Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: India Fisher, Michael Maloney, James Joyce, Nicholas Briggs.
The feeling of rarity is quite uncommon when it comes to listening to the return of Charlotte Pollard.
Arguably the finest of all the audio companions introduced since Big Finish took the job on of bringing The Doctor back into the main stream consciousness of the British public, and before the B.B.C. finally saw sense in the folly of having let one of their most loved programmes go to waste, Charlotte Pollard, Charley to her friends, has travelled with two Doctors, been in an abundance of adventures with both and has captured the ideal of what it means to be a companion in the Tardis. To question, to investigate and not get become a quivering wreck in the face of adversity or under the sometimes withering gaze of The Doctor.
In the time honoured tradition of Big Finish, the captivating, the popular and possibly important to the overall arc of the impossible man from Gallifrey, Charlotte Pollard has finally got her own series, following on from such luminaries as Jago and Litefoot and the irreplaceable Louise Jameson’s Leela, and it is with a sense of further female derring-do and post Edwardian feminism that the first of the new adventures, The Lamentation Cipher is almost a celebration of what went before in the life of Charley but also the very great importance this much loved character has had in the lives of the faithful Big Finish listener.
The last time the listener truly caught up with Charlotte Pollard’s life, discounting the enormously successful The Light at the End which was part of Big Finish’s contribution to the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, she had been coerced to join the Viyrans in their dogmatic purging of all the aspects of the Amethyst Virus. It was a tearful farewell to a woman who had been at that point, a sort of fixed purpose in the life of both The Doctor and arguably of the producers of the audio series.
The Lamentation Cipher picks up quite a while after the events of the Colin Baker story Blue Forgotten Planet and the events and times of their travels together that led to Charley being wiped from The Doctor. It is this timing that gives the listener the focus of being lost, that somehow Charley has been forgotten by the all but those very close to her, the stripping away of identity and that the only rationale for her still being alive is to help serve the Viyrons in their never ending quest.
Charlotte Pollard would though be nothing without her adventurous streak and without the voice of India Fisher. It is Ms. Fisher that gives Charley that fierce, yet kind and honest, independent streak and it blurs the boundary of the imagination of just how well a fit the two women are. It is also a testament to writer Jonathan Barnes in bringing back a much loved character and not letting the story overshadow the beginning.
There would have been nothing worse than say, any incarnation of The Doctor riding to Charley’s rescue or having her act in a way that was completely out of her nature just to get more listeners interested. These things take time and the last thing any fan of Big Finish wants is to visualize a series ending before it gets started. Time is always on the side of the listener, if they allow it to take it slowly at first.
The Lamentation Cipher is a good start to a much awaited event. The canon may be getting bigger, the selection of titles ever expanding but it matters not when the Whoniverse can more than cope with it.
The Lamentation Cipher is part of the Box set Charlotte Pollard, Series One.
Ian D. Hall