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)
- You may wish to consult
Panda (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Panda was quite sensitive over the fact that he was a toy and was greatly upset whenever he was called a "bear". (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large, et al) Due to the fact that he had no fingers, Panda had to stick blu-tack onto his paws in order to turn pages of books. (PROSE: Iris Wildthyme and the Unholy Ghost) According to the Seventh Doctor, his species were developed to travel with the children of star colonists to be a protector and teacher. (AUDIO: Muse of Fire)
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's homeland was China. (PROSE: The Delightful Bag) According to one account, he was a cyborg, designed 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 once speculated that he came from a "Planet of Pandas", where everyone was like him. (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme) There was indeed a (as Missy called it) "Planet of the Bears", Ursino Six, which was home to a faction of reality-engineers resembling stuffed bears, with at least one having similar speech patterns to Panda. (PROSE: Teddy Sparkles Must Die!)
He had many adventures and, whilst living with Thomas Daley, contemplated writing his memoirs. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)
Travels with Iris and Tom
When Iris Wildthyme returned to Tom in the late 2000s, Panda and Tom were captured by MIAOW when Tom's publisher refused to terminate Tom's contract with Satan & Satan Ltd.. The two were saved by Iris, who was being controlled by the Head until Panda shattered the Memory Crystal and restored her memories. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)
Panda was irritated by Iris calling him a stuffed toy but fell in love with her, (AUDIO: The Devil in Ms. Wildthyme) choosing to stay with her when Tom returned to Earth to live as a journalist. (AUDIO: The Sound of Fear)
New adventures with Iris
When Iris was exiled to 1972, Panda became a journalist and helped her 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)
Panda found it difficult to accept Iris's male incarntaion and was annoyed by his attempts to make Panda sober. Whilst combating Roger the Naxian, Panda opened his hip flask and found that it was a temporal link to the Rehab Dimension where his Iris was, bringing her back. (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 in fake realities designed to trap him. (PROSE: Framed)
Panda sacrificed himself to save the multiverse from being invaded by his alternative selves by jumping into a rift in the Time Vortex whilst holding a bottle of Tonic water. (AUDIO: The Panda Invasion) Panda did not die as he had expected and was saved by Iris and Santa Claus. (AUDIO: Iris Wildthyme and the Claws of Santa)
Clockwork Panda
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
On Trull, Panda was unaware of Iris's possession by Wayne Bland II and became the secretary of the Iris Wildthyme Appreciation Society when she became famous. Due to further mind swaps, Iris ended up in Panda's body and stopped Kragoom from having sex with Trull. (AUDIO: The Iris Wildthyme Appreciation Society)
Panda did not understand why Iris installed a randomiser in the Celestial Ombnibus which caused their rides to be bumpier. (AUDIO: Iris Rides Out)
He asked her to take him to Earth to get a pork pie, but he was instead involved in a murder investigation and was, with Iris, captured by her future self (AUDIO: Midwinter Murders) and sent to a Pleasure Prison. Panda was immersed in a virtual reality in which he had a biographer/personal assistant called Amanda, but he kept hearing Iris's voice and caused her future self's plan to fail. (AUDIO: Whatever Happened to Iris Wildthyme?)
Panda and Iris went to a darts competition and met the Bovians, meaning he had only three species in his book of terrifying of monsters left to see. (AUDIO: Iris at the Oche) He later had a TV jingle stuck in his head and came under the the spell of Lift. (AUDIO: A Lift in Time)
He worked as an art critic in Paris, 1922, and told Salvador Dalí that his paintings were rubbish. His reviews were changing history, which the Seventh Doctor chastised him for. He caught the Doctor and Ace breaking into the bus. He didn't like Iris' current affair and told the Doctor about this. The reviews he wrote was because Iris told him as he actually loved the artist, and wanted to help the Doctor as he was worried about Iris' wellbeing. He helped the Doctor to get the artist's back. Dora Muse wanted to eat his brain to chastise Iris. Dora transferred her mind into him. He recovered after falling into the Seine. (AUDIO: Muse of Fire)
Adventures with Simon, Barbra and Iris
Panda helped Iris investigate strange happenings in Darlington from the bus, aware of how the locals would react to him. With Simon, he helped save Vince Cosmos from a Martian assassination attempt and was later tortured by the New Gods. He escaped with Iris and Simon before a bomb inside Barbra exploded and travelled with them to Hyspero to save Kelly from Anthony Marvelle. (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme)
On Hyspero, Panda drove the bus whilst sitting on five pillows and believed that the pub they found in the desert looked like part of MIAOW. He also believed that Saga City was a trap for Iris and wanted to go after Simon once he was kidnapped by the Scarlet Empress's vizier. (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)
Undated events
Jack told Ace that hippies helped put Panda on "the bus to space". (PROSE: Teenage Kicks)
Living with Paul Magrs and Jeremy
Panda once met Paul Magrs and his partner Jeremy in Norwich. Panda travalled with them to Manchester, where he moved in with them in their flat, and Panda stayed with the couple when they moved into their cosy new home in Levenshulme. Panda spent most of his time with the couple, so if they would go on holiday to places such as Paris, Panda would accompany them. Panda also spent his time reading biographies and reviewing ballet and opera for "serious-minded broadsheets".
When Fester Cat, a cat that Paul and Jeremy took in off the streets in 2006, moved in, Panda would often make conversation with Fester, but Fester was sceptical about Panda being "real". (PROSE: The Story of Fester Cat)
In 2012, Panda visited the Rollright Stones with Paul and Jeremy after they returned from the Utopia convention, and Panda was "delighted" that the stones were "Panda-sized". (PROSE: The Stones of Spookiness)
In 2013, Fester began work on a book about his life with Paul and Jeremy. Fester actually omitted Panda from most of the book, as he was still unsure about Panda. (PROSE: The Story of Fester Cat) However, in a short story Fester wrote to publicize his book, Fester showed that he had finally accepted that Panda was real. (PROSE: Fester and the Christmas Mouse)
Alternate Pandas
Lionel Pandeau
- Main article: Lionel Pandeau
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. Among the countless versions of Panda to emerge were vampires, cyborgs and giants, who Pandeau intended 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)
The Gallery
Panda once found himself in a mysterious place known only as the Gallery, and Mister Heart kept repeatedly luring Panda into other worlds, in a ploy to capture Panda within a painting. In these worlds, Panda experienced being other versions of himself, including:
Chef Panda
This version of Panda hosted a show called What The F**k Do You Call That?, before his eventual death by choking on stuffing. (PROSE: Framed)
Art Critic Panda
This version of Panda was a judge for an art show. He had a relationship with Antoinette Bisby, who turned out to have an ulterior motive of exposing Panda and his fellow judges for being corrupt, and this broke Panda's heart, as he was genuinely in love with Antoinette, and he slit his throat with a piece of glass in despair. (PROSE: Framed)
Author Panda
This other version of Panda was an author who had just released a bestselling novel, but when a secret message was discovered in his book, Panda killed himself as he new he had no future.
As it turns out, Iris had spent seventy-four years deliberately causing the death of Panda within these worlds, so as to prevent Panda being trapped in a painting for all eternity. (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)
Panda wanted to be a DJ for Radio 4 and was annoyed when the bus got messy. (AUDIO: The Sound of Fear)
Panda expressed a sexual interest in Mida Slike, who he thought was "gorgeous" (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large) and had "splendid boobs". (PROSE: Iris Wildthyme and the Polythene Terror)
Behind the scenes
Panda appears in a few of Paul Magrs' non-Iris Wildthyme but still DWU novels, including Brenda and Effie Forever!.
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.