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