The Wheel in Space
Story 43, Episodes 204-210, Season 5 Episodes 32-37
Doctor: The Second Doctor
Companions: Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot
Base under siege stories continue to get less and less original as Season 5 sinks to a dismal conclusion.
The Review
Well, we learned a good lesson: you can’t just add Cybermen to a story and hope it all works out. The biggest problem with The Wheel in Space is nothing really happens, and everything that does we’ve seen before. The biggest problem with bad classic Who episodes is that they’re aggressively bad, they just don’t justify the length. The first episode of the Doctor and Jamie aboard an abandoned rocket could’ve been two minutes. Most of the story is spent doing the old rigamarole of trying to prove that the enemy is real to the crew of wherever they are, find whatever it is they’re planning, and taking them out. For the fourth time in two seasons, it’s the Cybermen, and the show has little clue how to make them interesting. Now they mind-control humans, but we saw seaweed do that more effectively just last week.
The new companion, Zoe, seems to be quite young. Wendy Padbury was 21 at the time, but sure seems younger. Compared to Victoria’s relative lack of knowledge, the clear choice was a genius in Zoe (even if she’s lacking the practical knowledge that Jamie is here to provide). Once again, episode two is Troughton-less giving him a well deserved break, but it also means that the episode is quite dull. This is maybe the least interesting classic story I’ve watched, and it had Cybermen! At least Zoe has good bits using her excellent math skills to prove things about the Cybermen plan. She also laughs at Jamie’s kilt, which is quite good. Clearly the goal for next season is finding something else to do other than a base under siege, because it is just out of steam.
This is being animated, so when new animated versions come out I’ll do re-reviews. It will probably score a little higher.
6/10. It’s just boring.
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 