Day 106 — April 16th 2021
The Wheel in Space Episodes Five and Six
The Wheel in Space — Episode Five
I’ve genuinely not got an awful lot to say about this episode. I don’t know what it is about The Wheel in Space, but I just can’t seem to engage with it on any level. I’m really disappointed because I love the Cybermen, I love David Whittaker and I’ve loved Season Five. For whatever reason I seem to have gotten bored of the story very early on and I’ve totally failed to recover from that.
There’s even a point in this episode, captured by the tele-snaps, when Patrick Troughton seems to look directly down the camera with an expression of ‘yes, I’m bored, too…’.
There just doesn’t seem to be an awful lot going on — in spite of a Cyberman invasion — and lots of tedious talking about things that aren’t a great deal of interest. I’ve tried, I really have, but I think The Wheel in Space might be a write off. I’m going with a 2/10 for this episode.
In the dim and distant year of 2005 the first series of the New Testament had really ignited my love for Doctor Who. I’d been dipping into some of the archive material on and off for about 18 months already, but it was that first series that really made me A Fan. So when I discovered Doctor Who Magazine in the spring of 2005, it opened my eyes to other parts of fandom and I wrote in.
Specifically, I wrote in to give my (very few) thoughts about the recently-revealed design of the Cybermen to feature in the 2006 series. I read the letter back now and I cringe;
Hmm, I don’t know if I like them or not! I like the faces, the eyes and mouth are good — back to a more classic ‘Second Doctor’ style.
I went on, but that’s the pertinent bit. Oh, look at me pretending to know what I’m talking about. I had seen The Tomb of the Cybermen by this point, but I’d not seen any other Second Doctor Cyberman stories. Heck, I’m not sure I’d seen any other Cyberman stories full stop. I just wanted to sound like I knew what I was going on about!
The Wheel in Space introduces a brand new design of the Cybermen, and it’s an evolution of the ones seen in the last two Cyberman stories. It’s a bit of a mixed bag for me, though. I do really like the teardrop on the eyes. I think it’s a great little design feature, and I’m glad they’ve retained it for all the new series designs. I’m less keen on the one underneath the mouth. Someone once said it looked like they were sticking their tongues out and I can’t un-see that now.
I’m also not a big fan of the new suits worn by this version — and retained for The Invasion, too. It makes it look a bit more obviously like a costume than the last design did. One final thing I’m not a fan of; the slightly odd corked fingers. I prefer the long design of the last version, and think that worked better when they shot electricity out of them.
That said, I prefer the rods used on the arms and legs in this design to the thicker pipes seen before. These look a bit more truly medical, and that helps sell the idea that these creatures have been created. I think my perfect design of 60s Cyberman would be a halfway house between the last version and this one… but not in the way that they Radio Times knocked up in 1970. Somehow that ends up looking the worst of them all!
This episode is something of a milestone in the marathon, because it’s the last missing episode for which we’ve got Tele-Snaps. John Cura continued to supply them to the Doctor Who team up to and including the third episode of The Mind Robber, after which I think he stopped providing the service due to his health — he died in April 1969, just after The War Games had begun broadcast.
The wealth of tele-snaps held by the BBC’s Written Archive Centre were discovered in the early 1990s, and by the time I discovered Doctor Who in 2003 they were almost all freely available to browse through on the old Doctor Who website. So for me they’ve always been part of the series. But I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated them quite as much as I have during this marathon.
The last time I worked my way through I didn’t really use the tele-snaps very much. We’ve already established that I’m not a huge fan of recons, and I don’t think it even occurred to me to look through them online at the time. The Doctor Who Magazine tele-snap specials came out that bit too late for me I think, but this time they’ve been treasured possessions, and they’re certainly looking pretty well-thumbed!
We talk a lot as Doctor Who fans about the missing episodes and how much we’d love to see them back. But I think we also forget just how lucky we are compared to several other shows from the same period. We can listen to the missing episodes thanks to fans who recorded the sound from their TVs on broadcast. There’s tele-snaps in existence for more missing episodes than not, we’ve got original scripts (something else I’ve enjoyed consulting this time around), and plenty of photography.
By contrast the first series of The Avengers has episodes which we know almost nothing about. There’s episodes for which we have production photographs but no script survives, so we can only speculate as to the details of what we’re missing. If only the production team there had employed Cura every week!
So even though the last time I’ll be referring to his work in this marathon is a fairly unspectacular episode, I wanted to take a moment to note the work John Cura did way back in the 1960s. I like to think that it would please him to know how invaluable his services really were in helping to preserve these little bits of history.
The Wheel in Space — Episode Six
Maybe I’ve simply been in a bad mood for the previous five episodes, but I think I’ve actually enjoyed this one. It’s certainly the best episode of The Wheel in Space, and I found things to like almost from the off.
The exploding meteors are fab, and Jamie and Zoe making their space walk is far more effective than the two Wheel crew members attempting the same thing a few episodes back. The later effect of the Cybermen doing a strange sort of chicken impression as they make their own space walk is bizarre… but I actually enjoyed it! Possibly in a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of way, but all the same. I’m a bit baffled that they decided to use the overlay effect to show them moving through space rather than sticking them on a black set as with the human characters, though.
The real highlight in this episode is something of an unusual thing to pick… but it’s Patrick Troughton acting on a video screen. It’s funny, I think I vaguely remember pointing that out the last time I did this episode, but then on this watch through I discovered just how prevalent video communicators are during the Troughton era, and started to wonder if I’d misremembered.
But no, he’s brilliant at it here. The key is that he doesn’t just stare blankly out of the screen as so many would, he’s made a note of where the other actors are positioned around the screen, and turns to face them as though he can genuinely see them. It’s a tiny little thing, and easily missed now in an era where video calls are common place, but it really does make all the difference, and I can honestly say it made me enjoy the episode more.
It’s not all sunshine and roses, though. This episode is still dull in places, and in unusual ways. Take for example the moment when one of the Wheel crew is forced to go through everyone on staff so the Cybermen can work out who it is that knows their ways. We’re treated to a fairly lengthy sequence where we do indeed get read a cast list one by one very slowly, with the Cybemen replying ‘Negative’ to each photograph in turn. It’s a mercy that we get to Doctor Who as quickly as we do, because it feels like it took an absolute age to get there already!
I really like the design of the Cyberplanner, but I can’t help feeling the character is a bit wasted in this one. It doesn’t do anything that couldn’t have been filled by any old Cyberman back on their ship, and that’s a shame. I’ll look forward to its return next week, where maybe it’ll get a bit more to do…!
One last thing which is rather lovely, but only with hindsight, is Jamie and Zoe’s ‘goodbye’;
Zoe: ‘So I’ve just got to go back?’
Jamie: ‘I’m afraid so.’
Zoe: ‘And you won’t tell me anything about this, what is it?’
Jamie: ‘Tardis.’
Zoe: ‘Oh, yes. I asked the Doctor what it meant. “Time And Relative Dimensions In Space”, he said.’
Jamie: ‘Er… yes.’
Zoe: ‘But you won’t explain it.’
Jamie: ‘Well, you see Zoe, it’s, well, it’s like two different worlds. Look, you’ve got yours and the Doctor and me have ours. Look, you’ve been. Well, look, Zoe, we won’t forget you.’
There’s a sad irony in that this isn’t goodbye, and that ultimately Jamie will end up forgetting Zoe, though not by choice.
I think I’m going to go with a 5/10 for this final episode. There’s more to like there than in any of the others in the story, but it’s still not a classic. A shame to see a season I’ve enjoyed so much go out with such a lacklustre bow.
