Zoe Heriot

Zoe Heriot
Doctor Whocharacter
First appearance	The Wheel in Space(1968)
Last appearance	Tales of the TARDIS(2023)
Portrayed by	Wendy Padbury
Duration	1968–1969, 1983, 2023
In-universe information
Species	Human
Affiliation	Second Doctor
Home	Earth(Space Station W3)
Home era	21st century

Zoe Heriot(sometimes spelledZoe Herriot) is a fictional character played byWendy Padburyin the long-running Britishscience fiction televisionseriesDoctor Who.A youngastrophysicistwho lived on aspace wheelin the 21st century, she was acompanionof theSecond Doctorand a regular in the programme from 1968 to 1969.Zoe appeared in eight stories (48 episodes).

Character history

Zoe first appears in the serialThe Wheel in Space,where she is the librarianon board Space Station W3, also known as the Wheel. When theCybermenattack, she aidsthe DoctorandJamiein defeating them before stowing away aboard theTARDIS.InDavid Whitaker's script forThe 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 mathematicsand is a genius, with intelligence scores comparable to the Doctor's. Coupled with herphotographic memoryand 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, causing her to get herself into trouble frequently.

Together with the Doctor and Jamie, she meets the Cybermen again when they invade 20th-centuryLondon,enters the surreal Land of Fiction, fights theIce Warriorsand survives the battlefields ofthe War Chief's war games. Her journeys with the Doctor come to an end in that serial, when theTime Lordsfinally catch up with the Doctor. As well as forcing aregenerationon 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.

An illusory image of Zoe appears to the Second Doctor and the Brigadier in Gallifrey's Death Zone the 20th-anniversary episode, "The Five Doctors".

An older Zoe, still played by Padbury, returns in the 60th-anniversary spin-offTales of the TARDIS.She and Jamie, drawn from their respective timelines aboard a Memory Tardis, discover their memories of each and the Doctor have been restored. Zoe describes her life after the events of The War Games; she married an Australian man, has a scientist son she named James, and is currently serving her third term as president.

Other appearances

Zoe's life after her return to her own time is not further explored in the series. In thespin-offshort 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 theThird Doctormakes the memory blocks permanent, but she ultimately never reaches her full potential.

Padbury has appeared inDoctor Whoaudio adventures fromBig Finish Productions,first as a character other than Zoe in the full-cast audioDavros,and then as Zoe inFear 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 asEchoes of Greyand her second Companion Chronicle,Prison in Space,based on an unmade TV story.Echoes of Greyand subsequent follow-up stories,The Memory CheatsandThe Uncertainty Principledepict Zoe being essentially taken prisoner by an unnamed Company whose experiments in creating a new form of life were disrupted by the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe—the TARDIS arriving on Earth a few decades in Zoe's future—inEchoes of Grey,subsequent stories seeing the Company arresting Zoe's older, contemporary self on trumped-up charges to try and provoke Zoe into unlocking her lost memories of her time with the Doctor so that they can harness the secret of time travel. This comes to a head in the audioSecond Chanceswhen Zoe has a 'flashback' of the destruction of a space station that will actually take place a few days in the future from her current point in time, allowing Zoe to interact with her past self as she tries to change her history and prevent the station's destruction. Although this part of her plan fails, the audio ends with Zoe using a computer virus that has mutated to attack physical matter to destroy the Company and escape, although her mental state and memories of her time with the Doctor are still lost.

An older Zoe is reunited with the Doctor inhis sixth incarnationinLegend of the Cybermen,where she returns to the Land of Fiction after she is nearly converted by the Cybermen after leaving the Doctor, her attempt to trap the Cybermen in the Land resulting in the universe being endangered by the risk that the Cybermen will harness the computer that controls the Land and use that to influence the imagination of the entire universe. After Zoe draws the Doctor into the Land, she created a fictional duplicate of Jamie to protect the Doctor until he learns the full situation and helps Zoe drive the Cybermen out, at the cost of Zoe losing her memories again as the Doctor takes her home. Zoe and Jamie also meet the Sixth Doctor in the audioLast of the Cybermen,but in this case the Sixth Doctor has swapped with the Second shortly before the events of "The War Games",the Doctor's attempt to change his personal history to let his companions keep their memories failing when history is 'reset' as the Second Doctor returns to his proper place in history.

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

List of appearances

Television

Season 5

• The Wheel in Space(episodes 2–6)

Season 6

• The Dominators
• The Mind Robber
• The Invasion(episodes 1–2 & 4–8)
• The Krotons
• The Seeds of Death
• The Space Pirates
• The War Games

20th anniversary special

• "The Five Doctors"(cameo)

2023 specials

• Tales of the TARDIS:The Mind Robber

Audio drama

• Fear of the Daleks
• The Glorious Revolution(adventure related by Jamie)
• Legend of the Cybermen(with theSixth Doctorand a fictional duplicate of Jamie)
• Echoes of Grey
• Prison in Space
• Tales from the Vault
• The Memory Cheats
• The Uncertainty Principle
• Second Chances
• The Rosemariners
• The Queen of Time
• Lords of the Red Planet
• Last of the Cybermen(with theSixth Doctorand Jamie; for Jamie and Zoe, occurs between "The Space Pirates"and"The War Games")

Short Trips audios

• A Stain of Red in the Sand
• The Five Dimensional Man
• Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Novels

Virgin Missing Adventures

• The MenageriebyMartin Day

Past Doctor Adventures

• The Final SanctionbySteve Lyons
• The Colony of LiesbyColin Brake
• The Indestructible ManbySimon Messingham

Telos Doctor Who novellas

• Foreign DevilsbyAndrew Cartmel

BBC Books

• The Wheel of IcebyStephen Baxter

Short stories

• "Fallen Angel" byAndy Lane(Decalog)
• "Vortex of Fear" byGareth Roberts(Decalog 2: Lost Property)
• "Aliens and Predators" by Colin Brake (Decalog 3: Consequences)
• "War Crimes" bySimon Bucher-Jones(Short Trips)
• "uPVC" byPaul Farnsworth(More Short Trips)
• "Please Shut the Gate" by Stephen Lock (Short Trips and Sidesteps)
• "Constant Companion" bySimon A. Forward(Short Trips: Zodiac)
• "The Tip of the Mind" by Peter Anghelides (Short Trips: Companions)
• "One Small Step" byNicholas Briggs(Short Trips: Past Tense)
• "Goodwill Towards Men" byJ. Shaun Lyon(Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)
• "That Which Went Away" by Mark Wright (Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins)
• "Undercurrents" by Gary Merchant (Short Trips: A Day in the Life)
• "Visiting Hours" byEddie Robson(Short Trips: A Day in the Life)
• "Mercury" by Eddie Robson (Short Trips: The Solar System)
• "Lepidoptery for Beginners" byJohn Dorney(Short Trips: Defining Patterns)
• "Homework" by Michael Coen (Short Trips: Defining Patterns)
• "Relative Dimensions" by Andrew Cheverton (Shelf Life)

Comics

• "The Vampire Plants" byDavid Brian(Doctor Who Annual 1970)
• "The Robot King" byDavid Brian(Doctor Who Annual 1970)
• "The Tides of Time" (Cameo) by Steve Parkhouse and Dave Gibbons (Doctor Who Magazine)
• "Land of the Blind" by W. Scott Gray andLee Sullivan(Doctor Who Magazine224–226)
• "Renewal" by Tony Lee andPia Guerra(Doctor Who: The Forgotten #2)

External links

• Zoe Heriot on the BBC'sDoctor Whowebsite