Wildthyme on Top:

So Iris has been well and truly decoupled from the (relative) sanity of the Whoniverse. I've actually nothing against this in principle, it's just a pity that all the crazy magical worlds are so incredibly stupid and boring and unconvincing and pointless.

Preface - OK, so her LEOPARDSKIN coat is synthetic. But what about her TIGERSKIN coat...?

Most Horrid - Ooh, a GOOD ghost story (i.e. without any actual ghosts). Though quite why Iris decides the dead woman with bruises all round her neck is having a nice kip is anyone's guess.

The Sleuth Slayers - Muddled and silly and seriously annoying - especially calling someone 'the man' all the time. And as for 'Iris cracked it' - no she didn't.

Minions of the Moon - I have the feeling there's a decent story buried beneath the excruciating tedium and incredibly stupid silliness...but that may just be because I'm seriously respectful of the words 'Phil Purser-Hallard'. Or maybe I just hate its guts because the 'Elizabethan spaceship' thing just reminds me of the Unbound audio A Storm of Angels. Plus it murders an oochie (lion. Whatever). 'The Queen's a stickler for the healthful properties of dirt' - really? I seem to remember Elizabeth I uttering the immortal line 'I take a bath every three months. Whether I need one or not'...

Beguine - Disjointed gibberish involving Tom being buried alive for no readily apparent reason and some old man wetting himself for no readily apparent reason. Am I perhaps missing something...?

Blame Iris - 'Sometimes he suspected she kept him around as a glamorous accessory because of his exotic skin colour. What hat goes best with Tom this evening?' - I'd hardly describe BEING BLACK as having 'an exotic skin colour'. And neither would any black person of my acquaintance. Especially if he happens to be from early-twenty-first-century London, where he's practically the norm.

Pretty dull. Plus I've seen it all before. In Mind Robber/Dying in the Sun/Meglos, of all things.

So Iris is 'itching for the off' after a few weeks? Funny, given the later claim that she'll (pointlessly!) spend TWELVE YEARS as Juliet's Nurse...

Came to Believe - 'A truly amazing fur coat...it must have been real - fake fur just didn't have that lustre' - and yet she has the cheek to be anti-blood-sports in Iris and Irregularity? Sad to say, this obsessive depiction of alcoholism is probably my favourite story in this collection.

Rough Magic - Its boringness is especially unforgivable given that all this SODDING REAL MAGIC stuff could only POSSIBLY be justified by being REALLY EXCITING. Oh, and - hello! - the 'vortex' and the 'void' are two completely separate things! And Iris thinking her BEST FRIEND and her TARDIS being destroyed should result in a BIT of GENUINE ANGST. And - for those of us who've been obsessing about the genuineness of her fur coats (due to a dearth of anything INTERESTING to be obsessed by) for the duration of this book, the news that the coat 'thought of her as the person for whom its skin had been cut off' isn't exactly encouraging...

The Mancunian Candidate - What the •••• possessed LANCE PARKIN to write about a ••••••• TALKING SQUIRREL? WHAT - THE - ••••???

Iris and Irregularity - It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jac Rayner chucking Iris Wildthyme into a Jane Austen pastiche will be mildly amusing. Though see above re blood sports...

...And I can cope with Iris hinting she's a doctor's widow, but it's going pretty far for her to say that 'You think you've married the right one, eh? Well, let me tell you, it won't work. One day they're all teeth and curls, next day you wake up to find they've changed, and a moment too soon...' - no matter how much I might agree with the general sentiment....

The Evil Little Mother and the Tragic Old Bat - Ever since I discovered Medea (my own excellent version of her life being available from http://www.piperbooks.co.uk) I've wondered why the hell the Whoniverse hasn't harnessed this incredibly powerful, feminist and hilarious legend. And it turns out...it has. In an excellent story, at least until its godawful ending. I find it hard to believe that a) Iris says 'Welcome to sidekickery...more often that not it's someone else's story they get the real dramatic bits and I'm lucky to squeeze in and grab a bit of the adventure for myself. The auntie never gets a really big story of her own, does she? Sodding comic relief, that's all' - she's got HOW many audio series of her own, by now? b) the universe would bring an archetypal Medea into existence (on Iris's bus) the moment the REAL one omits to off her brats (hello! She didn't slaughter the rug-rats in the ORIGINAL legend!) and c) Iris should be so desperate for 'really big' adventures and to be 'sidekick to the best' that she'd conjure up Medea like this INSTEAD OF JUST GOING TO FIND HER BELOVED DOCTOR.

Enter Wildthyme:

Well, that was surprisingly enjoyable, right up until the ending (or complete lack thereof). Of course, it was grossly unoriginal, but spotting all the Who references is half the fun (poodles and pinking shears from Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Tomorrow Twins from Horror of Glam Rock, Hyspero and its bottled Empresses from Scarlet Empress, Denobian slime dollars from Serpents Crest, Toulouse-Lautrec and the local cemetery from Demon of Paris, Barbra the vending machine from Sick Building, the Atlas of All Time from Demon Quest, Ringpullworld from, well, Ringpullworld, MIAOW from, um, wherever MIAOW was from, etc...) And, let's face it, redoing Scarlet Empress WITHOUT THE DOCTOR is an excellent move. All the zany magical waffle just works so much better without him.

OK, so the beginning was a tad misfortunate, all this wacky-pirates-on-a-quest-across-space stuff reminded me quite sickeningly of Coming of the Terraphiles for a moment.

'Simon was reminded of cats, going off alone to die somewhere. Taking their injured pride and retreating to where they wouldn't disturb anyone else with their passing' - well, it may not be a proper Who book but it's certainly got stuck into the oochies pretty •••• fast. (Also, since when has any cat had the consideration to NOT DISTURB anyone?)

So Simon's twenty-six but he's just been away at university for four years? Odd age to go at. And odd number of years to go for, given that it's a university 'across the other side of the Pennines' and not in Scotland, where the courses ARE four years not three.

'It's probably one of the most vitally important bits of bric-a-brac on the Earth today' doesn't exactly make it VERY important, does it.

'I'm usually off in the margins somewhere, doing something crucial but discreet' - DISCREET?! (Or, as Herself puts it later in the book: '"Subtle?" jeered Iris. "Ecky thump. Are you sure, chuck?"')

'I can hardly get out of the bus, can I? And go wandering around Darlington? Just imagine what kind of scenes might result! No - here I am! A prisoner!' - since WHEN! Don't seem to remember Panda having any problems wandering around all over the place in the Iris audios.

Why does Barbra say 'There you are, Simon' when producing the can of orangeade that IRIS asked for?

'Every transdimensional traveller knows Darlington like the back of his, her or its hand' - well why has the Doctor never been then?

So it's a 'Maelstrom' not a 'Vortex' WHY, exactly?

And 'The time winds came shrieking through the gaps and cracks in the bus's outer skin' - so why don't they have the effect on human/Time Lord flesh that they do in Warriors' Gate?

'There was fear in Panda's voice. She wasn't used to hearing that' - what, just cos he's found a few murdered bodies? Surely an everyday occurrence as much for Iris's Companion as for the Doctor's?

'Astounding, that he had lain here for two weeks, gradually fading away' - quite. Wouldn't he have died of thirst alone, never mind his wounds? Wouldn't the smell be...noticeable?

'I must swear you to secrecy, same as I did Simon' - if she swore Simon to secrecy why isn't she upset to discover he Blabbed All to Kelly?

Iris really doesn't worry about nipping off to an 1894 restaurant in the middle of an adventure? The TARDIS would be highly unlikely to make it back to said adventure on time, and her bus is superior to Sexy in precisely no ways.

'This could be my whole life now, he thought, with increasing excitement. I could be racketing about having fun - just like Iris and Panda do. With no worries...' - NO WORRIES?! What, apart from HAVING TO SAVE PLANETS on a regular basis...?? Which part of 'deadly dangerous fun' went whoosh over his head?

'You can tell me...gay, gay, gay, right?' - at this point it would be a shock twist to discover that the latest modern-day-Earth-boy Iris was picking up was actually STRAIGHT.

Alternate realities. That's what this is all about – it IS? Since WHEN! (And...y'know...WHY?)

The Martians have heat-rays, tentacles and worship a panda? Why on Earth would you introduce Martians to your Who rip-off and then make it REALLY PLAIN that they're NOT Ice Warriors?

Kelly 'was supposed to be his closest friend' - SINCE WHEN! They've just exchanged the VERY occasional email for YEARS!

'"On Saturday night this whole building...is utterly vaporized...That's how we keep the secret and special stuff safe, you see. Just allowing it three days' existence in our care. Then we can go back and back to it, and no one will ever know the three days we were ever here." This sounded not exactly foolproof to Simon' - or to me either. She'd keep bumping into herself, for starters.

To be continued...

'What did Simon tell her those first few days and nights aboard the bus?' - it's just been the ONE night out!

'She felt stupid and trapped and useless' - what the hell happened to her GUN! And all that MIAOW training? If Jenny's so helpless against Marvelle, why was she pursuing him so recently?

Why isn't Simon sleeping in the bus's spare bedroom?

'"Obviously some sort of ritual," Panda said. "Sacrificial, maybe." His expression darkened. "We're best off leaving well alone. It doesn't do to get too mixed up in local rituals." "Too right," said Iris. "Are we ready for another at the bar?"' - well. What a truly disgusting display of moral cowardice by Our Heroes. On the plus side, however, at least THE DOCTOR isn't around to join in, a la Excelis Dawns.

'Kelly explained that this wasn't how it worked. At the Exchange you didn't buy books that then became yours. It was all about bringing books back when you were finished with them, and then leaving with something else next time' - er, this bookshop is in fact a LIBRARY then? Rather weird that Simon was thinking earlier that the baddie was 'rude' for not BUYING ANY BOOKS, then.

'What about the way they happily gave their young people away to be sacrificed, eh? That was awful!' - actually, Panda, YOU happily gave their young people away to be sacrificed rather than interrupt your quest for another drink. The parents of said young people were actually moaning, wailing, pulling at them, arguing, protesting, and crying with despair.

Why are they unnecessarily sleeping out of doors? Why is no one on watch? Why doesn't Simon wake anyone when there's 'some horrible flying nocturnal beast' in the offing?

'Our creator wanted to dismantle us and cannibalise us. A few of us were lucky to get away with hour lives...We stole an escape pod called Helen one day and flung ourselves into the void' - since when! I may not have particularly strong (or fond) memories of Sick Building, but I'm pretty sure the stupid vending machine was rescued by THE DOCTOR.

'Everyone's so...alien' - don't try quoting the happiest moments of our lives. It'll only make the contrast in quality more poignant.

So MIAOW are guarding 'the Dreadful Flap - that terrible nexus point for multi-dimensional exploration' - hmm. Anyone else getting the feeling that Torchwood and its Rift are getting the •••• mercilessly taken out of them?

Alas for Magrs, even such a self-consciously wacky idea as flying sentient wardrobes has been done before in the Whoniverse. (Well, with fridges anyway.) To be fair, they work better in THIS context than in a Benny short story.

'Here are where the Empresses are stowed away when they abdicate...we don't die, we just feel the need to take a nice line rest. I was the first in my long line to have myself put away like that' - why on Earth is she suddenly pretending that the process is VOLUNTARY?

'Jenny set the opened jar down on the ground. Even she was amazed by what happened next' - leaving aside the fact these people are the six-impossible-things-before-breakfast types...Jenny KNOWS there's an Empress in the jar. Frankly she should have been amazed if said Empress HADN'T popped out once her lid was off.

Wildthyme Beyond!:

'Money in the slot, exact change only' - what, even though you were created to serve ONE FAMILY (and a pretty small two-parent one-child family at that, we're not talking MORMONS) on one otherwise-deserted planet? What's the point of demanding MONEY every time you dispense a (flat) fizzy drink?

There are AT LEAST three hundred and twenty-four novels about Iris? I realise this particular alternative-universe must be tragically devoid of Doctor Who, but that's still ridiculous.

'Of course! Of course, Panda! You're right! We're saved!' - what, just because there's a slash in the Very Fabric of Time and Space that will take you to a 1972 Hammersmith Odeon toilet? In what way will THAT stop Marvelle opening the Ringpull to the Obverse Universe...on Hyspero?

'He had all three hundred and twenty four in his room, all in precise order. That meant canonical order - the strict ordering of when novels happened, rather than publication order' - um, isn't the POINT of Iris that she DOESN'T have any canonical order? (Plus, there are surely some multi-Iris stories in there? What d'you do with THEM?)

'My limited edition novella with Charnel House Press was nominated for four and subsequently won three awards from the British Horror and Fantasy Association last year!' - leaving aside what one can only assume is a dig at the Telos novellas...how could one (skinny) book be up for four different awards?

OK, what is it with child-Iris's unexplained amnesia? Don't we have enough of such things in the REAL Who novels?

Panda gave the impression that he not-infrequently drives the bus. Which makes it odd that he 'didn't actually know how to stop the thing'.

'It had been years since they had had a cat. When Muffit died just after the millennium' - oh yeah, even a Who-related novel that delights in ripping up all the rules has gotta kill an oochie. It's TRADITIONAL.

As, of course, is gouging someone's eyes out. At least here it's a lobster that seems to be inexplicably blinded. (And, um, how exactly do Kelly and Simon manage to 'lock stares with the horrified shellfish' AFTER he's been blinded anyway?)

'He would come to hers on Sunday evening for a good, home-cooked meal.' Fine. Said Sunday also happens to be 'tomorrow evening'. Also fine, since today is a Saturday. Except that said invitation is later referred to (pre-said-dinner) as occurring on 'the other day'. NOT 'yesterday'. And said dinner occurs on the evening of his writing class at the Arts centre. Which, it is previously made clear, is on A MONDAY.

'He realised with a stab of guilt he'd forgotten to buy flowers or wine or something. Magda didn't mind. As she had told him, all he needed to bring was his good self' - er, actually what she told him was to BRING SOME ABSINTHE.

'She was fourteen' - wasn't she a little girl, like, YESTERDAY?

PANDA gave Iris her bus, her identity, her name, etc? Even given his inevitable and ultra-convenient amnesia, that just doesn't ring true.

'As far as she knew, no one on his planet had met aliens yet. The Earth had been bottled up all by itself throughout its history' - yeah, RIGHT.

'So many of them were similar, too! He kept introducing youngish male characters who lived lives analogous to his own' - VERY quick response to my 'at this point it would be a shock twist to discover that the latest modern-day-Earth-boy Iris was picking up was actually STRAIGHT' complaint. Though just because an author can spot his own shortcomings doesn't mean they aren't a problem.

'When he had joined her crew he had known that travels through the cosmos at her side would involve terrible dangers and calamities' - oh yeah? Whatever happened to 'I could be racketing about having fun...With no worries'...?

Why not lock themselves INSIDE rather than OUTSIDE the bus when the monstrous sand ship appears?

Haaang on. Marvelle and Kelly are in some sort of RELATIONSHIP?! The previous book gave me the VERY STRONG IMPRESSION that she BITTERLY REGRETTED her one-night stand with him...?

'Missy was used to picking up titbits from her master's conversation, and trying to piece them together. Rarely did he actually sit down and explain things to her. And why should she? She was just his dog. She was there to follow him and unconditionally approve of everything he did' - oh-kay. Ignoring the accidental use of 'why should she' instead of 'why should he' (SO typical of this book's slapdash editing)...and fully cognisant of the vile slavish nature of those DAWG creatures...(SO typical of non-feline pets)...what the HELL? From my (admittedly vague) memories of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, the inhabitants of Dogworld SO don't go in for inferiority complexes...

'There AREN'T any books on Hyspero!' - since when?! I distinctly remember Sam nicking one for Eight in Scarlet Empress.

'The poor old bus, left alone in the desert, with no one to guard it or look after it...' - IT?! A TARDIS is a SHE!

'Yes, it was for kids, before any of yours [sic] jump down my throat! Just look at the letters from the upper echelons of Tyne Tees television reprinted in THE MAKING OF IRIS WILDTHYME book for 1980' - why should a few episodes of a spectacularly unsuccessful TV series get a 'making of' book? And didn't you claim earlier that all the behind-the-scenes details of said Iris TV series had been destroyed?

'That end of season climax finished with the theft of the very first Empress' - I thought you said it had been cancelled mid-episode, so what's the series doing with a finale? Even assuming any series in the 1970s actually HAD a concept of end-of-season climaxes, which was more than Who did...

'Beware - much of the book consists of our heroes in various combinations wandering about the planet and encountering strange foes and deadly dangers. All the while they're chatting about the adventure they're on - and what it's all supposed to mean. In other words, it's disastrously LOW ON PLOT!!' - er, YEAH. Does Magrs really think that pointing out the problems with his own books will somehow obviate said problems...?

'I was brought up to be a proper little lady... quiet and well-mannered... Speak when you're spoken too' - leaving aside the fact 'too' should be 'to'...didn't this claim earlier that Iris was from the Clockwork SLUMS?

'All written down in those millions of books' - oh, so 'no book' Hyspero's got MILLIONS of books, all of a sudden...?

'I was the only person in Hyspero who could read and write' - er, except for your chum Simon, your Aunty Iris and, presumably, whoever-the-hell had written those aforementioned MILLIONS of books...

'"I'm not sure what's for the best," Robert said' - who the ••••'s Robert?

'She struggled with the heavy locks on what seemed to be the front door, and soon made short work of them with her laser corkscrew' - how can you 'struggle' AND 'make short work' of something? And the Iris audios said it was a SONIC corkscrew.

What's with the awful endless sub-C S Lewis account of young-Kelly-and-Simon-being-on-Hyspero (despite the fact THEY WEREN'T) with a terrified helpless Aunty Iris getting murdered?

Um, sorry, the raison d'etre of the past couple of novels - evil Marvelle drags the First Empress and Kelly to the Ringpull to break into the Obverse Universe - is exactly what will ensure that 'the Ringpull will remain shut forever!' Uh...any particular reason WHY?

'The closest bar (according to the handy monitoring device she always kept stowed away in her carpetbag) told her that the nearest and nicest bar was downstairs' - the BAR told her that?

Well, at least Wherewithall Hall is Lungbarrow House done properly (well, properly insanely, anyway). I have to admit to cracking up when Iris's aunts are revealed to be Faith, Hope and Susan.

From Wilthyme with Love:

Does the BBC not have any LAWYERS? This couldn't be more of a Who rip-off if it had a waitress on a cruise liner who looked a bit like that one off Neighbours making a noble sacrifice in a fork life truck...OH WAIT! IT DOES!

(I wouldn't have thought that saying 'Sacred Flame! Sacred Fire!' instead of 'Sacred Fire! Sacred Flame!' would be enough to get you off the hook, but what do I know.)

Still, it has to be admitted that 'Covent Garden is just a wasteland of Jurassic faeces' is a better line than anything Invasion of the Dinosaurs came up with.

And, let's face it, 'I met a man with a dove sitting on his head who kept trying to get me to go on some kind of celestial errand for him, but I wasn't having any of it. I said, thanks for the creme-de-menthe dearie, but no dice' is at least as enjoyable as actually WATCHING The Key to Time.

And I did laugh quite a lot about Panda and his top totty in Paris 1979, whose husband the Count is out of town a lot, trying to be in too many places at once...

I don't believe for a moment that a) Iris has a Time Scrunchy or b) Panda would be caught dead in such a thing even if she DID.

OK, so it's a bit rich to open a book with 'Paul Magrs' on the cover and complain about it being too post-modern, but....'A police station all Christmas Day...I was locked up with someone who looked like that girl off "Upstairs Downstairs"...I asked her, "What are we doing here?" And she said, "I don't know...they've junked this one...you can still listen to the soundtrack and look at some back and white snaps to see what's going on"...someone was doing a toast through the Fourth Wall, or so somebody muttered' - REALLY?

And there's something rather distasteful about Panda being zapped into a universe of anti-matter while visiting a wildfowl sanctuary and meeting two other Pandas, the older one of whom 'didn't make it through the Event Horizon or whatever, and we can only see him on Skype, thank goodness. Looks like he might smell of wee, TBH.'

'I've spent months in the caravan of Marco polo! I think I'm in the old devils's harem...! Really, it is a bit of a bind being a sex slave all the time' - ah yes, isn't it hilarious that Iris is getting raped.

I can't work out which story the 'gestalt entity that took the form of a gigantic bin bag full of vomit - called Samantha' is taking the •••• out of.

Future-Iris 'was flummoxed' and 'could only agree' when Panda suddenly announced that 'we have a responsibility to put right some of history's great wrongs', staring with assassinating Hitler. As if Panda would ever get such a stupid idea after years of responsible(ish) time travel, and as if Iris - a Time Lord (sort of) - would go along with it.

Iris invites MRS WIBBSEY to a party? As if ANYONE would want that moaning killjoy around under ANY circumstances.

Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus:

With one very obvious exception, a very worthwhile collection.

A Gamble with Wildthyme - MIAOW is made up of MEN since WHEN! AND they hire mercenaries...?

'He had placed their lives - the lives, if he understood correctly, of everyone who lived or had ever lived or would ever live - in those unsteady, liver-spotted hands' - there are surely limits to the amount of damage a bunch of dawgs can do the cosmos, even with a TARDIS at their disposal? I mean, there have been LOADS of genocidal renegades Sexying their way round the universe for eons...

Why don't the dogs just grab the TARDIS anyway? I mean, they're DAWGS. And evil.

Sovereign - OK, but way too much magic, Iris is rather pointless and it's too obvious it's Alex. Why have a successful artist and writer (with only one child to support) got an enormous mortgage on a tumbledown cottage in the middle of nowhere that they bought twenty years ago in the 1940s? They should have snapped it up for about a FIVER.

The Unhappy Medium - Good fun - why are Wright n'Scott never this fun when they're doing Who? Ah, probably that misfortunate Forge obsession...

Panda is 'hand-stitched' by WHOM, for heaven's sake! AND he's made of...polyester?

There's a spirit plane? That TARDISes can cut across? You KNOW there's no life-after-death in the Whoniverse, Torchwood says so so it MUST be true!

'We only pulled in to use the lavvy' - Iris's TARDIS has no loo?!

'If it was one of my own people I'd be able to recognise him by his BO. No-matter how many faces and bodies we get through, no-matter how our personalities change, we always have the same smell' - hmm. Have never seen THAT happen with the Doctor n'chums on-screen.

'Heaven is dull as ditch water' - THERE'S NO HEAVEN! How many times do I have to TELL people this!

'Do we a favour, would you? Pop it into a jiffy bag and send it to "The Forge, Dartmoor"' - OF COURSE I knew, deep down, that they'd never be able to ditch their Forge obsession, not for a single short story, even though Iris would OF COURSE have entrusted such tech to MIAOW - to which she used to be Scientific Advisor - rather than that nasty old vampire-run Forge.

'His hand brushed his other self's suit and the universe exploded' - dunno if Blinovitch gets THAT over-excited about a SUIT.

Future Legend - 'A few weeks ago, for instance, we managed to prevent this old freighter crashing into prehistoric Earth and killing all the dinosaurs (even if it did take Iris seventeen goes before she managed to get Tom off in time)' - poor Adric. Poor, poor Adric...

'"No," said the cat, with that smug self-satisfaction which makes the Pussyworlders so unattractive' - OI! Don't you diss any oochies! Just remember, it's DOGWORLDERS that are the scum of the universe!

Hell, isn't it hard enough getting excited about the whole Key To Time thing without referring, with cruel accuracy, to 'a grimy lump of Perspex'?

OK, if you've absolutely GOT to follow the Who-novel tradition of torturing innocent felines, I suppose I should just be grateful that the cat-army you RUTHLESSLY SLAUGHTER is made of wood.

'I was on the verge of soiling myself' - Panda can DO that?!

'Who knew what kind of mischief the PussyWorlders could get up to with all their future knowledge?' - Isn't Iris the LAST person in the universe to give a toss about such things?

'The cat crumpled in a heap of fur and blood...' - I bloody KNEW I shouldn't have been lulled into a false sense of security by the wooden-oochie-massacre!

The Blinovitch Limitation Effect works on GEARSTICKS? It didn't do anything when the same sonic screwdrivers touched in Big Bang - oh, what the hell, TV never got this remotely consistent either.

Battleship Anathema - Very good. Aside from the lack of nits.

The Dreadful Flap - OK, I s'pose.

...And Not A Drop to Drink - Panda has CLAWS?

'The sign on the door read "Distillery - No Entry for Unauthorised Persons". That could only mean one thing. Alcohol' - er...the PREVIOUS sign you saw, reading 'Welcome to Glen Gorbals Distillery Home of Scotland's best whisky, gin and liqueurs' didn't tip you off in any way...?

Iris Wilthyme y Senor Cientocinco contra Los Monstruos del Fiesta - Panda SLEEPS?

'Hadn't she met some rubbishy cloth-faced robots or cyborgs somewhere' - Iris's adventures usually echo the Doctor's rather closely, making her Cyberman-ignorance unconvincing.

The 'something from space' that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs shouldn't have caused unearthly creatures and spirits in Mexico and New Orleans. The Cybermen have no voodoo in their souls.

Iris's TARDIS forces its way through one dimensional skin after another since WHEN!

Extremely boring and extremely stupid.

Why? Because We Like You - 'More than once, one of them found himself losing his grip and needing to be helped by the other' - HIMSELF? 50% of said people are Iris Wildthyme and she was a herself the last I checked (that bloke from the audios claiming to be a future incarnation was a big far liar).

The Scarlet Shadow - 'This is all rather silly, Iris. I've been through some things with you, but what you're suggesting is just impossible' - SERIOUSLY? Inanimate art pieces coming to life? That should count as a quiet, normal day for Panda. None of us were whinging about extra doses of implausibility in Mona Lisa's Revenge.

'You are worried for the end of your life. You have lost count of the regenerations' - how the hell do you LOSE COUNT OF YOUR OWN REGENERATIONS?! (Alright, I can't complain TOO much, if it happened to THE DOCTOR it can happen to anyone...)

Only Living Girls - MORE life-after-death...? What's the MATTER with people!

'The sign on the door read "Distillery - No Entry for Unauthorised Persons". That could only mean one thing. Alcohol' - er...the PREVIOUS sign you saw, reading 'Welcome to Glen Gorbals Distillery Home of Scotland's best whisky, gin and liqueurs' didn't tip you off in any way...?

Well, that first sign referred to the building as a whole, whereas this one indicates where the alcohol is actually to be found.

Ah, OK. You obviously understand the mentality of stuffed toys a lot better than I do...

There's a spirit plane? That TARDISes can cut across?

Of course. Remember how the Great Intelligence was said to have contacted Padmasambhava on an astral voyage?

Clearly, the time vortex doubles as a spirit plane, which helps explain how telepathic communication can happen across time.

Remember how the Great Intelligence was said to have contacted Padmasambhava on an astral voyage?

That was DIFFERENT. Padmasambhava was a nutcase and Mr G. Intelligence was just your average invading-Earth-obsessed alien who just happened to be a bit more disembodied than most.

Clearly, the time vortex doubles as a spirit plane, which helps explain how telepathic communication can happen across time

I thought that was just DRUGS. (I'm thinking of Name of the Doctor obviously, are there other instances?)

Miss Wildthyme & Friends Investigate:

The Found World:

Why does the creature run away, leaving the precious object?

Way too much magic, and since when have vampires (I mean WHONIVERSE vampires, obviously) transubstantiated into mist?

If you believe your soul is already damned, why wouldn't you welcome a vampiric eternal life in place of the expected hellfire?

Readable - if eventually a bit tiresome - but if you think chucking in a couple of Iris scenes disguises the fact this is a nothing-to-do-with-Iris Count Dracula story, you're sadly mistaken.

The Irredeemable Love:

Ah, another instance of Iris popping in for a few paragraphs to pretend this is an Iris Wildthyme story. Instead of just a pile of tedious interminable gibberish.

One moment it's 'eyes sewn shut', the next it's 'mouths sewn shut'.

Elementary, My Dear Sheila:

No one asks WHY 105 doesn't think there's any point in trying to save Sheila this time?

'How could genes be so easily ripped to shreds and reassembled? This was almost magical technology' - oh, YA THINK!

'A grey tabby cat, one of the unfortunate stray animals, sat licking at a copper coloured implant screwed into her paw. The poor puss had similar implants on her head' - yeah, this series may have thoroughly detached itself from anything remotely resembling the Whoniverse but it's just GOT to torture an oochie like a REAL Who book.

Wasn't it bad enough having to list MIAOW (The Ministry of Incursions and Other Alien Wonders) alongside Torchwood, UNIT and co without having to stoop to MOOO (Military Observation of Otherworldly Occurrences)?

'Sheila and Chago were running through the frozen crowd' - Sheila's a ••••••• BALLOON! How can she RUN?

'The Sentients and the Modulars were neighbours in the days when the Multiverse was recently cooled. The Sentients, the Modulars, the Clockworks, the Recursives, the Binaries...and more. We were all friends...in the beginning' - I find it hard to picture the Time Lords (aka Clockworks) being friends with any of these weirdos (or, y'know, anyone, ever), and SURELY the Anchoring of the Thread would have written the silly creatures out of existence?

'Wood and Stone. They keep appearing in la Ciudad, but won't speak to me. It's as if they're just observing. Sometimes there's a third with them' - is that a...Sapphire and Steel joke? Can't we have some DOCTOR WHO references instead?

The Shape of Things:

Oh thank the gods. An actual Iris Wildthyme story at last. That doesn't make reading feel like wading through treacle.

'Wondering...why he'd been quite so trusting of a woman who'd led him straight to a dead body' - but she didn't lead him straight to a dead body.

'It wouldn't surprise Panda in the slightest if the swine intended to ruin the poor sweet girl, trample on her fair innocence like a...well, that was perhaps taking things a bit too far' - oh, YA THINK! - 'It was Iris he was talking about after all' - well, QUITE, and hilarious as this is, nothing else in my acquaintance with the stuffed toy suggests he'd EVER think like THIS.

'...Intending to use it to fix the embarrassing problem of the Bus' interior being smaller than its exterior' - SEE! That wasn't so difficult was it! WHO REFERENCE! (Though since when has Iris been embarrassed about her Bus's interior?)

The Bus is 'the only one of its kind in the multiverse!' - surely there are plenty of other TARDISes (unless this is set during one of those all-the-Time-Lords-have-been-wiped-out-forever-in-a-Time-War-honest periods, in which case there's at least ONE other)?

Panda bleeds (blood, not stuffing) since WHEN!

'I think we should take a wander back a bit in time, see if we can't pick it up before it even gets to you, or me, or him...' - HELLO! WEB OF TIME, Iris!

Wasn't it bad enough having to list MIAOW (The Ministry of Incursions and Other Alien Wonders) alongside Torchwood, UNIT and co without having to stoop to MOOO (Military Observation of Otherworldly Occurrences)?

O.o Who are those books written by, five year olds?

I'm pretty sure it was Paul Magrs who originally came up with these concepts (if you can dignify them with the name of 'concepts') and he can certainly go a few steps too far in his attempt to be wild n'wacky, as anyone who's caught an eyeful of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen cover can testify...

Iris Abroad:

Annabel Regina:

'Now's the time to hot-foot it back to the bus and make good our escape!' - Panda hasn't NOTICED yet that Iris doesn't run away from adventures any more than the (post-Hartnell) Doctors do?

'"I thought you said they only wanted love?" said Panda sarcastically. "They hardly seem the most peace loving individuals. Look at the way they're trying to break their way inside that place"' - Panda hasn't heard of STALKERS?

Chicken Fried Banana Republic:

'Panda couldn't remember the last time he had seen her so sombre. To be fair though, he couldn't remember a good sixty percent of his time with Iris due to a combination of booze and head trauma' - what a great line, though it's my nitpickerly duty to ask if a stuffed Panda CAN suffer head trauma...

'Think of the universe as a big pub. We can scribble on the walls of the toilets, carve our names on the tables, drop our ciggies on the floor and pick a fight or two, but we can't skip out on the tab' - since WHEN has IRIS had a greater respect for the Web of Time than certain Doctors I could mention (e.g. ALL of them in Day of the Doctor)? Isn't her entire POINT to spit on continuity and drive people like me mad...?

Junior is, presumably, George W Bush? Sadly this whole story has been somewhat undermined by the fact something similar would have been a LOT more effective with a certain Donald J Trump. Not that I'm blaming the writer for failing to see THAT coming in 2010, didn't we all...

'Sooner or later, some killjoy with a time machine and an ego would come along and "fix" everything' - I assume Iris is thinking of the Doctor here, which is REALLY MEAN considering how much she loves him/her.

The Midnight Washerwomen:

Firmly, leisurely, she plucked the small brown eyes from their sockets' - ah yes, the statutary eye-gouging...

The Little Bighorn Casino:

So, um, what happened to the disappeared hair?

How to Play Four-dimensional Chinese Checkers, and Win:

'She knew that men were generally a useless bunch' - she DOES? Iris has never struck me as particularly sexist.

'Iris' eyes widened as they took in the full extent of the male bodies. The men were interested. They were very interested. Iris prepared herself for the worst. Here she was - a vulnerable young woman, trapped in a phoney house with close to a dozen dumb, attractive, naked, and suddenly very horny young men. She sighed. Oh well, a gal's got to do what a gal's got to do' - yes that's right! Every woman secretly yearns to be gang-raped, you know!

'"We-ell," replied Sui-Sui hesitantly. "China is a populous country. Or at least - it was."' - how the hell could the Pandas munch their way through virtually every human in CHINA!

'She'd recognise his stilted prose anywhere' - Panda has stilted prose since WHEN!

'"Such a waste!" Iris' voice caught in her throat as she stared sadly at the Sargasso of Sapphire Gin lapping at the shore of broken glass. "There should have been another way."' -

'The rusting remains of a canary-yellow Edwardian roadster' - DON'T YOU RUST OUR BESSIE!

'"What would happen if someone were to write about the pair of us? Would we be transformed into fiction, too?" Iris laughed. "Don't worry, chuck. Who on Earth would want to write about a time-travelling old drunkard and a talking panda?"' - doesn't Panda have an autobiography? Also, Tom-in-the-audios wrote loads of books about his Iris-experiences and possible-fictionalisation wasn't one of Iris's issues with them.

To be continued...

Iris: Abroad continued:

Who on Earth would want to write about a time-travelling old drunkard and a talking panda?"' - doesn't Panda have an autobiography?

And so does Iris. In several volumes.

Firmly, leisurely, she plucked the small brown eyes from their sockets'

They look more yellow-ish on the cover. The cover with loads and loads of Pandas though I don't remember any multi-Panda stories in this book...

Panda on Ice:

'He kicked and screamed, for all the good it did. He knew he was using up air but he was having an episode and logic wasn't going to stop him. Did he even need air, really? Was he about to find out?' - he's never ended up in a vacuum? Or just thought to experiment by holding his breath?

Couch Potatoes:

'Jaw dropped and eyebrows rose. Eyes blinked. Bowels considered registering a strongly worded complaint (as did the estate of Douglas Adams' - er, why? It's a warehouse. With some people in it. Iris has seen worse.

Riviera Shakedown:

'For some reason she affected a blue-rinse, hairstyle that did nothing for her, and Panda found himself fixated by the question of whether or not it was a wig..."I find this hairpiece works wonders preventing static build up at altitude. It wouldn't surprise me if the astronautical gals of the future didn't all wear them; the saucy minxes"' - the Iris books and audios spend their LIVES spitting on canon but they have INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN references?

Iris Wildthyme and the Colonic in Space:

Seriously people, I MEAN SERIOUSLY?

'His nose began to itch the way it always did when the night was not going to end well, usually finishing with him repeatedly shouting "Vorderman's arse!" at the top of his voice' - I've...never noticed THAT happening with Panda despite the enormous number of his novels, short stories and audios in which things-not-going-to-end-well was extremely evident.

First Meetings:

'I knew who he was of course. the Word Thief. The Lord who Left. A minor functionary from that mysterious relict race of the previous universe' - EVEN IRIS WILDTHYME KNOWS ALL ABOUT PREVIOUS UNIVERSES! Why is the Doctor so in denial in Satan Pit?

The seas on Gallifrey consist of 'dirty water'? How does that planet manage to drop in my estimation EVERY BLOODY TIME IT'S MENTIONED?

'Those diaries never left the safety of the bus, not ever. They're my entire life, those diaries, and when you've had an eventful as [sic] life as I have that amounts to a fair amount of paper. Bloody hell, my battles with dangerous vending machines have got three entire volumes to themselves' - adore the vending machines joke (presumably at the expense of vending-machine-obsessed Paul Magrs) but when said diaries are nicked a few minutes later suddenly they're memory crystal diaries?

'Extract from the "Memories of a Transtemporal Adventuress Volume 1: The Early Years"' - Iris PUBLISHED her memoirs when? Before or after her memories were wiped (Wildthyme at Large), her diaries were stolen (this very story), and/or she said no one would want to write about a time-travelling old drunkard and a talking panda (How to Play Four-dimensional Chinese Checkers, and Win in this very volume)?

Anyone who's still insane enough to be trying to keep track of Gallifreyan Renegades travelling round time and space can add 'Alison' to the over-long list.

The Best Holiday Ever:

'Mrs Wildthyme, is it not? 'Miss Wildthyme, actually' - it was 'Ms' in The Devil in Ms Wildthme audio...

Bad luck that Who did Mummy on the Orient Express after this and so much better.

The Story Eater:

'Being entirely without blood, Panda was unable to blush' - um, seven pages earlier it was all 'Panda felt himself blushing, a reaction he hadn't been sure he was capable of.'

'You look like a distressed cocktail umbrella. A shrivelled, unwelcome, entirely unnecessary accompaniment' 'you wretched harridan' 'you withered old prune' - Panda and Iris have a....robust relationship but I don't remember him lunging viciously for her throat anywhere except - repeatedly - this story.

'He buried her [sic] head in the horrors of her armpit' - since when has Iris stank? I wouldn't mind if this was after rather than before 'Having been on the hoof for mere moments they were drenched in sweat'. (Well, I would cos Time Lords don't sweat, according to Dominion anyway. But I wouldn't mind so MUCH.)

'"Point taken," said the bear' - bear? BEAR??

Hospitality:

'An older man and his boy, they're on about the new Doctor Who TV movie, and about how sexy Paul MCGann [sic] is, and should you really want to shag Doctor Who?' - !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since when has Iris been an elderly lesbian novelist of world renown? Ah well, I suppose she's got whole lifetimes we've barely dipped into.

'Neither the boy nor the girl...were being paid anything at all for their forty hour weeks. Like Raoul, they were doing it for the training, for the foot-in-the-door' - but you implied that Raoul WAS paid! (His job happened 'at exactly the right time, too. We'd been living off my signing-on money for six months.')

'"Point taken," said the bear' - bear? BEAR??

Well, yeah. Pandas are bears.

Of course, you haven't heard the audios, which basically consist of Panda roaring 'Bear? BEAR??' at any misfortunate who refers to him as such.

(I think possibly one brave soul pointed out the whole 'but you are a bear' thing but most people just crawled away and died, or at least shut their gobs (it can be hard to tell which, on CD). There's simply no way I could let a book get away with calling Panda a bear regardless of scientific accuracy, he's got me well-trained.)

Ah, I see, a touch of panda snobbery.

'Mrs Wildthyme, is it not? 'Miss Wildthyme, actually' - it was 'Ms' in The Devil in Ms Wildthme audio...

The Doctor calls her 'Miss' in The Blue Angel and then, of course, there's the Miss Wildthyme & Friends Investigate book...maybe some incarnations are more feminist than others? (I still can't believe JODIE! lets people go round calling her Mrs Doctor...)

What's an Iris Wildthyme?

That's a surprisingly philosophical question.

She's a Paul Magrs creation who pops up in loads of his Who short stories, novels and audios (and even a few non-Who books) - ostensibly she's a Time Lady with a smaller-on-the-inside TARDIS in the shape of a bus who's in love with the Doctor (her, I mean, not the TARDIS), but scape the surface and she's a mass of paradoxes and lies and seems to come from an Observe universe where Gallifrey is referred to as the Clockworks...

Uh, yeah...

Really, she can be quite fun. Try From Wildthyme With Love if you ever come across it...

I'll keep that in mind.

Wasn't it bad enough having to list MIAOW (The Ministry of Incursions and Other Alien Wonders)

Also...from TARDIS Wiki:

'it may have been "Ministry for Incursions and Alien Ontological Wonders", (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large) "Ministry of Incursions and Ontological Wonders", (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion) "Ministry for Incursions and Ontological Wonders", (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen, A Gamble with Wildthyme) "Ministry for Alien Incursions and Other Wonders", (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder) "Ministry of Incursions and Other Alien Wonders", (PROSE: The Dreadful Flap) "Ministry for Incursions and Other Wonders", (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme) or "Ministry of Alien and Other Ontological Wonders". (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)'

*Sigh*

'Money in the slot, exact change only' - what, even though you were created to serve ONE FAMILY (and a pretty small two-parent one-child family at that, we're not talking MORMONS) on one otherwise-deserted planet? What's the point of demanding MONEY every time you dispense a (flat) fizzy drink?

Especially as you signally failed to do so on the numerous drearily-repetitive occasions you dispensed said disgusting drinks in Sick Building...

'Mrs Wildthyme, is it not? 'Miss Wildthyme, actually' - it was 'Ms' in The Devil in Ms Wildthme audio...

It's 'Ms' for the duration of Verdigris, for what it's worth.

Art Critic Panda:

Modern Love:

Panda thought Iris was DEAD? And just sat there for THREE DAYS? Getting BORED? Not bothering to check her pulse? Not bothering to give her gin like she'd demanded before collapsing? I've never had a high opinion of the stuffed little git but I didn't think THAT badly of him. And why, AFTER that, Felix thinks Panda LOVES Iris...

'I could use a shower' - that's an odd attitude. For a cat.

I don't think they blush, either.

Hang onto Yourself:

'"The souls of all the Martians on Earth," Glister said. "That's what the map showed. Where all the Martians were hiding."' - Um, they're big and green and you don't need a magic map to spot 'em.

'"But..." Glister spluttered. "You think it's here? You think he took it with him wherever he went?" She nodded' - which bit of 'Wherever he went the map went with him' are you somehow failing to grasp?

'"I imagine that the Galactic Pharaoh tour has upped the number of death threats considerably," mused Panda. Poppy nodded unhappily.' - as opposed to, say, shrieking 'OMG THE BEAR CAN TALK!', for example...?

'And just as Glister punched Glister in the nose there was a pretty ••••••• big explosion in the dressing room deep under Wembley.' - oh come off it, the Blinovitch Limitation Effect hasn't worked since Mawdryn Undead...

Iris can't believe all the evidence she ever worked for MIAOW was on that crystal, even I know she worked for MIAOW....and it's not as if that's anything to be ashamed of, it's not like it's MOO...

Slip Away:

'When they installed the Point of Death Loopback Mechanism – or Looper, for short – they hooked it up to everything that lived. The theory was that if some people who couldn't time travel got a quick recap of their life it would do them no harm' - oh gods not ANOTHER intervention-at-the-death-of-everyone-in-universe-that-no-one's-noticed...

Low/Profile:

'Professor Angelchrist' - what, the TOTAL LOSER from Paradox Lost?! Like Iris would waste her time on HIM!

That's an unusual way of doing footnotes (all those '[5]'s) but never mind.

You can't mention 'deleted television shows (such as Doctor Who)'!!

Since when does Iris write LETTERS?

Up the Hill Backwards:

If whatshisface can't afford to remember Iris or an alien will take over his brain (or, er, something) how come he makes a living painting large pictures of...Iris?

‘It was rather confusing, even by my standards. And of course, Panda wasn’t in it. It’s always more fun with him' - you said it...

Cracked Actor:

'She usually offended someone within minutes of landing somewhere new, whether it was a clan of tribesmen wanting to roast her over a fire for landing on their precious idol of the goddess of plenty' - TARDISes don't land on things! That squished-professor in Mad Dogs was a set-up! And if Graham will leave chairs lying around...

'But Panda was beginning to wonder if he'd had enough, if he shouldn't just get off at the next stop, walk into history' - you don't think it's important to choose the CORRECT bit of history to walk off into, especially if you're, y'know, a talking toy that could easily get accused of witchcraft...?

'A dread in her dreams had woken her to an image of a dark figure standing over her with a knife. The fact that it had been Panda offering her a piece of toast and a butter knife with a selection of spreads...' - since when has Panda ever done anything remotely as considerate?

'I found some more of those porcelain chippings under the lounge' - under the LOUNGE?

Panda doesn't like heights? (Not a nit just the happy expectation I'll spot a contradiction sooner or later if I remember this fact.)

'"Didn't I tell you, chuck? The whole mansion burned down mysteriously in a great fire. The police spent months piecing together what happened." "Iris? Look at me." This is it, he thought. If she had anything to do with this fire he was getting off at the next stop. "What lovey?" She looked at him with utter guilelessness. She had already forgotten all the deaths and was thinking about the next adventure. He sighed, sipped his gin, decided to drop it' Um, so one second Panda's prepared to ABANDON her over some victimless necessary-evidence-destroying and the next he can't be bothered...?

If whatshisface can't afford to remember Iris or an alien will take over his brain (or, er, something) how come he makes a living painting large pictures of...Iris?

Does he know these are portraits of Iris? He's probably just painting a subconcious impression of her face.

Ah. Sadly I've already forgotten all the details of this story, and indeed entire book...