The Apocalypse Mirror

The TARDIS makes an accidental landing in a city is a state of terror; the people rarely go outside and when they do they are attacked by fearsome metal bird-like creatures and then vanish. The leaders of the city are incapable of making any decisions about how to deal with any crisis - including the imminent impact of a meteorite which will wipe out everything when it strikes. And on top of this, the odd time someone can see another city overlain on this one, a better one where it is bright and clean and more pleasant than this cold dingy one. If only they could get there.

Well this is different. It's not a very complicated tale for starters; there's a mystery afoot and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are as usual suspected of having something to do with it until they start to persuade the powers that be that they are there to help; it's pretty standard "base under siege" formula for the Troughton era. Fraser Hines does most of the work here providing voices for the entire cast save for Wendy Padbury in a supporting role as Zoe again.

As far as continuity goes here, though, The Apocalypse Mirror could really be dropped anywhere in season 6 after The Isos Network; there's no preamble set it in Zoe's future along with the previous three stories nor in Jamie's post War Games amnesiac life, it's just the TARDIS crew on an adventure. Jamie speaks in past tense but there are not enough clues to really place it anywhere specific. And without the framework of retrospection, to me a Companion Chronicle adventure doesn't really seem to be doing what they should: telling the story from the companion's point of view but from some time after the events. What we have here is really just a simple short tale with a bit of a cut down cast, not something that is being looked back on in horror or joy from the future. With Jamie and Zoe, though, it's not like there are a lot of ways to keep them telling stories; as I said before the device of sudden recall for Jamie will only work so many times, and with Zoe the interrogation of the Company is probably going to drive her mad or kill her. There's far more potential for Zoe to tell these stories within her future framework, but maybe as a boxed set of a few together linked by her escape from the Company, maybe desperate to reconnect with the Doctor once everything comes back to her.

Of course Big Finish can do what they want, and they show good judgement in almost everything they do produce, keeping within their limits as defined by the BBC's license but also being mindful of the universe they themselves have created in the nooks and crannies of the established series. My grumbles about continuity are my own; I would have preferred to have known this was not being told from the future perspective so I could have slid it in between The Final Sanction or The Colony of Lies. That said I have but two more to go before I am moving onto the next Doctor's era, so we shall see where they should be placed.

NEXT EPISODE: THE DYING LIGHT

The Uncertainty Principle

Still held by the Company, Zoe is still insistent that she does not remember any travels with the Doctor and Jamie in the TARDIS. Her interrogator, Jen, insists they keep pushing as they have managed to punch a hole through whatever is blocking Zoe's memories, and she prods Zoe for more. Zoe remembers a funeral for a scientist - a girl named Meg, someone they never met - but with the Doctor and Jamie she befriends Meg's friend Archie to find out what Meg was working on which caused her death. There's more to it than just an experiment gone wrong, and the Doctor wants to find out and stop it.

Big Finish's decision to give Zoe this kind of extended afterlife from her companion days is playing out brilliantly; third tale in a row now with her trying to live a normal life with the adventures in the TARDIS behind her and the memories out of her reach. Companion Chronicles, in my view, function best when they are told in hindsight once the party is over and they are left to deal with their new lives. Some have been simple flashbacks, but this sort of thing I feel is the best. This one feels like the last of them in this plot thread, so I can rate it as good, but the after-TARDIS adventures of Ian Chesterton feel a bit more compelling. But maybe just because there are more of them.

A new dimension here though is Zoe having a potential love interest in Archie. Jen chides her about not being loveable or loved as a means to get her to talk and almost mocks her interest in Archie as something she could never see through, but Zoe isn't used to thinking or feeling that way and it means little to her to be mocked for it. All through the TV series there was not any idea Zoe might be interested in any of the men she met, it was only when The Indestructible Man was written that it was ever really explored and even then Zoe just accepted it as a logical thing that she might end up coupled with someone, even if that time it was out of convenience. And it's not to say that Zoe is asexual, the idea of romantic interest and emotions just honestly never occurred to her. Interestingly the one person she does feel attraction to here, Archie, is not a confident sort - hardly the type one would think she would notice. And Archie is not without his own baggage - he was interested in Meg until she died. But he thinks he can still hear her talking to him down a mock up single string telephone line they built.

Ohyes in amongst all the Zoe material is the actual mystery around Meg's death and what she was up to that caused it. That scary monster on the cover should give a clue; there are aliens behind the scenes but their motivation is unclear as they are not always there. They only appear in relation to Meg's experiment, which arouses the Doctor's suspicions. There's a good dose of hard science in here right from the principles of what Meg was trying to achieve right through to Zoe's own rationale about science being about inconsistency and the never ending search for more answers.

As the story rolls on though Zoe's life is said to hang in the balance. If she gives the Company the memories they want, will she go free? Another Companion Chronicle will no doubt reveal that.

NEXT EPISODE: THE APOCALYPSE MIRROR

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

Echoes of Grey

Years after she has seen a counselor for her bad dreams, Zoe finds herself face to face with a woman named Ali who she does not know, but who says she knows her. Ali insists that she and Zoe met not too long ago in the company of the Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon. Zoe is confused; she knows that she has a perfect memory but it does not include any adventures with the two time travellers, yet her vivid dreams tell her otherwise. Ali offers to help Zoe uncover some of her lost memories, in particular the ones where she is present, centering on events which took place at an advanced medical research centre. Zoe allows Ali to help her, and the memories of the horrors she faced there begin to return.

Echoes of Grey seems to get panned by a lot of critics as one of Big Finish's least ambitious tales, with complaints being mostly about what some feel is a sub-par performance by Wendy Padbury as the biggest issue. And in some ways maybe this is true; she is not tremendously animated as she speaks of the events she witnessed, but Zoe is supposed to be under some kind of influence as she recalls things, almost a trance, which would account for why her delivery is a bit stiff and unenthusiastic. The other reason for it, though, may be something that Big Finish were working on behind the scenes without feeling the need to spell it all out for listeners: Zoe is probably slipping into depression. Her life before the Doctor and Jamie was fulfilling enough for her at the time with logical puzzles to solve and work to do every day, but as she has returned to it and is now older, the daily joyless grind has just switched off any enthusiasm she might have had. She says herself that she lives alone and has no friends, she just does her job and knows she is good at it given that she if gifted with total recall. Imagine what these blank bits in her memory and the bad dreams can do to the confidence of a person like that.

As for the meat of the episode we are told a tale of genetic engineering and a species bred to draw out infection and disease and cure patients of all their worldly ills. Not a bad leap really, although having a race about packed full of distilled disease doesn't sound like the best solution; we're talking walking biohazards, living waste receptacles. The ethics of creating a species just to lumber them with sicknesses and let others live longer is a minor concern to the people who created them, these Achromatics - after all the bigger picture is all the lives which are being saved, not the few lives which have been created just to act as vessels. We've come across this in a lot of other science fiction and fantasy, most notably the Clones in The Clone Wars of the Star Wars franchise; if you've created a life form, don't you get to determine it's fate?

Echoes is actually the start of a Zoe trilogy, much like the three tales of Oliver Harper and the last few adventures of Steven Taylor; Zoe has attracted the attention of the Company, and her interaction with Ali is really just their first stab and getting into her head and at her memories. I enjoy this sort of an approach, with a bit of a theme to pull the adventures together - especially where Jamie and Zoe are concerned as there can only be so much convenient recall before the device gets tired.

But I don't think this approach will.

NEXT EPISODE: THE MEMORY CHEATS

The Glorious Revolution

James Robert McCrimmon receives a visitor from the stars while on the moors. The visitor - man who calls himself a Time Lord - insists that Jamie travelled through time and space with a man known as the Doctor, and while Jamie remembers the Doctor he is sure that he never travelled with him. Sure, that is, until the strange visitor restores his memories, and it all comes flooding back: Victoria, Zoe, the TARDIS, the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors... and a time when the TARDIS came to land on Earth in 1688. Jamie found himself wandering in his own past, and the crew were received into the court of King James II. But the visitor insists that something went wrong in that time, and soon they realize that Jamie himself was the cause of a massive disruption to the timelines.

First deal here is there's is an assertion that this is the first time Jamie went into his own past, conveniently forgetting The Roundheads, published some eight years earlier. Still, Roundheads in 1648, almost one hundred years before Jamie's time and one could argue that The Glorious Revolution is more legitimately Jamie's past as it is closer to his time and he knows who the historical players are. Not only that, but Jamie  has a more direct connection with these events as they shape his own life and when he realizes that he has the opportunity to do something about it and make things better, he takes it.

Yes, it's now Jamie's turn to fall into the "you can't rewrite history" trap; he realizes that the revolution that is to come from James's abdication of the throne creates untold suffering in Ireland and Scotland and indeed leads to the Jacobite uprisings of his own time. The Doctor warns Jamie that interfering in this could create massive damage to the future, but Jamie's retort is they have always fought against evil and rhymes off the list of baddies they have seen off, and in his mind this is no different. As far as he is concerned, the Doctor is wrong, and he is right - after all, it's his planet and his history.

Zoe gets pretty much hushed up for this one, getting trapped and locked up with the Doctor a great deal and not getting much to do at all. Her own logic tells her that the Doctor is right, leading Jamie to turn his back on her as well, although he does save them both from a hangman's noose despite the difference of opinion. The Doctor comes to life a bit more this time with even more of his dialogue performed uncannily by Fraser Hines, which ultimately leads to him playing the Doctor full on.

With this as the second time Jamie's memory has been restored one has to wonder how many more times this formula is going to seem entertaining or enjoyable; with Zoe there is the potential for a story arc to build but unless Jamie is going to keep his memories for good the whole concept of forgetting and sudden restoration is going to get tired eventually.

But for now, back to Zoe's future...

NEXT EPISODE: ECHOES OF GREY

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

Fear of the Daleks

Zoe Herriot is having bad dreams. Very vivid bad dreams. She wakes up at night tormented by very clear images of monsters and feelings of absolute terror; with her eidetic memory this is worse than a normal nightmare. She seeks the help of a counselor and tells of her dream, a dream where she is with two men she met just once on the Wheel: Jamie McCrimmon and the Doctor. How she can dream of them so vividly is a mystery to her and she suspects her memory is being blocked, for how else could she recall with such clarity a time when she was with the Doctor and Jamie and they encountered the most evil creatures in the universe - the Daleks.

It's curious that in this instance the Daleks are trying to be all subtle in their plans; they are attempting to use third parties as assassins to disrupt a peace conference and set the parties at war, but this kind of cunning is not really them at all. I was surprised that the Daleks were not just going to roll in and wipe everyone out. Zoe is absolutely terrified of them, with her dream detailing watching them on a screen in the TARDIS and then falling into their trap; her eidetic memory makes her a perfect candidate for the assassination mission they have in mind. Zoe is then used against her will as their puppet to attempt to carry out their plans.

There are really two stories being told here; the first and most obvious is the adventure with the Daleks, but the other is the start of a loose story arc. Zoe's memory being so sharp has somehow resisted some of the Time Lord voodoo they used to wipe it of her time with the Doctor, and over the years bits of what happened while she was on board the TARDIS is percolating through the layers. Being a logical type of gal, Zoe makes the conclusion that she is actually being blocked somehow and slowly realizes that she actually has been with the Doctor and Jamie, even if she can't remember everything in any coherent order or detail. Did the Time Lords get the whole mind wipe wrong? Did they understand so little about humans that the whole thing was just a big fail?

And if Zoe's memories are still lurking somewhere in her subconscious, bubbling up in her dreams, then what about Jamie...?

NEXT EPISODE: HELICON PRIME