Peri and the Piscon Paradox, parts 3-4

Companion Chronicles #5.7

Released: January 2011

Listened: 5/23/20

Still hurting from the Trial, the Doctor comes back again to Peri, this time the older version whom the Fifth Doctor met in L.A. Most of the two episodes of this story completely pick apart and undermine the first two episodes from young Peri’s POV. It turns out that nothing was what it seemed at all. If anything, this half of the story is even sillier than the first, with a lot of cheap shots taken at show business and even the show itself, with the Doctor running around in an awkward monster costume. And just when it can’t get a lot sillier, the purported story ends, and it veers hard into tragedy, with older Peri attempting to tell her younger self about the horrible things that caused her to end up in L.A. Except young Peri doesn’t hear her, so the Web of Time is unaffected. This is followed by a denouement where a Time Lord turns up and explains why there are multiple Peris running around the cosmos (basically, there just are; deal with it). If you were looking for a story that explains all the paradoxes neatly, Moffat-style, you won’t get that. If you want some Nev Fountain showcase Peri writing, or an extremely silly story about fish-aliens, or a multi-Doctor story, you’ll get all of those. On the whole, the plusses outweigh the minuses.