Second Chances

"For as long as I can remember, I haven't been able to remember."

Writer: John Dorney

Format: Audio

Released: June 2014

Series: Companion Chronicles 8.12

Featuring: Second Doctor, Jamie, Zoe

Synopsis

From time to time, everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has things from their past they'd like to undo, but nobody gets a second chance. What's done is done and we can't change that.

Zoe Heriot's mistakes have led her to imprisonment at the hands of the Company. But when news reports trigger memories of the Doctor, Jamie and an appalling threat, she begins to sense a way out. An opportunity for redemption opens up to anyone willing to take it.

Nobody can alter what's been done. Nobody gets a second chance.

Or do they?

Verdict

Second Chances was an excellent audio adventure to conclude the eighth series of Companion Chronicles and the range as a monthly release. It was a terrific ending to a series of stories featuring Zoe and her capturing by the Company that harked back all the way to Echoes of Grey and it was a fitting finale for sure. Zoe starting things with a wish and wanting to be happy but being told the solution to that was to never dream, never love and to never wish for anything. Talk about a morbid beginning! The concept of a space station dying was intriguing and the wishes centring around the shooting star was very good. I liked how that mattered to Zoe and transitioned into the TARDIS arriving on the Artemis station which was cooly located near Saturn. I thought it was great that it was a Company station and the threat of it developing bacterial weaponry was superb. Ali returning was a good development and a nice way to bring the story arc full circle, and it was interesting for Zoe not to remember her but did remember Jen telling her about Ali. Zoe did recall the events of The Uncertainty Principle which was some good continuity and I liked how a focus on pain was able to spark more memories. The link between Artemis and Apollo as the twin space stations and the parallels that had with mythology was great and having Zoe translate the ship's final message was a good use of her skills. I thought it was magnificent for Ali to want to skip the irrelevant bits of the story and a loose way to mock the typical structure of a Doctor Who story. It was also an easy way to eliminate Jamie and the Doctor from proceedings with Zoe very much the focus. Zoe realising that the code was another code was intriguing and her horror at the potential of a computer virus really sold it, especially with the links to the sync ops which I thought were a fun idea. Combining matter and processor was a good clash of worlds and the virus being a metal eating bug was a fantastic threat, especially when it came into the ship systems. The asteroid hitting and Zoe being told bluntly that the Doctor and Jamie were dead must have been a huge shock but all attentions had to be on evacuating the shuttle. The virus was past the point of return and Zoe was sucked out into space and lost her vision, a sequence that I was stunned wasn't the cliffhanger! She survived through a breather, but what I loved was her realisation that her attempts to decode the virus had actually activated it so she blamed herself for everyone else dying. That didn't include the Doctor and Jamie though as the TARDIS was located at the spindle to survive and they refused to depart without Zoe which was lovely. I loved the twist that the virus release on Apollo was happening now concurrent with Zoe's timeline and Zoe wanted to contact to stop it from happening, but the Company were unwilling so there was the alternative of Zoe and Ali going together to contain because Zoe knew the timings and what to do contain. That was a fun concept for the story over the two parts. Part two had a lot of repetition and seeing events from afar we'd already listened to which I liked and Ali, who was actually Kym, was just there for the virus and wanted Zoe to create a copy which was brilliant. She'd faked the records and they were always there anyway as they helped cause the destruction. Zoe using her photographic memory was super and I loved how she remembered every bit of the code and needed a copy to make it better. She'd sent the Company a transmission modified to destroy the Company from within and then to destroy itself. That was excellent stuff and then we had a big shock factor of Kym shooting Zoe! She was saved thanks to Jen which was a nice touch, and the talk of remembrance at the end was magnificent to tie up the story arc over the series! Overall, a fantastic listen!

Rating: 9/10