- The Doctor: You had no idea your handbag contained all of heaven and hell?
Iris Wildthyme: I only wore it for show!
This episode is the first part of the Excelis arc, and marked the first appearance of Iris Wildthyme in Big Finish.
En route back to Frontios from dropping off the Gravis, the Fifth Doctor lands in a village on the slopes of Mount Excelis on the planet Artaris. There, he reluctantly becomes involved with the Warlord Grayvorn (voiced by Anthony Head!), the young nun Sister Jolene, and time traveling adventuress Iris Wildthyme in their search for the mysterious and powerful "Relic". Said MacGuffin is in the hands of a group of forest zombies, who have been using it in order to attain immortality.
The thing eventually turns out to be a glittery handbag that Iris once left on the planet by accident. A space portal handbag containing a glimpse into all of heaven and hell, to be exact. Grayvorn looks into it and can't help but Go Mad from the Revelation, and — in a struggle over the thing — tumbles off a cliff and merges with the consciousness of the local nunnery's scheming mother superior.
To be continued here for the Doctor, and here for Iris.
Tropes
- Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: The Doctor telling Iris about Adric's death.
- The Alleged Car: Iris' TARDIS. For one, it's smaller on the inside.
- Consummate Liar: Iris' long rambling stories about her adventures. Among other things, she claims to have played the Game of Rassilon together with seven other selves, fighting Zarbi and Voords instead of a Raston Warrior Robot.
- Continuity Nod: Iris says she picked up her handbag at the market on Hyspero, which hasn't happened yet for the Doctor because that was his Eighth self.
- First-Person Smartass: Grayvorn.
- Noodle Incident: Five, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric once spent Christmas with Iris.
- The Quest
- Sword and Sorcery
- We Used to Be Friends: Iris laments about how sober and standoffish Five is compared to Four.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Conan the Barbarian. Lampshaded by Iris.
- Written-In Absence: Turlough is still back on Frontios, and Tegan remains in the TARDIS for the entire story because she and the Doctor had a fight about his driving. Though this was obviously done because Janet Fielding was unavailable, it does serve as a nice bit of retroactive foreshadowing: once the Doctor and Tegan do get back to Frontios, it will only be a matter of hours before she leaves the TARDIS for good over various disagreements with his lifestyle.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Grayvorn thinks he's the fearsome villain of a sweeping fantasy epic. The rest don't know what he's talking about.
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You Sound Familiar: Katy Manning (who plays companion Jo in the rest of Doctor Who) plays Iris.
