Helicon Prime

Jamie McCrimmon has awakened in hospital, his head smoking from being struck by lightning out on the moors. The jolt has done something to him - he has remembered something that had been blotted out for the longest time: he has remembered the Doctor. He starts to tell the nurse about the time he and the Doctor visited Helicon Prime, which was a posh luxury vacation spot situated in a region of space where anger and hostility were nonexistant thanks to the effects of the Golden Zone, an energy field which reduces the urge to do harm to virtually nothing. But then the murders start, proof that the effect is fading, and someone has a plan to take advantage of it.

Unlike Zoe's emerging recall in Fear of the Daleks, Jamie needs a good jolt of lightning to snap his synapses back into place, even if it may just be a temporary effect. He doesn't remember leaving the Doctor, though; he doesn't recount their separation at the end of The War Games in his narrative but he describes it all as dream that fades as one wakes up in the morning. And fade it does as the tale works its way to the finale, with Jamie starting to lose his train of thought as the memories start to slip away. Again a difference from Zoe; whereas she is going to keep remembering things, Jamie is experiencing a rarity and potentially he won't be haunted by bad dreams.

Continuity gets a bit off here though; Jamie states that he and the Doctor arrive at Helicon Prime en route to picking Victoria up from her study of graphology (a handy means to have the narrative limited to two regulars and not neglect a third) but up til now there has been no mention of her being absent from the TARDIS crew in the televised episodes, let alone the Doctor being able to pilot the ship with that kind of accuracy. Previously, though, there was mention in The Black Hole of the Doctor and Jamie going off on a mission together and leaving Victoria behind to do just that, and that was a device to allow the Doctor and Jamie to meet a future Doctor in The Two Doctors (in 1985 - so a ways off right now). Helicon Prime suggests that the Doctor and Jamie might well have had several adventures without Victoria, which would be relatively easy for Big Finish to realize with Fraser Hines being able to do both voices. This is the first Companion Chronicle with Hines doing the work and although he has not started his Troughton impressions in earnest there are parts where while doing the dialogue I could hear it starting to happen.

There is a proper theory about this whole graphology business which was put out there but it's yet to be discussed. But I'm coming up to a big chunk of it shortly. Before then, though, Jamie and Zoe have a few more adventures in their Doctor-less futures,

NEXT EPISODE: THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION