The Persistence of Memory

"There's an alien spaceship at the bottom of Loch Ness?"

Writer: Colin Brake

Format: Short Story

Released: October 2016

Printed in: Twelve Doctors of Christmas 12

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor

Synopsis

CJ is hunting mysteries and wants to collect the latest one in the newspaper, but he doesn't have enough money. Luckily a stranger with fierce eyebrows gives him the coinage, except it's from 8 years in the future. There's a new mystery for CJ to investigate now...

Verdict

The Persistence of Memory was a wonderful way to conclude the Twelve Doctors of Christmas collection! This really has been an unexpectedly great volume of stories and I have thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. I was glad that things ended very strongly as we saw the Twelfth Doctor doing battle with the Monk! I really didn't see that coming and was one of the best surprises I've had in a Doctor Who story in a very long time indeed. I'm a huge fan of the Monk as it is so putting him in a modern era adventure was just delightful! I have hoped for his return on several occasions when there has been meddling with time but it has never turned out to be him. I had a sneaky thought during my reading here but as soon as the mysterious meddler showed that he knew who the Doctor was, I was just waiting in almost disbelief for the big reveal. It was really well done. The Doctor saying it couldn't possibly be him was just added icing on the cake that I adored. CJ was a really good character and his collection of mysteries was a fantastic hobby for a fourteen-year-old boy and that also fitted in nicely with the initial 1979 setting. The Doctor providing him with a 10p coin from 1987 was what set him off in hunting the mystery of this man and when he saw he entered the TARDIS and that it was dematerialising, he barged his way onto the Doctor's ship and seemed quite knowledgeable about it through educated guessing. He deduced that it was more than just a spaceship and could travel in time and as it was Christmas, he hoped for one trip. And he got it! He wanted to see the Loch Ness Monster. Well, initially there were some other things he wanted to see first like the Mary Celeste but as the Doctor established and we saw in The Chase, that was all the Daleks doing. The reference to Terror of the Zygons was great and there was the inevitable line about UNIT dating controversy, something I don't really think is necessary in every single adventure that deals with it, but off they went Nessie hunting. Now, I recently visited Loch Ness and was fascinated by the story of Nessie and I am convinced that she is real. So for the Monk to be interfering from beneath the Loch and using a time scoop was something I could picture easily. The Doctor was fascinated too and he had to make sure that the Monk was defeated. It said something about how far the Doctor has come by this incarnation as his fellow Time Lord was almost fearing the power of the Doctor. Maybe that was something to do with the Time War? It was an intriguing element and it also helped the length of the story so there were a lot of positives. CJ would be returned home having seen Nessie and I loved the revelation that he turned out to actually be Clive Finch, the man we would later see in Rose as the man who tracked all the appearances of the Doctor throughout time. The Doctor even remembered the link and I thought that was terrific. A really fantastic touch that I was a big fan of reading. Overall, a wonderful little tale to finish the collection on!

Rating: 9/10