1)For this story, only episodes three and six are currently available. It brings us the return of the Cybermen - wow, they were used alot during the Troughton era - and the introduction of new companion Zoe Herriot, one of my favorite characters.
2)I'm not particularly wild about this iteration of the Cybermen - their voices seem off, somehow.
3)Some fun quotes:
- "Doctor John Smith, isn't it?" This is the earliest use of this alias that I know of.
- "Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority." I don't 100% agree with this sentiment, but I would go along with what Spokc would later say, that "Logic is merely the beginning of wisdowm."
- "I feel as if someone's been hitting me all over with small hammers." What an interesting image!
- "I imagine you have orders to destroy me." Later re-used in "Earthshock".
4)The bit at the end with the Doctor showing Zoe a previous adventure was used at the time to segue into a repeat of "Evil of the Daleks".
[Part of list of Doctor Who episodes here.]
Replies
Taking drastic measures to escape a malfunction, the Doctor materializes the TARDIS on an apparently deserted rocket speeding through space. The TARDIS is shrinking, and the Doctor and Jamie are forced to flee lest they be crushed. We’ve seen the Monk trapped inside a shrunken TARDIS, but in this case the interior as well as the exterior shrunk. They soon encounter the rockets aggressive robot guard, and the Doctor is knocked unconscious. When the rocket is retrieved by the space station personal, the Doctor and Jamie are quite naturally suspected of being saboteurs based on circumstantial evidence.
Unbeknownst to all at this time, the rocketship does, in fact, have other occupants: the Cybermen who begin surreptitiously to fire egg-shaped spheres containing Cybermats to penetrate the space station’s outer hull. Their intention is to take over the Wheel to establish a beachhead as the first step toward their colonization of Earth. One by one the space station’s crew are being taken over, then, on top of everything, a meteor storm is approaching… but the Wheel’s defense system has been disabled!
This story handles the introduction of Zoe as well as “Fury from the Deep” did the departure of Victoria. Tracy agrees with your assessment of the Cybermen this time out, Bob. She hasn’t been listening to the audio episodes, bu last night we watched episode six from “Lost in Time” together and she commented, “Worst… Cybermen… EVER!” One advantage of listening to the episodes rather than watching them, though, is you’re not subjected to the Cybermen “prancing” across space between the rocket and the station!
I would say the "Tomb" era Cybermen are my favorites.