These Stolen Hours

"Just one more adventure."

Writer: Grace Knight

Format: Audio

Released: August 2020

Series: Short Trips 10.08

Featuring: Sixth Doctor, Charley

Synopsis

Charlotte Pollard knows all too well how precious memories can be. She remembers her travels with the Doctor, her Doctor. She remembers watching him die.

A time disturbance leads the Doctor and Charley to a remote research station. Unable to form memories, the crew believe someone is doing their work while they sleep. The truth, however, is far more insidious.

Verdict

These Stolen Hours was a good little Short Trips adventure! I am grateful for this range in giving us an extra story with this relatively rare pairing of the Sixth Doctor and Charley, and it was fun to have Charley telling it retrospectively from her own point of view at the start. I'm a huge fan of Charley as a companion and it's interesting to hear how she still didn't quite see the Sixth Doctor as her Doctor. She was still reiterating how much she loved the Eighth Doctor here and missed travels, but the way she linked things later in the story to having her own extra time travelling as a bonus with the Sixth Doctor was a highlight for me. It's intriguing to delve into the mind of Charley which these Short Trips allow, and I thought India Fisher did a stellar job with the narration. I liked that the Charlotte Pollard series was referenced with 'them' letting Charley out of stasis, of course meaning the Viyrans, and it's nice to get another bonus with her here before I delve into The Further Adventuress in due course. I enjoyed the concept of a time disturbance as I think that always works well and it always angers the Doctor when someone interferes with time. Artemis was a decent character as the head of the research and I liked the relationship she developed with the Doctor. The Doctor always does well when engaging with someone in the scientific field and I can imagine that if this was the Eighth Doctor then Charley might be a little jealous of what they developed over the course of the half hour. Marty was a good character and his adoration of Artemis was nice to see at the start, but I really didn't see the true significance of that coming towards the story's conclusion! I thought the research that was taking place was good and having a crew without memories was a fun concept and something I felt ought to have been more of a focus and expanded upon. I believe there is a lot of potential in the inability to remember and memorise that wasn't fully exploited here. There was definitely room for more in my opinion! Artemis having engaged in time travel after losing her own Marty to a disease was quite something and showed how determined she was to be reunited with her loved one, but she was invading his past for her own desire which didn't sit well with the Doctor. I liked the idea of her literally cutting into time and making a gap wide enough for just her to step though and I honestly think that's such a fun description of time travel! Her thinking that it would just seal back up was logical and I don't blame her for that, but the repercussions were felt here with the lack of memory building. It was a sad end for her with her relationship with Marty and having to accept that he was gone. Overall, I thought this was a solid little half an hour and exciting to revisit Charley! I do think the writing of the Doctor could have been slightly more centred towards the sixth incarnation, but that's difficult without the actor himself present. Still, a fine little adventure.

Rating: 7/10