Day 209: The Wheel In Space Episode 6

And at the conclusion of this story, the TARDIS gains a new crewmember, in the form of Zoe Heriot. Already, I instantly prefer her to Victoria, due to the way in which her character has been presented. Zoe is a futuristic character, who takes no nonsense from either Jamie or the Doctor. She looks down on Jamie due to his poor knowledge, and yet she is able to defer to him in times when more basic human feelings are needed, such as having trust in the Doctor, or alternatively in the things for which Jamie knwos but Zoe doesn't. Already, an interesting dynamic has been set up between these two characters that allows them to be in conflict and still have a strong mutual respect for each other. Likewise, Zoe fails to see the playfulness within the Doctor, and yet she knows thta he is te more intelligent of the two. And we know that by starting this character as someone who is fond of logic, we're going to be able to see their character develop as they break out from the dull world of The Wheel in Space and move onto more exciting times.

Day 208: The Wheel In Space Episode 5

Not much of note happens in this episode, so I'm going to cheat. Big Finish Productions is a company that produces licensed audio adventures about a vast array of series, including Doctor Who. Some of their plays deal with the world of The Wheel In Space, because it's actually an incredibly depressing world. There's a young character, Zoe, who is a genius, created to have perfect recall and a completely mathematical mind. And she's been brainwashed to do this, taken at a young age for the good of the world. A young child has been forced into this life, having pieces of their mind like emotion and irreverence replaced with logic. Big Finish deals with this sort of thing in plays such as The Uncertainty Principle or The Memory Cheats, both of which deal with Zoe trying to fight the world that she has been brought up in, as she has long since realised that this is no way to run a society. To tie this back into The Wheel In Space, we can see that this is a world which has been constructed well, and whilst it's not as well done as Whitaker's previous efforts, such as The Power of the Daleks, it still has hints of something lurking behind the scenes, ideas that were never fully realised. Whitaker remains a good writer, it's just that the good writer is slowly fading away, so we need some more writers to take his place

Day 207: The Wheel In Space Episode 4

Let's have a talk about Jarvis, the Wheel's neurotic controller. He's such an interesting character because of what he isn't, rather than what he could be. He's a small man, who wanders about shouting and generally being suspicious of everything that's happening, yet stubbornly refusing to believe anything that falls outside of the realm of the laws of Physics, meaning that he doesn't believe that there is a Cyber-invasion, choosing instead to spend his time in opposition to the Doctor and all of his new allies whom he has gathered to fight the Cyber-Force. What's interesting though is the fact that he is an anti-Captain Kirk. Captain Kirk represents your stereotypical hero, a man who is intelligent, caring and more than willing to fight if needs must. He's what you think of when you consider a spaceship captain, which indicates that Jarvis has been written such that all of the stereotypical captain traits have been chucked out of the window and replaced with their opposites, to show the differences between what normal writers for television series would do, and what Doctor Who writers can do.

And it is at this exact moment that I suddenly realised: in over half of the stories this series, we've dealt with slightly insane leaders of scientific groups. It's a testament to how well defined each of them are that I didn't realise this sooner, but also worth pointing out that I generally write these quite late at night, showing that my mental faculties aren't really up to scratch at this time...

Day 206: The Wheel In Space Episode 3

Aww, it's destroyed everything that you hold
dear in the cutest way possible

The Cybermen make a return appearance in this story, as do their little friends, the Cybermats. The Cybermats somehow escaped my attention when we first met them in The Tomb of the Cybermen, so I should probably mention them here. They are fundamentally cute creatures, and it's clear that they have been written in this way, in order to create a new sense of horror as these cute little things attack you and kill you horribly. Except they don't really look that cute, instead they look like a toy (almost as if they were created to be toys...). Nor do they look particularly menacing either, meaning that the monsters tend to fail. That said, they're reasonably well directed in this story, or they would be if one of the crew members who was killed by them wasn't one of the hammiest actors that the series has had to date. but it's hard to get past these creatures who were probably just created to act as toys.

Day 205: The Wheel In Space Episode 2

Of note in this episode is the first occasion where the pseudonym Dr John Smith is used to cover the fact that the Doctor's name is not generally told to people. It's used in a hurried fashion, as Jamie has to quickly come up with a solution to the problem that has arisen, and brings up the fact that this whole thing about the Doctor having the pseudonym of John Smith is not an idea that has been meticulously prepared. Instead, it's an idea that's been made up on the fly, to just answer someone as quickly as possible. What's also noticeable is how quickly this idea took off, as it becomes the go-to pseudonym, and given that the previous serial brought the sonic screwdriver, it's becoming apparent that the things that will become pure facts of Doctor Who at the moment are not going to be the monsters as much as they're going to be little details that flesh out the universe that is inhabited by the intrepid crew of the TARDIS.

Day 204: The Wheel In Space Episode 1

It's a return of David Whitaker to the writing fold, and a realisation of just how much Doctor Who has changed since Whitaker first wrote for the series. It's because he's writing it very much in the traditional sense of how Doctor Who used to be, a first episode that consists of the regular cast (in this case the Doctor and Jamie) exploring their surroundings, with not much else in it. And back in those days, it was OK, because we were able to appreciate that it takes time to tell a story and that we need to set the scene before we can begin. But now, we've realised that there are other ways of doing this. We can, for instance, allow for the situation to be discovered through taking part in the situation and using this as a springboard to meeting characters and discussing the problems that are occurring. This can be seen in 'The Ice Warriors', which begins with the Doctor meeting the crew members, and discovering about the world that he's landed himself in through expository dialogue. Here, on the other hand, we're treated to the Doctor and Jamie landing on a ship, and then exploring the empty sip for 15 minutes. There's a brief stab at action when a pitifully slow robot attacks them, and Troughton begins to fall unconscious towards the end, but aside from that, it comes across as a very dull piece of work. But the odd thing is, that this wouldn't have seemed as dull 200 episodes ago, giving us a concrete example of just how much the show has developed over the course of the five or so years that it's been on the air. It's an interesting to think about, but not so much to watch.