April 14: The Wheel in Space Episodes 3 & 4

Episode 3 exists, which means that we can actually see the cliffhanger reprise this time, with the humanoid figure fairly clearly resolving itself into a Cyberman (looking a little different from their last appearance, most noticeably in the face) before it punches out of its egg -- something that wasn't as clear from the telesnaps.  There are also some nice directorial touches which aren't evident from the telesnaps, such as when the Doctor tries to remember "some warning, some menace" from before he received his concussion, and Tristan de Vere Cole dissolves from the Doctor's face to a Cyberman's in the same position.

But this episode is also the one where the science, which looked like it might be pleasingly accurate last episode, goes out the window.  Stars going nova 250,000 light years away divert meteor showers into the path of the Wheel, apparently.  There's also some confusion about how travel in space works.  And the odd moments don't end there.  Crewman Bill Duggan finds a strange new space bug (in reality a Cybermat) which he then promptly fails to report, resulting in it consuming all the stocks of bernalium, the (fictional) power source for the x-ray laser, aboard the Wheel and killing one of the crew.  Bennett has Duggan relieved from duty and confined to quarters for this, even though he doesn't believe Duggan's story about a space bug.  Er...then why is he being punished exactly, if not for failure to report a new lifeform on board?  Does Bennett think Duggan destroyed all the bernalium?

The Cybermen appear.  (The Wheel in Space Episode 3) ©BBC

We also get some more discussion of Zoe's machine-like qualities, as Leo Ryan angrily yells at her lack of emotion when she states that the x-ray laser needs to be repaired or they'll all be killed by meteors: "It's all a problem in solid geometry to you, isn't it?"  And to contrast with that we have the continuation of the Cybermen's plan, when two crew members from the Wheel head to the Silver Carrier to retrieve some bernalium (good thing Jamie sabotaged the x-ray laser so that it wasn't blown up then) and are taken over by Cybermen, whose new speech effect is virtually unintelligible -- I had to turn on the subtitles to figure out what they were saying.

Episode 4 begins with a reenactment of the cliffhanger rather than a replay, and in the meantime someone's fiddled with the Cybermen's voice effect, so they're much more understandable now.  The Cybermen are brought aboard the Wheel, free to wreak havoc on the station.  Except they don't.  This episode is another tense waiting game, as the Doctor tries to convince the members of the crew that the Cybermen are around and a palpable threat to the well-being of everyone on the station.  The Cybermen barely figure into things here, content to let their mind-controlled slaves do their bidding and cut off the Wheel's contact with the outside.  And Jarvis Bennett appears to have gone off the deep end, as he cheerfully wanders about declaring everything to be fine, when just last episode he was yelling at everyone for letting things fall apart.  All that and some more stuff about Zoe's lack of emotion ("I don't want to be thought of as a freak," Zoe says.  "I want to feel things as well").  And, well, that's about all that happens.  But we get another Cyberman in this cliffhanger too -- this one apparently advancing on the Doctor and Jamie...