Fungus (short story): Difference between revisions

'''''Fungus''''' was a short story from the [[Doctor Who Annual 1984|1984 ''Doctor Who'' annual]]. It unusually featured a [[companion]]-less [[Fifth Doctor]] meeting up with a previously-unseen "old friend" called [[Professor]] [[Lloyd (Fungus)|Lloyd]] and having an adventure that was almost exclusively [[laboratory]]-bound.

Somewhere in the [[United Kingdom]], a young woman called [[Edith Stevens]] is attacked by her [[cat]], [[Boris (Fungus)|Boris]]. Elsewhere in the country, [[Professor]] [[Lloyd (Fungus)|Lloyd]] informs the [[Fifth Doctor]] of the epidemic of similar cat attacks that are sweeping the nation.

The Doctor immediately begins investigating his old friend's problem. He uses his heightened olfactory senses to determine that something about the [[milk]] in his [[tea]] is "off". Lloyd's [[human]] senses aren't keen enough to detect anything, so the Doctor is forced to prove it through careful examination of the milk. He discovers a [[fungus (Fungus)|fungus]] that he enigmatically says that he's seen before. When asked why the milk isn't affecting other animals, like humans, the Doctor surmises that cats are simply particularly susceptible.

The Doctor uses his previous knowledge of the fungus to develop a quick solution: a high-pitched sound, as delivered from a [[dog whistle]], will successfully knock out the virus. He leaves it in Lloyd's hands to get the government of [[Britain]] to co-ordinate short bursts of sound from [[radio]] stations around the country.

* The story features a trope that was extraordinarily common in [[World Distributors (Manchester), Ltd|World Distributors]]' [[Doctor Who annual|annuals]]: that of the Doctor meeting an "old friend" of whom the readers were not previously aware. The trope allowed the writer to get away with depicting a close relationship with the Doctor without having to explain why. This shorthand was extremely valuable to World Distributors authors, given the brevity of the stories.