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Zoe Heriot (also spelt Zoë Heriot and Zoe Herriot) was a companion of the Second Doctor.
Zoe was a young scientist from the late 21st century who accompanied the Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon in their travels aboard the Doctor's TARDIS. She was one of the very few companions of the Doctor's that was as smart, and at times even smarter than, the Doctor himself. They would often compete with one another when tackling situations that required their intellects. Her memories of the Doctor and Jamie were erased after encountering the Time Lords.
Biography
Early life
Under hypnosis, Zoe Heriot claimed that she was born in the 21st century. (TV: The War Games) Whilst some accounts indicated that she was born circa 1984, (TV: The Mind Robber; AUDIO: Prison in Space) others indicated that she was born circa 2063 (AUDIO: The Dying Light) or after 2084. (PROSE: The Indestructible Man)
Zoe was taken from her family at a young age by the Company to be put through the Elite Programme (AUDIO: The Uncertainty Principle) and would later tell a lie that she could remember her mother giving her one last hug before she was taken. (AUDIO: The Memory Cheats)
Although Zoe said that she grew up on space stations, (AUDIO: Second Chances) she considered the City to be her home (TV: The Mind Robber) and was educated there at the Parapsychology Unit. (TV: The Wheel in Space) She was subject to harsh mental and physical conditioning during her extensive education, (AUDIO: The Uncertainty Principle) having her head "pumped with facts and figures". (TV: The Wheel in Space)
Zoe memorised a number of stories as a child (AUDIO: Legend of the Cybermen) and read the complete works of Oscar Wilde in a day at the age of eight. (AUDIO: Echoes of Grey) She single-handedly won the Speed Calculus Cup from Gödel House (AUDIO: Last of the Cybermen) and did a Basic Course in Self-Preservation, during which she learnt some martial arts. (PROSE: The Mind Robber) She majored in pure mathematics, graduating with honours (TV: The Wheel in Space) and with several degrees. (PROSE: The Menagerie)
Life on the Wheel
By the age of sixteen, (AUDIO: The Dying Light) Zoe was working on the Wheel in the Parapsychology Library in a capacity best described by Gemma Corwyn as a librarian. She also worked as an Astrometricist First Class and was frequently sought as a second opinion. (TV: The Wheel in Space) Although she disliked exercise, she made sure to complete the regulation hours on treadmills and exercise bikes (PROSE: The Colony of Lies) and stuck to a strict routine. (PROSE: The Indestructible Man)
Zoe considered Captain Leo Ryan to be a friend (AUDIO: Last of the Cybermen) but believed that her colleagues regarded her with both admiration and resentment. She was aware of her reputation for effectively being a robot, believing that that was why her colleagues tried to get her to drink wine, and would refuse to do so in order to avoid losing her inhibitions. (PROSE: The Indestructible Man) Although she used most of her free time to pursue knowledge, (PROSE: The Colony of Lies) she did follow the Karkus comic strip in the Hourly Telepress. (TV: The Mind Robber)
Meeting the Doctor
In 2000, (TV: The Mind Robber; AUDIO: Prison in Space) 2079 (AUDIO: The Memory Cheats) or later, (PROSE: The Indestructible Man) Zoe was asked by Dr Corwyn to guide Jamie McCrimmon around the Wheel and to keep an eye on him. She correctly predicted the imminent nova of Hercules 208 and was challenged by Ryan for her apparent lack of personal interest when the meteorites approached whilst the x-ray laser was out of action.
Zoe endeavoured to help the Second Doctor save the Wheel from the Cybermen and found herself out of her depth, forcing her to realise that the Parapsychology Unit had prepared her only for a false existence in which there were no such emergencies. Following the defeat of the Cybermen, she went to see off Jamie and the Doctor and chose to sneak aboard the TARDIS, but she was quickly discovered and shown an encounter of theirs with the Daleks to let her know what she would be in for should she travel with them. (TV: The Wheel in Space)
Although Zoe was frightened by the Daleks, the Doctor quickly reassured her that he had witnessed their end and that they would not meet them again. He told her that they could do with another genius on board and the trio began their travels together. (AUDIO: Fear of the Daleks)
Travels with the Doctor and Jamie
Zoe, the Doctor and Jamie were held hostage by Atrika on Lavonia, who forced Zoe into a projection machine powered by a Dalek crystal and ordered her to assassinate the president. She was eventually restored by Jamie and the Daleks were defeated by Atrika, having realised that they had been using him. (AUDIO: Fear of the Daleks)
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 the "brainless 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)
She spotted a cyber-ship escaping the explosion of the fleet and the Doctor decided to follow it. Landing on Isos II she encountered giant slugs which she enjoyed riding. While investigating the city she got trapped in a lift. Investigating the train line with slug trails on it she encountered Cybermen but was rescued by Hilsee. Taking her to a place of safety, he showed Zoe what had happened to his people. She saw a half converted Cyberman and felt appalled. She was told by Hilsee that there was no way to escape. The Cyber-Controller ordered her conversion. As Hislee was the one to put her in the pod he didn't fasten her in which allowed her to escape. (AUDIO: The Isos Network)
Zoe was sent outside the TARDIS in an interstellar spacesuit to mend a crack in the outer shell, as she was the only one that could fit inside the suit. She saw the World shortly before the TARDIS crashed into it. Nostic saved her from the collapsing room she was in and demanded that she fix the ship. After discovering an image of a crow faced humanoid, she decided to fix more of the ship and managed to get some of the power back on. After learning about the reanimated corpses, she and Twenty used the cameras to track them. She was upset at Twenty sacrificed himself to save her and her friends. (AUDIO: The Wreck of the World)
Landing in 1800 China, Zoe and Jamie both entered a spirit gate which transported them to 1900 Kent. She posed as a temporary maid and attempted to find Jamie, later being joined by the Doctor and teaming up with Thomas Carnacki. After finding Jamie, the travellers destroyed the gates and returned to the TARDIS. (PROSE: Foreign Devils)
Zoe and Jamie searched the TARDIS after the Doctor disappeared and, when somebody knocked on the door whilst in flight, they let Vorac in. Zoe trusted him and read the TARDIS Instruction Manual to learn how to fly the ship and return him to his people, after which the Doctor was returned per the Time Riders' law of exchange. (PROSE: Undercurrents)
On Mercury, Zoe accompanied Dr Wayne Songo'o and encountered the Mercurials. (PROSE: Mercury) They also encountered snake-like creatures which attacked the crew of a spacecraft, (COMIC: The Forgotten) and the Quiet One on their planet (AUDIO: Shadow of Death) and Zeus on Olympos. (AUDIO: Little Doctors) Gento manipulated Zoe into letting him aboard the TARDIS to disable the controls by disguising himself as a cat, but the Doctor was able to see the real him. (PROSE: Outstanding Balance)
Upon meeting Iolas Blue, she realised that he had predicted everything that she and her friends were going to do. She found it appalling that he manipulated events to kill one of his childhood bullies. (PROSE: Lepidoptery for Beginners)
Jamie and Zoe had an argument about there being no peaceful aliens in the universe. She found the Integral weird to look at. When she discovered what Aspen Base was built for she said that more Integral were needed due to the failure of the experimental machine the humans were using to replace them. (AUDIO: The Integral)
When Zoe explored a cave on Sanctuary she found that there was maths everywhere, some of which she couldn't understand, which was because they came from Gallifrey. She spent ages trying to decipher the equations as Stoyn had taken the Doctor with him. She eventually realised that the equations where like a computer programme. (AUDIO: The Dying Light)
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)
The Doctor took her and Jamie to England in the 1960s to investigate a spate of mysterious robberies. She helped him to find out who was behind it. After stopping them the Doctor placed her memory into the crystal as its user guide for UNIT. (AUDIO: Tales from the Vault)
She used her technical skills to get some of the equipment of Tromesis and found out that a meteor was heading towards them. She was later taken by a Hawker to the other version of the city due to an experiment by physicists which accidentally created two versions of the city. She told the Doctor about this. (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Mirror)
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) She encountered the Sixth Doctor when he was switched with her Doctor. They encountered Zennox who wanted to revive the Cybermen using Zoe's mind. (AUDIO: Last of the Cybermen)
She liked to try and understand parts of the TARDIS such as the Relative Dimensional Stabiliser and teased Jamie when he couldn't understand. With the Doctor, she took a test to gain access to the labs on the Edge. When Provost Curtis saw her sore he wanted to keep her in his Acuman mine. Jamie eventually rescued her from being kidnapped by him. (AUDIO: The Edge)
After discovering the Time path indicator in a cupboard, Zoe decided to reattach it, unintentionally causing the TARDIS to crash into a past version of itself, which in turn caused the Dematerialisation circuit to burn out. Trying to find parts for the circuit on Urbinia, the Doctor and Zoe were dragged along with a crowd trying to evacuate the planet and met the First Doctor, Steven and Katarina. She calculated the course needed for the citizens of Urbinia to to escape the planet quicker than the First Doctor could, which annoyed him. She worked out a way to create a weapon to destroy the Daleks using the fuel of the spaceships. She escaped the effects of the Time Destructor by making it to the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Daughter of the Gods)
At some point during her travels with the Doctor and Jamie, they visited Bob Dovie at 59A Barnsfield Crescent in Totton, Hampshire on 23 November 1963. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)
The group landed in the Frenko Bazaar, a famous intergalactic trading post where one could buy "just about anything". After the Doctor and Zoe rescued Jamie from a kidnapping, the trio teleported back to the shop. The Doctor was shocked to find his companions missing, having been captured by Adam Mitchell. (COMIC: Bazaar Adventures) Later, all eleven Doctors rescued the companions and sent them back to their own times. (COMIC: Endgame)
She found the 14th century very strange and didn't like being there. She couldn't understand why people would want to hear bad things from a visionary. Marie showed her the relics of the church and she tried to explain the mechanisms of the clock. Marie later took her to a Tank which was in the churchyard. She heard strange things coming from the Tank. She worked out that it sounded like a man's voice slowed down. She eventually worked out that the groundskeeper was a soldier from the First World War. She learnt that the soldiers had a plan to kill the French King so that France wouldn't exist in the form they knew it. (AUDIO: The Iron Maid)
Zoe and the Doctor landed in Belize. She encountered Ruth Matheson who recognised her being from UNIT. Zoe worked out what one of the gadgets Ruth had was. Ruth explained to Zoe that Deakin was bargaining for Zoe's life. Zoe realised that this was inevitable and used logic to kill her. She didn't die as the device that was to kill her actually displaced her in time and she created a logic bomb to wound Deakin. She managed to get back to the TARDIS before the missile hit and the HADS took her away from danger. (AUDIO: The Tactics of Defeat)
Departure
The Doctor and his companions landed on a planet where the War Lords planned to use human soldiers as an army to conquer the galaxy by picking them out of various periods of Earth's history with the the War Chief's space-time vessel technology that had been given to them. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe helped unite the various resistance movements on the planet to fight the War Lords. Unable to return the soldiers himself, the Doctor sent a hypercube to the Time Lords to return them to the right time zones. After the capture of the Doctor's TARDIS and the dematerialisation of the War Lord for his crimes, the Time Lords sent Zoe back to the Wheel at the exact moment before she went away with the Doctor, thus erasing her memory of all but her first adventure with him. Zoe was met on arrival by Tanya Lernov, and was never aware that she had ever been away — except for a vague feeling of having forgotten something important. (TV: The War Games)
Life after the Doctor
According to one account, which may have been a dream, Zoe went into a coma after the Doctor linked her to the TARDIS's telepathic circuits. She woke up twenty-three years later, having dreamed not only her adventures with the Doctor, but also K9 and other future events. The Seventh Doctor visited her and encouraged her to write down all her dreams on a typewriter, telling her that a lot of people were depending on her. She began with The Dominators - Episode 1. (PROSE: Dream a Little Dream for Me)
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 him. (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)
Circa 2102, Zoe visited or lived on Pluto. (AUDIO: Echoes of Grey, The Memory Cheats)
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)
In circa 2119, in her late fifties, Zoe lived alone and struggled 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 central 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 and share the secret of time travel with them. During this time an employee for the company named Jen was responsible for helping Zoe recover her lost memories with the help of a machine. With Jen's help, Zoe was briefly able to remember some of her adventures with the Doctor, but forgot all about them once again after the sessions were over. In spite of the memories recovered during her sessions, Zoe stubbornly maintained that she had not travelled with the Doctor, claiming the Company was trying to discredit her as mentally unstable. (AUDIO: The Memory Cheats, The Uncertainty Principle)
When it became clear that Jen was making no progress with Zoe, the company sent in Kym, the woman who had originally posed as Ali when the Company had first approached her. Having pioneered the technology used to recover Zoe's memories, Kym had lost her standing with the Company due to her past failure with Zoe and was attempting to succeed where Jen had failed in getting the secret of time travel from Zoe. During their session, Zoe recalled an instance where the TARDIS landed on a space station called Artemis. While there, she decoded the last transmission from Artemis's sister station, Apollo, before it was destroyed. The transmission contained a virus capable of transferring itself to living tissue and other matter, apparently responsible for the destruction of Space Station Apollo, where it had been developed. Zoe attempted to quarantine the virus, but was knocked out when a computer terminal hit her during a meteor shower. In the end the Artemis was destroyed along with most of the crew as the virus ate away at the space station itself. Zoe was able to survive, however, thanks to an air mask given to her by a guard, keeping her alive when she was sucked out into space before being rescued by the Doctor and Jamie.
Kym realised that the events that Zoe witnessed were already happening in their current timeline as news of Apollo's destruction reached them, which turned out to be a Company-owned space station. Wanting to rectify her mistake of accidentally releasing the virus onto Artemis, Zoe agreed to go with Kym to prevent this disaster on the condition that she tell the Company the secret of time travel afterwards. Kym and Zoe were taken to the ship by Jen, with Zoe posing as a guard. As the events began to unfold, however, Zoe began to realise that Kym was behind most of the events that unfolded during her original visit to Artemis with the Doctor.
In the end, Zoe found out that Kym only brought her to the space station so she could finish decoding the virus and make a copy of it for Kym to give to the Company to get back in their good graces. After tending to her younger self and providing her with a breathing mask to survive the destruction of the space station, Zoe pursued Kym into the escape shuttle. There, she was able to send a modified version of the virus to the Company's headquarters where it would take out the Company's entire computer mainframe and then self-destruct before it could spread to any organic matter. In the process, the virus was also released into the escape shuttle, destroying it as Kym gave up her own breathing mask to keep Zoe alive before pushing her out of the ship into space, where she was eventually recovered by Jen. Now free of the Company, Jen continued to help Zoe recover her memories, even as they seemed to become increasingly hazy for her. (AUDIO: Second Chances)
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 Tomb of Rassilon and warned the Doctor against going further in the direction he had chosen because they said that 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)
When he was trapped in the Maelstrom by the demon Melanicus, the Fifth Doctor saw an illusory woman playing a carnival Hoopla. She fit both Zoe's description (COMIC: The Tides of Time) and Patience's. (PROSE: Cold Fusion) The Doctor recognised that he "knew her from somewhere" but couldn't put his finger on who she was; she darted out of sight before he could question her. (COMIC: The Tides of Time)
Undated events
At some point, Zoe was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken. Her memories of the visit were subsequently erased and she was sent on her way. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Personality
Despite knowing little about the Doctor, Zoe was a 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)
Zoe was also a mathematics wizard, which helped her in her role as an astrophysicist, (TV: The Wheel in Space) as well as scoring the highest marks ever on a Kroton teaching machine. (TV:The Krotons)
She was a vegetarian. (AUDIO: The Integral)
Jamie considered Zoe to be "a nice enough lassie" but was irritated by her occasional smugness. (AUDIO: The Edge)
Appearance
During her travels with the Doctor, Zoe was described by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to be "around nineteen or so". (TV: The Invasion) She was small, neat and precise (PROSE: The Seeds of Death) and had short black hair and a round (PROSE: The Dominators) pixie-like face. (PROSE: The Wheel in Space) She always had an expression of wide-eyed curiosity. (PROSE: The Mind Robber)
Behind the Scenes
- She is the first companion to be from the 21st century.
- She was supposed to stay on for season 7, but Wendy Padbury decided to leave along with Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines. Liz Shaw was created in her place.
- She was considered to appear in The Three Doctors, but Jon Pertwee felt that too many returning characters would be too distracting.