Some time after returning their friend Herbert to his own time, the Sixth Doctor and Peri take a holiday in Ostend, Belgium. It's The Edwardian Era, and Six plans to spend a few weeks reading Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. (Peri's already read it, and wasn't impressed.) They end up saving the life of a moustachio'd police inspector named Chardalot, who's on the trail of a murder... that hasn't been committed yet.
At dinner with Chardalot, the Doctor and Peri get to know an old lady named Miss Bultitude, who's also searching for someone at the hotel. The person in question turns out to be a sapient pig named Toby. Since the death of Vaudeville, Toby's been living off his earnings together with his dedicated nurse, Albertine. He's not in the mood to face a Loony Fan like Miss Bultitude, but comes to trust her and the Doctor when he realises they're not there to hunt him down. Toby claims to be a perfectly ordinary pig who simply learned to walk and talk from his equally porcine parents. (They were from Essex. People didn't really notice.) The Doctor notices a few holes in that story, particularly when Chardalot almost murders Peri and a whole bunch of dead cows suddenly appear on the beach. Also, the TARDIS is kidnapped.
On the trail of Chardalot, the Doctor realises that the man has temporal teleportation equipment (which caused — or will cause — the cows, a side-effect of team TARDIS successfully re-ridecting a temporal bomb). Chardalot claims that he's Toby's "father". Or, rather, the man who created him, for a science conference on the planet Guermantes. The Doctor wearily explains that Chardalot is as much a science experiment as Toby is, and that they were both created by an unknown alien force, and that Guermantes is just the name of a family in À la recherche du temps perdu that the main character longs to be a part of. Once the confusion has been sorted out, Chardalot and Toby get along quite well, and decide to lodge at Miss Bultitude's home.
If you're looking for information on pigs in the Chinese Zodiac, you'll find them on this page.
Tropes:
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Albertine, to Toby.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Shakespeare, Milton, Ibsen, and Georgia Elliot were all pigs. Except not. Toby's drawn the wrong conclusions.
- Big Eater: Toby.
- Brief Accent Imitation: The Doctor fakes a French one, in order to pretend to be a roomservice attendant.
- Brick Joke: The Doctor makes sure to hide the last few volumes of À la recherche du temps perdu, since they haven't come out yet and time itself may get ruptured should anyone find them. He accidentally leaves one volume behind in 1913. Toby eats it.
- The cows on the beach that come out of nowhere? A time-displacement bomb targeted for the Doctor thrown into a meadow is the cause of it.
- Call-Back:
- Peri plans to send her friend Herbert a postcard.
- The Doctor threatens to tell Peri the story about the Giant Rat of the River Fleet, and mentions he's met up with an anthropomorphic slug once. And mentions a lizard who held similar views to Toby.
- Six says that his previous incarnations haven't read many books. The Third spent more time elbows deep in elbow grease and Five preferred cricket and fizzy lemonade over books. Though The Fifth Doctor has, apparently, actually been reading that book about orchids.
- Contrived Coincidence: A few, Played for Laughs. Most notably when Marcel Proust turns out to be staying at the same hotel as the other characters, and Six accidentally gets into a bitching match with him.
- The Edwardian Era: With all its quiet, nostalgic implications.
- Emergency Temporal Shift: Chardalot owns a fob watch that's also a portable time machine capable of transporting him a maximum of one hour through time and two hundred kilometres through space. Though quite useless for Chardalot's ultimate goal, it comes in handy when Toby chucks him out of the train to Brussels, allowing him to escape certain death and get to his hideout ahead of the Doctor.
- Expy: Inspector Chardalot, of Poirot.
- Fake Memories: Both Toby and Inspector Chardalot.
- Faux Affably Evil: Chardalot.
- Large Ham: Toby. How very apt.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Literally, Toby has an electric device that wipes you of all the memories of several hours before.
- Loony Fan: Miss Bultitude.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Actually his brother.
- Noodle Incident: The Doctor once was in Belgium to buy a wedding ring "For business, not for pleasure".
- Older Than They Look: Chardalot.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Toby claims that he's not from 1913 at all, and that he's meant to restore Earth to its normal timeline, with humans instead of pigs. It's bollocks, of course.
- Shout-Out: Peri mentions she won't have to write someone a message like Michael J. Fox.
- Toby mentions a rubbish fairy tale book about a man who travels to the future and meets with blonde and hairy people.
- The Doctor mentions Power Man and Iron Fist of all things, finally returning the favour for when their comic featured Professor Gamble and the Dredlox.
- Sinister Sweet Tooth: Alphonse Chardalot is a Villainous Glutton with a thing for confection - to the point that he's stockpiled a mountain of cakes, chocolate biscuits and dried fruit in his bathtub. Amusingly, though he disparages Toby's appetite, it doesn't take the Doctor and Miss Bultitude long to notice that Chardalot can't keep his hands off the dessert trolley. This is an early hint that Chardalot is actually another sapient pig.
- Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Toby is apparently a Funny Animal. Walks upright, and wears suits.
- Spoiler: Peri ruins a book the Sixth Doctor was about to read.
- Super-Senses: Toby's smell is enhanced.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust, referenced throughout the episode.
