Zoe Heriot

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Doctor Who character
Zoe Heriot
Zoe
Affiliated with	Second Doctor
Race	Human
Home planet	Earth (Space Station W3)
Home era	21st century
First appearance	The Wheel in Space
Last appearance	The War Games (regular) The Five Doctors (cameo)
Portrayed by	Wendy Padbury

Zoe Heriot (sometimes spelled Zoe Herriot), or simply Zoe, is a fictional character played by Wendy Padbury in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A young astrophysicist who lived on a space wheel in the 21st century, she was a companion of the Second Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1968 to 1969.

1 Character history
2 Other appearances
3 List of appearances

[edit] Character history

Zoe first appears in the serial The Wheel in Space, where she is the librarian on board Space Station W3, also known as the Wheel. When the Cybermen attack, she aids the Doctor and Jamie in defeating them before stowing away aboard the TARDIS. In David Whitaker's script for The Wheel in Space, Zoe's last name is spelled "Heriot", but the double-"r" misspelling is also seen in reference works.

Zoe holds a degree in "pure mathematics" and is a genius, with intelligence scores comparable to the Doctor's. Coupled with her photographic memory and 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. Having been on the Wheel all her life, however, means that her real world experience is severely limited, and that gives her an ability to frequently get herself in trouble.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Together with the Doctor and Jamie, she meets the Cybermen again when they invade 20th Century London, enters the surreal Land of Fiction, fights the Ice Warriors and survives the battlefields of the War Chief's war games. Her journeys with the Doctor come to an end in that serial, when the Time Lords finally catch up with the Doctor. As well as forcing a regeneration on him and exiling him to Earth, the Time Lords return Jamie and Zoe to their own times, wiping the memory of their experiences with the Doctor (save for their first encounters with him) in the process.

[edit] Other appearances

Zoe's life after her return to her own time is not further explored in the series. In the spin-off short 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 the Third Doctor makes the memory blocks permanent, but she ultimately never reaches her full potential.

Wendy Padbury returned to Doctor Who as an illusory image of Zoe in the 20th anniversary episode, The Five Doctors. Padbury has appeared in Doctor Who audio adventures from Big Finish Productions, first as a character other than Zoe in the full-cast audio Davros, and then as Zoe in Fear 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".