Doctor Who/Recap/S5/E07 The Wheel in Space
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.
Jamie: Just you watch your lip or I'll put you across my knee and larrap you. |
Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority.
—The Doctor delivers a Take That to rival show Star Trek: The Original Series...
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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. Most of the rest of the crew are being hypnotically controlled by the Cybermats, 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 a previous adventure to demonstrate the dangers. She still seems keen, so they agree to let her come along.
Tropes
- Action Figure Speech
- Auto Kitchen: The spaceship that the Doctor and Jamie spend Episode 1 on has one.
- But This Is Ridiculous: Jamie, on discovering that people in the future eat cube-shaped Food Pills: "I've heard of a square meal, but this is ridiculous!"
- Emotionless Girl: Zoe, in her first couple of episodes.
- Freak-Out: Jarvis Bennett is the latest in a series of base officers to go nuts during this season.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Gemma Corwyn
- Line-of-Sight Name: Jamie coins the long-running "John Smith" alias for the Doctor from a piece of medical equipment.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The Cybermen's plan requires meteor showers—which they cause by blowing up distant stars.
- Space Clothes: Zoe's catsuits are fondly remembered by fandom.
- Tainted Veins
- Tin Can Robot: The servo robot in episode 1.
- Zeerust: Never mind Rose, Zoe was actually the first 21st century companion. A different, much groovier 21st century, featuring Space Clothes, Raygun Gothic, and Food Pills. Zoe probably played with jetpacks when she was a kid, it's just not mentioned...