Christmas 2010, and Jo Grant finds herself stuck in a department store elevator with an alien creature called Huxley. Huxley is a narrator from Verbatim Six, and he is here to let Jo revisit the best time of her life – when she was the plucky companion to that eccentric Space/Time traveller known only as… Iris Wildthyme. Confronted with memories she knew nothing about, Jo agrees to a meeting with Iris inside her transdimensional bus, and together the three of them take a trip back in time. Back to the 1970s, to UNIT HQ, and a meeting with the only person who knows the whole truth.
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: FIND AND REPLACE
The third Companion Chronicle of the fifth series, Paul Magrs’ “Find and Replace” introduces the beloved spinoff character Iris Wildthyme to the range and features a tour de force performance from Katy Manning. It’s not quite up to the standard of Magrs’ previous effort, “Ringpullworld,” but it’s still a fine piece of drama in its own right and well worth hearing.
If anyone ever doubts Katy Manning’s skill as an actor, give them “Find and Replace” and watch their opinion change. She plays three distinct characters in this story – Jo, Iris, and the third Doctor – and though they are sometimes even in the same scene, it’s difficult to tell that the same actor is playing all three parts. She shifts between voices and emotions without missing a beat, even interrupting herself on occasion, giving all three characters a remarkable degree of depth and subtlety. Listening to Manning in the extras shows how different she sounds even from Jo and indicates how chameleonic her voice work can be. Even in the modern day, Jo is earnest and forthright, while Iris is casually impertinent and the Doctor is gruff and apologetic. Of course, Magrs’ intimate knowledge of these characters shines through in their dialogue, but Manning’s performance is the best thing about this story. The final conversation between Jo and the Doctor is heartbreaking; I’m surprised she got through it without tearing up.
“Find and Replace” is largely a full-cast drama rather than a narrative. While Jo will occasionally provide narration for more action-oriented sequences, most of the story is occupied with real-time dialogue scenes. Iris and Jo traveling back to the 1970s feels quite natural – the way the story shifts times with little effort is rewarding listening – and hearing Iris raising hell with the UNIT family brings back memories of Magrs’ own “Verdigris.” And while the Doctor’s plan to protect Jo doesn’t make a lick of sense under scrutiny, it’s a perfect encapsulation of the Doctor’s relationships with his companions: he cares about them deeply but yet he has virtually no understanding of their emotions. I could see Pertwee awkwardly rubbing his neck as he tried to explain himself – it’s a great scene, one of the best in recent memory from Big Finish.
My biggest complaint with “Find and Replace” is the presence of Huxley, the Novelisor from Verbatim VI, making his first appearance since “Ringpullworld.” He’s here to try to convince Jo that her memories are incorrect, and he still has the habit of taking over the narration at hilariously inconvenient times, but the subtlety and the unreliability of “Ringpullworld” is completely gone. He’s mostly just there to argue – “I worked with the Doctor and UNIT!” “No, you worked with Iris and MIAOW!” – and he never really convinces Jo that she’s mistaken. Which is ultimately the point, since it’s an ill-judged scheme from the Doctor, but it does make a large portion of the first episode unnecessarily drawn out and pointless.
The production is impeccable. I’ve already written at length about Katy Manning’s performance, which speaks highly of Lisa Bowerman’s direction as well. The sound design from Daniel Brett, meanwhile, is note-perfect, especially the score, which changes tone beautifully to match the mood of the script. Overall, “Find and Replace” is a very strong release and a worthy treatise on the relationship between Jo and the Doctor. Yes, it’s a bit cluttered, and no, it’s not as good as “Ringpullworld,” but unless you really dislike Iris there’s no reason to pass this up.
Highly recommended.
8/10