Monday, February 27, 2017

Find and Replace by: Paul Magrs directed by: Lisa Bowerman: Iris Wildthyme and the Narrator of Doom

Find and Replace is performed by Katy Manning as Jo Grant and Iris Wildthyme with Alex Lowe as Huxley.  It was written by Paul Magrs, directed by Lisa Bowerman, and was released in September 2010 by Big Finish Productions.

 

A Christmas Special in September is an interesting idea, I call this one a Christmas special because it takes place at Christmas and has the tone of a Christmas pantomime.  A Christmas special written by Paul Magrs is an even more fun idea.  Add in the character of Iris Wildthyme with Jo Grant and a narrator from Verbatim Six and you have the mixing for a story that is either a fun adventure or an eclectic seizure.  The story takes a pretty good approach to a Companion Chronicle, having Jo tell events that happened to her in the present which gives the audio a more full-cast feeling even though there are only two actors.  Jo is doing Christmas Shopping in London when she is stuck in an elevator with Huxley whose job is to narrate Jo’s life as hired by the rulers of the planet Verbatim Six.  The problem comes when he gets aspects of her life totally and completely wrong, for instance he claims she never travelled with the Doctor or worked for UNIT.  According to Huxley, Jo worked for the secret organization MEOW with trans-temporal adventuress Iris Wildthyme in her bus that’s smaller on the inside than it is on the outside.

 

What becomes interesting in the premise of this is just how funny Paul Magrs can be when given a topic he is enthused about.  Writing a story where a narrator takes place in the narrative itself and not outside the fourth wall.  This allows Magrs to slip in quite a lot of little jokes slip in with references to continuity that could easily be considered fanwank, but what Magrs does to get over that is to scatter in references to stories that never happened, are still yet to happen, and stories that happened, just not to Jo.  The devil goblins from Neptune happened to Liz Shaw and the Third Doctor, while the Quarks were never in the Death Zone on Gallifrey.  The point of the story is the trope of the unreliable narrator which everybody is in this story.  Huxley is intentionally misleading while Jo and Iris have awful memories for what’s happened in the past.  Katy Manning provides the majority of the voices for the audio and Iris Wildthyme is the character closest to her natural voice, just with a silly accent put on for good measure.  Wildthyme is head over heels for the Doctor just because she thinks he looks good and he took her out to dinner.  Manning plays the role as the Doctor, but perpetually drunk which is just extremely fun to listen to.  She’s very nostalgic about the good old days and can easily spin a yarn about MEOW and her travels with Jo that Huxley is trying to fictionalize into reality.

 

Alex Lowe as Huxley is a great narrator as he gives the story a flair for the dramatic when it comes to just about everything to do with the cadence of Lowe’s voice.  Lowe controls his voice so one minute it sounds warm and inviting which turns to curiosity and wonder, and finally to a threatening villain who is ready to blow up Jo and Iris using the power of his mind.  Sadly however he is dropped off the story in the second half with no real purpose once his function of getting Jo and Iris to the 1970s is complete.  Yes this has Jo crossing her own time stream which allows her to talk to the Doctor sometime in the middle of her time as a member of UNIT when the big twist comes that the Doctor is the one who hired Huxley to change her memories.  This leads to an extremely touching scene performed by Katy Manning where the Doctor has to apologize for the first time in his life for making a mistake.  Manning does a great job at capturing the spirit of Jon Pertwee in this scene and has to be commended for the work she’s put in.

 

To summarize, Find and Replace while from an author who often comes under criticism for going too far out there with story ideas, turns into a touching story of what happens after a companion leaves the Doctor.  It features versatility in the portrayal of the characters by Katy Manning that keeps the story interesting making Jo and Iris feel like they’re two completely different people with the biggest problem being the hook of the story, Huxley, dropping off from the story halfway to its completion.  85/100

No comments:

Post a Comment