Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Case Study No. 1683: Zoe Heriot

Doctor Who: The Wheel in Space- Zoe meets Jamie
0:40
A classic reconstructed clip fro the 1968 Doctor Who story, "The Wheel in Space", when Zoe Heriot first meets the Doctor's companion Jamie McCrimmon. I personally think the clip is hilarious, but I'll leave you to be the judge of that!
Tags: doctor who wheel in space 1968 zoe heriot patrick troughton frazer hines jamie mccrimmon wendy padbury
Added: 2 years ago
From: 72Who
Views: 2,257

From wikipedia.org:

Zoe Heriot (sometimes spelled Zoe Herriot), or simply Zoe, is a fictional character played by Wendy Padbury in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A young astrophysicist who lived on a space wheel in the 21st century, she was a companion of the Second Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1968 to 1969.

Character history
Zoe first appears in the serial The Wheel in Space, where she is the librarian on board Space Station W3, also known as the Wheel. When the Cybermen attack, she aids the Doctor and Jamie in defeating them before stowing away aboard the TARDIS. In David Whitaker's script for The Wheel in Space, Zoe's last name is spelled "Heriot", but the double-"r" misspelling is also seen in reference works.

Zoe's age is not given in the series, but according to initial publicity she was fifteen when she joined the TARDIS crew. She holds a degree in pure mathematics and is a genius, with intelligence scores comparable to the Doctor's. Coupled with her photographic memory and the advanced learning techniques of her era, this makes her somewhat like a human calculator, able to perform complicated mathematics in her head. Part of the reason for her wanting to travel with the Doctor is her chafing at the restrictions and sterile surroundings of her station-bound existence. However, her real world experience is severely limited, and that gives her an ability to frequently get herself in trouble.

Together with the Doctor and Jamie, she meets the Cybermen again when they invade 20th century London, enters the surreal Land of Fiction, fights the Ice Warriors and survives the battlefields of the War Chief's war games. Her journeys with the Doctor come to an end in that serial, when the Time Lords finally catch up with the Doctor. As well as forcing a regeneration on him and exiling him to Earth, the Time Lords return Jamie and Zoe to their own times, wiping their memories of their experiences with the Doctor (save for their first encounters with him) in the process.

Other appearances
Zoe's life after her return to her own time is not further explored in the series. In the spin-off short story "The Tip of the Mind" by Peter Anghelides, it is revealed that although her intellect allows her to resist the memory blocks by the Time Lords, she is unable to access the memories of her time with the Doctor consciously. This causes her strange dreams, and makes her work suffer. An encounter with the Third Doctor makes the memory blocks permanent, but she ultimately never reaches her full potential.

Padbury has appeared in Doctor Who audio adventures from Big Finish Productions, first as a character other than Zoe in the full-cast audio Davros, and then as Zoe in Fear of the Daleks, part of the "Companion Chronicles" talking book series. The latter story portrays an older Zoe having detailed dreams of her adventures with the Doctor; she suspects that something is blocking her memory, but she does not know what, and is seeing a psychiatric counselor in an effort to understand the "dreams". She has returned as Zoe in several more Big Finish plays such as Echoes of Grey, her second Companion Chronicle and unmade TV story, Prison in Space. An older Zoe is reunited with the Doctor, in his sixth incarnation, in Legend of the Cybermen, where her life after leaving the Doctor is explored.

The novelisation of The Mind Robber mentions, in passing, that Zoe discussed that adventure "long afterwards", suggesting that she eventually recovered some or all of her lost memories.

Wendy Padbury returned to Doctor Who as an illusory image of Zoe in the 20th anniversary episode, The Five Doctors.

---

From ilovelibraries.org:

She's not just the smartest companion ever to rock a sparkly catsuit — Zoe also has an incredible brain, including total recall. Which is why, when we first meet her in "The Wheel In Space," she's working as the librarian aboard a space station, specializing in parapsychology. Of course, she needs the Doctor to explain to her that "logic, my dear, merely allows one to be wrong with authority." It also allows her to make a computer have a brain seizure just by talking to it, though. Don't mess with a librarian who's seeking information.

---

From wikia.com:

Zoe Heriot was a young scientist from the 21st century who accompanied the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon in their travels aboard the Doctor's TARDIS.

Early life
Zoe was taken from her family as a young child and educated in a scheme known as the Elite Programme. She later became one of its chief opponents. (AUDIO: The Memory Cheats)

When she was eight years, she read Oscar Wilde's complete works, including The Picture of Dorian Gray, in a day. (AUDIO: Echoes of Grey)

Meeting the Doctor
Zoe's home was a terrestrial city later shown to her in the White Void. (TV: The Mind Robber) She was an astrometricist first class and astrophysicist on board Space Station W3 (a.k.a. the Wheel) when she met the Doctor and Jamie. She introduced herself to them as "astrophysicist, pure mathematics major", to which her colleague, Dr Gemma Corwyn, added "with honours". Zoe had a photographic memory. She was described by her colleagues as "the librarian". She was very bad at history, as evidenced by her lack of knowledge of the Daleks, the Ice Warriors and the T-Mat fiasco. (TV: The Wheel in Space, The Seeds of Death) Having been taught only the value of logic, her training left her emotionally underdeveloped. This lack of balance led to conflict. Some of her colleagues challenged her about her apparent lack of personal interest in the Wheel when it was about to be struck by meteorites. When she met the Doctor, Zoe was presented with a case study in how illogical, intuitive actions and instinct could be successful.

As Zoe became aware that there was more to knowledge than facts, she decided to hide in the TARDIS. She realised that she had learnt as much as she could on the Wheel, where her abilities and role were compartmentalised and defined. Zoe was ready to discover the universe and her place in it.

Before he felt ready to have her brave the terrors of the universe, however, the Doctor showed her a thought projection of his most recent encounter with the Daleks. (TV: The Wheel in Space)

Travels with the Doctor
When visiting the War Museum on Dulkis, Zoe was reminded of "the old atom test islands on Earth." At the same time, she was dismissive of the Quarks, claiming, "They're only robots." (TV: The Dominators)

In the White Void, Zoe was lured out of the TARDIS by seeing her home city on the TARDIS scanner screen. Having recognised the Karkus from the Hourly Telepress of the year 2000, Zoe was able to defeat him in unarmed combat and secure his loyalty. (TV: The Mind Robber) She used her programming skills to solve problems. Whilst helping the Doctor and Jamie deal with the Cybermen's invasion of Earth, Zoe destroyed the computer in the reception at International Electromatics. Determined to not be beaten by the "brainless tin box," Zoe gave the computer an insoluble program in ALGOL, and delighted in the computer's destruction. With her logic and mathematics, Zoe computed the attack pattern for missiles to set up a chain reaction to destroy the incoming Cyberships. (TV: The Invasion) Zoe's great knowledge and intellect were always evident, but never more so than when she was tested on the teaching machines used by the Krotons to teach and indoctrinate the Gonds. Having scored more than double the score of the best Gond students, Zoe declared the Doctor could certainly answer the questions too. (TV: The Krotons) Again using her computational and logic skills, Zoe, in further travels, worked out the trajectory of beacon segments to deduce that a band of space pirates must have their base on the planet Ta. (TV: The Space Pirates)

The group landed in the Frenko Bazaar, a famous intergalactic trading post where one could buy "just about anything". After the Doctor and Zoe rescued Jamie from a kidnapping, the trio teleported back to the shop. The Doctor was shocked to find his companions missing, having been captured by an entity. (COMIC: Prisoners of Time)

At some point during her travels with the Doctor and Jamie, they visited Bob Dovie at 59A Barnsfield Crescent in Totton, Hampshire on 23 November 1963. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)

Eventually the Time Lords sent Zoe back to the Wheel, where she was met by Tanya Lernov. Having had her memory of her time with the Doctor and Jamie removed, other than her initial adventure with them on the Wheel, she was never aware that she had ever been away. (TV: The War Games)

Life after the Doctor
Whilst she was working on the UrtiCorp Project at station XZ49, the Third Doctor arrived, pretending to be an academic named Dr John Smith. But when Zoe saw the TARDIS, she collapsed, because the sudden return of her memories caused her to lose them completely, as a result. When she recovered, the Doctor had already left, suspecting that the Time Lords sent him there to make sure she forgot all her memories of the Doctor. (PROSE: The Tip of the Mind)

After discovering she had aged by two years after the only experience with the Doctor and Jamie she could recall, Zoe deduced she had had more adventures with the Doctor which had been wiped from her memory. About a month after her return to the Wheel, the Wheel was attacked by a Cybership. Due to her slight build, Zoe was judged unfit for conversion into a Cyberman, but upon scanning her brain and recognising her above-average intelligence, the Cybermen decided she would be suitable for conversion into a Cyber-Planner. The conversion caused Zoe's memories of the Doctor to resurface.

It also gave her the opportunity to gain control of the systems of the Cybership. Before the conversion was complete, Zoe had diverted the ship into the only place she could think of where the Cybermen would be unable to hurt anyone else - the Land of Fiction. Once there, she took control of the Land's damaged computer, bringing the Land of Fiction back to life. She used fictional characters and constructs to fight the Cybermen, but came to the conclusion that she needed the Doctor's help to triumph over the Cybermen. After unsuccessfully attempting to create an accurate fictional version of the Doctor, she opened a hole in space-time and sent a data-stream which drew the TARDIS into the Land. The TARDIS landed far off-course, so Zoe created a fictional version of Jamie to protect the Doctor as she drew him to her control centre. With the Doctor's help, she destroyed the Cybermen once and for all. As the Doctor returned her to the Wheel, the Time Lords' conditioning of her mind returned and she lost her memories of him once more. (AUDIO: Legend of the Cybermen)

As the years passed, Zoe began to have detailed dreams of her adventures with the Doctor and Jamie. Unable to clearly remember her dreams or reconcile them with the knowledge that she had parted company with the Doctor when the TARDIS left the Wheel, she undertook psychiatric counselling. (AUDIO: Fear of the Daleks)

In her late fifties, Zoe lived alone, unable to form relationships as a consequence of the damage to her memory. At this time she was approached by a young woman, Ali, who claimed to have met the Doctor, Jamie and the younger Zoe at the Whitaker Institute in Australia. With technological assistance, she was able to recover Zoe's recollection of that adventure. It transpired that the Company which owned the Institute had become aware of Zoe's history as a time traveller, and were seeking knowledge of what she had learned. Zoe refused to cooperate with them, but suspected that they would not let the matter rest. (AUDIO: Echoes of Grey) Her fears were justified; the Company engineered her arrest on charges that carried the death penalty, threatening to have her executed unless she could prove she had travelled in time and share the secret of time travel with them. During this time an employee for the company named Jen was responsible for helping Zoe recover her lost memories with the help of a machine. With Jen's help, Zoe is briefly able to remember some of her adventures with the Doctor, but forgets all about them once again after the sessions are over. In spite of the memories recovered during her sessions Zoe, stubbornly maintains that she had not travelled with the Doctor, claiming the Company was trying to discredit her as mentally unstable. (AUDIO: The Memory Cheats, The Uncertainty Principle)

When it became clear that Jen was making no progress with Zoe, the company sent in Kym, the woman who had originally posed as Ali when the Company first approached her. Having pioneered the technology used to recover Zoe's memories, Kym had lost her standing with the Company due to her past failure with Zoe and was attempting to succeed where Jen failed in getting the secret of time travel from Zoe. During their session, Zoe recalled an instance where the TARDIS landed on a space station called Artemis. While there, she decoded the last transmission from Artemis's sister station, Apollo, before it was destroyed. The transmission contained a virus capable of transferring itself to living tissue and other matter, apparently responsible for the destruction of space station Apollo, where it had been developed. Zoe attempted to quarantine the virus, but was knocked out when a computer terminal hit her during a meteor shower. In the end the Artemis was destroyed along with most of the crew as the virus ate away at the space station itself. Zoe was able to survive, however, thanks to an air mask given to her by a guard, keeping her alive when she was sucked out into space before being rescued by the Doctor and Jamie.

Kym realised that the events that Zoe witnessed were already happening in their current timeline as news of Apollo's destruction reached them, which turned out to be a Company-owned space station. Wanting to rectify her mistake of accidentally releasing the virus onto Artemis, Zoe agreed to go with Kym to prevent this disaster on the condition that she tell the Company the secret of time travel afterwards. Kym and Zoe were taken to the ship by Jen, with Zoe posing as a guard. As the events began to unfold, however, Zoe began to realise that Kym was behind most of the events that unfolded during her original visit to Artemis with the Doctor.

In the end, Zoe found out that Kym only brought her to the space station so she could finish decoding the virus and make a copy of it for Kym to give to the Company to get back in their good graces. After tending to her younger self and providing her with a breathing mask to survive the destruction of the space station, Zoe pursued Kym into the escape shuttle. There, she was able to send a modified version of the virus to the Company's headquarters where it would take out the Company's entire computer mainframe and then self-destruct before it could spread to any organic matter. In the process, the virus was also released into the escape shuttle, destroying it as Kym gave up her own breathing mask to keep Zoe alive before pushing her out of the ship into space, where she was eventually recovered by Jen. Now free of the Company, Jen continued to help Zoe recover her memories, even as they seemed to become increasingly hazy for her. (AUDIO: Second Chances)

Illusion
When the Second Doctor, accompanied by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, was sent to the Death Zone on Gallifrey, Zoe and Jamie appeared to the pair in the Tomb of Rassilon and warned the Doctor against going further in the direction he had chosen because they said that they were in a force field. Knowing the Time Lords had erased their memories of him, he realised that they must be an illusion. This was proven right and they both vanished. (TV: The Five Doctors)

Personality
Despite knowing very little about the Doctor, she was a very loyal companion. She described him as old, clever and kind. (AUDIO: The Five Dimensional Man) Although brave, she was quick to call for assistance if she needed it. (TV: The Seeds of Death) When visiting her recent history, Zoe became irritated by the out-of-date technology that they used. (PROSE: The Wheel of Ice). She was also a maths wizard. (TV: The Wheel in Space, TV: The Krotons)

---

From bw.edu:

THE WHEEL IN SPACE
by DAVID WHITAKER
from a story by KIT PEDLER
first broadcast - 4th May 1968

GEMMA: Wait a moment.

JAMIE: What?

GEMMA: Would you like to see over the Wheel? I could arrange it for you if you like.

JAMIE: Oh yes. There's nothing else to do.

GEMMA: Well, if you go along the corridor you will see a door marked Para-psychology library.

JAMIE: Para.. what?

GEMMA: It's on the other side of the wheel complex. About eight sections on. I tell Zoe to show you round.

JAMIE: Zoe?

GEMMA: She our... Well the best way to describe her would be to call her our librarian.

JAMIE: Zoe, you say?

GEMMA: That's right.

JAMIE: Oh, you will tell me what happens to the Doctor.

GEMMA: Yes, of course.

JAMIE: Thank you.

(JAMIE leaves the room and GEMMA waits until he has gone and then patches through a visual link to the para-psychology library.)

GEMMA: (into communicator) Para-psychology library. Dr. Corwyn calling.

(An attractive young dark-haired girl in her late-teens/early-twenties answers her call.)

ZOE: (oov) Para-psychology library. What reference do you require, Dr.Corwyn?

GEMMA: No reference thank you Zoe. I need your help in another way.

ZOE: (oov) Oh?

GEMMA: One of the people retrieved from the rogue spaceship is coming to your section. I'd like you to show him over the Wheel and observe him.

ZOE: (oov) Observe him?

GEMMA: Discreetly of course.

ZOE: (oov) Do you want these observations recorded?

GEMMA: Yes please.

ZOE: (oov) Hmm, should be interesting. Any facts known?

GEMMA: Yes. He is a nice lad. His name's Jam....

ZOE: (oov) Just a minute.

(She interrupts to conclude the mental analysis of a half-solved problem. GEMMA patiently waits for her to finish)

ZOE: Sorry, I was halfway through a REA analysis when you came on. Right ...

(JAMIE walks down the corridor searching for the right door.)

(He finds and walks into the circular room as Zoe is completing her delivery of information on nova star predominance.)

ZOE: (talking into microphone) With the exception of the Hercules clusters. Confirmation of the information received that one of the stars in the Messa 13 group is entering the nova phase. This would be a repetition of the phenomenon observed in the Perseus cluster last week. Information of the gamma radiation level is available.

(She notices that JAMIE has entered the room.)

ZOE: Sorry. You must be......

(She breaks off into uncontrollable giggles on seeing his attire.)

JAMIE: Hey, what are you laughing at?

ZOE: Your clothes. You're wearing female garments.

JAMIE: Female?! Look I have you know this is a kilt. Have you never seen it before?

ZOE: (to herself) Kilt? Kilt. A barbaric form of garment as worn by a kiltie! Are you of Scandinavian origin? Danish?

JAMIE: (annoyed) No I am not. I am a true bred Scot! And I just stand.....

ZOE: Oh, a Scot! Scotland, of course. Pre-century history isn't my field you see.

JAMIE: Aye, maybe not but just you watch you lip or I put you across my knee and larrup you.

ZOE: (laughing) This is going to be fun! I shall learn a lot from you. Come on James Robert McCrimmon, do you know anything about interstellar flora?

JAMIE: (lost) Hey?

[...]

(ZOE enters)

ZOE: (to GEMMA) Is it all right? The guard said that you are here.

DOCTOR: Guard?

GEMMA: We can't let you roam about wherever you want to.

JAMIE: Aye, we're under arrest.

DOCTOR: Oh no!

ZOE: How did you pilot the rocket, Doctor?

DOCTOR: I don't think we met have we?

GEMMA: Zoe, Doctor ... John Smith isn't it?

(The Doctor looks about for Dr. John Smith.)

JAMIE: (pushing the Doctor a little bit to get his attention.) John... John...

(the DOCTOR realises that John Smith is himself.)

DOCTOR: Oh, oh yes. (to Zoe) And what do you do here, Zoe?

ZOE: I'm an astrophysicist, pure-mathematics major.

GEMMA: With honours.

DOCTOR: Oh, I am impressed.

GEMMA: We use Zoe as our second opinion.

ZOE: (to the DOCTOR) You didn't answer my question.

DOCTOR: What question?

JAMIE: (to ZOE) You know, I surprised you didn't know the answer. Don't tell me there is something you can't work out.

ZOE: (to the DOCTOR) How did you pilot the rocket ship? You see, I calculated its original course. It was a surface and supply station for number five station. Overdue and presumed lost nine weeks ago. Well the rocket couldn't drift 87,000,000 miles off course.

DOCTOR: So what's your theory?

ZOE: Well, there is a record of the last contract with the Silver Carrier rocket. It had seven million miles to touchdown and enough fuel for twenty million. Well, it couldn't have drifted off in the time involved. It must have been driven and piloted.

JAMIE: Och, you are a right wee space-detective.

ZOE: There is only one solution. That rocket was re-fuelled in space. Provided for at least with another twelve fuel rods.

DOCTOR: Well, it is an interesting theory...

ZOE: Oh, it isn't a theory. You can't disprove the facts. It's pure logic.

DOCTOR: Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority. Suppose there was a faulty automatic pilot.

ZOE: To drive a rocket 87,000,000 miles on fuel for 20,000,000?

DOCTOR: Well, it's a possibility.

ZOE: (firm) That rocket was driven here somehow. I know it was.

No comments:

Post a Comment