Verdigris (novel)

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*You may wish to consult `**Verdigris**` for other, similarly-named pages.*
***Verdigris*** was the thirtieth BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel. It featured the Third Doctor, Jo Grant and Iris Wildthyme. This was the first full length past Doctor novel to feature Iris Wildthyme. She had previously appeared in the full length Eighth Doctor novels PROSE: *The Scarlet Empress* and *The Blue Angel*.

## Publisher's summary

*Jo Grant had no inkling of the ship that revolved in orbit like a discreet, preposterous thought in the mind of someone serene but bonkers.*

High above London and its crust of smog, stretched tall above the soapy atmosphere of the Earth, is a ship the size and exact shape of St Pancras railway station.

On board, the Doctor and that mysterious lady adventurer, Iris Wildthyme, are bargaining for their lives with creatures determined to infiltrate the 1970s in the guise of characters from nineteenth-century novels.

Without the help of UNIT, the Doctor and his friends face the daunting task of defeating aliens, marauding robot sheep, the mysterious Children of Destiny and... the being who calls himself Verdigris.

## Chapter Titles

1. A Secret, Cosmological Bonsai Thing
2. The Dawn of a New Venture
3. A Mysterious Carriage
4. Children of the Revolution
5. It’s Only Mind Control But I Like It
6. Beside the Sea
7. Spacejacked!
8. You Live in a Perverted Future
9. The House of Fiction
10. Night
11. Bargains
12. Reading the Signals
13. The Order of Things
14. Space Pods and Cephalopods
15. In the Forest!
16. Iris Puts Out the Flames
17. In the Newsagent’s
18. My Bag
19. An Attempted Escape
20. The Tunnel
21. Verdigris
22. The Manager
23. Iris Remembers
24. Back to Work
25. Space

## Characters

* Third Doctor
* Jo Grant
* Iris Wildthyme
* Tom
* Verdigris
* The Children of Destiny
* The Master
* Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart
* John Benton
* Mike Yates
* Bennett
* Bluebeard
* Borges
* Dobbs
* Havisham
* Katra
* Kevin
* Little Red Riding Hood
* Marsha
* Martha
* Mary
* Peter
* Saldis
* Sally
* Simon
* White Rabbit
* Wolf

## References

### Cultural references from the real world

* The Meercocks, imitating characters from Earth's literature, are led by Little Red Riding Hood and her husband, the Wolf.

### Foods and beverages

* The Doctor, Jo, Tom and others drink Chardonnay, whiskey and multiple gin and tonics.
* The Doctor prefers lime rather than lemon in his Bombay Sapphire Gin.

### The Doctor

* In the future Iris and Jenny help (a future incarnation of) the Doctor to defeat the Dalek Supreme in the Crystal Mines of Marlion.

### Individuals

* Verdigris travels to the anti-matter universe and makes Omega aware of the Doctor (thereby leading to the Doctor being freed from his exile).
* Following her impersonation in the Sisterhood, Iris was time scooped to Gallifrey where she and her other incarnations battled the Zarbi, Voord and Mechanoids in the Death Zone.
* Iris met the Brigadier during a conflict in Venice involving the Celaphopods.
* Iris has met the Terrible Zodin on Mars.
* Jo Grant is trained in lock picking and escapology.
* Iris describes her companion Jenny Winterleaf as the "butch dyke traffic warden".
* Tom has been travelling with Iris for about a month. He's gay, but has a paranoid moment when he meets his mother and thinks he's destined to impregnate her.
* Verdigris kisses Jo whilst wearing a mask which makes him look like the Master.

### Locations

* The Doctor takes Jo to his country house, which is thirty miles from Thisis.
* He had also taken Jo to his house in Kent, his flat in London and a caravan he has in the highlands of Scotland.

### Planets

* Iris summoned Verdigris from the planet Makorna.
* The Doctor and Iris agree that the Nurses of Ionicaiy Six would go to the trouble of kidnapping humans simply to play doctors and nurses.
* In Tom's first trip with Iris she took him to the planet Calgoria.

### Species

* The Saldisians are hand-bag shaped aliens.

### TARDIS

* The Doctor wants to steal Iris' TARDIS so that he can escape his exile on Earth.

## Notes

* Paul Magrs crafts Iris Wildthyme as a sort of "anti-Doctor". She drinks, smokes, and generally kidnaps her companions. Also her companions are more or less opposite to the Doctor's: Jenny, the lesbian traffic warden who "got the runs" as they went through the vortex, and Tom, the black gay guy whom she also kidnapped.

## Continuity

* Iris mentions the occasion when the TARDIS fell off a cliff on Peladon. The Doctor says that that has not happened yet in his personal timeline. (TV: *The Curse of Peladon*)
* Iris was on Karn when the Fourth Doctor visited the planet. She was then a member of the Sisterhood of Karn. (TV: *The Brain of Morbius*)
* Iris has an adventure in the Death Zone remarkably similar to the Doctor's. (TV: *The Five Doctors*)
* The Master leaves Earth at the end of this story, having escaped from prison, (TV:  *The Sea Devils*) and aims for Skaro. (TV:  *Frontier in Space*)
* At the end of the adventure, Verdigris travels to the anti-matter universe to assist Omega against the Doctor. (TV: *The Three Doctors*)
* Iris recalls her encounters with the Fourth Doctor while he was travelling with Sarah Jane Smith (PROSE: *Old Flames*) and, later, with "a blonde girl" and "a robot dog". (PROSE: *Suitors, Inc.*)
* Jo recalls being dragged to the future to face the Daleks, (TV: *Day of the Daleks*) tussling with "fish people", (TV: *The Sea Devils*) being tied to an altar to be sacrificed to the Devil, (TV: *The Dæmons*) facing "a malign alien consciousness that disguised itself variously in the form of shop dummies, plastic daffodils and trimphones" (TV: *Terror of the Autons*) and visiting Atlantis. (TV: *The Time Monster*)
* The Doctor mentions that the Cybermen once had a base on the Moon. (TV: *The Invasion*)
* Jo and Iris would meet again in December 2010. (AUDIO: *Find and Replace*)

## External links

* ***Verdigris*** at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
* The Discontinuity Guide to: **Verdigris** at The Whoniverse
* Cloister Library - Verdigris