Iris Wildthyme
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Iris Wildthyme, née Lilith, was a self-styled "transtemporal adventuress" who travelled the multiverse in a double decker bus, often with friends, most notably her best pal Panda. (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!) She once described herself as a "transtemporal righter-of-wrongs, wronger-of-rights, meddler, artist, writer, glamourpuss, occasional Time's champion, and very old flame of the Doctor". (PROSE: The Blue Angel)
Iris spent portions of her life under the aliases Brenda Soobie (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen) and Bianca. (AUDIO: The Wormery) She sometimes used the username Route22, (PROSE: Buyer's Remorse) but her Twitter username was @realwildthyme. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil) She was known to the Forge under the codename Jezebel. (PROSE: Project: Wildthyme) The Poodles referred to Iris as the "evil one in the wonderbra and sensible shoes" (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!) and "Ka Faraq Kweethri", which meant "the Oncoming Hangover". (PROSE: A Gamble with Wildthyme)
Iris didn't have a stable timeline, and as such she didn't live her life in chronological order. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
Iris was friends with many people across time and space, including the Darlington branch of MIAOW, (PROSE: The Dreadful Flap et al) the Manleigh Halt Irregulars, Señor 105, (PROSE: The Shape of Things et al) Vince Cosmos, (PROSE: Hang onto Yourself et al) Bernice Summerfield, (AUDIO: The Plague Herds of Excelis et al) and the Doctor. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress et al)
Origins
Iris had multiple equally true pasts, with details that contradicted each other to varying degrees. (PROSE: Wandering Stars) Her birthday was 16 August. (PROSE: Our Tune)
The Eighth Doctor suggested Iris may have been a Faction Paradox creation. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
Iris was a lesbian novelist from late 20th century Earth. (PROSE: Hospitality)
Iris was a Greek goddess, possibly the mother of Eros. (PROSE: Wandering Stars)
On Gallifrey
Iris talked about her mother leaving with an older man, an offworlder, when Iris was young, leaving her to grow up with a dozen older, matriarchal "Aunts" in a great house in the mountains of Gallifrey's southern hemisphere. They were perpetually kept inside their house, which had hundreds of storeys, by fierce snow. Her favourite Aunt was Baba, who had a shawl made from the feathers of every bird her people knew, with which she could travel anywhere in the world. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress) While living in the House, she was called Lilith. (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!)
As a child, Lilith went to the base of the mountains with her friend Alison and found a deserted fishing village. When Liltih stood with Alison at the village's pier, she saw dozens of small sharp-toothed white fish and was startled. She fell into the water and quickly grabbed a beam and pulled herself out. While this was going on, Alison laughed at Lilith's misfortune. After this incident, Lilith never trusted Alison again. (PROSE: First Meetings)
After Aunts died one by one, Iris travelled to her planet's main city to demand a place in the elite society. But she only found bickering old men who knew the secrets of the cosmos but would not do anything, (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!, The Scarlet Empress) and wouldn't let a woman like Iris in even though their president was a woman. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress) She said that she found her bus abandoned and dying in the mountains and coaxed it back to health, (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress, Verdigris) and that it told her what to do with her life. (PROSE: Verdigris)
The Third Doctor said that Iris wasn't a "proper Time Lady": she was a commoner, from somewhere like the New Towns under the Capitol. (PROSE: Verdigris) She claimed at times to be Gallifreyan, (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress) but also that her home was the Obverse. (PROSE: The Blue Angel) The Sixth Doctor noted that he was unable to find any record of her on Gallifrey, because she had erased herself from the records. (AUDIO: The Wormery) Her bus was a TARDIS. (PROSE: Old Flames)
The Eighth Doctor speculated that Faction Paradox had retroactively injected Iris into his past, or that she was from another reality where all the times she claimed to have met him, and which he didn't remember, really did happen. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion) She did, in fact, meet him out of the correct sequence, which created events in his past that shouldn't technically have happened. (PROSE: Verdigris)
In the Clockworks
Iris told Panda that she was a kid from the slums miles outside the Clockworks. She managed to inveigle her way into Clockworks society, but she thought it was terribly dull, so she stole her bus and escaped. (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder)
Lilith investigated the forest at the heart of Saga City, where she met a Eliot, a tree containing a map of the multiverse. She went through Eliot and found herself outside Saga City, near Wherewithal House. The House's Aunts took her in, hoping that her family would find her and reward them. A boy named Dick discovered Panda and the bus, which had both already travelled with her in her future, out in the desert. Panda helped her get the bus going again and they escaped through the Ringpull to the outside universe, where she first began her travels. (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!)
As fiction
Iris was aware that her life was "a series of stories that involve[d] paradoxes, time travel, mind control, virtual selves, cloning, regression, reincarnation, talking vegetables, cybernetics, regeneration, prolepsis, analepsis, alternative dimensional instabilities, metatextuality, allegory, satire, fantasy, revisionism, cliches, plagiarism, and hoodwinkery". (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion) Some parts of her life were missing because the "episodes got junked back in the Sixties". (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)
Iris knew that she was a deliberate parody of Doctor Who. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
Iris had a multi-platform franchise with spin-off audio adventures, original novelisations, computer games, and comic strips. One super-fan hardly knew what was canonical. (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)
John Cleavis once came up with a story about a "strange old aunt" who "happened to own a double-decker bus that [could] travel to [a] magical world". (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
In one meta-dimension, Iris existed only as a fictional character. (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!, AUDIO: Looking for a Friend) The seventeen-episode The Iris Wildthyme Show inspired a cult franchise with CDs, action figures, comics, fan conventions, and over 300 tie-in novels. (PROSE: Wildthyme Beyond!)
In his youth, Arthur Bayer wrote several stories about a woman who travelled through time and space in a double-decker bus with a panda. (AUDIO: Looking for a Friend)
Edith Sitwell Iris
The incarnation of Iris that resembled Edith Sitwell was Iris' first incarnation. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion, The Golden Hendecahedron, From Wildthyme with Love)
Iris met the Doctor in his first incarnation shortly after he ran away from Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
Iris was involved in the life of novelist Denton Welch and was mentioned in his memoirs. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
On one occasion, Iris was brought to a desolate wilderness with a tower in it by PAND-R. There she encountered four of her other selves and fought the Voodi, the Gaar, the Bummies, and the Chumbloids before defeating PAND-R in the tower. During the adventure, Iris cackled they were lucky only the "rubbish monsters" had been pooper scoopered to the wilderness. (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)
Iris came to August 1984 to track down some alien creatures, but they realised they were being followed and made her bus the size of a toy. She mostly escaped the bus before she could be squished, but found her foot stuck in it. A boy named Andrew wandered by and used a screwdriver he had in his pocket to mess with the bus's miniature controls and disconnect the etheric solenoids. The bus quickly grew back to normal size and Iris invited Andrew into the bus to have lemonade and seed cake. The creatures had already left during the time Iris's foot was stuck, so she also left after saying farewell to Andrew. (PROSE: Dog Days of Summer)
Brenda Soobie
Iris' next incarnation resembled the singer Shirley Bassey in her prime. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion) She was either the second (PROSE: The Golden Hendecahedron) or the third Iris. (PROSE: The Blue Angel)
She was skilled at darts. (PROSE: The Blue Angel)
Biography
For a while, Iris made money by posing as Shirley Bassey. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
She took to the life of a singer and began calling herself Brenda Soobie. Under this alias, she performed in places such as Las Vegas and Vega and released "a ton" of records. (PROSE: The Golden Hendecahedron)
Brenda visited 1960s Las Vegas where she met the Eighth Doctor, along with his companions Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor. It was also here where she met Noël Coward for the first time. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
Iris travelled to Scotland in 1447 and helped a burly warlord get out of a well he had fallen into. She beat the warlord in a caber tossing contest and posed for an oil painting called "Posing with unknown Scottish warlord". (PROSE: Iris at the V&A)
Accompanied by "a black boy in a silver, figure-hugging spacesuit", Iris encountered a mustachioed incarnation of the Doctor in the City of Glass on Valcea. (PROSE: The Blue Angel)
Appearance
Iris "famously" had a beehive hairstyle. She was known to wear an evening dress with a feather boa. (PROSE: The Blue Angel)
Beryl Reid Iris
The next Iris resembled Beryl Reid. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion) She was either the third (PROSE: The Golden Hendecahedron) or the fifth Iris. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
Biography
Iris encountered the Fourth Doctor in 1764. She was trying to obtain a house in every century and had brought Edwin Turner to marry Bella Huntingdon, thereby gaining the Huntingdon estate. In fact, the Huntingdons were of an alien species and Lady Huntingdon wanted Iris' TARDIS so she could return to her home world. When Iris refused, Lady Huntingdon raced to the TARDIS and attacked Iris when she got there. The Doctor was able to trap Lady Huntingdon in a message pod. With her plan failed, Iris simply left 1764, leaving Turner trapped in the past. (PROSE: Old Flames)
Iris was part of the Sisterhood of Karn for a couple of years and was one of those present crying 'Death!' when the Fourth Doctor paid Karn a visit. (PROSE: Verdigris)
Jenny Winterleaf
When Iris parked her bus in a side street in Sunderland in 1991, a traffic warden named Jenny Winterleaf wandered onto the bus thinking it was a normal bus. Iris left before Jenny could get off and the two were stuck together for several years of adventures. (PROSE: The Dreadful Flap)
The first place that Iris took Jenny to was ancient Mexico, where Iris stole a ceremonial bracelet. This enraged the locals and Montezuma swore that he would have his revenge on Iris. (PROSE: Iris Wildthyme y Señor Cientocinco contra Los Monstruos del Fiesta)
Iris and Jenny fought Spiritus Mundi, (PROSE: Only Living Girls) visited the Super Hotel Miramar, (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme) and helped the Second Doctor defeat the Dalek Supreme in the diamond mines of Marlion. (PROSE: Verdigris, Bafflement and Devotion, AUDIO: Excelis Dawns)
After four years of travels, Iris landed in 1996 England. Jenny took this chance to stop travelling with Iris and return to her native time and place. (PROSE: The Dreadful Flap)
Tom
Many years after meeting her other selves in the Death Zone and sometime after her travels with Jenny, Iris parked her bus in London somewhere between Piccadilly and Old Compton Street in early November 2000. Tom came into her bus wanting to go to Putney Common.
A month into their travels, Iris and Tom visited 1973 and aided the Third Doctor in defeating Verdigris. (PROSE: Verdigris)
Tom left Iris when they got into an argument during an adventure in the 1990s. Tom refused to continue travelling with Iris and left her. He went on to write a series of books based on his adventures with Iris. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)
Final adventure
Iris ate a Kaled mutant during this period, which proved harmful and forced her to regenerate. She encountered the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones on Hyspero and participated in a quest across the planet to reunite the Four. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
Personality
Iris was not fond of the Doctor's seventh incarnation. She once described him to the Eighth Doctor as "a portentous little feller, swaggering around, thinking he's got all the world's darkest secrets under his hat." Furthermore, she thought that he was "a pretentious old thing" who "got on [her] nerves" as he regarded himself as the Guardian of Forever and Time's Champion. She held the Decayed Master in a similarly low regard, referring to him as "that pitiful, deluded phallocentric dope." (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
Jane Fonda Iris
Iris' new body resembled the actress Jane Fonda in her prime. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress) Accounts differ as to whether she was the fourth Iris, (PROSE: The Golden Hendecahedron, Wandering Stars et al) the sixth Iris, (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress, Femme Fatale, The Blue Angel) or a "future" incarnation. (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)
Biography
Solo adventures
One of the first things Iris did after regenerating was send a video of her regeneration to the Eighth Doctor and Sam. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
Iris met the Eighth Doctor in Paris, 1934 and also in the Obverse. (PROSE: Femme Fatale, PROSE: The Blue Angel)
During a time in which the Eighth Doctor was travelling with Iris in her omnibus, she chatted with him over how similar their lives were. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
Iris took Marlene Dietrich and Carlos Esteban to 4281, where they fought a Tarixion Gas Fiend. (PROSE: Iris at the V&A)
Iris had several adventures with the crew of the Anathema in the 79th century. They visited Pyras, encountered robots in a historical theme park, and got captured by Duke Anubis. During this time, she developed a bond with Captain Rex Halidom. (PROSE: Battleship Anathema)
Iris visited 17th century Samhain and married Michael Drake, a man who had already married one of Iris' future incarnations. (PROSE: Michael Drake)
Working for UNIT
Iris worked part-time as UNIT's special scientific advisor in the mid-1990s. During this time, "a couple of people in Geneva" repeatedly asked how easy it would be to put a base on the Moon.
In 1996, the Remote sold a dangerous alien weapon at COPEX. Iris asked UNISYC to tell her what was going on, but they refused. After the Eighth Doctor dealt with the situation, Iris was interviewed by Sarah Jane Smith for the documentary Voodoo Economics. (PROSE: Interference)
In early 1997, Iris went on vacation. (PROSE: Bullet Time)
Post-War universe
In the post-War universe, Iris visited the Eighth Doctor and his daughter Miranda at his house in Kent in the 1980s. The Doctor was suffering from amnesia at the time, so Iris tried to explain to him a few things. She only succeeded in confusing him. The Doctor let Iris sleep in a spare bedroom of his house for a couple nights. During this time the Doctor walked in on Iris while she was taking a bath. (PROSE: Father Time)
The Eighth Doctor and Marnal saw a vision of the four surviving elementals that included a "young woman with long blonde hair in an extraordinary piece of haute couture". (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Travelling with Panda
Needs info from From Wildthyme with Love and Iris Wildthyme of Mars
For a while, Iris travelled with Panda. (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love) Many of their adventures involved the planet Mars. (PROSE: Green Mars Blues et al)
Fifth Iris
Iris' fifth incarnation had an easy going personality. She dyed her hair red and wore clothing similar to a rock star from the 1970s.
On one occasion, Iris had to explode something in space. Due to the fact that sound couldn't travel in the vacuum of space, Iris closed one of her eyes, but kept the other open to make sure the explosion happened. The explosion caused a dispersal of pigment in Iris' open eye and it changed colour from brown to blue. (PROSE: The Golden Hendecahedron)
However, other accounts indicate that the fifth Iris was the one that resembled Beryl Reid. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress, The Blue Angel)
Sixth Iris
The incarnation of Iris that travelled mainly with Panda was Iris' sixth body. (PROSE: The Golden Hendecahedron) By the time of this incarnation, she was at least 900 years old. (AUDIO: The Two Irises)
According to one account, Iris was incapable of regeneration and this was her only body left. (AUDIO: The Elixir of Doom)
Biography
Alone
Iris had an adventure with the Doctor's fifth incarnation on Artaris. (AUDIO: Excelis Dawns)
Iris travelled to Artaris again in the 27th century, where she met Bernice Summerfield. She showed Benny some of the local hot spots. She came to Artaris to get the Relic back so she could wear it as an accessory. She got drunk with Benny. She worked out that Snyper was manipulating the situation. She later helped Benny to escape her cage and then to discover the truth about the plagues. (AUDIO: The Plague Herds of Excelis) After this adventure, Iris dropped the drunken Bernice on the space liner the Empress to take her home, telling her to act like she owned the place. (AUDIO: The Dance of the Dead)
Iris decided to take a drink in Bianca's Bar where she met the Sixth Doctor and faced Bianca, her own evil future self, who attempted to steal her remaining regenerations. (AUDIO: The Wormery)
Iris met Robin Hood and his Merry Men and introduced them to time travel. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)
Tom & Panda
Iris found herself being pursued by a powerful being from the higher dimensions who wanted her knowledge of the multiverse. For several months, she hid from the being in a variety of realities. Eventually, she put her memories into a mind crystal from Marlion to protect them from the being. She then landed in Sherwood Forest and met up with Robin Hood and his merry men, who took Iris to the 2000s.
Iris learned that her old companion Tom had written a book series based on his adventures with her and attended one of Tom's book signings. After the signing, Iris had dinner with Tom and gave him the crystal with her memories. Before the meal ended, Robin Hood's merry men came to the restaurant and took Iris back to their time. The Sheriff of Nottingham had kidnapped Maid Marian and Fiar Tuck and wanted Robin Hood to give him Iris in exchange for them. Iris was taken to the sheriff's castle where she discovered that the higher being was responsible for the kidnapping. The being learned that Iris didn't have the knowledge he wanted with her, so he took control of Iris and made her pilot her bus directly to Tom.
Iris landed in the office of Satan & Satan, a publishing company and secret offshoot of MIAOW, where Tom and his sentient toy panda had been trying to convince Mida Slike to cancel the Iris Wildhtyme book series. The higher being mind controlled everyone in the office and tried to make Tom give him the mind crystal, but Panda wasn't affected because he didn't have a brain and took the crystal from Tom. Under instruction from Iris, Panda shattered the crystal and Iris' memories were seemingly lost forever. With this, the higher being left. Iris offered the chance to travel with her again to Tom and he accepted. Tom's toy panda Panda also wanted to travel with Iris so she took him with her as well. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)
Her memories started to appear in Panda. She said that she learned medicine from Lister. Iris thought she was becoming the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz. (AUDIO: The Devil in Ms. Wildthyme)
Shortly afterwards, the trio attended the unveiling of the Hendecahedron, an eleven-sided power source created as part of a collaboration between Allis and Ballis and Zelopan. Due to the temporal residue on Iris and her companions, the Hendecahedron became unstable. Iris shut down the Hendecahedron, but during the process was hit by a bolt which pinched her timeline. She split into two Irises: one that aged backwards and regressed through Iris' past selves and one that aged forwards and turned into several possible future incarnations. During this confusion, Zelopan tried to steal Iris' bus by impersonating the sixth Iris. The two Irises stopped Zelopan from tricking Tom and Panda and unpinched their timeline by holding hands. (PROSE: The Golden Hendecahedron)
Iris, Tom, and Panda visited Xanadu and encountered Kubla Khan, who gave Iris a hookah. (PROSE: Iris Wildthyme y Señor Cientocinco contra Los Monstruos del Fiesta)
The trio decided to go to relax by going to an acupuncturist in Lowestoft, but their acupuncturist turned out to be the Acupuncturist, an evil retired Clockworks who was going by an alias that was an anagram of his name. Iris used a lighter and some fireworks she had in her handbag to defeat the Acupuncturist.
Iris discovered an old freighter spaceship that was going to crash onto prehistoric Earth and kill all of the dinosaurs. Tom almost died on the spaceship, but after seventeen attempts Iris was able to get him off of it before it crashed. She eventually prevented it from crashing into Earth, although she accidentally left Panda on the ship and came back for him two weeks after she left. (PROSE: Future Legend)
Tom left to be with a man with whom he had fallen in love during one of the trio's adventures on Earth circa 2008, leaving Iris and Panda travelling without him. (AUDIO: The Sound of Fear, The Dreadful Flap)
Adventures with Panda
Iris and Panda then travelled to Radio Yesterday and met her husband Sam Gold. (AUDIO: The Sound of Fear) The pair continued travelling together for a long time though the two often fell out. (PROSE: Couch Potatoes, PROSE: Future Legend) She was rather found of using logic bombs in her investigations. She could fix vehicles better than her bus. She was exiled by the people of the Clockworks to 1972. She travelled to wonderland. (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder)
During their travels, the two encountered George W. Bush, (PROSE: Chicken Fried Banana Republic) Marlene Dietrich, (PROSE: The Scarlet Shadow) Professor Challenger (PROSE: The Found World) and Sherlock Holmes. (PROSE: The Shape of Things) She met Hilary Wildthyme after Panda opened his hipflask. She went into rehab and created Hilary as a decoy. (AUDIO: The Two Irises)
Iris dropped her gin and tonic into the vortex and caused a rip. After Iris lost Panda when he jumped into a rift to save the multiverse, (AUDIO: The Panda Invasion) she spent many years searching for him and eventually turned to Santa Claus for help. Iris and Santa found that Santa's ex-wife, Mary Christmas had kidnapped Panda. Iris used Clockworks technology to regress Mary's mind to a time when she and Santa were happy together. She then left with Panda for new adventures. (AUDIO: Iris Wildthyme and the Claws of Santa)
For an extended period, Iris and Panda were pursed by a Monstron time destroyer piloted by an unknown enemy. (AUDIO: The Iris Wildthyme Appreciation Society) Iris installed a randomiser in the bus to evade the craft, but its pursuit continued until the pilot - a bitter future version of Iris - caught up with them in the town of Midwinter Leys in Warwickshire and attacked them. (AUDIO: Iris Rides Out, 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. Iris and Panda were able to escape the program after remembering how much each needed the other. (AUDIO: Whatever Happened to Iris Wildthyme?)
After this, Iris met Ted Taylor, an up-and-coming professional darts player who fulfilled his prophesied destiny by becoming a quantum superbeing and waging war on the Bovians, a cow-like alien race. (AUDIO: Iris at the Oche)
A jingle got in her head and she passed it on to Panda. Iris then decided to go an find the source the single and tracked it to Jupiter. It turned out the Lift was trying to wipe the minds of humanity. (AUDIO: A Lift in Time)
Iris and Panda attended a book launch party at Shaftsbury Avenue in 2010. Afterwards, they relaxed in the omnibus with Elspeth May. George Mann drew a picture of them while this was going on. (PROSE: Iris at the V&A)
Jo Jones
After dropping Panda off somewhere to complete a mission for her, Iris met Jo Jones while on Earth in 2010 and took her to meet the Third Doctor in the 1970s. After this, Jo and Iris began to travel together. (AUDIO: Find and Replace) On one occasion, Iris and Jo arrived in Los Angeles, 1930s. While there, they encountered the Eighth Doctor, and together defeated a movie star who was turning her husbands into monstrous characters using an elixir left behind by Iris on a previous misadventure. (AUDIO: The Elixir of Doom)
Returning to Turner
Iris returned for Captain Turner, whom she had left trapped in the past, and travelled with him on many new adventures. She took him to 2015 where she wanted to buy him some derivatives of Jane Austen's work. Here she discovered a book by Kronos Vad which didn't exist. She went back in time to stop Sherlock Holmes from being killed in an explosion. (AUDIO: Kronos Vad's History of Earth (Vol. 36,379))
She had a crush on Brian Bonamy and often went into the 1980s to see him. She met him again in Margate in 2015, where she found out he was under contract by the Scorchies. (AUDIO: Comeback of the Scorchies)
Iris then took him to Pink Gables, her house on the Moon. (AUDIO: Dark Side). When she visited Fergusons she found Cassie Burdock who told her future. (AUDIO: Oracle of the Supermarket)
She didn't think that Chloe Fothergill died by accident so proceeded to investigate her death. She was good at picking locks. (AUDIO: Murder at the Abbey)
Iris took Turner to the Giza. (AUDIO: The Slots of Giza)
She then took Turner to her favourite place in the universe the Garden in the Clouds. (AUDIO: High Spirits) She battled Nora.
After meeting a werewolf, she placed Turner back with Chloe Fothergill. (An Extraterrestrial Werewolf in Belgium)
After she parted ways with Turner again, she went searching for Panda, not able to find her most faithful companion. She met a human version of Panda named Arthur Bayer. (AUDIO: Looking for a Friend)
Later years
Many years after her adventures with Panda and Simon, Iris encountered them while investigating a Vince Cosmos concert in 1973. (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme)
Appearance
Iris had a tattoo of a "bumblebee riding a bike." (AUDIO: Iris Rides Out)
Other Irises
Iris once proposed to the Doctor in Venice, when she appeared to be a woman in her sixties, with long white hair that reached to the ground. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress) The Doctor, in his third incarnation, had recently left Jo behind. He suggested they team up to defeat a common foe; Iris misinterpreted this as seduction. (AUDIO: The Wormery)
The first seven incarnations of Iris faced Morbius in the Death Zone, facing aliens such as the Quarks and the Zarbi. (AUDIO: Excelis Dawns, PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
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)
Iris' Celestial Omnibus once generated a projection of a male incarnation of Iris. (AUDIO: The Two Irises)
Bianca acted as Iris' equivalent of the Valeyard. Working with a group of psychic worms, Bianca rebuilt her TARDIS as a nightclub at a dimensional nexus. From there she endeavoured to bring ultimate harmony to the universe, and to steal the remaining regenerations from Iris. The plans failed when her club was destroyed, and she faded out of existence. (AUDIO: The Wormery)
Undated events
On one occasion, Iris spent Christmas with the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan Jovanka. Iris adored the Fifth Doctor but also worried about him being so serious lately, stating that he didn't seem as fun as he used to be. Iris was fond of Adric and was devastated to hear of his untimely death. However, she was not fond of Tegan, describing her as "that shrill Australian woman." (AUDIO: Excelis Dawns)
She claimed to have been present for the Great Fire of London in September 1666. (AUDIO: Excelis Dawns)
She was in London in March 1868 when the Doctor and Nyssa were stranded there due to Thomas Brewster accidentally sending the TARDIS on a solo flight. The Doctor decided against requesting Iris' assistance in retrieving it. (AUDIO: The Boy That Time Forgot)
She once shared breakfast with US President Abraham Lincoln on the White House lawn in the 1860s after saving the United States from Martian invaders for the third time. She told George Strangeways that they had "such a laugh." She also met Napoléon Bonaparte on the Russian front in 1812 and claimed that, in spite of what the history books said, he was "anything but small." (AUDIO: The Panda Invasion)
Iris dealt with Cephalopods in Venice with the help of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and one of the Doctor's early incarnations. Iris also encountered Lethbridge-Stewart when they fought the Terrible Zodin on Mars. (PROSE: Verdigris)
Iris requested entry to the City of the Saved in order to remove various friends from the Civil War. First she claimed she had a strand of human DNA in her sixth incarnation; when that didn't work, she drove her vehicle directly at the Uptime Gate. (PROSE: A Hundred Words from a Civil War)
Iris' TARDIS
- Main article: Celestial Omnibus
Iris Wildthyme's TARDIS was usually known as the "Celestial Omnibus" or simply "the Bus," resembled a red London double-decker bus, specifically the Number 22 to Putney Common. Lacking the standard dimensional transcendence exhibited by other TARDISes, it was smaller inside than out. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
Iris's companions
This section needs to be rewritten as normal prose, including complete sentences.
- Captain Edwin Turner, who left Iris after only one trip to marry Bella Huntingdon. (PROSE: Old Flames) However, he later rejoined her in further adventures (AUDIO: Kronos Vad's History of Earth (Vol. 36,379))
- Timmy, whom Iris referred as her "glamorous assistant." (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
- Iris mentioned Gary as another of her previous companions. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
- Jeremy, who helped her defeat the 22nd century Dalek invasion of Earth. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
- Iris once referred to one of her former companions as "an obtuse shape-shifter who loved nothing better than to spend much of his time as a lippy and garrulous penguin". (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
- Flossie and Fritter joined Iris following the adventure with the Doctor and Noël Coward. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englismen)
Jenny Winterleaf
A Traffic warden, who once helped Iris fight the Dalek Supreme alongside the Second Doctor, used to get diarrhoea whenever they went through the vortex. (PROSE: Verdigris)
Martha
A poodle from dogworld. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
Tom
Tom and his talking panda travelled with Iris for some time, before he returned to Earth, Iris came looking for Tom once more. While on Earth, Tom wrote mildy successful books about his travels with Iris, although most people regarded the books as fiction. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)
Panda
He looked like a stuffed panda, liked more than a drop of alcohol (any really) and was a freelance journalist in 1972. He would often get self-conscious at any mention of him being stuffed or looking like a toy panda. He continued to travel with Iris even after Tom departed. (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder)
Jo Jones
Iris befriended the Doctor's former companion Jo Jones (née Grant) in 2010. Jo joined Iris on her travels, happy to once again be a time traveller. (AUDIO: Find and Replace, The Elixir of Doom)
Behind the scenes
- Iris can be regarded as a crossover character. Creator Paul Magrs' first published work, Patient Iris, was about a dying elderly hospital patient named Iris. Iris Margaret Wildthyme appears as one of the main characters of Magrs' first published novel, Marked for Life. In Marked for Life, Iris is a lesbian novelist who claims to have lived for 474 years and changed sex five times, "like Orlando"; she has memories of visiting Dunwich in the 1860s, meeting Marlene Dietrich in 1920s Berlin, and writing a popular novel (which was later adapted into a film) in 1960s Los Angeles. At the end of Marked for Life, Iris transforms into a baby after suffering what should have been a fatal fall. Iris reappears as "an ugly-looking baby with an old look about it" in Magrs next two novels Does it Show? and Could it be Magic?.
- Iris Wildthyme can be described as a meta-fictional character, able to comment on the world she is in, and on the Doctor's own adventures from a point of view removed from the normal narrative structures. The "old woman" Iris Wildthyme appears like actor Beryl Reid (who has guest-starred on Doctor Who). On audio, Katy Manning supplies the voice for the character; her image is usually also used to depict the character, as on the cover of Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus.
- Along with Bernice Summerfield, Wildthyme is one of the more prolific Doctor Who universe characters never to appear on screen (although Bernice did appear in the animated webcast Dead and Buried and live-action webcast Transmission from Mars).
- To date, Katy Manning and Maria McErlane are the only actors to portray Iris officially. None of Iris's other incarnations have as yet been portrayed in audio form.
External links
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