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

Zoe held a degree in "pure mathematics" and was a genius, with intelligence scores comparable to the Doctor's. Those, coupled with her photographic memory and the advanced learning techniques of her era, made 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 was her chafing at the restrictions and sterile surroundings of her station-bound existence. Having been on the Wheel all her life, however, meant that her real world experience was severely limited, and that gave her an ability to frequently get herself in trouble.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Together with the Doctor and Jamie, she met the Cybermen again when they invaded 20th Century London, entered the surreal Land of Fiction, fought the Ice Warriors and survived the battlefields of the War Chief's war games. Her journeys with the Doctor came to an end in that last serial, when the Time Lords finally caught up with the Doctor. Forcing a regeneration on him and exiling him to Earth, the Time Lords returned 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 was 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, and she ultimately never reaches her full potential.

Wendy Padbury returned to Doctor Who as an illusory image of Zoe in the 20th anniversary television movie, The Five Doctors. Padbury also acted in the Big Finish Productions audio play Davros, but playing a character other than Zoe.