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| Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd |
Jo Grant remembers the time she spent with UNIT and the Doctor only too well, and often she misses that life of excitement. It comes as quite a surprise, therefore, when a pushy noveliser comes into her life and starts explaining that he knows that she was the companion of quite a different time traveler.
Find and Replace dispenses entirely with framing narrative. Instead, the story is a narrated play, featuring Manning as Jo Grant, and also as the other character she plays for Big Finish, renegade trans-temporal adventuress Iris Wildthyme. Support comes from Alex Lowe, reprising his role as the noveliser Huxley from Ringpullworld.
Iris Wildthyme is a sort of raddled, perpetually-drunk, female version of the Doctor from an inverse dimension, who travels through time and space in a TARDIS trapped in the form of the Number 22 bus to Putney accompanied by a sentient, mobile, talking stuffed panda called Panda. She was originally gay, but Magrs - her creator - seems to have since decided that it is more apposite that she be obsessed by the Doctor, since she is somewhat aware of her own nature as a parody of the titular Time Lord. She is in many ways the antithesis of angst, and yet in her own way often very poignant. Here, her irrepressible persona is one of the few things keeping a story about the Doctor's attempt to protect Jo by removing himself from her memories from becoming a complete downer. This makes her presence somewhat jarring, but then that is pretty much what she is.
Manning differentiates superbly between Jo and Iris, and provides strong support in the form of a passable Third Doctor. Lowe is excellent again as Huxley, perpetually baffled by his subjects' failure to be awed and honoured by his attention, although both Iris and Huxley are kind of sidelined for the final act.
Next up, the Companion Chronicles go epic with The Invasion of E-Space.
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