THE SPANKING ADVENTURES: PRODUCTION HISTORY (THE ZOE YEARS)

When Deborah Watling announced her intention to leave 'Doctor Who' at
the end of 'Fury From the Deep', the production team took the
opportunity to reconsider and develop the role of the girl companion.
One of the most popular aspects of these characters had been the
intermittent spanking scenes, so it was decided to make this part of the
regular format, and to devise the new girl companion accordingly. The
result was Zoe Herriot, a too-clever-by-half girl from the future who
would be spanked at least once in each serial. Auditions were held in
which the short-listed actresses performed a five-minute scene with
Frazer Hines in which Zoe is caught stowing away on the TARDIS and
spanked by Jamie. (A version of this scene was later used as Zoe's
introduction to the TARDIS crew at the end of 'The Wheel in Space'.) Of
the six hopefuls, Wendy Padbury was chosen to play the role, and she was
introduced to the press at a photocall three weeks later. The intention
was to introduce the new emphasis on the spanking element at the same
time. However, neither Patrick Troughton nor Frazer Hines were available
to attend the photocall, and an actor in costume as a Cyberman was used
instead. Although some pictures were taken showing Zoe across the
Cyberman's knee, they were too comical for the desired effect and the
newspapers chose to run photographs showing her being menaced more
conventionally.

Interviewed in 1984, Wendy Padbury was philosophical about the many
spankings she endured on 'Doctor Who': 'The program had been running for
a long time even then, and you knew that if you took the part of the
girl it would happen sooner or later. What I didn't know when I applied
for the job was that it was going to become a much bigger part of the
series, but they were very open and up-front about that, and all the
girls were spanked at the audition. I preferred it when it was Patrick
or later Jon who had to spank me, because Frazer could be very
heavy-handed at times, and after a Jamie spanking I often couldn't sit
down!'

One of the most memorable of the new regular spanking scenes came in the
final episode of 'The Prison in Space' by Dick Sharples. Unlike most
writers, Sharples chose to make this scene the key to the resolution of
the plot, in which Zoe has been hypnotized by the feminist villains.
When Jamie, enraged by her betrayal, gives her a good spanking, he
unwittingly discovers the way to break the mental conditioning. This
leads to scenes of mass spanking as the downtrodden men rebel against
the ruling dictatorship and put Jamie's discovery into effect against
its conditioned dolly-guards, economically and stylishly realised in a
tightly-edited sequence of extreme close-ups showing male hands smacking
upturned female bottoms and the dolly-guards' facial reactions.

The spanking of Zoe in this story was a turning-point for 'Doctor Who'
in one respect. Among the problems of spanking scenes in the late
Sixties was the fashionable mini-skirt. These could be highly revealing
when a girl wearing one was put over a man's knee, and this was still
widely thought to be indecent in some quarters. In the previous story,
'The Invasion', a scene where Zoe and guest star Isobel (Sally Faulkner)
were spanked by the Doctor and the Brigadier had both girls' panties
visible under their short skirts, and earlier scenes with Polly and
Victoria had shown the same problem despite carefully chosen camera
angles. In 'The Prison in Space', however, for the first time in 'Doctor
Who', Jamie was seen to lift Zoe's mini-skirt and spank her directly on
the seat of her knickers.

As Frazer Hines explained in 1991, this was his own idea, put in on the
spur of the moment when the scene was recorded: 'I was bothered by the
fact that Zoe was doing much worse things than usual in that serial.
Most of the time she was cheeky or got into trouble or whatever, and she
was spanked for it. There needed to be something more in 'Prison in
Space' because it wasn't just the usual misbehavior. It only came to me
when I actually put her across my knee for the take and I remembered
something that happened at the auditions when we chose Wendy earlier
that year. The girls had all been told to wear trousers because they'd
decided to have more spankings and it was important to cast someone with
a nice-looking bottom. But one girl turned up in a dress, so when it
came to the part of the scene where Jamie spanks Zoe, they asked me to
turn up her skirt first so they could see properly. The girl, it wasn't
Wendy, I'd better not say who it was, she didn't like this at all and
walked out of the audition, and of course she didn't get the part. As I
put Wendy across my knee, this came back to me, and I thought it would
be a good way to make the scene something more than usual, so I just
flipped her little skirt over and spanked her panties. It was just an
impulse. The cameras were running and I thought they might ask for a
retake, but fortunately they liked it and kept it in.' (Incidentally,
despite Frazer's reticence, it is known that the actress who objected to
being spanked on her knickers at the audition was Gabrielle Drake, later
to find fame in the Gerry Anderson series 'UFO'.)

Although there were some complaints from people who felt the scene went
too far, it was very influential in the future development of spanking
in 'Doctor Who' after Hines's departure from the program. When the
Doctor, freshly regenerated into the form of Jon Pertwee, escaped from
Gallifrey with Zoe, only to have the TARDIS steered by the Time Lords to
modern-day Earth and grounded there, the production team decided that
the new series should lose some of the restrictions that went with being
a nominal children's program. At the same time, they wanted to find ways
to exploit the fact that the series was now to be made in color as part
of the BBC's upgraded television service. One of the ideas adopted,
inspired by the 'Prison in Space' scene, was that in future Zoe should
always be spanked with her mini-skirt lifted to display a variety of
colored panties. This meant that Zoe's wardrobe for the new season was
now restricted to mini-skirts, with no room for the bottom- hugging
catsuits and hot-pants of the previous year.

The new color series also saw the full-scale introduction of
out-of-order recording. Wendy Padbury comments: 'This was not a change I
was altogether happy with, even if it did make it easier for the BBC. We
did groups of scenes together that took place in the same sets, whereas
before we had done each episode more or less in the right order, like a
play. The trouble with this was that we might follow a spanking scene
with something from another episode entirely. Previously if I looked
uncomfortable or needed a cushion to sit down on, it was alright because
Zoe had a sore bottom from the spanking, but that wasn't possible with
the new system. There was one occasion when I was spanked three times on
the same evening because the scenes all took place in the same group of
sets!'

This was the serial 'Inferno', during which the Doctor travels to a
parallel world and meets subtly different versions of his friends on
Earth. Wendy expands: 'We did the first spanking, and then I had to go
and change into a new pair of knickers, because the gimmick was that
they'd be different each time. Then we did another spanking, to go later
in the story, after which everyone changed into their other costumes and
we did the scenes on the parallel world, in which I was spanked yet
again, this time as the other Zoe!' As a character touch, this Zoe,
though superficially similar, was seen to be wearing plain white panties
when her skirt was raised, quite unlike the bright colors and patterns
regularly displayed by her counterpart. 'At the time several people told
me they thought I overdid the reactions in this scene, and I used to say
that this was a different Zoe who had never been spanked before and
wasn't used to it. But the truth was that I had already had two good
spankings that evening and it really did hurt as much as it looked!'

'Doctor Who''s then producer, Barry Letts, told a convention audience in
1987, 'This was an oversight in the planning stages, and although Wendy
was very good about it, it made us have a rethink of the way spanking
scenes were recorded. The main outcome was that we decided wherever
possible to keep them back until the end of a studio day. This helped
the actress, and it also meant that the technicians were less quick
about pulling the plugs if we overran. They would all gladly put in
overtime to see a glamorous actress spanked!' This was too late for
Wendy Padbury, however, for 'Inferno' was her last story, as Zoe left to
marry Greg Sutton, the rugged oil man who had spanked her earlier in the
serial.