Concern about an implant that Jamie has received leads to his memories being studied…

Martin Day returns to the era of the Second Doctor, one that he tapped previously in his Virgin Missing Adventure The Menagerie, although slightly earlier in the timeline. It’s a story featuring the Doctor and Jamie with Victoria quite literally off world for the duration, and focuses heavily on the young piper, and the scary stories that he was told in his youth about the Phantom Piper – as referenced in The Moonbase. Simone Lahbib gives strong performances as she provides the guest voice for the story, playing Dr Hunter as well as a key figure from Jamie’s past, while Frazer Hines gives us not just the Doctor and Jamie as usual, but also members of the McCrimmon clan.

Day throws a number of curveballs along the way, leading us to expect this to be one sort of story but then changing tack. In part it’s a dissection of what made Jamie the man he was before he met the Doctor – the effects of the various family influences on him – but Day doesn’t neglect the SF element, with some quite unpleasant ramifications to what Dr Hunter and the Doctor discover. Richard Fox’s sound design draws us into both alien worlds – the one on which the time travellers find themselves, and Scotland pre-Culloden – with Lisa Bowerman’s direction bringing a more vulnerable side of Jamie to the fore than we’re perhaps used to.

Verdict: An interesting delve into a less well charted part of Jamie’s life. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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