Find and Replace

Companion Chronicles #5.3

Released: 13 September 2010

Listened: 6/16/21

This is a weird one, but written by Paul Magrs, what do you expect? It features an older, present-day Jo Jones, but takes place at this point in the timeline for the Doctor. Jo has attracted the attention of Huxley, one of the Novelizers of Verbatim Six, who are a quite funny concept, but only appear in one other story. Except Huxley thinks Jo’s history is quite different than what she remembers. Because this is a Paul Magrs story, Iris Wildthyme is involved, meaning that Katy Manning gets to play Jo, Iris, and a bunch of other incidental characters. Fortunately, Alex Lowe has a lot of lines as Huxley, or poor Katy Manning would be quite worn out. As it is, her Iris sounds rather deeper pitched than usual, perhaps to emphasize the difference from older Jo. The action moves to the 1970s, where the Doctor helps to unravel the mystery, and it’s not quite so sinister as the setup implied. The first part of the story sets up a strong mystery, but the second half runs on nostalgia, and probably worked better when it was released, during a time when Third Doctor stories were basically unavailable. It’s a good premise, though, and ends with some amusing hints at other stories.