Production Code: SS
First Transmitted
1 - 27/04/1968 17:15
2 - 04/05/1968 17:15
3 - 11/05/1968 17:15
4 - 18/05/1968 17:25
5 - 25/05/1968 17:15
6 - 01/06/1968 18:00
Plot
The TARDIS materialises on board a spaceship, the Silver Carrier, where the Doctor and Jamie are attacked by a Servo Robot. Jamie manages to contact a nearby space station known as the Wheel and they are rescued. Meanwhile, the Silver Carrier discharges some Cybermats, which also travel to and enter the station. These pave the way for the penetration of the station by Cybermen, who intend to use its direct radio link with Earth as a beacon for their invasion fleet.
The Doctor sends Jamie and a young woman named Zoe Heriot over to the Silver Carrier to fetch the TARDIS's vector generator rod. Meanwhile he manages to free the Wheel's crew from the Cybermen's hypnotic control and to destroy all the Cybermen on the station.
When Jamie and Zoe return, he installs the rod in the station's X-ray laser, making it powerful enough to destroy the Cyber-fleet. An approaching force of space-walking Cybermen is also vanquished.
Episode Endings
Convinced that the Silver Carrier poses a threat to the Wheel, Controller Jarvis Bennett decides to turn the X-ray laser on it and destroy it completely.
On the Silver Carrier two large egg-like objects start rocking backwards and forwards. One of them becomes translucent and the shape of a Cyberman can be seen within. It punches its fist through the shell of the egg.
Laleham and Vallance, two of the Wheel's crew, space-walk over to the Silver Carrier to fetch fresh supplies of bernalium. There they encounter and are hypnotised by two Cybermen. They are ordered to take the Cybermen to the Wheel and assist them there.
The Doctor and Jamie are investigating the crates of bernalium in a storage area on the Wheel when suddenly a Cyberman appears on the stairs behind them.
Jamie and Zoe are space-walking across to the Silver Carrier to fetch the TARDIS's vector generator rod. Zoe suddenly sees that the approaching meteorite storm is heading straight for them.
The Doctor finds Zoe hiding on board the TARDIS. She wants to join him and Jamie on their travels. He decides to give her a taste of what this might be like by using a thought scanner to 'show' her one of his past adventures. She sees a man - Kennedy - being exterminated by a Dalek.
Roots
Star Trek.
Conquest of Space.
Dracula (coffins=crates).
Dialogue Triumphs
Jamie : "Just you watch your lip or I'll put you across my knee and larrap you."
Zoe : "Oh, this is going to be fun. I shall learn a lot from you."
Zoe : "You can't disprove the facts. It's pure logic."
The Doctor : "Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority."
Zoe : "I don't want to be thought of as a freak. Leo said I was like a robot, a machine. Well I think he's right. My head's been pumped full of facts and figures which I reel out automatically when needed. But, well, I want to feel things as well."
Cyberman : "You know our ways."
Dialogue Disasters
"Leo, did I ever tell you about my nose?"
Double Entendre
Cyberman : "Effective penetration should be immediate."
Continuity
James Robert McCrimmon is very fit, mentally and physically, with a constructive personality. His blood pressure shows that he's not been in space very long [he's just had five consecutive Earth adventures]. The Doctor carries lemon sherbets and gets his pseudonym of John Smith from Jamie, who sees it as a brand name on a medical container. [Jamie has learnt to read since The Highlanders.]
Zoe Herriot is the Wheel's parapsychology librarian (which means that she's received brainwashing-like training in logic and memory), an astrophysicist, an astrometricist first class, and a major in pure maths. History is a weak area for her.
Reference is made to the TARDIS 'fault indicator'. The TARDIS still has problems with its fluid links evaporating, and needs more mercury (see The Daleks). The Time Vector Generator is a rod that makes the TARDIS dimensionally transcendental [it powers the connection between the two dimensions] and is a powerful energy source, able to seal, burn, power or zap things, and giving out huge amounts of radio interference (See The Time Meddler, The Ambassadors of Death ).
The Cybermen (with three fingers) are given orders by a computer device (see The Invasion). They hibernate in egg-like pods. A beam from their helmets controls humans (it can be blocked by a transistor and metal plate on the back of the neck); one from their chest units kills. They can spacewalk, and can be killed by an electric charge, or by spraying plastic into their chest unit. Their bodies are mechanical, and their brains are neurosurgically treated to remove emotion and pain. They need the mineral wealth of Earth, but don't need air.
Their control machine recognises the Doctor as an enemy. They have capsules which turn air into ozone, and can transmit mental pictures, drained from controlled humans, on their communications devices. They are capable of destroying stars. Their mothership holds many smaller ships that need to home in on a transmitted radio beam to land on a planet.
Cybermats in smaller pods can cut into metal hulls and re-seal the holes undetected. They corrode bernalium, and fire a 'sting' from their eyes at a range of ten feet. They're vulnerable to quick setting hyperoxide plastic. They tune into brainwaves to find their targets, but can be confused by oscillating radio signals.
QV
Location
Station W3 within the path of the Perseid meteor stream [inside the orbit of Venus and probably that of Mercury]: Zoe gives the distances to Venus at perihelion and aphelion. W3 relays messages and ships, conducts research and acts as an early warning post [against threats from the other side of the sun]. The date is difficult to establish, although it is almost certainly between The Moonbase and The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The Mind Robber suggests c 2000, and in The War Games Zoe says that she was born in the 21st century.
Future History
The kilt is no longer worn by the Scots, but Scandanavian 'kilties' wear them. The Wheel personnel have never heard of Cybermen [obviously, like Zoe, the ones we hear from are not up on their history], or Daleks, and the destruction of a rocket is a 'sight rarely seen by human beings' [a time of relative peace. Bearing in mind previous Earth invasions.]
All space personnel are given anti brain control drugs, and are fitted with a Silenski Capsule that detects an influence on the wearer. Earth Central is in control of the space programme, but some at home, the 'pull back to Earth' movement [related to the Sons of Earth: see The Power of Kroll], have already used force in their quest to suspend it. They still use helicopters on Earth.
Links
Trivia
The Doctor's face creases in pain in Episode 1 as he rummages in his pocket. Following Jamie's apparent concern, the Doctor pulls out a bag of lemon sherbets and offers one to the boy.
Patrick Troughton makes no appearance in Episode 2 as he was on holiday during the week when it was recorded. The Doctor is seen only as an unconscious figure, with Chris Jeffries doubling for Troughton.
Jamie gives the Doctor the alias 'John Smith' - a name he sees printed on the side of a piece of medical equipment on the Wheel.
This story is the first to have an incidental music score as well as sound effects provided by the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop.
Eric Flynn, who plays Leo Ryan in this story, was the son of Hollywood film star Errol Flynn.
Production of this story was affected by a scene-shifters strike at the BBC, which necessitated several last minute changes of studio.
Myth
This story went considerably over budget. (It was one of the few stories of the second Doctor's era to come in under budget.)
Zoe's surname is spelt 'Herriot'. (In David Whitaker's script it is spelt 'Heriot'.)
There is a suspenseful scene in which the two Cybermen menace Zoe in the Wheel's library. (There is no such scene. The photographs that exist of this were specially posed for publicity purposes only.)
Only two Cyberman costumes were used in the making of this story. (A third was put together from stock for the sequence in Episode 6 where a force of Cybermen space-walk toward the Wheel.)
Technobabble
One of the stars in M13 (the Hercules Cluster) is going nova, 'ionised' by the Cybermen, and so diverts a meteor stream at the station! [How does the destruction of a star in a distant galaxy affect things in the solar system (a) so swiftly, and (b) at all?! Have the Cybermen been dosing the base with mind confusing drugs (which might have been influencing Jarvis Bennet), and have they destroyed the star for separate reasons of their own?]
Goofs
The Cybermen's control device refers to them being aboard the Voyager, rather than the Silver Carrier.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Patrick Troughton
Jamie - Frazer Hines
Victoria - Deborah Watling Deborah Watling received an on-screen credit on Episode 1 for her appearance as Victoria in the reprise from the end of Fury from the Deep.
Armand Vallance - Derrick Gilbert
Bill Duggan - Kenneth Watson
Chang - Peter Laird
Cyberman - Jerry Holmes
Cyberman - Gordon Stothard
Dr. Gemma Corwyn - Anne Ridler
Elton Laleham - Michael Goldie
Enrico Casali - Donald Sumpter
Jarvis Bennett - Michael Turner
Kemel Rudkin - Kevork Malikyan
Sean Flannigan - James Mellor
Servo Robot - Freddie Foote
Tanya Lernov - Clare Jenkins
Voice - Peter Hawkins
Voice - Roy Skelton
Zoe - Wendy Padbury from Episode two
Crew
Director - Tristan de Vere Cole
The Wheel in Space