s lights dip. In the shuttle collar, a manual hatch creaks; a controlled crewman opens it with blank eyes. Footfalls echo in the transfer tube. The Cybermen have arrived.

Episode 4

They come like sculptures brought to life: impassive faces, heavy tread, voices flat as metal. A controlled rigger, Flannigan, helps them into a service bay and cuts surveillance. The Doctor plants a detector on his collar and whispers to Gemma that the invaders always begin with a handful of slaves and a plan to turn defences into tools. Jarvis snaps orders to power the laser; technicians slam in the last bernalium and swing the dish.

It fires., white lance through blackness, shattering the leading clump of meteors and buying the Wheel a breath. In the shadows, Cybermen splice cables into the communication net, using the Wheel as a beacon to pull more forces through space. Zoe, precise even under fire, back-calculates the signal’s origin and points to the Silver Carrier’s transmitter.

Jamie and a small team push for a shuttle run to wreck it. In corridor D, a Cyberman breaks cover. Jarvis confronts it with a pistol and is thrown aside like a rag. Dr Gemma drags him clear, shouts a warning into the tannoy, and takes the brunt of the counterblow. The Doctor forces the Cybermats back with a boosted field and turns to Zoe. If they can blind the beacon and keep the laser hot, the tide might turn.

Episode 5

Loss tightens the crew. Jarvis raves against shadows and wanders into a patrol; a Cyber blast ends his defiance. Gemma, dying, hands the Doctor access overrides and begs him to finish this. Flannigan, jolted by an emergency shock the Doctor arranged, fights his conditioning and becomes their inside man, feeding door codes and patrol routes. Jamie reaches the Silver Carrier with Enrico and Leo, wrenches the transmitter out of its housing.

He finds a compact control node: the brain behind the station’s hypnotic orders. Cybermen step from the hold. Enrico falls, and Leo buys seconds with a spanner and a curse. Jamie smashes the node with a fuel rod; the pulsing beacon dies. On the Wheel, the Cybermen switch to brute force, stalking toward the laser room to seize the dish and turn it on Earth.

Zoe faces the empty command chair and, voice steady, coordinates firing solutions in Gemma’s place. The Doctor lures a squad over his charged mesh; they judder and collapse, cables smoking. Flannigan leads a counterattack through a maintenance crawlway. The meteor tail thickens again. one last wave that will smash the station unless the laser holds. The Doctor dumps every spare rod into the feed and tells Zoe to keep firing until the barrel glows.

Episode 6

The Wheel becomes a fortress of wires and will. Zoe rides the firing console like a concert pianist, calling ranges and bursts, punching corridor after corridor through the stone rain. Jamie drags bernalium crates to the feed with burned hands. Flannigan throws a switch that floods a junction with vacuum, pinning two Cybermen to a bulkhead.

The survivors rally behind the Doctor as he turns the Cybermats’ tricks back on their makers: feedback through the stolen circuits, traps primed to the invaders’ footfall. The last boarders reach the laser room; the Doctor snaps a final relay and the dish roars, its beam raking the docking spine. Silver bodies glow, fail, and fall. Silence returns in stages. Alarms quiet, lights steady, the racket of meteors gone. Zoe exhales and looks at the Doctor differently: the logic holds, but courage matters too.

With the station stable, the travellers prepare to leave. Zoe hesitates in the airlock, eyes bright with a hunger for the universe beyond calculations. Later, she slips aboard the TARDIS. The Doctor warns that life with him is not tidy, then lets the time scanner show her a tale of peril to test her mettle. She squares her shoulders and smiles. The engines catch. The Wheel recedes into starlight.

Themes

As a cool, orbital “base-under-siege,” The Wheel in Space closes Season 5 with confidence. It is less iconic than The Tomb of the Cybermen and not as nerve-tight as The Web of Fear, but cleaner and more disciplined than the exuberant The Underwater Menace.

As a Cybermen tale it sits a notch below the sweep of The Invasion and the shock of Earthshock, yet its austere station design, creeping Cybermats, and the Second Doctor’s needling wit make it a solid upper-mid entry. Most importantly, it introduces Zoe Heriot, whose sharp, analytic presence instantly recalibrates the team dynamic and lifts even familiar siege beats.

Linking past and future, it follows the maritime dread of Fury from the Deep and hands the baton to The Dominators and the dreamlike The Mind Robber, as Zoe’s arc carries on through The Invasion, The Krotons, and ultimately The War Games. Its sabotage, quarantine, and radar-watch rhythms echo the earlier The Moonbase and resonate forward to space-station crises in The Ark in Space and Revenge of the Cybermen.

Within the Cybermen lineage from The Tenth Planet and The Tomb of the Cybermen, this story consolidates the stealth-and-infiltration mode the series will return to again and again: a quiet pivot point before the show widens into Season 6’s bolder experiments.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Second Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Second Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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