The Wheel in Space Episode 6

The one where the Cybermen show up in force...

It's the Season 5 finale! Don't expect anything too special though, judging on the previous five episodes. Doctor Who could do finales well, even in the 1960s (look at The Evil of the Daleks and The War Games for instance, and for a great example of a mid-season finale, look no further than Destruction of Time). However, The Wheel in Space brings Season 5 to a very disappointing end after a run of excellent serials through 1967-68.

The Doctor's ridiculous idea of sending two novice spacewalkers over to the Silver Carrier to get his Time Vector Generator takes a slightly darker turn when our hero openly admits that risking Jamie and Zoe's lives is worth it to save the lives of many. He's right, of course - maybe - but it's still surprising that it's his best friend he's willing to risk, and it gives this impiest of Doctors a darker tinge at the edges. However, this Doctor does not take the deaths of others lightly (as some Doctors do), and the moment he breaks the news of Gemma's demise to the others is a brief yet poignant counterpoint to his earlier pragmatism.

The Wheel in Space Episode 5

The one where the Cybermen kill the best character in the story...

I'll never forgive them. Never. It happens right at the end of the episode, but I'm going to address it straight away here: the Cybermen kill Dr Gemma Corwyn. She dies. The best character in the story, the best written and acted by far, and the silver giants go and murder her. I'm not happy.

These Cybermen are a pale imitation of their former glory. The best Cybermen so far for me were in The Moonbase, because they had a very definite and clear plan, and they didn't allow anything or anyone to divert their course. If the humans hit back in some way, they merely regrouped and returned in greater force. If help came from another source, they merely destroyed that help. But here, they lurk off-stage, never getting anywhere very fast. Some might say they're more threatening for the fact we don't see them as much, or that they are backstage rather than front and centre. I disagree. They're Cybermen, they're Doctor Who monsters, they need to smash through some doors or take over a control room or something. But instead they merely loiter.

The Wheel in Space Episode 4

The one where the Cybermen incinerate a corpse...

The Wheel in Space is written "by David Whitaker from a story by Kit Pedler", apparently. What story?! There's very little in this serial to show that it's been written by one of Doctor Who's finest scribes, the man who helped shape and sculpt the stories of Doctor Who's debut season, the man who wrote some of my favourite Doctor Who stories of the 1960s (The Rescue, The Evil of the Daleks, The Enemy of the World). A man who I believe understood Doctor Who on a fundamental level, and knew what made it work, and also what made good drama.

But The Wheel in Space is not good drama. It's laborious, runaround, talky, nonsensical hogwash. It feels like somebody pretending to write like Whitaker, so we've got a many and varied crew aboard the Wheel, but they have little of the Whitaker sparkle that turns them from mere names on the page into real people, with personalities and backgrounds (except, perhaps, the widowed Gemma). Whitaker was known for writing stories with interesting and realistic characters, and engaging plots, such as The Crusade, The Power of the Daleks and The Enemy of the World (and The Ambassadors of Death to come). But The Wheel in Space is just a mess, as if the input of Kit Pedler's "story idea" has muffled Whitaker's usually sparkling talent. Somehow I doubt that's to blame, but it sure feels like something went very wrong in the script development process for it to end up this messy.

The Wheel in Space Episode 3

The one where the Doctor stays in bed all day...

What exactly are those Cyber-egg things? We've never seen the Cybermen "born" in this way before. The original white spheres came out of a pod in the hangar, which we can assume the crew of the Silver Carrier either took on board in space, or brought from Earth before setting out for Station 5. And these two Cybermen, now grown from lickle foetuses to full men, came from the spheres, which appeared to grow in size by absorbing energy from the ship itself. I think.

In fact, when you actually sit and think about what the Cybermen are up to, it doesn't make very much logical sense (and these guys are supposed to be the most logical creatures in the cosmos!). They arrive aboard the Silver Carrier inside little spheres, which then absorb the power of the ship to grow in size. Two Cybermen then pop out and take control of the ship (inexplicably taking the weight off their cybernetic limbs by sitting down). Meanwhile, some other spheres have floated across the void and absorbed themselves into the Wheel, seemingly spawning Cybermats who then proceed to destroy the Wheel's stock of bernalium. The loss of bernalium means the Wheel is unable to use its x-ray laser, leaving the Cybermen to hope/ expect that the humans will space-walk over to the Silver Carrier to see if there's any bernalium on board there.

The Wheel in Space Episode 2

The one where we meet a know-it-all librarian called Zoe...

I think the designers and directors of Season 5 had "busy and bustling control room" off to a fine art, and did it very well. Whether it's Britannicus Base, the Eurogas oil refinery, or the Wheel, they all feel authentic, a convincing place of work. This episode opens with an extremely busy workforce who, by the sound of it, love flicking switches on and off repeatedly. It's great to finally get some new characters to get to know after the lethargic introduction of episode 1, and although they're not fleshed out all that much, already we've got Leo Ryan the ladies' man, and Tanya Lernov, the ladies' man's lady.

Their boss Jarvis Bennett is yet another brusque commander type so typical of this season, a man far too convinced of his own opinions and judgements to possibly consider those of his colleagues (echoes of that Season 5 stalwart, the Conceited Authority Figure; see also Klieg, Clent and Robson). He is adamant he wants to blow up the Silver Carrier before it careers headlong into the Wheel, and he and Leo are very keen on seeing the big bang it'll make in space. But it's the ladies on the staff who are more cautious, as first Tanya and then Gemma voice their concern that the Silver Carrier may not be empty. This is a very real concern, because I see absolutely no good reason why Bennett assumes it is empty.

The Wheel in Space Episode 1

The one where not very much happens...

After a run of stories which seem quite modern and contemporary for the time (stories set in Earth's present, near and far future), this episode feels like an echo from Doctor Who's past, as if it was a leftover script from Season 1. It reminded me very much of The Daleks and The Sensorites. It has that slow-burn exploration of a seemingly abandoned location, but sadly with this particular exploration, there isn't very much to find, and it proves really quite tedious at times.

The first thing that took me back to the Hartnell era was, of course, the fluid link, which vaporises and gives off a toxic mercury gas which the Doctor and Jamie have to be careful not to breath in. The Doctor's rather extreme reaction is to dismantle the time vector generator, which essentially disconnects the TARDIS's interior dimension from the exterior dimension. Suddenly, the TARDIS interior begins to shrink - the "walls shimmer and fold in on themselves", as Wendy Padbury's soundtrack narration puts it - and the Doctor and Jamie have to get out of the Ship before they're presumably squished.