Big Finish Productions Memories of a Tyrant

Written by	Ronald Moore
Format	Compact Disc
Released	2019

Starring Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant

Synopsis: What if you'd committed a truly dreadful crime but couldn't remember? The Doctor takes Peri to the Memory Farm: a state-of-the-art space station where hidden memories can be harvested and analysed. To their surprise, they find the station in lock-down and all its resources dedicated to probing the memories of an elderly man. Garius Moro may, or may not, have been responsible for the deaths of billions of people many years ago, but he simply can't remember. The assembled representatives of two opposing factions, each with their own agenda, anxiously wait for the truth to be unlocked from Moro's mind. But when a memory does eventually surface, everyone is surprised to learn that it is of Peri...

• The Memory Cheats by Thomas Tiley

The Memory Cheats by Thomas Tiley 23/5/26

Meeting up with an old friend of his, the Doctor and Peri end up on the memory Farm, where they are trying to retrieve the memories of an elderly man who may or may not be a war criminal...

It is an intriguing/interesting set up, the old science-fiction idea of looking up people's memories with the USP that it is the only way to identify the what may be a genocidal tyrant and bring him to justice. Later on, Peri ends up the only person unaffected by alterations to her memory, and it ends up as a variation of the story Mindwarp in a way, minus the Trial aspect. The Ghalad are just standard cyborg aliens with the USP of needing tanks of their own air to breathe. There are a few neat ideas, such as the assassin using a venomous squid concealed in the stew to try and kill the prisoner (requiring the Doctor to electrify it) and some fun as the Doctor and everyone else bar Peri is brainwashed into thinking he is the mass killer.

Colin Baker is his fantastic self. A later plot development allows him to play a different variation of his character as a mean, nasty war criminal and the sequences set in prison are fun as a result (even if it seems a little like a weird time filler/plot detour). Nicola Bryant is fine as Peri, although I do wish Big Finish had used someone else to voice her in the segment that flashbacks to her childhood (did no one have a daughter or niece that they could have borrowed for a moment?). She comes across well as the plot develops and she has to stick up for the Doctor and later when she defeats the cyborg Ghalad by knocking off their air supply. Diane Keen as Varish, the Doctor's friend, makes a good impression in the time she has. At first, I thought the Doctor being friends with a lawyer was an odd choice but as we learn she is of the alien rights/campaigning sort, I guess it makes more sense. It also fits in with the various moments in the sixth Doctor's era when he was always bumping into old friends or visiting them. In fact, the whole play has a low-level Season 22 vibe to it in my opinion. It's a shame Varish has to befall the usual Doctor Who supporting-character fate and ends up biting the dust. As for the central role of the is-he-isn't-he tyrant, Joseph Mydell does what he can with the role, but it's a thankless task, despite being the the central character that the play resolves around. Because of the nature of the story/his amnesia, we can't get to know him enough, and as for the backstory of planetary genocide, it's too large in scale to take it in. Maybe if the crime had been smaller, it would have been easier to care. The play leaves it up to the listener to decide whether he is or isn't the tyrant in question, which is either a brave choice or just lazy (the writer wanted to reveal it according to the interview at the end but thought leaving it ambiguous was better; I disagree). The plot reminds me in a way (not a bad way) of an episode of Star Trek in the way it moralizes, you can almost picture Captain Picard sitting around his meeting room discussing the various issues with his crew.

I didn't guess the identity of the person behind the mindwarping, although in retrospect the man who first showed off the process on Peri was the most likely candidate. Nor did I guess that the assassination attempts were a separate plot to the mind alterations, so the play has that going for it, but overall it was a bit boring bar a few moments that enlivened it such as the squid attack or the Doctor going all Tyrant-Diva like. If this were a Season 22 story like I mentioned above, it would have been the one that most people would neither like or dislike, dead average. Most would forget and need to be reminded 'It's the one about the space tyrant, ah yes, I remember'...

The thing is, for a story about memory, its not very memorable. 5/10