Unless your name is Wendy Padbury (and it’s not; I checked), no one remembers The Wheel in Space. Thanks to it being mostly missing and “just another” Cyberman story in the Second Doctor era, it gets unfairly overlooked amid The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion.
Admittedly, the first part is a little slow, but only in the same way as The Mind Robber or Wild Blue Yonder. They all seem fashioned from the same cloth, except I’d argue that The Wheel in Space Part One is better than both of those.
And really early on, just after a lovely scene with the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) lamenting the fact that Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling) has stayed behind on Earth, we get a fascinating and scary piece of lore that’s seldom picked up on again.
The TARDIS tries to warn them that something is amiss and then goes really nuts, chugging out smoke like no one’s business and threatening to choke the Time Lord and his Scottish best bud.
The Doctor gets Jamie outside, but not before he does something mad.
He removed the Time Vector Generator, and so turns the TARDIS “into an ordinary telephone box again”!
Yes, by removing this one rod, the TARDIS jettisons its interior into an alternate dimension, meaning the Ship is apparently no more than a blue box. For anyone familiar only with 21st Century Doctor Who, it’s enough to make you not only gasp but also to hold onto your sonic screwdriver (don’t) for dear life. (But it might explain what happened in Father’s Day…
It’s a shocking moment where the safety of the TARDIS is seemingly ripped away from us, and so we must face the isolation and terror of drifting endlessly in space… Or so the Doctor thinks after they emerge into a space ship that’s going nowhere fast.
The Time Vector Generator is seldom heard from again. Aside from brief mentions in expanded media, its main other appearance is in The Ambassadors of Death. Here, its removal means the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Liz Shaw (Caroline John) are sent 15 seconds into their own future for some reason.
Either way, this is a lovely bit of Doctor Who history that we always overlook yet could be used to great effect… if someone in charge remembers it at all.
