The Memory Cheats

"They're dreams. They never happened."

Writer: Simon Guerrier

Format: Audio

Released: September 2011

Series: Companion Chronicles 6.03

Featuring: Second Doctor, Jamie, Zoe

Synopsis

Zoe Heriot remembers everything. But she remembers nothing.

A genius with instant recall, Zoe's mind has been purged of her memories of travelling with the Doctor and Jamie in the TARDIS. And years later she is in deep trouble, prosecuted by a mysterious company that has evidence that she has travelled in Space and Time.

Except Zoe knows they're wrong. Aren't they?

But if that's the case, why is there proof that Zoe was in Uzbekistan in 1919.

Can the memory cheat?

Verdict

The Memory Cheats was a great audio adventure to continue this story arc for Zoe in the Companion Chronicles! I think it's a brilliant idea to have a continuous adventure flowing through the series for a specific companion and Zoe is a superb choice given her total recall ability with memory combined with her memory of her travels with the Doctor and Jamie in the TARDIS being wiped from her mind by the Time Lords in The War Games. We start strong with Zoe once again on the end of an apparent interrogation, this time by Jen, a colleague of Ali's from Echoes of Grey. Her mentioning of healing on Zoe's and not lasting because her memories were somehow locked was fantastic and I liked knowing that the Time Lords had power over Zoe's mind despite tampering. We were then taken on another adventure recalled by Zoe and as she told the story, her memory became clear. The setting of Uzbekistan in 1919 was about as unique as its gets for Earthbound stories so I really liked that and the parallels it had with Russia of the time and the two revolutions were fantastic. Tashkent was undergoing something mysterious and horrifying with children being taken one by one, each night. The fear factor that must have induced was quite something and the fact it was a single child every night somehow made it creepier than if it happened en masse. Again, I think I was more interested in Zoe and Jen's conversation than the former's actual recollection of the adventure, but one highlight for me of the story being told was that Jamie was playing football with the locals! That sounds right up his alley and his pride of winning for Scotland was a joy to hear. The report of the Lancings proving that Zoe was in Uzbekistan in 1919 was good as the later revelation that Zoe claimed to have made the story up by connecting all of the dots she had glimpsed from the paperwork was terrific! It was creating such a dilemma for Zoe given her total recall and adamant that she declined to travel in the TARDIS in The Wheel in Space. She dreamt of the journeys she could have had in the TARDIS which actually made me quite sad because she did have these adventures! And here she was on hand to help with missing children. The air of grief over the city was good atmosphere and I liked the description of how the family homes were devoid of family pictures. That was awful. The description of the creature that was taking the children as being a deformed man with a cry like an animal and twice the size of normal men painted quite the picture, and I liked the the Doctor and co rallied the troops to scare it off. Chebrokov was an excellent character and Zoe painting a different picture of him to what was on file was magnificent. The cliffhanger with Zoe claiming to have been the one to kill the Lancings and not him certainly took me by surprise! The second part felt different with the hunt for the creature and children and once we got there the description of the webbing was rather disturbing. Describing the children as being a part of an irrigation system was terrifying. Zoe waking the creature and this being the action that caused it to lash out and kill the Lancings was not quite what I expected with her claim, but it was still shocking to hear her lack of remorse. Of course, Zoe claimed the entire story wasn't true and that she thought the children were better off with the creature and that's what happened, but hey, the memory cheats. The creature that the children were in danger in a country of war, famine and sickness and Zoe agreed they'd be better off with the creature. A very fun concept and I liked the ambiguity. Overall, a great audio!

Rating: 8/10