Doctor Who: The Memory Bank and Other Stories

An anthology of four 30-minute stories, linked by the loose theme of “memory”. I found them surprisingly variable in quality.

* The Memory Bank - The title story is set on a world where, for some not-terribly clear reason, remembering people is key to their continued existence. The story is full of little snippets from the lives of the people being remembered, although it's primarily about those who are forgotten. Like some other audio stories of its length, it feels too slight to be anything much; things go wrong, a monster turns up, it gets defeated. Nor does it seem that there's anything much else that could have been done with its theme. It's fair enough, but not, well... memorable. 3 stars.

* The Last Fairy Tale - Set somewhere vaguely in medieval Europe, this sees the Doctor being mistaken for a mythical storyteller. The story really doesn't make any sense, with exaggerated stock characters not having any plausible motive for what they're doing, and the science fiction elements just being plucked out of thin air (it's effectively magic, although the Doctor says it isn't). Yes, this strangeness is lampshaded at the end and there's a vague reason for the stereotyping, but the story is little more than meaningless fluff. 2 stars.

* Repeat Offender - Finally, things improve with a hard SF story set entirely inside a single room in 22nd century Iceland. The Doctor is caught in the middle of apparently committing a crime, and the memory of those involved seems to point to his guilt, but (naturally) their recollections may have been tampered with. There are some themes of the future development of modern technology here, but it's also about time travel and an authoritarian system. It would probably have worked better at twice the length, since there are a few points where things seem to move along rather too quickly, but it would likely also have had to lose the highly contained setting, which might have been a minus. 4 stars.

* The Becoming - An unusual story for DW this, and the sort of thing that probably wouldn't have worked if it was much longer. It's a highly speculative piece, set on a strange and distant planet, with that world's ecology as the main focus, and presenting an alien race for whom memory is particularly important. The Web Planet is probably about the closest we ever got to something like this on TV, although the much shorter length of this prevents it from dragging. It's really quite a delightful story with a sense of the strange and alien, although not the sort of thing you could do too often. 5 stars.