SERIES PLACEMENT

 THIS SERIES TAKES
 PLACE BETWEEN IRIS
 WILDTHYME SERIES 1

 AND THE OBVERSE

 ANTHOLOGY "THE

 CELESTIAL OMNIBUS."
 

 WRITTEN BY

 MARK MICHALOWSKI (1),

 PAUL MAGRS (2),

 SIMON GUERRIER (3),

 MARK MAGRS (4),

 CAN SCOTT (5) &

 MARK WRIGHT (5)

 

 DIRECTED BY

 GARY RUSSELL

 

 RECOMMENDED 

 PURCHASES

 BIG FINISH 'IRIS WILD-

 THYME COMPLETE SERIES

 2 BOX SET' (ISBN 1-8443

 5-370-5) RELEASED IN

 FEBRUARY 2009 & 'THE

 CLAWS OF SANTA' CD

 (ISBN 1-84435-443-6)

 RELEASED IN NOVEMBER

 2009.

 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

 

 

 PREVIOUS                                                                                  NEXT

                                                 

 

 

Series Two

FEBRUARY 2009 - NOVEMBER 2009

(5 70-MINUTE EPISODES)

 

  1. THE SOUND OF FEAR     2. THE LAND OF WONDER

 

3. THE TWO IRISES      4. THE PANDA INVASION      5. THE CLAWS OF SANTA

 

 

 

                                                       

 

 

Time and space. Good and evil. Gin and tonic.

 

I have a real soft spot for Iris Wildthyme, and I don’t mind admitting it. Some readers and listeners seem to find her a little embarrassing, but personally I think she’s marvellous. As a parody of the Doctor and all that Doctor Who includes, she fits the bill perfectly, sending up the character’s and the show’s frequent pomposity and making sure that, first and foremost, we all have a laugh. And she reminds me of my mum.

 

Iris first appeared in Paul Magrs’ excellent novel Marked for Life, in a role that only hinted at her otherworldly origins (until… well, I shan’t spoil it). She then tore into the Doctor’s world in the short story Old Flames and the novel The Scarlet Empress. For the last few years, Big Finish have had their own version of Iris, played with zest by the wonderful Katy Manning. Which incarnation she is I’m not sure (she definitely follows the Jane Fonda version, but not necessarily immediately), and trying to put her adventures into some kind of order is utterly pointless (and a recipe for madness!) Big Finish’s first ‘series’ of Iris adventures, under their occasionally utilised ‘New Worlds’ banner, was a bit of a letdown; two brief audio adventures that were certainly fun, but overdid the whimsy at the expense of plot, and contained too few laughs to keep them afloat. Nonetheless, the trailers for the second series of audios tickled my fancy; and so, fancy tickled, the complete box set went on my birthday list (cheers Mum).

 

Big Finish have taken the unorthodox step of releasing the full set at the same time as the first release, rather than waiting till the end; still, I expect most fans will plump for the full set anyway, rather than cherry-picking from the range. So we have four one hour adventures, packaged in a stunningly pink box, graced with the marvellous new logo. Each CD case is also illustrated by Anthony Dry in nostalgically gorgeous Target novelisation style.

 

The series is pitched as an affectionate parody of the Doctor Who series, naturally, but

more specifically, each release pastiches a particular era of the show, with, admittedly, varying degrees of success on this count. More intrinsic to the plots is the clear desire to

do things that Doctor Who has often courted, but would never actually do. Forest of the

Dead might hint that the Doctor will get married one day, but the series would never have him bump into his ex-wife.

  

 

Iris Wildthyme and the Sound of Fear

 

 

“Keep away from me, you stage school succubus!”

 

Iris Wildthyme and the Sound of Fear, by Mark Michalowski, kicks things off with a story that’s nominally 1960s-themed. Iris is accompanied for this series exclusively by Panda - yes, that’s correct, Panda, an animated stuffed panda no less, voiced with fruity aplomb by Noel Coward impersonator David Benson, who’s perhaps the best thing in these audios. The two of them park their trans-dimensional double-decker bus at Radio Yesterday, “a space station broadcasting golden oldies to Earth’s colonies.” Iris has been having terrible trouble with her memories, and feels that a spot of nostalgic music might spark a fewCLICK TO ENLARGE. Her memory’s worse than she realises, however – she’s forgotten that the station (radio station, dear me) is hosted by Sam Gold, her husband, voiced by a charming Miles Richardson. Poor old Sam is depressed, having spent the last six months pining for Iris, who ditched him to go adventuring, leaving him to pick up the pieces of his shattered career. For Iris, however, it’s been so long that she’s almost forgotten all about him. As Panda observes, this is “a social blunder of an unprecedented scale.” Nonetheless, Sam’s genuine fondness for Iris is lovely to listen to; it’s just a shame we know there’s only ever been one man for her…

 

Of course, unnatural goings on are afoot. A band of monstrous Naxians – who somehow manage to come across as slimy and mucous on audio, much to the sound crew’s credit – have infiltrated the station, planning to use the subspace broadcasts to brainwash humanity and allow their invasion of the Galaxy. Leeza, Sam’s star-struck assistant, has been tempted by their promises of fame and fortune, not to mention a grafted-on Naxian ear, and has been assisting the brutes in their plot. Helen Goldwyn makes Leeza an effective character, grad-ually sliding from naïve innocent to raving megalomaniac. Once Iris is aboard, however, the Naxians devise a new plot, deciding to travel back to the 1960s to use Leeza’s augmented voice to erase five hundred years of showbiz history and conquer the human race from within.

 

The Sound of Fear is a fun, sprightly tale with plenty of cracking lines. The chemistry betwe-en Iris, Panda and Sam is a pleasure to listen to, and I was far more concerned about their survival than human history’s. I can’t see how this story pastiches 1960s Doctor Who though; apart from the trip back to the 1963, I fail to see a link beyond the inclusion of monsters with an implausible plan. In fact, style-wise it feels more late 1970s, in particular Douglas Adams era Who and of course The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy - the spaced out station computer especially, not to the mention the Naxian voices, which sound not unlike Vogons.

 

 

Iris Wildthyme and the Land of Wonder

 

 

“There’s something emanating from that tea service…”

 

CLICK TO ENLARGEPaul Magrs himself pens the second instalment, Iris Wild-thyme and the Land of Wonder. Combining Magrs’ love of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense worlds with a UNIT era pastiche,

this story also owes a huge debt to the Quatermass serials, particularly Quatermass and the Pit. Indeed, this can be said to be true of UNIT era Doctor Who too. Borrowing liberally from the fifties science-fiction serials and The Web of Fear (hang on, that was the 1960s), this tale sees Iris trapped on Earth in 1973 by the people of the Clockworks (what she seems to be calling her mysterious people now, be they Time Lords, Obverse beings or something else entirely this time round), who have crippled her cosmic bus by knackering the clutch. She has affiliated herself with the Ministry for Incursions And Ontological Wonders, or MIAOW, her world’s version of UNIT, with overtones of nasty Torchwood.

 

Professor Bernard Qua – sorry, Trevor Ramsbottom – has discovered a tea set buried beneath an underground station. Assisted by his dappy assistant Audrey (perhaps a source of déjà vu for Manning), he continues his investigations, only to be interrupted by Iris and Panda on MIAOW work (actually, Panda is there as a free-lance journalist). Iris discovers a miraculous craft named the Jabborwocky, crewed by none other than the White Rabbit and the Mock Turtle (Magrs loves his Mock Turtles). A variety of peculiar happenings commence, and frankly it all gets a tad hard to follow. This can surely be put down to Iris’s use of a device that summons forth the most implausible and unlikely entities that exist nearby. Soon there’s a genuine Jabborwocky on the loose, and the bus is heading down to Wonderland, located at the centre of the Earth (“…like travelling layers of hot lasagne,” says Panda). Salford Cats and Caterpillars aside, this is the realm of Harriet Dodd, the five-brained Victorian empress of Wonderland and its otherworldly denizens. Not only that, but Audrey reveals herself to be

a minion of MIAOW, sent on a mission to both annihilate her ministry’s founder Dodd, and Iris herself, now considered far more trouble than she’s worth. This is little of a surprise, considering that Audrey’s now the second dippy female sidekick to be a secret villain. Still, full marks to Lizzie Hopley for providing two entirely distinct voices for Audrey and Dodd,

and for Sean Connolly and Scott Hancock for their idiosyncratic performances as the Mock Turtle and White Rabbit respectively. All in all, a frenetic, highly enjoyable romp in Magrs’ inimitable style.

 

 

The Two Irises

 

 

“I am Iris Hilary Wildthyme – whether you like it or not!”

 

Beginning with a prologue in the form of Iris holding a press conference to announce her coming departure, The Two Irises by Simon Guerrier is probably the most successful of the plays when it comes to idolising and pastiching the era on which it is based - Doctor Who

in the 1980s, and most specifically, the ongoing, ever-changing roll call of Doctors is put through the wringer. Ever since Uncle Tom Baker made a glib remark about the possibility

of his successor in the role being female, the possibility of the Time Lord changing sex has cropped up again and again. It was inevitable that eventually, Iris would have a crack at it. And so, after an ingenious take on the end of The Caves of Androzani, in which Iris has made only enough bats’ milk cheesecake to cure Panda’s dose of the plague, we are treated to a regeneration, in which Iris is transformed into a man. This new incarnation is played beautifully by Dan Hogarth, who brings both a vulnerability and a pomposity to the role. His new Iris is more Doctorish than you might expect, being verbose and even a little elegant, and is even committed to healthy living – he threatens to pour away all of Iris’s hard earned booze!

 

CLICK TO ENLARGENaturally, this doesn’t endear him to Panda, but nonetheless,

the two are soon underway on another adventure. It can be a

tad confusing at times, since Hogarth and Benson do sound

rather similar. The story take at turn into Warriors of the Deep

territory, as the bus lands on Earth in 2108. The world is

divided into the North Bloc and the South Bloc, the only

sovereign territory remaining being the Independent State

of Malaga. Here, a bunch of Naxians, refugees from the first

instalment, have set up base in a nightclub, dedicated to

broadcasting music to calm the pressures of this new cold

war. Naturally, Iris offers to help, but soon finds himself unable

to cope. Not only is this whole event just an excuse for love struck Naxian Roger to get close

to the apple of his eye (he’s surprisingly not too bothered about her change of sex), but the

cold war is hotting up, and soon missiles are on their way to blast Malaga off the face of the

Earth. It all becomes too much for Panda, who let’s the cat out of the bag: summoning Iris

through the use of a temporal beacon in a hip flask, he brings everyone’s favourite trans-temporal adventuress back to reality. Turns out that she’s been in rehab all along, and Iris

Two was just a decoy, a bus-built computer programme designed to fool her enemies and

the papa-razzi into thinking she was still around. Naturally, poor Mr Iris – or Hilary, as he

comes to be known – is rather upset by this revelation.

 

This isn’t really too much of a spoiler; it was unlikely that Iris had really regenerated, what

with Katy back for the next play. Still, this series is mad enough to actually pull it off, and it’s easy to suspect that she really has changed. The main body of the play is fairly low on plot, focussing on the interactions between Hilary, Panda and Roger; a truly wonderful three way mixture of back-slapping and bitching. It’s in the closing segment, which sees both Irises, Roger and Panda onboard the bus and attempting to head off the missiles to prevent global devastation, that the pace picks up. Yet the emotion never drops, with humour and drama in equal proportions gripping the listener. But don’t worry – there is a happy ending.

 

 

Iris Wildthyme and the Panda Invasion

 

 

“You’re not one of those black-and-white supremacists, are you?”

 

Mark Magrs, brother of Paul, provides this series’ closing episode, Iris Wildthyme and the Panda Invasion, a sustained parody of the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie. Iris takes Panda to San Francisco, New Year’s Eve 1999, but on the way, spills gin into the heart of the Space-Time Vortex… “and no one’s supposed to do that…” (shades of The Parting of the Ways creeping in here). The bus undergoes a catastrophic rematerialisation, perched atop the Golden Gate Bridge with Panda inside, while Iris is rushed unconscious to hospital. There, she does not regenerate (we’ve had enough of that for the time being), but does baffle the doctors with her two livers. Before long, she’s attached herself to hunky surgeon Dr George Strangeways (oh, the puns!), and soon enough, the two of them find themselves confronted by horrors from another dimension…

 

Meanwhile, Panda remains aboard the bus, and things are far worse for him. The spilling of hard liquor into the bowels of time and space has opened a rift between realities, allowing his evil double, Lionel Pandeau, into this universe. Pandeau, marvellously illustrated on the cover with a Masterly goatee, is played with relish by Big Finish veteran Toby Longworth, who somehow manages to make him sound even fruitier than the Panda we know and love. Via means of horrific torture (ear shaving! The indignity!) Pandeau soon has Panda in his power, and begins his plans of multiversal conquest – by emptying the contents of the drinks cabinet into the Vortex, he will allow pandas from all realities into our own, and take over from Man.

 

CLICK TO ENLARGEThus, Iris and George have the unenviable task of fighting

off hoards of vampiric stuffed toys, coming up, in the play’s

most bizarre and thrilling moment, a gigantic ‘Panda-zilla’

that threatens to destroy San Francisco. A batty, brilliant

affair, hilariously sending up its source material, from the

unsubtle parallel characters to the occasional hints of the

Doctor’s storyline going on in the background. Iris and Panda

are both on brilliant form; I could listen to Panda and Pandeau

bitch for hours, while Iris’s refusal to accept the obvious with

her hunky new doctor friend is fabulous. The play packs a

punch as an adventure too, with the day saved by the skin of

our heroes teeth, and poor Panda lost to the Vortex, apparently swept back to his home dimension, wherever that is…

 

Altogether, this second set of Iris tales succeeds in giving our transtemporal adventuress some genuinely stirring escapades, while all the while adhering to the skewed view of life and the universe that Iris and her world have always had. And, though much of this is down to the excellent writing, direction and sound, the series wrests on the shoulders of its two stars, Katy Manning and David Benson. I, for one, and very much looking forward to the upcoming special, The Claws of Santa

 

 

Iris Wildthyme and the Claws of Santa

 

 

“She’s as slippery as rancid brandy butter!”

 

A very belated review for this Christmas special, due to heavy workloads and terrible stock shortages at online retailers. Still, at least it’s still winter - it was even snowing a bit when I first settled down to listen to this. So, to recap, Panda has vanished into the wilds of time, space and reality, leaving Iris alone. Many months later, and Iris has landed in a shopping centre during the festive season, having failed utterly to find her furry friend. Yet, no sooner has she sat down with a drink in her hand, than she discovers the latest kiddies’ craze: Flair Bears - robotic toys with an uncanny resemblance to our good old friend Panda. They even repeat his catch phrases. Thus begins a strange festive adventure.

 

CLICK TO ENLARGEThis may be marketed as a Christmas special, but there’s little that marks it out from the preceding series. It continues the

silly adventures in tried and tested style, a daft and enjoyable

adventure, nothing less or more. Iris gets herself a temporary

new companion, ST58 - a Mummerset-accented robot voiced by Conrad ‘C’rizz’ Westmaas, who provides plenty of humo-

rous comments to keep things ticking along. Things pootle

along nicely, not really going anywhere too exciting, but still

providing plenty of grins, as Iris looks up her old friend and

drinking buddy Santa Claus, played posh, dirty and a little

camp by Peter Sowerbutts. We then finally get to hear from

Panda - in the clutches of none other than Mrs Mary Christmas, Santa’s wife, brought to life brilliantly by Sarah Douglas.

 

It’s the moments between Panda and Mary that I enjoyed the most here, especially the nauseating flirting between the two. Panda, ever one for a larger, more dominant woman, has let himself get well and truly seduced, with little help from an intoxicating pinch of fairy dust. David Benson is on fine form, even posher and more lascivious than ever. Santa and Iris have some great scenes too, Katy Manning and Peter Sowerbutts sharing some great chemistry.

 

Still, the story itself is quite underwhelming. The idea of an army of pandas is great, but it’s already been done - and in the previous release! Mad old Mary’s plan to use these two-tone troops to transform everyone in the Universe into babies is pretty funny, but there’s never any sense of threat. There’s less focus on the adventure than on the bickering between the main characters. Nevertheless, this aspect is played to its limits, and it’s a great moment when we realise the whole thing is Iris’s fault - Mary snapped when that brassy tart tried on with ‘Noel’ in the back of the sleigh!

 

So, good fun and little more, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It’ll surely run better in ten months time, when it’s Christmas again and I’m once more in the festive mood. On the other hand, maybe I’ll have had my fill of robotic panda armies by then - I’ve just seen the summary of the 2010 Design Awards, and it seems someone’s clearly been taking inspiration from the adventures of Miss Iris Wildthyme…

 

Copyright © Daniel Tessier 2009, 2010

 

Daniel Tessier has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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