Wendy Padbury - the Wheel deal!
(Today, I bring you something a little different. It’s the text which appears in The Doctors: The Archive, the Daily Mirror’s bookazine released to mark the 50th anniversary. I’ll blog about its genesis another time. Anyway, I needed words to go with the pictures from the picture archive, and this was what I wrote on The Wheel in Space, and an interview with Wendy Padbury)
THE final story of Doctor Who's fifth season saw the arrival of a stowaway in the TARDIS.
Plucky young astrophysicist Zoe Heriot, played by Wendy Padbury, had helped the Doctor and Jamie defeat the Cybermen, who had tried to take control of The Wheel in Space. At the end of the story, she snuck into the TARDIS and hid inside a chest, but was found by the time travellers. They agreed let her join them on their travels.
Wendy said: "It was a very strange time - I'd got the part, was given my costume, and I felt very grown up when I was taken to do my photoshoot in costume - it was very exciting for me.
"I don't think we would have done it a million miles away from the BBC.
"I do remember the shoot, though, as that outfit I wore had been made for me for the shoot, and I went on to wear it in my first story.
"The shoot itself was amazing, as it was all a bit new to me. I'd never done a job before where you had your pictures taken before you'd even started working. It all seemed very grand to me at that time."
Like many other stories from the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who, The Wheel in Space isn't complete in the BBC archives, as only the third and sixth parts are known to exist.
With the recovery of The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear, featuring Troughton, Frazer Hines and Wendy's predecessor Deborah Watling, she is optimistic that one day The Wheel in Space might be seen again in full.
BBC sales records show that it was sold to Nigeria around the same time that the recently-recovered episodes were.
Wendy added: "Who knows? The BBC might already have them.
"The problem with missing episodes is similar to the way things were in those years when Doctor Who was off the air for so long - every six months or so, you'd hear it was going to come back, and it wasn't the case.
"Now, you hear all these rumours that they've found missing episodes, and for years, nothing happened, then all of a sudden these episodes show up this year. I was really pleased for Debbie Watling, as so few of hers survived. She lost more episodes than anyone.
"It's all very exciting - we can but hope!"
In 1974, Wendy was given the chance to play another companion, when she took on the role of Jenny, in the stageplay Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday. Wendy would briefly reappear as Zoe in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors. She also had a spell in Emmerdale Farm, where she worked alongside her old Doctor Who sparring partner Frazer Hines.
