Production
Writing
The Wheel in Space is the fourth Doctor Who story to feature the Cybermen, after The Tenth Planet (1966), The Moonbase and The Tomb of the Cybermen (both 1967). [4] [5] The Cybermen were created by Kit Pedler (unofficial scientific adviser to the production team) and Gerry Davis (story editor) [6] as a replacement for the Daleks, the alien villains created by Terry Nation. Nation planned to capitalise on the Daleks' popularity by developing Dalek spin-off media, so he temporarily withdrew the villains' rights from the programme. [7] [8] Plans for a new Cybermen story were temporarily halted in August and September 1967 by a minor dispute over the Cybermen's rights and royalties. Pedler eventually accepted a halfshare of royalties, and in September he began developing the serial with the production team. In December, Nation was approached regarding a serial potentially featuring both Daleks and Cybermen, but he refused to allow the villains to appear together. [9]
This was the first Cybermen serial not written by either Pedler or Davis. [b] As Davis had left the programme to work on The First Lady , and Pedler lacked experience in writing for television, veteran Doctor Who screenwriter (and original story editor) David Whitaker was called upon to develop Pedler's notes into a finished script. The serial's working title was The Space Wheel. Pedler wanted the space station to be depicted with a degree of scientific accuracy. On 14 December, incoming story editor Derrick Sherwin formally commissioned Whitaker to write a six-part serial titled Dr Who and the Wheel in Space. [9] It follows the "base-under-siege" format which constitutes the majority of the Second Doctor's television stories. [15]
Not long before filming, many of the characters' names were changed by director Tristan de Vere Cole to give the space station's crew a more diverse range of nationalities. [16] [17]
This is first time the Doctor uses the alias "John Smith", which he would often use as the Third Doctor. [18] Jamie notices the label "John Smith & Associates" on a medical device and gives it as the Doctor's name when asked. [19] [20]
Casting
As Deborah Watling decided not to renew her contract in late 1967, her character Victoria Waterfield was written out of the programme in Fury from the Deep . Sherwin envisaged a scientifically-minded young woman to replace Victoria's role. Writer Peter Ling suggested the character be named Zoe. [10] Following a camera test held at Lime Grove Studios during recording for The Web of Fear (1968), actress Wendy Padbury was cast as astrophysicist Zoe Heriot. Padbury admired Patrick Troughton's acting and she turned down a role in the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in order to play the Doctor's new companion. Frazer Hines' then-girlfriend Susan George also auditioned for the role. [21] [17]
The second episode was written to accommodate Troughton's scheduled holiday. [22] As a result, the Doctor is unconscious during the episode and played by body double Chris Jeffries. [23] [2] Deborah Watling's brief appearance in Episode 1 was reused footage from the end of the previous story Fury from the Deep. She received an on-screen credit. [2]
Director Tristan de Vere Cole cast many actors he had recently worked with on Z-Cars . These include Michael Turner, Clare Jenkins, Kenneth Watson, Derrick Gilbert, Donald Sumpter and Peter Laird. [16] Jenkins, cast as Tanya Lernov, previously played Nanina in The Savages (1966). She briefly reprised her role as Lernov in the final episode of The War Games (1969). [24] [25] Michael Goldie previously played Craddock in The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964). [26] [27] Watson also played Craddock in Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966), the film adaptation of that serial. [28] Sumpter later played Commander Ridgeway in The Sea Devils (1972) [29] and Rassilon in "Hell Bent" (2015). [30] He also played Erasmus Darkening in The Eternity Trap (2009), a serial from the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures . [31] [32]
Production
Two new Cybermen costumes were constructed for the serial. [27] The space suit costumes worn by Hines and Padbury were previously used in The Tenth Planet. [19] It has been suggested that these are the same space suit costumes which were later used in the first two Star Wars films, where one was notably worn by Bossk the bounty hunter. [33] [34]
Production of The Wheel in Space was affected by a BBC strike which "necessitated several last minute changes of studio". [2] Due to cost-saving measures, [35] this was the first Doctor Who serial scored by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. [18] [2] The BBC visual effects team declined work on the serial due to the heavy demands of the script. As a result the effects work was subcontracted to the firm Trading Post. [35]
Filming began in March 1968 with the effects sequences in Ealing Film Studios. [36] Recording concluded on 10 May at Riverside Studios, Studio 1. [37] Episodes 1–4 were transmitted from 625-line videotapes. [38] Episodes 5–6 were edited and broadcast from 35 mm film, so that Padbury, Hines and James Mellor did not have to change in and out of their space suit costumes live. [38] [39]
Missing episodes
Only Episodes 3 and 6 exist in full in the BBC Archives, [19] though off-air audio recordings of all six episodes exist. [40] 16 mm telerecording film copies of the serial were sold to broadcasters in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Gibraltar and Nigeria. [41] [38] The 625-line videotapes of Episodes 1–4 and the 35 mm films for Episodes 5–6 were cleared for junking by the BBC on 21 July 1969. [38] All episodes existed in some form in BBC archives until at least early 1972; [42] by the end of the junking period in 1978, only Episode 6 was retained in the BBC Film Library. [41] [43] In 1983, film collector David Stead bought a 16 mm film copy of Episode 3 from another collector in Southampton. Stead returned the film to the BBC archives in May 1984. [41] [38]
Small clips exist of the remaining 4 episodes. [19] An establishing shot of the Wheel from Episode 1 was later reused in Episode 10 of The War Games . [44] [45] Stock footage of a hippo in Episode 1 was sourced from "The Ancient Highway", an episode from the 1965 David Attenborough series Adventure - Zambezi. [46] [47] In 1996 two short clips of Duggan's death from Episode 4 were located in Australia, having been excised by ABC censors in 1969. In 2002, three short clips from Episode 5 (totalling eight seconds) were found in a private collection in New Zealand, having been removed by censors. [48] [41] [45]
The first rerun of a complete Doctor Who serial ( The Evil of the Daleks ; 1967) aired after The Wheel in Space's first broadcast. To prime audiences, Episode 6 ends with the Doctor displaying a scene from this serial on the TARDIS scanner. [18] [38] Within this scene is a short three-frame clip from the missing first episode of The Evil of the Daleks. [49]
