The Lamentation Cypher (2014)

If there is one thing that has been constant in the Big Finish forums is the desire to have a Charlotte Pollard series and so their cries have been heard and here we have a boxset of adventures featuring Charley who appeared alongside the eighth Doctor from 2001 to 2007 and then with the Sixth Doctor in a series of superb stories from 2007 to 2009. Charley is a fantastic character and was the second companion created by Big Finish and is arguably their most successful companion. After 13 years she is still as popular as she was when we first heard her on board the R101 and I was worried that these stories weren’t going to live up to expectations that have been growing since word was first mentioned about a possible series. I was slightly worried because I didn’t know what format the series would take as the last time we heard from Charley she was working with the Viyrans.

It’s hard not to make comparisons between Charley and Bernice Summerfield. Ok they have different social backgrounds and jobs but there is something there and this story even starts off with Charley writing in her diary which is something that Bernice did in her early stories (only listened to the first series). Then the narration continues in the story which is something that I think works in this story. One of things that I do like about this story is the relationship between Charley and the Viyrans.

Things seem to start off rather weird when after speaking to Robert Buchan (played by James Joyce) starts saying random words in his speech and I can’t help but think of an episode of House where a guy suffers a bang on the head and then starts to speak gibberish. This is a relatively short but very dramatic moment which seems like it’s going to take up the entire story but appears to be over in less than ten minutes. There are more strange things that happen which then lead to Charley trying to escape.

They try to do something different with the Viyrans. The title ‘Lamentation Cypher’ doesn’t get mentioned until the half hour mark and its dropped into a scene which is where the story starts to take shape. I think that the Viyrans are a great creation and so its great that they feature so prominently in the spin-off series. There is a Viyran that doesn’t speak like the rest of them (voice effect). This seems to create a bit of tension and drama between the Viyrans. There was a nice mystery as to what the Lamentation Cypher was and its not what I was expecting. Another thing I wasn’t expecting was that the Viyrans can effectively stage a coup when the leader becomes unstable. By the end of the story it seems that the course of the series is quite clear. Whether this is going to change in future stories remains to be seen but it was definitely an exciting ending.

Michael Maloney seems to be the Nicholas Briggs of this series as seems to have voiced all the Viyrans and there are several scenes where several Viyrans talking to each other in the same way as when several Daleks talk to each other. Speaking of Mr Briggs, there is a fun cameo from him which sounds like he was playing a train spotter. He does get a more substantial role playing Robert’s dad and sounds like a cheeky cockney that wouldn’t be out of place in Eastenders.

Considering that apart from a brief appearance in ‘Light at the End’ back at the tail end of 2013, it’s been five years since she played Charley last, India Fisher hasn’t missed a step as Charley. If you didn’t know better you would have said that it was less than a year since she appeared in ‘Blue Forgotten Planet’. She has some good scenes with Maloney’s Viyrans and this is something that is going to play well during the course of the series. James Joyce is a character that seemed perfectly fine in the first half of the story but once he had been cured he then seemed to become a more interesting character and that might be because he had some scenes with Nicholas Briggs’ Bert Buchan.

I would be lying if I said that I was bowled over by the release because I just wasn’t. The reason is because I still haven’t got use to what the series is about. What I can see is potential and think that this is going to be a spin-off that is going to be another success story for Big Finish and I look forward to listening to the rest of the series.