Wildythme at Large

"We want to hear all her secrets."

Writer: Paul Magrs

Format: Audio

Released: November 2005

Series: Iris Wildthyme 1.01

Featuring: Iris

Synopsis

A message to you from Panda:

Apparently, it has been ten years since Tom's adventures aboard Iris Wildthyme's transdimensional double-decker bus. Tom has now settled into a life of writing weird and wonderful novels (his description; I call them schlocky) about his erstwhile friend in order to support himself and, of course, his best real friend, me! One small, highly intelligent and terribly sophisticated Panda. 

Then, one night at a book launch, there was a ruckus in the signing queue. Suddenly, the loud-mouthed floozy of the multiverse was back in his life, no our lives! I ask you, how rude is that? Anyway, she embarrassed him in front of his fans and caused a punch up. Before Tom even knew it, Iris had entrusted him with her most precious possession, ridden off into the night with Robin Hood, and revealed that she was being hunted by evil forces from a higher dimension. 

Of course, they both needed me to save the day. 

Verdict

Wildthyme at Large was a very entertaining start to the Iris Wildthyme spinoff series from Big Finish! I must admit I'm not entirely sure if I would have delved into this series if it hadn't been Katy Manning in the lead role as I'm a big fan of hers, but after a recent sale where the first series was on offer as a download for just over £6, I thought that was enticing enough to dip into the series and give it a go. After listening I'm really glad I did even though I'm still not wholly clued up on all of the details. I am absolutely going to need some background or an origin story for Panda as how Tom came to be living with a talking stuffed panda bear is fascinating. There has to be a good story there and I look forward to hopefully listening to it one day. For me, the timeline of Iris Wildthyme is a little confusing and convoluted given how she debuted in the Old Flames short story in the original Short Trips and has appeared in a number of short stories since then. She's showed up quite a few times in more mainstream Big Finish audios alongside the Doctor and always been a great deal of fun, so I suppose it's not a big surprise she gets her own series! It's nice for her to also get a companion in the form of Tom and whilst this was not my first exposure to him as travelling with Iris, I felt the story did a great job in establishing that backstory for first time listeners jumping on board with this series. He had been with her before and now he was back in his own time and place, he'd moved on. It had been ten years and the way he was now forging a career was as an author and using his crazy adventures with Iris as the basis for his fiction. That's the style he was writing in even though it was all actually true. That's a fantastic idea! He'd gotten so popular that Mida Silke started her own publishing company to get close to him because she knew about Iris and was after a very specific memory. That was intriguing and whilst she was playing the long game and hoping Tom would turn a particular experience into the latest book, someone else was also after a memory that Iris had. Her return to get Tom was fun and her entire memory being contained within a crystal was very interesting. I was a little surprised to find that when it was crushed by Panda at the end that it actually impacted her current memory. I wonder if that's a way to serve this story as a soft reboot for the character moving forward whilst containing and alluding to some historic references. Whilst I don't know a huge amount about the backstory of Iris before this audio, I can appreciate that. It's something I'd have liked if I did. The way things weren't wholly resolved at the end of the audio with there still being some scary sounding Head out to get Iris was good and presumably leads us up for something in the future, and this is a good way to establish some continuity and an arc moving forward. I did enjoy the more adult toned elements of the story with numerous mentions of Iris being pissed and even talking bollocks. It just feels a bit more real and Iris is a fine character for that. She wouldn't fit in at all with Torchwood, but the lighthearted approach feels brilliant and a nice welcomed addition to a more mature audience. There definitely is room for that in the Whoniverse, and this almost feels like the Classic contribution. Overall, a strong story to kickstart the series! 

Rating: 8/10