Zoe Heriot

"Yes, well . . . Zoe is something of a genius, of course.  It can be very irritating at times."

- the Doctor in The Krotons

Zoe Heriot (surname sometimes spelled "Herriot") was a brilliant young scientist who accompanied the Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon in their travels aboard the Doctor's TARDIS.

Profile
Zoe was an astrometricist, first class, and astrophysicist on board Space Station W3 (aka 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, and was described by her colleagues as 'the librarian'. Her training left her emotionally underdeveloped, having been taught only the value of logic. This lack of emotion led to conflict with some of her colleagues, who 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 more aware that there was more to knowledge than mere 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 had become 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. (DW: The Wheel in Space)

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' (DW: The Dominators)

Later in her travels, 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 by explaining that the pseudoscientific principles behind his "futuristic" ray gun-like weapon could not possibly work. (DW: The Mind Robber) Zoe tended to regularly use her programming skills to find solutions to problems. Whilst helping the Doctor and Jamie deal with the Cybermen's attempted 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 took great delight in the computer's destruction. Using her mathematical, and logic, knowledge Zoe later computed the attack pattern for missiles to set up a chain reaction which was needed to destroy the incoming Cyberships (DW: 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 both teach and indoctrinate the Gonds. Having scored more than double the score of the best Gond students, Zoe declared that the Doctor could certainly answer the questions too (DW: 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. (DW: The Space Pirates)

Eventually the Time Lords sent Zoe back to the Wheel. 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 (DW: The War Games)

Quotes
Zoe Heriot - Quotes

Behind the Scenes
Zoe's last name has often been given as Herriot, with two R's. However the original script for The Wheel in Space, her debut story, gives her surname as Heriot, with one R.