Panda

Panda
Main aliases:	Chairman Miaow
Species:	Teddy, Clockwork Panda
Job:	Art critic
Affiliated with:	Iris Wildthyme
Place of origin:	China
First appearance:	Wildthyme at Large
Appearances:	see list
Main voice actor:	David Benson

You may wish to consult Panda (disambiguation) for other, similarly-named pages.

Panda was a ten-inch-tall, fuzzy stuffed panda who travelled with Iris Wildthyme. For a time, Panda was a robot known as Clockwork Panda. (PROSE: Flasket Brinner and the Clockwork Heart, The Woman Who Sold the Moon et al)

Panda was quite sensitive over the fact that he was a toy. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large et al) Using X-rays, infrared, DNA sequencing, and deep tissue analysis, the Forge were unable to find any signs of life within Panda's body. (PROSE: Project: Wildthyme)

Biography

Early life

Panda was a cyborg. His kind were invented to journey into space with the children of star colonists. He was supposed to act as a protector and a teacher. (AUDIO: Muse of Fire)

Panda's homeland was China. (PROSE: The Delightful Bag)

Panda originally belonged to Tom when he was writing about his travels with Iris Wildthyme. He was annoyed that he hardly left Tom's flat. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)

Travels with Iris and Tom

After Iris returned to Earth, Panda and Tom joined her in her travels around the multiverse. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large) He got annoyed when Iris kept calling him a stuff toy. He was surprised that Tom picked up a girl. He felt for Jenny Winterleaf for only being known for her illness going through the vortex. He fell in love with Iris. Iris thought he was becoming the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. (AUDIO: The Devil in Ms. Wildthyme)

New adventures with Iris

After Tom returned to Earth to live his life as a journalist, Panda continued to travel with Iris. He got annoyed at the state of the bus. He wanted to be a DJ for Radio Four. (AUDIO: The Sound of Fear) When Iris was exiled to 1972 he became a journalist and helped Iris in her investigations. After meeting the White Rabbit and Mock Turtle he started to believe that Alice in Wonderland was real. (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder) He encountered Hilary Wildthyme disbelieving him to be Iris. He didn't feel himself after this event and took his hipflask with him everywhere. Roger the Naxian took him to Malaga. His hipflask was a link to the rehab dimension. (AUDIO: The Two Irises)

Several times, Panda got lost at the end of the universe (PROSE: Future Legend), completely changed in size (PROSE: The Shape of Things) and was killed (PROSE: The Panda Book of Horror).

San Francisco & Santa Claus

Panda sacrificed himself to save the multiverse from being invaded by his alternative selves by jumping into a rift in the Time Vortex while holding a bottle of Tonic Water. (AUDIO: The Panda Invasion) Panda did not die as he had expected. He was saved by Iris Wildthyme and Santa. (AUDIO: Iris Wildthyme and the Claws of Santa)

Clockwork Panda

Clockwork Panda with Iris. (PROSE: A Clockwork Iris)

After the Steam Lords retro-fitted the Obverse to be a bit more steampunk, (PROSE: The Woman Who Sold the Moon) Panda became a robot that had been created by Flasket Brinner.

When Clockwork Panda's heart broke, Iris searched the multiverse for a replacement. (PROSE: Flasket Brinner and the Clockwork Heart) Iris and Panda encountered the Counter-Clockwork Yeti of Mrrm, impersonated Venusian ambassadors on the Moon, (PROSE: The Woman Who Sold the Moon) visited Skullvaria, (PROSE: The Story Sorters) and bumped into an entity. (PROSE: Being)

Facing the future Iris

He became a secretary for the fan club of Iris. He had his mind swapped in an event with Traguam. (AUDIO: The Iris Wildthyme Appreciation Society) He didn't understand why Iris would install a randomiser in her TARDIS that would make the ride more bumpy. (AUDIO: Iris Rides Out) He asked Iris to take him to earth to get a Pork Pie. Instead he was involved in a murder investigation. A future version of Iris captured them. (AUDIO: Midwinter Murders)

The future Iris captured Panda and her younger self and sent them to a Pleasure Prison, where the pair were immersed in separate virtual realities designed to provide their greatest desires. In this realm he had an autobiographer/PA called Amanda. He kept hearing Iris' voice and caused the future Iris' plans to fail. (AUDIO: Whatever Happened to Iris Wildthyme?) He joined Iris to a darts competition. He he met the Bovine race which meant he had only three species in his book of terrifying monsters left to see. (AUDIO: Iris at the Oche) He had a tv jingle stuck in his head. He became under the the spell of Lift. (AUDIO: A Lift in Time)

Adventures with Simon and Iris

Panda was stuck on the bus when Iris investigated strange happenings in Darlington, knowing how the locals would react to him from their previous travels. He was able to help Iris though by relaying information from the bus. When Iris, Simon and Kelly travelled with him to an Alternate Paris in 1894, he admitted that he enjoyed the bohemian atmosphere. He had to explain to Kelly the properties of time travel when she wanted to interfere. When the crew minus Kelly and Barbra travelled to Valcea he started to have bad dreams. After Anthony Marvelle vandalised the bus, Panda and Simon managed to slip through time to a Vince Cosmos concert and saved Vince from an assassination attempt by some Martians due to an ancient legend about Pandas. At the after party a future version of Iris arrived to tell them to get back to the bus. Back on Valcea, in the glass city he was tortured by the living wardrobes. He had to escaped with Iris and Simon when the bomb in Barbra was about to explode. He travelled with Iris and Simon to the planet Hyspero to follow Marvelle. (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme)

He travelled with Iris through the deserts of Hyspero to catch up with Marvelle. He was able to survive on very little food and could drive the bus but only when sitting on 5 pillows. When they found pub in the middle of the desert, he thought it looked like part of MIAOW. After he and Iris visted Fenster he wasn't sure why they followed him to Saga City. He wanted to go after Simon once he found out the Vizer of the Scarlet Empress took him. He thought that Saga City was a trap for Iris. (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!)

A secret mission

After dropping Panda off somewhere to complete a mission for her, Iris travelled with Jo Jones, and later with Captain Edwin Turner. (AUDIO: Find and Replace, An Extraterrestrial Werewolf in Belgium) After parting ways with Turner, she went looking for Panda, but couldn't find him. Instead, she encountered a human called Arthur Bayer, who had a voice very similar to Panda's. (AUDIO: Looking for a Friend)

Later life

At one point later in his life, Panda travelled to the Obverse and helped a young Iris discover her identity and flee the Clockworks in her bus. (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!)

One of Iris' future incarnations starred in a successful television series as well as several films. Panda only appeared in the pilot episode of the series before he was replaced by a kangaroo named Hoppy. (AUDIO: The Iris Wildthyme Appreciation Society)

Alternate Pandas

One alternate version of Panda was the villainous Lionel Pandeau who used Iris's bus to summon an army of alternate Pandas to San francisco on New years eve, 1999. Amoung the countless versions of Panda to emerge were vampires, cyborgs and giants, who Pandeau intented to use to conquer the Multiverse.

Others Panda theorised to have been brought through the rift were traffic cop Panda, construction worker Panda and Native American Panda during his mocking of Pandeau's plans.

All Pandas were shown to have an aversion to Tonic water, demonstrated when Iris poured a whole bottle onto a vampire panda that had been assaulting hospital visitors. (AUDIO: The Panda Invasion)

In one universe, Panda was an angry chef who starred in a television show. In another, Panda was a successful art critic who only gave important awards to artists that slept with him. Another Panda was a popular writer. (PROSE: Framed)

Personality

Panda was usually bad-tempered. He took offence at being called a toy. Like Iris, Panda drank heavily, and always carried a hip flask of whisky with him, as he felt that it kept him safe through dark times. (AUDIO: The Two Irises) Panda resented being described as a bear and threatened to punch those whom he had felt insulted him "right up the hooter." (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large, et. al)

Behind the scenes

Panda appears in a few of Paul Magrs' non-Iris Wildthyme novels, including Brenda and Effie Forever! and The Story of Fester Cat.

In The Runaway HiFi, a piece of fan fiction that Magrs wrote for his blog, Panda is revealed to be HiFi. This story was later published in A Second Target for Tommy in 2018 by Obverse Books.