The Memory Cheats

The Company have detained Zoe Herriot; they have identified her as a traveller in time and they want her secrets for themselves. Where their previous agent, Ali, has failed they have dispatched another, named Jen to succeed. Zoe is outraged and confused - she knows she never travelled anywhere with the Doctor or Jamie McCrimmon, but here she is again with everyone insisting that her perfect memory is in fact flawed and she has forgotten everything. But the odd scraps of memory and the vivid dreams of being in the TARDIS remain, and with Jen Zoe begins to recount a tale of when she, along with the Doctor and Jamie, landed on Earth in 1919 and faced a monster.

Another historical tale, which the early years were famous for, although not as many in the Troughton era stayed firmly with history and left the science fiction element behind. The Memory Cheats, though, does go to science fiction land with the presence of a monster stealing children and terrorizing a village in Uzbekistan shortly after the Bolsheviks took power. The Doctor assumes the guise of a medical examiner from Moscow, there to look into these disappearances - his usual ruse in situations like this.

Like Echoes of Grey we're getting two stories again, but my interest is more with the tale of Zoe now, after she has been torn from the TARDIS and her memories stolen from her. And the Company as well - who are these people? What do they want with Zoe's memories exactly, and how long are they going to keep hounding her? And really how much of this can Zoe be expected to take? I had mentioned before that Zoe seemed to be tipping towards the edge of depression, but now her resolve seems to be building and she is hardening against the Company and its intrusion into her life. It's worth remembering that although she's been away from the Doctor for a while and can't even remember him, Zoe is still a lot smarter than the people looking to cash in on her memories, and that can be dangerous.

Dig that title though eh? The Memory Cheats. This is something a former producer of Doctor Who used to say when old lost episodes were remembered by people who saw it the one time on television, and through their remembering they are making the memory itself better, ignoring defects and inconsistencies and really upping the nostalgia tour. The notion is not misplaced as I remember speaking to some of those fans or reading their testimonies about older episodes which at the time were lost and my they were the best things on TV ever. And then some of those episodes started to turn up and although they were not absolute crap they were still on-par with the rest of the episodes we had; they were kinda normal, the memory filling in blanks to really make them seem like a lost treasure (and to an extent they are - don't think I am suggesting otherwise). And perhaps that is how the Company looks at Zoe's fleeting elusive memories. But be warned; if the memory itself can cheat, maybe Zoe can, too.

NEXT EPISODE: THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE