2 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 77 minutes. Written by: John Dorney. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Wendy Padbury, Emily Pithon.
THE PLOT:
Decades after her time on the Wheel, Zoe Heriot is startled when she meets Ali (Emily Pithon), a young woman who remembers her from The Whitaker Institute, where she was among those saved by Zoe, Jamie, and the Doctor. This reinforces Zoe's own doubts about her memory. Ali suggests using a Delta Wave device to try to restore those lost memories, using her own recollections of the incident as a starting point.
This works, with Zoe soon recalling arriving in the TARDIS. Something is amiss. Hospital beds are identified with patient names, but there are no patients. The Doctor impersonates an official from the company backing the Institute, and the chief researcher, Dr. Cadden, grants them access - but carefully directed access, which leaves the Doctor fuming.
There's a lab that's kept off limits, supposedly due to contagion, and they hear whispers about "The Achromatics." A secret is being kept - and the consequences could be deadly!
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: Impersonates a company official, freeing a captured Zoe and gaining access in a single move. After one person is killed, he tests Dr. Cadden by asking about the victim. When Cadden responds that he doesn't know where the man is, the Doctor knows that he's innocent; a guilty man would have had a story ready. Wendy Padbury does a much better job of capturing the Doctor here than in Fear of the Daleks, adopting a low, gravely tone that's a nice fit for the Second Doctor.
Zoe: She is mostly the standard Companion in the main story. She's in-character and active enough, but somewhat oddly for a Companion Chronicle, she doesn't particularly drive the plot. More interesting is the frame, which sees a middle-aged Zoe grappling with the hole in her memory. She tells Ali that she remembers wanting to travel with the Doctor, and then she simply... didn't. This mismatch makes her feel that she simultaneously remembers everything and nothing, and it leaves her primed to respond well to Ali's offer.
Jamie: Again oddly for a Zoe Companion Chronicle, Jamie has a stronger role in the main story than she does. He bickers with Zoe, who is irritated at him for a cut she sustained while trying to prepare haggis, grumbling that he can't help it if she can't follow basic cooking instructions. When he, the Doctor, and Zoe are threatened by the Achromatics, Jamie acts swiftly to throw the situation into chaos, allowing them to escape, and he pushes Zoe to climb to an at least temporary safety during the ensuing chase.
Ali: She bonds with Zoe over the difficulties of being a child prodigy. When she talks about being separated from her family and sent to work among adults who saw her as little more than a tool for calculations, Zoe admits that her story is almost identical. She pushes Zoe to remember, filling in the parts of the narrative that Zoe wasn't able to directly observe so that the story is complete.
THOUGHTS:
"I remember everything, and I remember nothing."
-Zoe Heriot grapples with lost memories.
There's a sharp divide in Echoes of Grey between the genuinely intriguing frame story and an entertaining but entirely standard main narrative.
The frame shows how the hole in her memory has affected Zoe's life and indicates that recovering her memories will make her feel whole again. It even folds in the bookends from Fear of the Daleks, with Zoe dreaming about traveling with the Doctor even though she knows she never did. It doesn't make Fear a better story, but it least it makes it less pointless. All of these scenes are quite good.
The story surrounded by that frame is a bit basic, a formulaic mystery/suspense story. There's nothing wrong with it. It moves along at a decent pace and everything is perfectly well-structured. The only problem is that it offers few surprises, with its major twist so clearly telegraphed early on that I doubt many listeners were at all surprised by it.
I still found it entertaining. John Dorney's script does a fine job of capturing the three regulars, and he's particularly good with the Jamie/Zoe dynamic. At one point, Jamie and Zoe hide in a closet to evade detection. Zoe shifts to peek through the gap in the door, digging into Jamie in a bit that would made for some amusing on-camera business; then the tone shifts toward horror as Zoe witnesses one of the Achromatics, leading to an effective cliffhanger.
Other than predictability, my main issue with this story is that Zoe doesn't actually do much. The frame presents an interesting dilemma, presenting an opportunity for her to recover her lost memories. But in the main plot, she gets the least to do of the three regulars. The Doctor puts the pieces together and resolves the incident; Jamie acts quickly to protect his friends; and Zoe... is there too. She's well-written and in-character. It just never feels like it's properly her story.
OVERALL:
If Echoes of Grey had been a television episode, its main plot would amount to midseason filler - but it would at least be pretty good midseason filler. It's far from indispensable, but it keeps me engaged throughout.
I wish I felt that the story was more centered around Zoe, rather than simply being a story that Zoe observes. Still, in the end I enjoyed Echoes of Grey, and I thought the frame was legitimately interesting. That's enough to boost my score by one point to...
Overall Rating: 7/10.
Set during: Season 6
Next Story: The Memory Cheats (not yet reviewed)
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