What's it about: Once, Jo Grant travelled in Space and Time with the Doctor. Now, she is travelling with trans-temporal adventuress Iris Wildthyme. Arriving in Los Angeles in the 1930s, Jo and Iris are caught up in the glamour of Hollywood. Monster movies are all the rage. But sometimes monsters are real…
Groovy Chick: In 197 the Doctor brought Jo to LA in search
of a vampire, a tale that I wish we could have seen on TV instead of The
Mutants or The Time Monster. Jo and Iris are less Thelma and Louise and more
like Hinch and Bracket. Jo wont stand for bullying, even if it is a monster
that is in the firing line. It's wonderful how she stands between Vita and the
Jellyfish and gives her a torrent of Jones abuse. The proximity of the Doctor
makes Jo feel just that bit braver. Jo knows her own mind and is determined to
free the monsters from Vita's prison, regardless of Iris' opinion. She will
always do the right thing as she sees it and doesn't need anybody's permission.
Crusades are her bread and butter these days. The Doctor never leaves your life
entirely, even when it appears as though he has.
Transtemporeal Adventuress: Drinking when she is driving
helps her to focus on the timelines. Iris baulks at the idea of there being
rules to time travel - clearly Jo has been trapped in the Doctor's way of
thinking ever since she stopped travelling with him. Iris has a lot of work to
do with this one. The only parties she will go to contain fabulous, beautiful
famous people. I don't care how many of Iris' tales are apocryphal or not, she
spins a great yarn and in the end of the day isn't that what matters? She was
an extra on the film Boudica and kept pointing out the inaccuracies because she
was there at the real event. The thought of the Doctor's gallantry makes Iris
moisten. She's with the sisterhood, a feminist to the last. Find and Replace
offered up a bawdy, hilariously screwball Iris but this time around Magrs has
gone for a more balanced approach. She's capable of moments of great insight
and depth in between swigging back the champagne and flirting with the fellas.
There's an unexpected moment when she quietly admits that she is always blamed
by the Doctor for all manner of temporal criminalities. Iris has grown very
fond of Jo Jones and is worried that if she realised she had the opportunity to
head off with a breathlessly dreamy version of the Doctor (the 8th Doctor is
exactly the sort of romantic drip that Jo used to fall for) she will smuggled
herself in his TARDIS before you know it. Iris screams for help in the face of
grisly nasties until she is reminded that she is a feminist and she offers to
give them a bunch of fives. How can you fail to love this woman? Because of
late night chillers Iris has learnt something about late night creature
features. Iris doesn't like being compared with the Doctor, the dilettante fop!
She was off her face most of the time in her youth and so she cannot be blamed
for leaving a bottle of elixir from the Higher Tombs of the Atrixians lying about
for anybody to get hold of. She's less heroic than the Doctor, sometimes she
does things for purely selfish reasons. She got her mitts on the elixir so she
could shed a couple of years and make herself more palatable again. Iris admits
she is more like Jo than she is the Doctor and that she doesn't have an extra
set of lives - I wonder if she is fibbing again. You never can tell with this
one.
Standout Performance: At this point the multitude of voices
and personalities that Katy Manning can bring to an audio never ceases to
astonish me. She is so used to playing both Jo and Iris that she can slip into
either character with consummate ease and convince the listener that there are
two actresses in the studio rather than one talking to herself. She also gets
to throw in an interpretation of the eighth Doctor (I kid you not) and an
appallingly insensitive American Hollywood star.
Sparkling Dialogue: 'That'll mess up the fan boys!'
'The monsters must have their revenge...'
'All husbands revert to type eventually.'
Great Ideas: Paul Magrs stories often leave me with a warm
glow of nostalgia in my belly, usually for an era of Doctor Who gone by (or in
the case of his superlative novel Diary of a Doctor Who addict of my
childhood). That same warm glow you get at Christmas when you are revelling
with your family, when you are on a friends holiday and lazing on the beach
with your best mates half drunk and when you have shared a wonderful meal with
the person you love. With Find and Replace and now The Elixir of Doom he
manages to wax lyrical and get me yearning for a time period that I wasn't even
born in! This might be a rosy glow imagining of the seventies but it is one
that is very easy to slip into. Magrs loves offering an amusing spin on
accepted tropes and in this case creates psychic money, the currency that keeps
on giving if you think hard enough. Oh the day out I could have with a couple
of those notes. I love the fact that Iris takes over the narration at points,
it gives us a greater perception into both characters to have their own unique
take on each other (and besides Iris is willing to embellish and make naughty
observations than Jo). Something terrible happened on the set of Leopard Boy
Meets the Human Jelly (sounds amazing)...and Iris has the hindsight to
know that the film was never completed. It's time to find out why... In a
bizarre twist it turns out that Vita has her own giant jellyfish waiting
backstage along with the other monsters, gorging on the elixir. Vita literally
turns her husbands into monsters and uses them in her movies. Apparently the
Doctor is the second biggest nosey parker in the galaxy (after Iris herself,
naturally). It wouldn't be an Iris story unless she was responsible in some way
or another and low and behold her penchant for booze has made this whole
ghastly situation possible, allowing Vita to turn men into monsters. Apparently
Panda has been on a little trip on the Orient Express.
Audio Landscape: Police siren, the hustle and bustle of LA
streets, tills pinging, the bus growling, shopping, pouring a glass of bubbly,
party atmosphere, glass smashing, people screaming, growling, hissing, dogs
barking in the distance, the hustle and bustle of a studio, jellyfish voice,
the wobbly jelly exploding on set, birdsong.
Musical Cues: I was just saying in my Tomb Ship review about
how predictable the music has become of late in the main range adventures - how
every story seems to contain the same bangs and flashes of a high octane action
adventure movie. I also said that there was often more diversity and identity
in he spin off ranges. Richard Fox and Lauren Yason wrote the score for Tomb
Ship. They also wrote the score for The Elixir of Doom and the difference in
quality and style is extraordinary. This is a stylish period piece set in US of
the happening seventies and so needs a soundtrack that will conjure up the
imagery of smoky back streets, vintage cars smoothing past, seductively lit
clubs and fashion on acid. It does that and then some.
Standout Scene: The appearance of the eighth Doctor was
completely unexpected and therefore utterly delightful. They have encountered
one another a number of times in the novels but I would kill for a bona fide
audio featuring Manning and McGann. I think they would spark off each other
really well. The Scarlet Empress and The Blue Angel are both name checked.
Result: Just delightful, the main range has been in such a
poor state of late that listening to a companion chronicle as effervescent as
this is like throwing down a cocktail at the end of a long, stressful day.
There's nothing especially deep going on with The Elixir of Doom but who cares
when the dialogue is this snappy, the interaction between Jo, Iris and the
Doctor so bouncy and the plot races along with so many humorous and exciting
moments. It's a Doctor Who romp in a fabulous location, packed with grisly
monsters and fronted by two great characters played with incredible deftness by
the same actress. Am I the only one who is clambering for an Iris and Jo spin
off series with more adventures in this vein? It's probably not on the cards
given that an Iris spin off series has just been given the chop but a run of
adventures in the same vein of Find and Replace and The Elixir of Doom would be
the perfect antidote to the musty staleness that is permeating certain ranges
being put out by Big Finish at the moment. Katy Manning has emerged as one of
the more remarkable performers of the companion chronicles, an actress of
diverse talents with a million and one voices at her disposal. Manning with
Paul Magrs' skilful, sunny writing is a match made in heaven. There is probably
a much darker, thoughtful tale to be told about turning men into monsters but I
don't think Doctor Who is the place to do it. Magrs rightly keeps things jolly
and there was a smile slapped on my face throughout. Add in the atmospheric
post-production work of Fox and Yason (especially the delightful score) and I
was unable to resist:
8/10
1 comment:
I don't think it's so much that Doctor Who's not the place to do it, but rather that a fun adventure with Iris is not the place to do it.
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