Peri and the Piscon Paradox by Nev Fountain
January 2011
I didn't really grapple with it in my Trial posts, but it's not exactly a hot take to suggest that Peri got short shrift during her time on the show. There are occasional, faint glimmers of a character under there, but under her constant bickering with the Doctor, the questionable accent, and the fan service, they're pretty hard to see. Nicola Bryant is a pretty good actress in my opinion, and it sucks that she never really got the time to flesh her character out. Until Big Finish rolled around, at least.
I didn't really know what to expect from Peri and the Piscon Paradox when I put it on, but I was attentively listening while running around the world of Skyrim with the audio playing in another tab.
The first half begins with Peri and the Fifth Doctor arriving in the far-off year of 2009 in Los Angeles. The tone is established quite early on as being somewhat humorous, with Peri's comments about life in the 21st century being especially memorable. The Piscons, the titular alien of the week, are established in a throwaway line as distant cousins of the Pescatons, and are played mostly for laughs.
After encountering a future Peri who is supposedly tracking a Piscon criminal named Zarl, the past Peri interrogates her about her future, but the elder Peri is a bit reluctant. She shields herself from further questioning by claiming to be a government agent, but the events of the story quickly cast some doubt on this cover.
A particular sticking point for the past Peri is that her older self never had a family, something which is clearly very important to her. When they part in anger at the end of part two, the past Peri swears that she'll go back to her high school sweet heart after she's done traveling with the Doctor and start a family, the shouts of her future counterpart drowned out by the TARDIS doors closing. The note it ends on is more sober than we'd expect from the rollicking parts that preceded it, but it's still nothing, compared with the end of the second half.
In the second half we see the same events from the future Peri's perspective, learning that she's not a government agent but a talk show host. She and her assistant, Buretor (short for Carburetor, natch) get sucked into an adventure by an unfamiliar man with curly blond hair. The Sixth Doctor is a little confused when he realizes that she doesn't recognize him; it seems this Peri only remembers Planet of Fire and nothing else, an experience which the Doctor later glumly compares to that of Jamie and Zoe.
The Doctor mentions that he remembers an adventure during his previous incarnation where they met Peri's future self here, which he knows now should be impossible based on what he knew of her fate in Trial. When they go try and find the fugitive Piscon Zarl however, he gets surprised and accidentally falls to his death on the beach. The dawning realization that the Zarl in the first half was just the Sixth Doctor in a fish suit the whole time is really quite something.
As funny as these parts are too, it's hard to see the gut-punch come at the end of the story, when we hear future Peri's rant in full, no longer stopped short by the TARDIS doors. How she did settle down with her Guy Back Home just like past Peri threatened to do. How he beat her on their honeymoon. How she can't have kids anymore. It's just absolutely devastating.
The actual coda to the story is a little more sweet, with a Time Lord appearing to explain what's going on. Supposedly, all the changes in Gallifreyan government had led to different groups trying to "fix" Peri's fate, resulting in several different Peris running around, each with a different fate. It seems that one of her really is off living with Yrcanos, and future Peri's slightly shy question, of whether that Peri has kids or not, is really touching.
I'm having a hard time making sense of my emotions after listening to that one. At making Peri a real character, it succeeds brilliantly. The tonal whiplash is just hard to grapple with. Domestic abuse is a particularly heavy topic for Who in particular, but I wouldn't say inappropriate. I just have to wonder if it works when the tone of the rest of the story is so self-consciously silly.
Regardless of my mixed feelings, it was really interesting and well-written on the whole and a gem of the Companion Chronicles range.
"We'll always have Peris..."
Time of Your Life is next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 13 June 2024.)
No comments:
Post a Comment