The Wheel in Space

I think this is the first time I've done one of these from audio CDs. I put it on in the car and, after two run throughs, I felt compelled to watched the two surviving episodes on DVD. There seemed to be... potential in this tale of cold logic, x-ray lasers and robots which can brainwash you just by pointing at your face. 

1. The serial sets its stall out when Jamie tells Zoë he’ll "put you across my knee and larrup you" and she replies "This is going to be fun!"

2. Episode One is pure padding. There are lots of stories where this is said (including some of the single episode stories in New Who) but never is it as true as the W in S. The Doctor and Jamie wander around a rocket. A robot follows them. It does nothing, they eat cubes of miscellaneous space food. Cliff hanger.

3. Still on the rocket, episode two does at least give us one of the classic Terrance Dicks’ anecdotes ("…every so often Jamie lifted the Doctor’s blanket up and said ‘Och – he’s fine’…") as heard in every single DVD commentary.

4. It was nice of the production team to ensure that future generations of fiction writers didn’t have an awkward and messy gap where the Doctor and Jamie travelled together. They would never do anything to suggest their relationship could be anything other than healthy chums.

5. The Cybermen don’t appear until episode three and then they spend the entire half hour ticking things off lists and looking pleased with themselves. I think they must've been on a course.

6. Why do the Cybermen hide themselves in giant eggs? I know it makes for an unusual end of episode treat but it remains silly. Unless there is a giant Queen Cyberman laying eggs in a huge cyber-nest on Telos. There’s an idea for the next Christmas special. The Queen Cyberman to be voiced by Roger Lloyd Pack, naturally.

7. The cyber-plan is utterly logical and well planned but I'm still not sure why they bother. It makes for an exciting base under siege drama (perhaps the best of this era) but it lacks that all important point which turns a good plan into a really good plan.

8. The time vector generator is basically a magic wand. Here is a thing which makes the Tardis massive inside but if removed, it is a torch, a weapon, a power source and probably makes rabbits appear from hats (though not in episodes 3 or 6 which still exist on video tape).

9. The TVG conversation prompts the Doctor to say that removing it turns the Tardis into "a police box again" - a line which would've fuelled endless online debate if the internet had existed. THE FILMS ARE CANON~!

10. Only David Whitaker would've remembered that the Tardis needs mercury for an unspecified but important purpose. It makes the Doctor look like a piece of cheese for getting caught out twice though.

11. Quick set plastic is used to kill Cybermen and Cybermats. Why did no one ever think of using this again? It’s brilliant. Perhaps the foamy white spray was a little suggestive for some but it is about the most convincing way of killing the metal buggers yet presented.

12. For this was the story where we discovered Cybermen are allergic to electricity too. So that's radiation, gravity and electricity. Not great for a robotic space-faring race. No wonder they spread the rumour that they hated gold - it is somehow less embarrassing. Slightly.

13. Speaking of embarrassing technology, the food machine breaks wind when it delivers the meal. Nothing is more likely to put you off your food than a flatulent eWaiter. Kenneth Williams has a good anecdote to back that up. I think it involved some old ham and Dame Edith Evans.

14. The Doctor’s soubriquet – John Smith – comes from Jamie reading the name on a machine. It’s a good job British firms make computers in the future or he could've been known as Doctor Fujiwara Yamaha for the next 40 years.

15. Zoë works in the Parapsychology Library on board the Wheel. This makes no sense. Parapsychology is the study of ESP and second sight and all that hand-holding, Derek Acorah type nonsense. It couldn’t have much less to do with astrophysics. It's odd enough that she's doing "an RNA analysis" when we first meet her but contacting the dead and making spoons bend is too silly.

16. Speaking of Zoë, I think it was most unfair of Leo to describe Zoë as "all brain and no heart". He completely ignored her arse, which is lovely.

17. Leo is in no position to criticise anyone – his hair is made of fused nylon and might as well have been borrowed from a ventriloquist’s dummy for the month.

18. While we’re criticising peoples appearance, Doctor Corwyn looks like a Vulcan

See?

19. More innuendo – the Doctor says of himself and Jamie "Well, we keep fit one way or another." He either means running up and down corridors while being chased by monsters or shagging while the Tardis is in flight. That’s what’s known as a multilayered script – the children take it one way, the adults another. And me, somewhere in between, deliberately misconstrues it for low comic effect.

20. Though I have never bought into the "sexual air supply" confusion. Judge for yourself. It clearly... one or the other... 

21. If we’re going to be all multimedia about it, Rudkin’s comical but horrific demise is worthy of an entire edition of Frozen in Time all to itself.

22. The Cybermen nodding from the waist to show who is speaking is unacceptable. It makes them look like the Butlers of Death.

23. Ditto their spaceship – the centrepiece of the exciting story finale – looking like a hairbrush.

24. I hadn’t watched the episodes for many years – certainly not since the days of fuzzy old VHS. So listening to them on CD made me imagine it somewhat differently. I don’t have a hugely visual imagination and I know more than enough about 60s Doctor Who but it still looked small when I finally watched the two surviving segments on DVD.

It is slow but ambitious - the Wheel in Space had a really good go at filling six weeks with exciting space adventure. The new series would've condensed everything into 45 minutes and still had time for some sexual tension between the Doctor and Donna, a trailer for next week and an announcement of everything the BBC will be broadcasting for the next thirty six hours. I wish all six episodes still existed - then I'd probably love it as much as the Seeds of Death. As it is, it's a jolly good six parter whose flaws are all part of the fun.

"Och, I give oop, Doctor" protested a brain weary Jamie. "Where ARE yer legs?"