Day 104 — April 14th 2021
The Wheel in Space Episodes One and Two
The Wheel in Space — Episode One
Another missing Troughton six-parter, another attempt to watch the episode in a slightly different way. Having not been overly impressed with the animation route for Fury From the Deep, I decided to give this episode a go as a recon — specifically the recon created as a BritBox exclusive. I figure that I already own basically every other episode that they’ve got on the service so I might as well give the exclusive content a whirl!
I’ll say that I’ve come away still not a massive fan of recons, but it was decent enough, and certainly a more rounded effort than was allowed for The Underwater Menace. I largely found myself amused by trying to spot the sources for some of the shots used here that I know aren’t tele-snaps from this episode. ‘That’s a promotional photo…’, ‘That’s a shot from Episode Three that they’ve photoshopped his jacket onto…’. I certainly enjoyed it more than the animation the other day, but I’ll be sticking with the Narrated Soundtracks for the remainder of the missing episodes. At least I can say I’ve been trying new things, though!
Trying new things, ironically, isn’t really something that can be said for this episode. It’s a bizarre throwback to the very earliest days of Doctor Who, and watching this you’d be forgiven for thinking that David Whitaker might not have seen the show since he departed in 1964.
We have talk of the Fault Locator (not mentioned in a long time), the fluid link (last seen in The Daleks), the TARDIS scanner showing pictures of things that are definitely not outside in an attempt to warn Doctor Who of danger (The Edge of Destruction) and even the Food Machine, which I don’t think has popped up since The Space Museum. You’ve even got the TARDIS crew spending almost the entire episode on their own exploring a new location, which is a fairly Season One thing to do, too.
None of this is a bad thing as such, but it does all add up to the episode feeling curiously out of place, as does the very fact that it’s set aboard a spaceship. With the exception of The Tomb of the Cybermen we’ve spent all of Season Five on Earth (a fact that was pointed out in both The Web of Fear and Fury From the Deep in a way that makes you expect they’re trying to make a point, but which then doesn’t go anywhere). Just seeing Doctor Who and Jamie aboard a spaceship feels strange.
Also strange to me, from a production standpoint, is that we introduce the guest cast for the story with only four minutes of the episode remaining. When listening I assumed we’d have a case as in The Enemy of the World, where footage would be recorded alongside another episode and then added into this one… but no! The camera script reveals that the crew of the Wheel really were in studio on April 5th to record scenes 40, 42 and 43 of this episode. I imagine they spent most of the week’s rehearsals sat at the side of the room twiddling their thumbs!
It’s an unusual choice to make with the episode. While it’s nice to have Doctor Who and Jamie exploring on their own for so long, I feel as though we should be cutting back and forth a little more with the guest cast. I’m guessing the intention is to make them feel isolated and cut off, but it just sort of leaves things feeling… slow. Troughton and Hines are, obviously, a brilliant pairing. But even they struggle to keep the interest going for a full 19 minutes with only themselves and the not-so-threatening Servo Robot to fill the screen.
An unusual sort of start, and while I’m not sure I’ve enjoyed it I’m also not sure that I haven’t. A 5/10, I think.
The Wheel in Space — Episode Two
Ooh, Season Five has been doing so well. Until now the lowest score I’d given for an episode this season was 4/10 for two episodes of The Enemy of the World, but this episode has committed the cardinal sin for Doctor Who episodes; It’s been boring.
I said under Episode One that this felt like a strange setting to see Doctor Who and Jamie in, and that continues to be the case here but with the whole setting being made to seem perhaps a bit too real. There’s fairly lengthy sequences of the Wheel crew going about their work which feel like they grind the whole thing to a halt. There’s not a lot of excitement in any of the exchanges.
And then there’s Zoe.
One of the brilliant things about doing a Doctor Who marathon like this is that you become so attached to the companions and the various incarnations of Doctor Who in a way that you simply don’t when watching stories in a random order. At various points in the last three months it’s felt inconceivable that the programme can continue to work for me without Susan/Vicki/Steven/Ben and Polly or Victoria. I’ve loved them all and found new appreciation for each of them.
So it doesn’t help that Zoe gets introduced here as fairly unlikeable, and being just as boring as everyone else aboard the Wheel. Take, for example, Jamie’s introduction to Duggan;
Duggan: ‘How do you like the Greenhouse?’
Jamie: ‘Do you collect these?’
Duggan: ‘No, they’re floating seeds. The only place they flourish is down here in the power room. Hey, that one comes all the way from Venus. Can you imagine that? All those millions of miles away.’
Zoe: ‘24,564,000 miles at perihelion and 161,350,000 miles at aphelion.’
I understand that they want to establish that she’s very clever and has a good mind for facts and figures, but she just comes across as more a plot device than an actual character. Especially after they worked so hard to make Victoria’s departure yesterday feel so human and genuinely emotional.
In fairness, Jamie undercuts Zoe’s pomp there in the very next line (‘Oh, I was dying to know that…’) but it’s not enough for me. Zoe is the first companion so far whom I’ve not taken to immediately.
A bit of a rough start for the final story of the season, and a 3/10 for this episode.
