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 the 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?
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE MEMORY CHEATS
“The Memory Cheats,” from Simon Guerrier, the third release in the sixth series of Companion Chronicles, is a sequel to “Echoes of Grey,” similar to Guerrier’s Sara Kingdom trilogy or Nigel Fairs’ work with Leela. As the title implies, it’s largely about Zoe’s memory after the Time Lords wiped it – but while the framing scenes are fascinating, the central story is much less interesting.
The framing device, as I mentioned above, is excellent. The mysterious Company is trying to figure out if there’s anything useful in Zoe’s mind, and they suspect she has a memory block though they don’t know why or how. Zoe herself is torn because she knows she has a photographic memory and yet experiences vivid dreams about adventures with the Doctor, adventures she knows she couldn’t have had. The title – which I assume is a cheeky nod at one of John Nathan-Turner’s favorite sayings – does give the game away in some respects, but Guerrier makes it work anyway. I love how the script turns itself around twice in the final moments, first by revealing that Zoe fabricated the entire story from her rapid observation of Company documents, but then revealing that there is actual proof that she was in Tashkent at the time of the Russian Revolution. So we don’t know how much of the story is false and how much actually came from Zoe’s obstructed memory, and that ambiguity sets up a nice cliffhanger into the next story in this series.
Unfortunately, the story itself isn’t very interesting. I like the setting quite a bit, as I always enjoy Doctor Who stories that take place in little-used historical periods, but apart from the constant sense of paranoia there’s not much to distinguish Tashkent. I like the little details like Jamie getting to know the local kids, but the actual plot, featuring a frightening alien abducting the local children, is very traditional Doctor Who material that fails to inspire. The other problem with the unreliable narration is that it uses the conclusion as a point of conflict: Zoe says that the creature was allowed to take the children with it, something that we know the Doctor would not have allowed to happen. But we never find out what actually happened, and while that lends ambiguity to the framing device, it also makes the story unrewarding. I don’t mind this in theory but, if that was Guerrier’s angle, he shouldn’t have made the story the central part of the script. I understand that’s the format of the Companion Chronicles, but there’s no reason that format can’t be broken.
The production of “The Memory Cheats” is stellar from start to finish. Wendy Padbury is fantastic, switching her performance noticeably between the present day and the flashbacks, and Charlie Hayes supports ably, driving the framing device along. Lisa Bowerman directs at the usual high standard, while the sound design from Richard Fox and Lauren Yason is excellent, particularly the haunting score. Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Despite the fact that it falls down in a few places, it’s still an intelligent, boundary-pushing script supported by excellent performances. Ambitious stories like this seem to be the hallmark of the Companion Chronicles, which might just make it my favorite range. More like this!
Very, very good.
7/10