Zoe Heriot was a young scientist from the 21st century who accompanied the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon in their travels aboard the Doctor's TARDIS.
Biography
Early life
Zoe was taken from her family as a young child and educated in a scheme known as the Elite Programme. She later became one of its chief opponents. (AUDIO: The Memory Cheats)
Meeting the Doctor
Zoe's home was a terrestrial city later shown to her in the White Void. (TV: The Mind Robber) She was an astrometricist first class and astrophysicist on board Space Station W3 (a.k.a. the Wheel) when she met the Doctor and Jamie. She introduced herself to them as "astrophysicist, pure mathematics major", to which her colleague, Dr Gemma Corwyn, added "with honours". Zoe had a photographic memory. She was described by her colleagues as "the librarian". She was very bad at history, as evidenced by her lack of knowledge of the Daleks, the Ice Warriors and the T-Mat fiasco. (TV: The Wheel in Space, The Seeds of Death) Having been taught only the value of logic, her training left her emotionally underdeveloped. This lack of balance led to conflict. Some of her colleagues challenged her about her apparent lack of personal interest in the Wheel when it was about to be struck by meteorites. When she met the Doctor, Zoe was presented with a case study in how illogical, intuitive actions and instinct could be successful.
As Zoe became aware that there was more to knowledge than facts, she decided to hide in the TARDIS. She realised that she had learnt as much as she could on the Wheel, where her abilities and role were compartmentalised and defined. Zoe was ready to discover the universe and her place in it.
Before he felt ready to have her brave the terrors of the universe, however, the Doctor showed her a thought projection of his most recent encounter with the Daleks. (TV: The Wheel in Space)
Travels with the Doctor
When visiting the War Museum on Dulkis, Zoe was reminded of "the old atom test islands on Earth." At the same time, she was dismissive of the Quarks, claiming, "They're only robots." (TV: The Dominators)
In the White Void, Zoe was lured out of the TARDIS by seeing her home city on the TARDIS scanner screen. Having recognised the Karkus from the Hourly Telepress of the year 2000, Zoe was able to defeat him in unarmed combat and secure his loyalty. (TV: The Mind Robber) She used her programming skills to solve problems. Whilst helping the Doctor and Jamie deal with the Cybermen's invasion of Earth, Zoe destroyed the computer in the reception at International Electromatics. Determined to not be beaten by a "stupid tin box," Zoe gave the computer an insoluble program in ALGOL, and delighted in the computer's destruction. With her logic and mathematics, Zoe computed the attack pattern for missiles to set up a chain reaction to destroy the incoming Cyberships. (TV: The Invasion)
Zoe's great knowledge and intellect were always evident, but never more so than when she was tested on the teaching machines used by the Krotons to teach and indoctrinate the Gonds. Having scored more than double the score of the best Gond students, Zoe declared the Doctor could certainly answer the questions too. (TV: The Krotons) Again using her computational and logic skills, Zoe, in further travels, worked out the trajectory of beacon segments to deduce that a band of space pirates must have their base on the planet Ta. (TV: The Space Pirates)
The group landed in the Frenko Bazaar, a famous intergalactic trading post where one could buy "just about anything". The Doctor, in an attempt to take down the slave market, placed a homing device on Jamie, and followed some Voraxx into Stellar Imports & Exports to gain their attention. A member told the Doctor that Jamie, coming from the past, was worth a mint. When he said Jamie wasn't for sale, the Voraxx members followed them.
The Voraxx kidnapped Jamie, and took him aboard a slaver ship in orbit. Following Jamie's signal, the Doctor and Zoe found the trans-mat that led to the ship and found Jamie. They then awoke some Ice Warriors, who started an uprising. The slaves took over the ship, forcing the slavers to leave. As the trio teleported back to the shop, the Doctor was shocked to find his companions missing, having been captured by an entity. (COMIC: Prisoners of Time)
Eventually the Time Lords sent Zoe back to the Wheel, where she was met by Tanya Lernov. Having had her memory of her time with the Doctor and Jamie removed, other than her initial adventure with them on the Wheel, she was never aware that she had ever been away. (TV: The War Games)
Life after the Doctor
As the years passed, Zoe began to have detailed dreams of her adventures with the Doctor and Jamie. Unable to clearly remember her dreams or reconcile them with the knowledge that she had parted company with the Doctor when the TARDIS left the Wheel, she undertook psychiatric counselling. (AUDIO: Fear of the Daleks)
Whilst she was working on the UrtiCorp Project at station XZ49, the Third Doctor arrived, pretending to be an academic named Dr John Smith. But when Zoe saw the TARDIS, she collapsed, because the sudden return of her memories caused her to lose them completely, as a result. When she recovered, the Doctor had already left, suspecting that the Time Lords sent him there to make sure she forgot all her memories of the Doctor. (PROSE: The Tip of the Mind)
After discovering she had aged by two years after the only experience with the Doctor and Jamie she could recall, Zoe deduced she had had more adventures with the Doctor which had been wiped from her memory. About a month after her return to the Wheel, the Wheel was attacked by a Cybership. Due to her slight build, Zoe was judged unfit for conversion into a Cyberman, but upon scanning her brain and recognising her above-average intelligence, the Cybermen decided she would be suitable for conversion into a Cyber-Planner. The conversion caused Zoe's memories of the Doctor to resurface.
It also gave her the opportunity to gain control of the systems of the Cybership. Before the conversion was complete, Zoe had diverted the ship into the only place she could think of where the Cybermen would be unable to hurt anyone else — the Land of Fiction. Once there, she took control of the Land's damaged computer, bringing the Land of Fiction back to life. She used fictional characters and constructs to fight the Cybermen, but came to the conclusion that she needed the Doctor's help to triumph over the Cybermen. After unsuccessfully attempting to create an accurate fictional version of the Doctor, she opened a hole in space-time and sent a data-stream which drew the TARDIS into the Land. The TARDIS landed far off-course, so Zoe created a fictional version of Jamie to protect the Doctor as she drew him to her control centre. With the Doctor's help, she destroyed the Cybermen once and for all. As the Doctor returned her to the Wheel, the Time Lords' conditioning of her mind returned and she lost her memories of him once more. (AUDIO: Legend of the Cybermen)
In her late fifties, Zoe lived alone, unable to form relationships as a consequence of the damage to her memory. At this time she was approached by a young woman, Ali, who claimed to have met the Doctor, Jamie and the younger Zoe at the Whitaker Institute in Australia. With technological assistance, she was able to recover Zoe's recollection of that adventure. It transpired that the Company which owned the Institute had become aware of Zoe's history as a time traveller, and were seeking knowledge of what she had learned. Zoe refused to cooperate with them, but suspected that they would not let the matter rest (AUDIO: Echoes of Grey). Her fears were justified; the Company engineered her arrest on charges that carried the death penalty, threatening to have her executed unless she could prove she had travelled in time. Zoe, still convinced that she had not travelled with the Doctor, believed the Company were trying to discredit her as mentally unstable (AUDIO: The Memory Cheats, The Uncertainty Principle).
Illusion
When the Second Doctor, accompanied by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, was sent to the Death Zone on Gallifrey, Zoe and Jamie appeared to the pair in the Dark Tower and warned the Doctor against going further in the direction he had chosen because they said they were in a force field. Knowing the Time Lords had erased their memories of him, he realised that they must be an illusion. This was proven right and they both vanished. (TV: The Five Doctors)
Personality
Despite knowing very little about the Doctor, she was a very loyal companion. She described him as old, clever and kind. (AUDIO: The Five Dimensional Man) Although brave, she was quick to call for assistance if she needed it. (TV: The Seeds of Death) When visiting her recent history, Zoe became irritated by the out-of-date technology that they used. (PROSE: The Wheel of Ice). She was also a maths wizard. (TV: The Wheel in Space, TV: The Krotons)
