[[WMG:[[center:[-''[[Series/DoctorWho Doctor Who]]'' [[Recap/DoctorWho recap index]]\\
'''Second Doctor Era'''\\
'''Season 5:''' [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E1TheTombOfTheCybermen 1]] | [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E2TheAbominableSnowmen 2]] | [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E3TheIceWarriors 3]] | [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E4TheEnemyOfTheWorld 4]] | [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E5TheWebOfFear 5]] | [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E6FuryFromTheDeep 6]] | '''7'''\\
'''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E1TheSmugglers <<< Season 4]]''' | '''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E1TheDominators Season 6 >>>]]''']]-]]]
!The Wheel in Space
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zoe_smile_smaller_9440.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:And here's Zoe, showing off the {{Zeerust}}-equivalent to the iPod.]]
->Written by Creator/DavidWhitaker\\
Directed by Tristan de Vere Cole\\
'''Production code:''' SS\\
'''Air dates:''' 27 April - 1 June 1968\\
'''Number of episodes:''' 6

->'''Jamie:''' Just you watch your lip or I'll put you across my knee and larrap you.\\
'''Zoe:''' Oh, this is going to be fun. I shall learn a lot from you.

%%
%% One quote is enough. Others can go in Quotes/DoctorWho.
%%

JustForFun/TheOneWith gyrating Cybermen.
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The Doctor and Jamie arrive on a spaceship and are attacked by a servo robot. Contacting a nearby space station, simply known as "the Wheel", they are rescued, but needless to say, more peril awaits.

The spaceship also releases some Cybermats which travel to the station and begin to prepare for an attack by the Cybermen. Meanwhile the Doctor and Jamie meet the crew, including a young teenage mathematical genius called Zoe Heriot. Some of the rest of the crew are being hypnotically controlled by the Cybermen, and the Doctor sends Jamie and Zoe to fetch a piece of phlebotinum from the TARDIS which will allow him to beef up the station's laser enough to destroy the approaching cyber-fleet.

Zoe stows away on the TARDIS, but is discovered by the Doctor who asks if she really wants to come with them, and shows a clip of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E9TheEvilOfTheDaleks a previous adventure]] to demonstrate the dangers. She still seems keen, so they agree to let her come along.[[note]]On the original broadcast, this was followed immediately after by a re-run of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E9TheEvilOfTheDaleks The Evil of the Daleks]]" in its entirety, with linking narration by Creator/PatrickTroughton and Creator/WendyPadbury establishing that this is meant to be the full extent of what the Doctor showed Zoe.[[/note]]

The first ten minutes of it were reconstructed in (colour) animation in 2018, as an audition piece for the animators of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E7TheMacraTerror The Macra Terror]]", and can be found on that DVD.

!!Tropes
* ActionFigureSpeech: The Cybermen indicate they are speaking by rocking their entire upper bodies back and forth. Their air of menace rather suffers as a result.
* AllThereInTheManual: Later expanded universe sources, ''Doctor Who: Cybermen'' and its audio adaptation ''AudioPlay/TheArcHiveTapes'', have InUniverse historians identify these Cybermen as the "Late [=CyberFaction=]"[[note]][=CyberFaction=] being the Cybermen who took their upgrades up to eleven and left Mondas behind.[[/note]] following the Early [=CyberFaction=], who appear in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E3TheInvasion The Invasion]]". The [=CyberFaction=] later upgrades to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E6TheMoonbase yet another form]] which [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E1TheTombOfTheCybermen settles on the planet Telos]], becoming the [=CyberTelosians=].
* AutoKitchen: The spaceship that the Doctor and Jamie spend Episode 1 on has one.
* BigBad: The Cyber-Planner, who directs the Cybermen on the Silver Carrier and the Wheel from their mother ship.
* BiggerOnTheInside: The Doctor removes the component that allows the TARDIS to be dimensionally transcendental, so the inside reverts to a simple police box interior.
* BookEnds: Season 5 [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E1TheTombOfTheCybermen begins]] and ends with a Cyberman story.
* BrokenAesop: The Doctor's "Logic, my dear Zoe..." line is intended to show that Zoe is too sure of herself, and logic won't necessarily lead one to the right answer. The problem is that her reasoning isn't wrong, and logic ''has'' led her to the right answer: the Silver Carrier's arrival was not an accident.
* CallBack:
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E2TheDaleks The need for mercury to fix the TARDIS was also the reasoning used by the First Doctor to explore the Dalek city on Skaro]].
** To demonstrate the danger he faces on his travels to Zoe, the Doctor shows her the cliffhanger from Episode One of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E9TheEvilOfTheDaleks "The Evil of the Daleks"]]. On the original broadcast, the end of this serial was directly followed up by a complete re-airing of "Evil" from front-to-back, one of the few reruns ''Doctor Who'' ever got during its original run, with Creator/PatrickTroughton and Creator/WendyPadbury [[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x399dmm voicing over]] the opening moments in-character as the Doctor and Zoe to explain that, although "Wheel" only showed a brief excerpt (for runtime purposes), in actuality the Doctor really did show Zoe the full events of his last confrontation with the Daleks.
* ComplexityAddiction: So, the Cybermen's plan: Capture the ''Silver Carrier'' and have the Servo-Robot pilot it towards the Wheel. When nearby, it releases tiny pods across space that go into the Wheel and hatch Cybermats. The Cybermats then consume the Wheel's stocks of bernalium. Meanwhile, the Cybermen ionise a star to (somehow) divert an asteroid storm towards the Wheel. The crew of the Wheel will notice this, but be unable to use their defensive laser without bernalium. They will then discover that the ''Silver Carrier'' has plenty of bernalium on board, so will go over to get it. Two Cybermen have hatched out from large egg-like pods aboard the Silver Carrier and take control of the crewmembers who come for the bernalium, having them smuggle them back to the Wheel. These Cybermen will then poison the Wheel's oxygen supply, killing the crew. The Cybermen will then be able to use the Wheel as a beacon for their fleet. All of which raises the question: if they want a beacon, why not just build one? [[http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2012/06/doctor-who-210-wheel-in-space-part-5.html Siskoid's Blog of Geekery]] sums it up pretty well.
* CostumeEvolution: This story features a one-off redesign of the Cybermen that makes them even sleeker-looking and puts large thimbles on the ends of their once-pointy fingers. Most significantly, it ditches the simplistic facial design that had been in place since [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]] in favor of the "teardrop" design that would become commonplace for most future versions of the Cybermen (barring the "hazmat suit" rendition used throughout the '80s). Unusually, this design also features a teardrop on the bottoms of the Cybermen's mouths, a trait that later designs would quietly ditch.
* CustomUniform: Zoe's jumpsuit is a different design from the other characters'.
* DiesWideOpen: How Jamie and Zoe find the body of Gemma Corwyn.
* EarlyInstalmentWeirdness: The Doctor offers Jamie a lemon sherbet rather than a jelly baby.
* EmotionlessGirl: Zoe, in her first couple of episodes.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Zoe's first scene has her relay instructions from her boss, only to be distracted by a mathematical problem she is completing in her head, establishing her as a human calculator.
* FakeShemp: A double plays the unconscious Doctor in the second episode. Similarly, Anne Ridler was not hired for Episode Six so the dead Gemma Corwyn is represented by a double and photographs of Ridler are used for close-ups of Corwyn's body.
* FoodPills: The Doctor and Jamie, exploring a deserted spaceship, discovers a machine that dispenses cube-shaped food pills.
* FreakOut: Jarvis Bennett is the latest in a series of base officers to go nuts during this season.
* HeroicSacrifice: Gemma Corwyn
* LineOfSightAlias: Jamie coins the long-running "[[MrSmith John Smith]]" alias for the Doctor from a piece of nearby medical equipment. Needless to say, this only raises Dr. Corwyn's suspicions.
* MathematiciansAnswer:
-->'''Zoe:''' This Doctor friend of yours. Is he a scientist?\\
'''Jamie:''' He is in a way I suppose, yes.\\
'''Zoe:''' What's his speciality?\\
'''Jamie:''' His what?\\
'''Zoe:''' Well, is he a physicist, biochemist, astronomer, biometrician?\\
'''Jamie:''' [[OmnidisciplinaryScientist Yes, he is.]]
* MeaningfulName: The Cybermen are often referred to in titles by the word silver (the Silver Menace, Nightmare in Silver, the Silver Turk, and so forth). So what's the name of the spaceship they use to TrojanHorse their way aboard the Wheel? The ''Silver Carrier'', of course.
* {{Retirony}}: Zig-zagged with Flannigan. He's attacked almost immediately after declaring he's eager for a year's leave back on Earth, but manages to fight and even (indirectly) kill one of his attackers. He's then subjected to Cyberman control. Later he's the first to be removed from Cyberman control, ultimately subverting the trope.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: The Cybermen's plan requires meteor showers -- which they cause by ''blowing up distant stars''.
* SpaceClothes: [[MsFanservice Zoe's]] [[FutureSpandex catsuits]] are fondly remembered by fandom.
* SpecialEditionTitle: In the opening titles for all six episodes, the usual time tunnel sequence gradually fades out into a shot of the Wheel, while the theme music is still playing; the story title, episode number and writer are displayed over this shot of the Wheel rather than in the time tunnel sequence.
* TaintedVeins
* TakeThat: One of the Doctor's lines to Zoe appears to be a dig at [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries a certain other space travel TV show of the time]] who had a popular character who was all about following logic.
--> '''The Doctor:''' Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority.
* TinCanRobot: The servo robot in Episode 1.
* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: It's not noticeable in the existing episode, but Laleham provides another in a long line of godawful American accents--this time a "Southern" one.
* {{Yellowface}}: The Wheel featured amongst its multinational crew a Chinese character, Chang, played by a white actor, Peter Laird, in yellowface, adopting an excruciatingly fake AsianSpeekeeEngrish accent.
* {{Zeerust}}: Never mind Rose, Zoe was actually the first 21st century companion. A different, much groovier 21st century, featuring SpaceClothes, RaygunGothic, and FoodPills. Zoe probably played with [[IWantMyJetpack jetpacks]] when she was a kid, it's just not mentioned...
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