From Wildthyme with Love (novel)
From Wildthyme with Love was a novel written by Paul Magrs and released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. The novel was written as a correspondence of 50 letters between Iris Wildthyme and Panda, each of them parodying at least one Doctor Who story. It contained a variety of references to Magrs' previous work, both for the Doctor Who franchise and independent of the Doctor Who franchise.
Publisher's summary
Panda lovey,
This is the last time I ever listen to you.
Bloody hell!
Plot
1
Iris Wildthyme finds herself on a dead planet having followed Panda's suggestion that it would be host to a "Bring-a-Bottle" party. Having made her way through the petrified forest she bangs on the door to the address that Panda had given her, but to no reply. Frustrated, Iris drinks the alcohol she had brought by herself before eventually stumbling upon a group of blond fellas with whom she parties before they help her find her way back to her bus. Iris questions whether Panda borrowed her Time Scrunchy.
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Meanwhile, Panda has made his way to 1979 Paris with Iris' Time Scrunchy. He meets with a classy lady who, feeling neglected by her husband, invites him to her luxury apartment in the Marais for the evening.
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In an attempt to meet with Panda, Iris sets her coordinates for Paris but ends up going off kilter within the Maelstrom. She finds herself within a Space city surrounded by a jungle of flesh-eating flaming plants. In the bar Iris witnesses a conference between space delegates including; one in a jumpsuit with covered in chocolate chip cookies, one that looked like a malevolent Christmas tree, and the Prime Minister of the Solar System. The meeting was apparently for a clandestine rendezvous with evil alien robots from another galaxy.
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Iris writes that earlier she had just spent her Christmas locked up in "the slammer" with someone who looked like the girl off Upstairs, Downstairs who mentions that "this one has been junked", then Iris had pulled out some sherry and the next thing she remembered that she had been running around like "they were in some silent movie", before passing out. She remembered waking up later as someone had just done a toast through the Fourth Wall, which Iris had subsequently escaped through. Ending her letter, Iris wishes that she and Panda could find themselves in the same Special Festive Episode next year.
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Iris is in a hospital on Holby Space City after being infected by a lurgy. She meets a "nice Professor" and PAND-R, a robotic companion of his own invention. To cure Iris, she, the Professor, and PAND-R clone themselves, shrink themselves, and go on a "Fantastic Journey all through [Iris'] insides". They find the source of the problem, a giant prawn, which Iris suspects she ate in a sandwich from a "dodgy motorway services". The giant prawn is defeated, but in order to expel the clones from Iris' body, they use colonics, much to Iris' displeasure.
The Professor has a new post on Earth, and he can't take PAND-R with him, so PAND-R becomes Iris companion.
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Iris Wildthyme opines that the Penultimate Question is always "Where's the bar?", and that the Ultimate Question is "What's yours, lovey?". She isn't at all looking forward to becoming the Jane Fonda Iris with whom Panda is travelling, who might have a icer figure than her but seems to be "a proper moaner".
Iris reports that for her part, she is "at the Earth's core". There, she has met some reptile people who are upset that the Ape Primitives have stolen their planet, as well as a "dashing old gentleman" who has a faint resemblance to Peter Cushing. Noting that MIAOW seem intent on committing genocide on the reptile people, she ends her letter there.
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An excited Panda promises to come right away via skates.
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Iris writes Panda one last letter (despite their now being in the same place that says simply: "HURRAY FOR US!".
Characters
- Iris Wildthyme
- Panda
- Blond fellas
- Classy lady
- Someone who looked like the one off Upstairs, Downstairs
- The one off Upstairs, Downstairs
- Rudy Valentino
- Someone who was doing a toast through the Fourth Wall
- Peter Cushing
- Dashing old gentleman
more to be added
Worldbuilding
- Panda travels through time using a Time Scrunchy.
- Panda communicates with his previous self through Skype.
- Panda gets stuck in a Tim War.
- Iris picks up a canteen of cutlery from John Lewis.
- Iris winds up joining "Pan's People", made up of a group of women who live in caves and sing "Sacred Fire, Sacred Flame!".
- Iris holds a party in Hobbe's End which Jenny Winterleaf, Barbra, Mida Slike, Tom, |Mr Darcy, Heathcliff, Noël Coward, Marlene Dietrich, those blonde alien boys with the blue eye shadow, Dusty Springfield, the girl from "Upstairs Downstairs", Robin Hood, Zenith the Albino, Catweazle and his giant green ball bag, the Parisian Countess, Blakey from "On the Buses", Cagney and Lacey, the giant head of Mr Derek from the Year 5 Billion, several synthetic men, the Cosmic Puppet Master, Fox and Magda Soames, Kristoff Alucard, Professor Challenger, Mrs Hudson, Doctor Van Helsing, the King of Spin-Off Fiction, Vince Cosmos, Poppy Munday, Mrs Wibbsey, the Organ Thief, his hunchbacked boyfriend, Pan's People, T.S. Eliot, Ngaio Marsh and her giant wasp, Peter Cushing, Brenda and Effie, Samantha the Gestalt Entity, PAND-R, Marco Polo, Mrs Claus and all her elves, and someone who looks a lot like Nerys Hughes all attend.
- Iris meets a lot of blond fellas who live in the woods together; they "wear a shocking amount of blue eyeshadow and not a lot else".
Notes
- The story is written as a series of letters between Iris and Panda, each of which details one or the other's involvement in events bearing a strong resemblance to a televised episode of Doctor Who.
- The description of the "blond fellas" (implied to be the Thals) as wearing a lot of blue eyeshadow references their appearance in the feature film Dr. Who and the Daleks, more than any of their appearances in televised Who.
- While "at the Earth's core", Iris encounters reptile people angry at the apes who took over their planet (implied to be the Silurians), but also a "lovely dashing older gentleman" who is said to resemble Peter Cushing.
- This story is one of many which blurs the distinction between the incarnation of Iris Wildthyme played by Katy Manning and the incarnation of Iris Wildthyme who resembles Beryl Reid.
Continuity
- Panda meets a Countess who "looks a bit like the top totty out of Space: 1999" and is "in the art business" in Paris, 1979. (TV: City of Death)
- Iris attends a secret summit full of space delegates including the "Prime Minister of the Solar System" who are planning to meet "evil alien robots from another galaxy." (TV: "Day of Armageddon")
- Panda visits Putney Common during the 22nd century, and a flying saucer lands. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
- Iris joins a cult obsessed with the ritualistic worship of fire and an elixir of life, and meets a Welsh surgeon and his hunchbacked boyfriend. (TV: The Brain of Morbius)
- Panda encounters dinosaurs and a fascist army general in 1974. (TV: Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
- Iris and some of the "fellas" with the blue eyeshadow and blonde wigs put on purple fur coats, hide exploding red handbags in trees, and have a disco beneath an ice volcano. (TV: Planet of the Daleks)
- Panda spends Christmas on a space cruise liner with a nice waitress who looked like that one off Neighbours. (TV: Voyage of the Damned)
- Iris spends Christmas locked up in a police station with someone who looks like Jean Marsh. It's difficult to tell what's going on because the episode was junked and all that's left is the soundtrack and some black and white snaps. Someone does a toast through the fourth wall, and Iris escapes through it. (TV: "The Feast of Steven")
- Panda meets a nefarious time traveller with marvellous boobs who opens a gay bathhouse in a small mining village, clones dinosaurs, and turns people into trees. (TV: The Mark of the Rani)
- Iris finds space cabbages buried in ice. (TV: The Seeds of Doom)
- On a mission for MIAOW, Panda gets sent to the universe of anti-matter, where he meets two other Pandas. (TV: The Three Doctors)
- Iris goes on a road trip with Marco Polo, as part of his harem. (TV: Marco Polo)
- Panda becomes involved with two old lesbians and a Neolithic stone circle in 1978. (TV: The Stones of Blood)
- With the help of a Professor, Iris sends a shrunk-down clone of herself into her brain to battle a possibly alien prawn. She takes PAND-R with her when she leaves. The Fourth Doctor experienced a very similar, but distinct, adventure where he met Prof Marius, battled the Swarm, and left with K9. (TV: The Invisible Enemy)
- Panda's Time Scrunchy is intercepted by Iris's mysterious superiors, who put him on trial and try to make him do a DVD commentary for episodes of his own life. The same thing once happened to Iris. (TV: The Trial of a Time Lord)
- Panda visits the Tim War, which is going to be closed off to the public soon. (TV: Rose, et al.)
- Iris and PAND-R visit the Living City of the Sexxilons. (TV: Death to the Daleks)
- Panda returns to "real, chronological time" (i.e. the '70s), where he witnesses four Scots suckling from the Loch Ness Monster. (TV: Terror of the Zygons)
- Crystalline robots keep Iris and other geniuses prisoner in "a kind of space-age call centre". (TV: The Krotons)
- Panda flees an Atrocious Snowman, several "Synthetic Men", and "something lissom in a leotard," and meets five versions of Iris, who were all transported by PAND-R using a pooper scooper. (TV: The Five Doctors)
- Iris encounters men in rubber suits and goes on a quest for five keys. (TV: The Keys of Marinus)
- Iris's mysterious superiors try to make Panda their Supreme Being, but he escapes with an Iris who looks like Jane Fonda (TV: The Five Doctors, PROSE: Femme Fatale)
- PAND-R takes Iris to a world where the Synthetic Men sleep in underground sarcophagi. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen)
- Panda and the other Iris are put through "lethal, dreamlike scenarios" by the Cosmic Puppet Master. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker)
- Panda and the other Iris investigate the origins of alternate universe Synthetic Men. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel)
- Panda has a space adventure where a very dirty spaceship is falling into the sun in a race against time. (TV: 42)
- Iris encounters an Egyptian sarcophagus which turns into a time tunnel. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)
- Panda's future Iris rides a horse, jumps through mirrors, fights clockwork fops, and has an affair with a young woman in a big frock. (TV: The Girl in the Fireplace)
- Iris encounters the Cosmic Puppet Master again in Blackpool. (PROSE: The Nightmare Fair / AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair)
- Panda thinks future Iris has blown up her mysterious superiors in the Tim War. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
- Iris visits a holiday camp that turns out to be overrun with crabs. (TV: The Macra Terror)
- In the year 5 billion, Panda encounters an Earth colony resembling the M25 and the dying head of a future friend of Iris, an omnisexual agent. (TV: Gridlock)
- Iris joins a '70s Welsh hippy commune and synthesises foodstuffs from mushrooms. (TV: The Green Death)
- Panda meets a famous crime writer and a giant wasp. (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp)
- During an adventure with MIAOW, PAND-R uses a serum to turn himself enormous and wreak some havoc, but Iris eventually comes to realise that he's just misunderstood. (TV: Robot)
- Panda encounters cavemen, and they're dirty. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
- Iris becomes embroiled in a Pseudo-Historical she calls "one of those future-fellas-visit-the-Middle-Ages-and-muck-about-with-stuff-affairs." (TV: The Time Meddler)
- Panda negotiates with a hairy, green, over-sized scrotum. (TV: The Creature from the Pit)
- In a junkyard in time, Iris encounters the spirit of her bus. She expected a spooky woman who would take responsibility for running away with her and for their adventures, but instead it resembles a Scot with a toothbrush moustache. (TV: The Doctor's Wife, AUDIO: Zagreus)
- Panda has been seeing the same phrase ("TIME GENTLEMEN, PLEASE") everywhere, like a message left for him across time. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
- Panda meets a blue head in a box tells the future Iris that she'll soon face "The Penultimate Question." (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
- Iris encounters a man she thinks resembles Peter Cushing and reptile people at the Earth's core, but MIAOW wants to kill them. (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
- Panda and his Iris try to kill Hitler, but instead meet Blakey off On the Buses, whom they shove in a cupboard. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
External links
- From Wildthyme With Love at Snowbooks[1]
