They always dig too deep...
Written by William Gallagher, "Wirrn Isle" was the fourth Doctor Who audio story to feature original companion, Phillipa "Flip" Jackson, The Third with her as a main companion. It was also the second Monthly Adventure to feature the Wirrn.The Family Buchman, consisting out of Roger, Veronica and Toasty, explores an old house of a Scottish isle, which has been abandoned in the year of our lord 16127. Everything is desolate, (but the stove works!) and Scotland (and a large part of Earth) has all but frozen over.
They're joined by the Doctor and Flip, whom find the situation at hand peculiar to say the least. The situation worsens when they find out they're stuck there, and while the Earth's warming up, and the Wirrn underneath. And the Wirrn are hungry.
Wirrn Isle contains examples of the following tropes:
- Admiringthe Abomination: The Doctor admires the Wirrn for their ability to survive, even though they threaten his life.
- After the End: This takes place after Earth has been ravaged by solar flares.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Well, the story does feature the Wirrn.
- Big "NO!": When Iron the Wirrn is about to exact a plan to transmat himself a thousandfold, the Doctor Who cliffhanger on disc 2 ends with this.
- Broken Bridge: The Transmat system is one way, by design, due to the high command on the sending side.
- Call-Back: Flip mentions flippantly that she's got little to fear because she's already died once.
- The Doctor harkens back to a phrase he used before, and describes humans as "indomitable". The Nirva beacon (The titular "Ark in space") is still in orbit as well.
- At the end, Flip asks the Doctor if they've "done alright together" invoking "Daleks, Porcians and Wirrn."
- The Doctor and Flip are mistaken for colonists from [[Galsex.
- Damned by Faint Praise: When the Doctor calls the current Transmat system rubbish, Roger points out he designed it.The Doctor: Well I'm sure you did your best.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Fearless Fool: The Doctor can't quite figure out if Flip is either brave, or foolhardy. Flip thinks it's both.
- Ghost Planet: Earth in the year 16127.
- A Good Name for a Rock Band: When Toasty introduces "Flip and the Doctor", Flip snarks this.'
- Harmless Freezing: The Wirrn, frozen in ice, are still alive.
- Humans Are Special / Humans Are Flawed: "Indomitable". Though unfortunately also a species that tries to figure out why you can boil a frog without it noticing.
- I Am Not Your Father: Toasty isn't Roger's daughter.
- I Ate WHAT?!: The general expression one gets when they realize that the "forage porridge" is in fact Wirrn mucus.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: A brief example; when the Iron-Wirrn talks to Veronica over the radio posing as him, the Doctor begs 'Iron' to stop tormenting his mother that way if there is any part of his original self still in whatever he has become, but admits after the radio falls silent that he wasn't seriously expecting that to work.
- Just Plane Wrong: The advice the Doctor gives Flip while she's flying the microlite is the exact opposite of what one wants to do while flying one of those things, not the least of which aiming for a hole in the clouds, something what aviation enthusiasts call "sucker's hole", and staying in contact while in adverse conditions. The fact that Flip lives to crash onto the ice by unrelated reasons is a miracle in and of itself, much less that she manages to live past that.
- Mistaken for Related: At different points, each member of the Buchman family assume that Flip is the Doctor's daughter.
- My Greatest Failure: Roger was at the base before, with his son Iron, and he beamed him into the loch.
- Odd Name Out: Roger, Veronica, and daughter Toasty.
- Older Than They Look: The Doctor says this about himself.
- Population Control: The human race is being reigned by a breeding plan so that genetics are top notch.
- The Reveal: The voice on the radio ... Is Iron.
- Scotireland
- Shout-Out: When walking on the ice, Flip starts narrating "ice, ice, baby".
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World
- Teleporter Accident: Roger accidentally transmat beamed his son into a Wirrn, which fused his body with the Wirrn, trapping his consciousness in a monstrous body.
- Teleportation Sickness: Flip's (accidental) transmat from a comfy environment into a -15 degrees celcius Scotland shocks her system bad enough that she starts throwing up.
- Teleporters and Transporters: The plot relies heavily on the Transmat system, and incidents therein.
- That Man Is Dead: The Doctor mentions this is the case with Iron.
- We Will Meet Again: I'm coming back, Doctor! Mother! I'm coming baaaaaaaaaaack!
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Flip at one point is helped by a Scot with vague South African twangs. This might be a callback to The Sontaran Experiment where all the future humans spoke with South African accents (Because the director thought Earth's future people would be a mixture of all races and languages, which'd be best represented by the South African accent.)
- Whole-Plot Reference: To The Fly (1958).
