Iris Explains
synopsis
Iris visits the amnesiac, PACT eighth incarnation of the Doctor and his daughter Miranda and attempts, quite poorly, to explain what has happened since the destruction of Gallifrey.
annotation
P30 - "Miranda" - the Eighth Doctor's adopted daughter, as seen in his adventure Father Time.
P30 - "the iron gates to get into the drive" - One of the Doctor's houses mentioned in Verdigris.
P30 - "Jane Fonda's workout book" - Jane Fonda [born 21.12.37] was the daughter of the actor Henry Fonda and New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw. Initially known as an actress, her screen debut in "Tall Story" (1960) marked the beginning of a highly successful and respected acting career highlighted by 2 Academy Awards for her performance in "Klute" (1971) and "Coming Home" (1978) Fonda's professional success contrasted with her personal life, often laden with scandal and controversy. Her appearance in several risque movies (including "Barbarella" in 1968) by then husband Roger Vadim was followed by what was to become her most debated and controversial period: her espousal of anti-Establishment causes and especially her anti-War activities during the Vietnam War. Her political involvement continued with fellow activist and husband Tom Hayden in the 70s and early 80s. In the 80s Jane Fonda started the aerobic exercise craze with the publication of the Jane Fonda's Workout Book. She remarried with broadcasting czar Ted Turner in 1991.
P32 - "the young Jodie Foster" - Jodie Foster [born 19.11.62, as Alicia Foster in Los Angeles]. Nicknamed Jodie by her three older siblings, Foster rose to popular prominence following her casting as the 12 year old prostitute in Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver, although later roles in The Accused and Silence of the Lambs eclipsed this early success.
P32 - "the Monocled Mutineer" - BBC Drama serial from 1986. Based on apparently true events recalled in a book by John Fairley, The Monocled Mutineer was the story of dashing rogue Percy Toplis, played by Paul McGann. Topliss, a private in the British army, was stationed at the Etaples training camp in France and, on the night before the Battle of Paschendaele in 1917, instigated a mutiny among his harshly treated fellow recruits. His partner in the action was Charles Strange, a political idealist. The four-part dramatization by Alan Bleasdale (whose own grandfather had died at Paschendaele) added fiction to the bare facts and depicted how Toplis escaped into the French hills, took to impersonating an army officer and led a group of renegades in the taking of a bridge. He then returned to England and fell in love with Dorothy, a young widow, before being captured in the Lake District and 'executed' for his crimes by Ml5 assassin Woodhall.
P32 - "BBC1" - the main, publicly-funded TV station in the UK. Makers of the best television in the world, regardless of what Hutton, Blair and his deranged cronies say.
P32 - "cascades of golden hair, big brown eyes and full lips" - which does sound a lot like Jane Fonda in Barbarella.
P32 - "the Doctor genuinely did not know the answer" - the Doctor, in his eighth incarnation, was responsible for the destruction and eradication of his (and Iris') home planet, Gallifrey. Following on from this, he was marooned on Earth for a century without his TARDIS or his memory - hence he cannot at this point remember Iris at all.
P32 - "this is the third time you've lost your memory...or is it the fourth?" - The Doctor has always been a little prone to losing his memory, although generally this is soon after his regenerations.
P32 - Incarnations of the Doctor - The Doctor at this point has regenerated 7 times.
P32 - "the one with a shock of white hair" - The Doctor's third incarnation.
P32 - "the one with the recorder" - The Doctor's second incarnation.
P32 - "the one who was only in a charity thing for a few seconds but was the best of the damn lot" - A reference to the actor Hugh Grant, who played the Doctor's penultimate incarnation in the charity presentation, "The Curse of Fatal Death" and was rather good, aided in no small part by a simply superb dying speech written by Steven Moffat.
P32 - "school uniform" - a possible reference to the second incarnation of the Doctor's one time travelling companion and latter President of Gallifrey, Romana, who at one point wore a very fetching school uniform.
P32 - "Do you have a surname or are you one of the ones what doesn't?" - a few of the Doctor's (and Iris' too for that matter) companions never mentioned their surnames - most famously Polly, who may have been a Wright or a Lopez; and Ace, who had two - Gale and McShane - depending on who you believe. Although why you would care sufficiently about Ace to enquire even once is another matter entirely.
P32 - "How old are you, love? Twenty seven going on fifteen?" - Historically, the Doctor's companions tend to be played by actors and actresses who are...ahem...slightly older than the parts they are playing.
P32 - "Now, don't get upset, or write letters" - The Doctor is never (well, very rarely) referred to as Doctor Who on the TV series (it's not his name, it's the name of the series) or official book range (although is so called for decades in the annuals amd the like), hence fanboys could well be upset by the use of 'Who' as Miranda's surname. Far more annoying, IMHO, is the way in which Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart at one point introduces himself as 'The Brigadier' in one of the Big Finish audios. Similarly, a character who has been spying on Bernice speaking to the seventh Doctor says she calls him 'The Doctor' in the New Adventure, Warlock.
P32 - "Great Gallifrey" - the home planet of the Time Lords.
P32 - "Not allowed any more" - as it's been removed from time by the Doctor and thus no-one should recall enough about it to swear in its name.
P32 - "Rassilon's Rod" - a piece of Gallifreyan regalia which, like almost everything else on that planet, was named after Rassilon, their most powerful former leader. The phallic connotations are fairly clear.
P32 - "professor...does that count as one?" - Iris is concerned that the use of the word 'professor' will count as a breaking of the laws of time as that is the name that Ace called the Doctor in the early years in which she was travelling with him. Presumably she's joking since (a) the damn tale is called Iris Explains so a small slip like that is hardly going to cause many ripples and (b) Professor barely counts as nickname for someone called Doctor, never mind viewing it as a breach in time. More pertinently, this is probably a meta-fictional reference to the unofficial BBV audios which attempted, with no great degree of effort, to avoid breaching BBC copyright by calling the Seventh Doctor 'Professor' rather than Doctor. The phrase 'gorblimey fliping eck' immediately preceeding this is, I suspect, a dig at the less high quality accents used by some of the cast.
P32 - "Or at least the first hundred and twenty nine pages or so of one" - So we can fairly definitely date this story to between pages 129 and 130 of Father Time. Which is quite specific.
P32 - "You know about the note?" Compassion dropped a note in the Doctor's pocket after he lost his memory in order that he meet up with Fitz in 2001.
P32 - "why are the diamonds arranged in a question mark...and so she never discovered that they'd been a gift from a gentleman admirer" - as the Doctor took the question mark as his personal symbol round about his fourth incarnation and as Iris claims - in her words from Plague Herds of Excelis - to have 'had him', we can conjecture that these undergarments were a present from him.
P32 - "Kipling cakes" - a range of small fondant cakes much loved in the United Kingdom in the latter part of the twentieth century.
P32 - "They were called Paradox" - a reference to Faction Paradox and the War in Heaven which led to the events of The Ancestor Cell and the destruction of Gallifrey. In another universe Faction Paradox did other, even more complicated, stuff as recounted in the Book of the War (although recounted is perhaps stretching the definition beyond any sensible limit), but in this one (actually, in that one too) they can be summed up as a a cult of time-travelling voodoo terrorists and we'll just leave it at that.
P32 - "the Grandfather...he was me, but with short hair" - Grandfather Paradox, the legendary founder of Faction Paradox, is a figure steeped in mystery and legend (and blood and bones he would no doubt add) who, reputedly, cut his own arm off. If he is also the Doctor then we shouldn't really be surprised.
P32 - "one where you lived at home and mourned your dead wife" - a reference to another Universe where the Doctor was the mysterious Time Lord founder known as the Other.
P32 - "Unless events conspire to restore, y'know, thingy" - a reference to Gallifrey.
P32 - "Borusa's your spirit guide" - One time President and Cardinal Borusa was a Time Lord who began his career either teaching at the Time Lord Academy or working for the Celestial Intervention Agency but who, in any case, rose in prominence to become first a Cardinal and later President of Gallifrey. Unfortunately, a tendency to regenerate a lot seems to have driven him a little mad, leading to the events of the Five Doctors, and his entrapment by Rassilon as a living eternal statue. In an very unlikely and quite contrived seeming addendum, Borusa was later released by the Eighth Doctor in The Eight Doctors to resume his role as leader of Gallifrey.
P34 - "Forget Izzy...Charley...Benny" - Three companions of the Eighth Doctor, from three different media. Izzy S first met the Doctor in Stockbridge, armed with a zap gun, and working for the Bureau for Interplanetary Liaison (Stockbridge Division). Charlotte (Charley) Pollard was saved by the Doctor from certain death of the airship R101, thereby causing huge ripples in the fabric of time and, indirectly, leading to the awful events of Zagreus. Professor Bernice (Benny) Summerfield is almost as interesting as Iris - a self-appointed Professor of archaeology with a fondness for unsuitable men and strong drink, she met the Doctor when he was in his seventh incarnation (during the period when that incarnation was a bit on the devious side, as opposed to earlier on when he fought giant sweeties and cleaning machines). She left the Doctor soon after his regeneration and is believed to be working for the Braxiatel Collection.
P34 - "the one that went to Guernsey without you" - This is a meta-fictional reference to the Just War audio play which is set in Guernsey and adapted from the similarly titled novel, both by Lance Parkin. In the audio, the Doctor has been excised for copyright reasons and replaced primarily by Benny's husband Jason Kane.
P34 - "the one who travelled with you, except for that one time in 1997, who you dropped off at Dellah in 2593" - the Doctor dropped Benny off in Dellah in 2593 in the Dying Days, the events of which are partly set in 1997, where Benny arrives under her own steam. This is the only time Benny and the Eighth Doctor travel together.
P34 - "I'm not sure where the one who fought the Scourge with you is" - The Shadow of the Scourge was billed as a side-step into New Adventure territory by Big Finish and hence featured that version of Benny. More interestingly, Ace (Dorothy[ee] Gale/Gail McShane) helped Benny and the seventh Doctor fight the Scourge in the same audio. It is very unclear what happened to her after her time with the Doctor - she has been reported as living in a past France; as a soldier in the Dalek Wars; as simply McShane in Colditz and as plain and simple dead. Take your pick - we like to think she was number 2 and is now number 4. YMMV.
P34 - "You had 13 children with her [Benny]" - Uh huh. Whatever, as the Americans say. Iris is such a big fat liar, as we say. As a no doubt wholly connected aside, Patience and the Other had 13 children, according to the same author's Cold Fusion. Tell me that's a co-incidence.
P34 - "or was that in another bottle?" - The theory of bottle universes can cover a lot of sins, as it were.
P34 - "Emma Thompson" - Emma Thompson [Born 15.4.59] Actress, daughter of Eric Thompson, creator of the Magic Roundabout and ex-wife of the actor/director Kenneth Branagh. Major roles include The Tall Guy, Howards End (Best Actress Oscar, 1993) Sense and Sensibility (Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, 1996) and Love, Actually. Bernice has frequently been described by Paul Cornell as looking like Emma Thompson in the movie, The Tall Guy. She has a protracted sex scene in that movie, so those wanting to see Benny in the Buff should go rent it now.
Old Flames
synopsis
The TARDIS materializes near an 18th-century manor, where the Doctor nearly drowns in a frozen lake while following giant cat footprints. He is rescued by the kindly Rector Adams, and eventually recovers and decides to go back to the TARDIS - but on his way he and Sarah see a 20th-century double-decker bus trundling through the woods and decide to remain and investigate. Adams invites them to accompany him to Lady Huntingdon's ball, where the Doctor meets an old "friend" - Iris Wildthyme, fellow renegade Time Lady. She's brought her human companion, a young man named Turner, to the ball in the hopes that he'll marry Lady Huntingdon's granddaughter Bella and Iris will inherit the estate. The ball ends badly when Adams' body is found outside, mauled by a giant animal. The Doctor attends a dinner with Lady Huntingdon, Iris, Bella and Turner, where it is revealed that Lady Huntingdon and her daughter are shape-shifting cat aliens and that Lady Huntingdon is fully aware of Iris' plans and intends to take Iris' TARDIS, the bus which the Doctor and Sarah spotted earlier. Bella refuses to help her grandmother, claiming that Earth is the only home she knows now, and Lady Huntingdon transforms into the cat-shape in which she killed Adams and heads into the woods to find Iris' TARDIS. The Doctor beats her to it and uses a Time Lord dimensional message capsule to trap her in a pocket dimension. The Doctor and Sarah then leave, and Iris sets off as well, leaving Turner behind with Bella.
annotation
P11 - "Sarah" - Sarah Jane Smith, investigative journalist and one time companion of the Doctor in his third and fourth incarnations. Rarely seen in modern times, following her sacking form Planet 3 News.
P11 - "John Donne" - John Donne [1572-1631] has been described as the first modern English poet - his major works include Satires (1593), Songs and Sonnets (1593) and Divine Poems (1607). His Collected English Poems is an excellent collection.
P12 - "that ridiculous scarf" - The Doctor is clearly in his fourth incarnation, enormous multi-coloured scarf and all.
P12 - "duffel coat" - a long woolen coat popular in the 1970s and early 21st century on Earth.
P12 - "Police Box shell" - Like Iris, the Doctor's TARDIS has a malfunctioning chameleon circuit and is stuck in the shape of a blue Metropolitan Police Box from the 1960s.
P13 - "Cheshire Cat" - the Cheshire Cat is a character from the children's book Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll [pen name of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898]. Carroll did not in fact invent the Cat, but merely based the character on the old English phrase 'to grin like a Cheshire Cat'.
P13 - "dungarees" - Ludicrous trousers cum overalls which should only be seen on small children but which were in vogue for adults (often in garish primary colours) in the 19702 and again in the 1990s (in denim that time, thankfully).
P17 - "her large, inelegant body...those feet of hers which she had once described to him as her 'very best feature'" - Iris is in what has been described as her 'Beryl Reid' body (although the quoted passage would be an unflattering description of even that stalwart actress of British stage and screen).
P18 - "plump hands" - and the description gets no more alluring on the following page.
P18 - "their paths had crossed on only a few occasions in the past" - We know that Iris met the Doctor in his first incarnation in historical France and on the planet of the Zarbi; visited the third Doctor at his home in Verdigris; bumped into the Fourth Doctor in "Old Flames"; the Fifth Doctor both in Excelis Dawns and one Christmas, when she had the Doctor and his companions for lunch; the Sixth in The Wormery (where she comments on the relative unattractiveness of that incarnation) and the Eighth Doctor in "Iris Explains", The Blue Angel and The Scarlet Empress. She claims to have met the Doctor in all of his incarnations so we can assume unrecorded meetings with the second and seventh Doctors.
P18 - "cravat" - Neckwear worn in a slipknot with long ends overlapping vertically in front, somewhat similar to the ascot as worn by Fred in Scooby Doo, but not half as camp.
P18 - "some land and a beautiful house in the North" - As Iris is planning to take over the Manor house by marrying Captain Turner to the current owner's niece and heir, it would seem that Iris is not content with, as the Doctor later puts it, owning a 'house in every century'.
P19 - "She's not the one I didn't get on with" - Sight unseen, Iris is concerned that Sarah might be Jo Grant with whom she bickered throughout Verdigris.
P19 - "the freezing, benighted world of the Exxilons in a bathing costume"In Death to the Daleks the third Doctor tries to take Sarah to the planet Florana where the water is sufficiently effervescent to support a swimmer, hence she is dressed in a bathing costume and sunglasses. Instead they end up on the rather unpleasant world of the Exxilons.
P19 - "an old flame of the Doctor's" - as remarked elsewhere, Iris does claim to have 'had' the Doctor by his the time of his fifth incarnation, although he denies it (but as she visits him out of sequence, maybe the version she has 'had' is a later one.) At a guess if she has had him, it would during his exile on Earth.
P21 - "She was thinking about the first time she had ever travelled in the TARDIS" - Sarah first travelled with the Doctor as a stowaway in the Time Warrior. This line (and that beginning 'Captain Turner had the same slightly glazed, bemused expression worn by all first-time time travellers') firmly suggest that this is Captain Turner's first journey with Iris.
P21 - "guts for garters" - First mentioned in literature in The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) by Sir Walter Scott (“He that would not pledge me, I would make his guts garter his stockings”) this phrase, according to Paul Beale’s update of Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, had been around in various forms since before even then, and was at one time Cockney low slang or the cant of racecourse toughs, and was a common reprimand or threat by NCOs in the services during World War Two and afterwards. As that book notes, it has since risen somewhat in the social scale to become a macho phrase among some idiotic middle managers.
Femme Fatale
synopsis
In an almost certainly apocryphal adventure, Iris visits Pop Artist Andy Warhol's Factory to relax and settle in following her turbulent regeneration on the planet Hyspero. The Doctor and his assistant Samantha Jones also go to the Factory so Sam can visit the Warhol, and they arrive just as Iris' new friend Valerie prepares to confront Warhol about the play which she's written and which he has refused to film. Valerie is too earnest and uncool to be permitted in the Factory any longer. Elsetimes, the Doctor and Mrs Jones, suave secret agents working for the British government, are ordered to investigate a book which purports to chronicle their top-secret adventures in science-fiction format, and the Doctor realizes that he must rewrite this "Iris Wildthyme"'s fictions to cover up the truth. Valerie, who has written a manifesto stating that all men should be replaced with clones for breeding purposes, shoots Warhol, while at the same time she's in Paris writing a book. The Doctor and Sam attempt to prevent the shooting, but fail, as it's part of history. Following the publication of Iris' book, the Doctor and Mrs Jones, who are too dangerous to be left at large, are gassed and awaken in an unidentified Village.
P317 - "in Chelsea...the King's Road" - two areas of London, England.
P317 - Description of the Doctor - The description of the Doctor suggests John Steed of The Avengers fame a British secret service agent assisted by Tara King, a friend of Jo Grant's.
P317 - "Eurostar" - The train line between England and France, passing through the Channel Tunnel.
P317 - "nasty affair with the brutish clones in that rundown mansion in Tunbridge Wells" - an apparently unreported adventure.
P317 - "Don't let Mother phone" - Another Avengers reference - Mother being the head of the British Secret Service.
P317 - "Alistair hates being called Mother" - Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.
P318 - "some Pop Artist chap" - Pop Art, as most famously exemplified by Andy Warhol [1928-1987], is best summed up in his words - "Everything is beautiful. Pop is everything". Emerging in the mid 1950s in England, Pop Art only realized its full potential in New York in the 1960s.
P318 - "the Factory" - Andy Warhol's base between 1964 and 1969.
P318 - "Valerie" - Valerie Solanis, who shot Warhol in 1969 - an event recently filmed as I Shot Andy Warhol (1996).
P318 - "planets...where women really were the rulers and men were banished" - an unrecorded adventure, unless Iris has recently seen Cat Women of the Moon, possibly based on the Doctor's adventure, Imperial Moon?
P319 - Iris' appearance is "slightly different again. Tighter round the eyes and mouth as if she'd recently had surgery" - Iris regenerates into a 'Jane Fonda as Barbarella' look at the end of Scarlet Empress, but the Doctor and Sam Jones have seen her in this new form, so perhaps she has indeed had a little plastic surgery in the interim?
P320 - De Sade - The Marquis de Sade [1740-1814] - more properly Donatien Alphonse François, comte de Sade - is probably most infamous writer in the history of French literature, and has variously been hailed as "the freest spirit who has ever existed" and a vile pornographer. He published primarily erotic writings and gave rise to the term sadism (i.e. enjoyment of cruelty for its own sake). On the one hand, his written works have been seen as exploration of sexual and political freedom, while on the other hand he was undoubtedly a multiple rapist, torturer, and possible murderer and was imprisoned for sexual and immoral offences on several occasions.
P320 - Flaubert - Gustave Flaubert [1821-1880] was another French author, whose publication of Madame Bovary in 1856 led to an unsuccessful prosecution against him on moral grounds. That aside, Flaubert was known as a meticulous stylist and careful craftsman of language.
P320 - Gertrude Stein - Gertrude Stein [1874-1946] was a gay American writer, whose home in Paris was a salon for the leading artists and writers in the inter-war period. She is best known for the novel Three Lives (1931) and her autobiography, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933).
P321 - Olympia Press - A famous publisher of sexually explicit literary works. They currently have a web-site selling their catalogue.
P321 - Ulysses, Lolita, Tropic of Cancer - Three novels, each banned upon publication on the grounds of moral laxity. Ulysses, by James Joyce [1882-1941], is now acknowledged as one of the classic novels in English of the twentieth century; Lolita, which describes the passage of one Humbert Humbert as he falls deeply in love with the 12 year old title character, is now Vladmir Nabakov's [1899-1977] most popular novel (and is incidentally something you really don't want to have as the name of any images on your hard drive, unless you wish to spend the next 10 to 15 years being sodomized with screwdrivers in some otherwise morally ambiguous prison); whilst Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller [1891-1980] deals explicitly with the author's sexual adventures and challenged contemporary models of sexual morality.
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Entertaining Mr O
synopsis
Iris battles the mysterious Mr O and his animated anti-matter.
annotation
P52 - "Alistair sent you" - Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.
P52 - "Not his unpaid scientific advisor?" - A position Iris also holds in Interference.
P52 - "I gather he was pensioned off rather suddenly...now he's a non-person living in a village in Wales" - Possibly the same Village as that which at one point held the so-called Prisoner, John Drake.
P52 - "Ministry equipment" - The Ministry of Defence is the government department in the United Kingdom which deals with security and the armed forces.
P52 - "anti-matter doesn't exist" - To be honest, we'd best hope that it does exist, or it's going to cause some basic problems with the way we view the Universe. For a quick introduction to the subject try this article
P52 - "my immensely long and rather glamorously breakneck career" - Hence this incarnation of Iris is one later on in her timeline. Maybe, like her friend the Doctor, her first incarnation lived for a long time?
P52 - "I was elderly Iris, burly and haggard" - Now, does that really sound like Beryl Reid?
P52 - "Tom, a human boy" - the same Tom as seen in Verdigris presumably.
P52 - "Soho" - In the 1970s, Soho was a somewhat seedy area of London, famed for what passed in England as a red light district. Having visited Soho as a 16 year old in 1985 I can attest that, by then, it was just very grubby and sad looking.
P52 - "bomber jacket" - a puffy sleeved short jacket, usually seen in green or black, rather than orange, beloved of the rougher element in the 1970s.
P52 - "the Tate" -The national gallery of British art, nowadays merely one of a series of Tates.
P52 - 1973 - It seems Iris replaced the Doctor as UNIT's scientific advisor.
P53 - "S.Foreman" - A reference to Susan Foreman, the Doctor's grand-daughter?
P53 - "his role as conductor" - In Britain in the 1970s, a conductor walked around public transport buses, collecting payment for tickets from new passengers.
P54 - Pierre Bonnard - Pierre Bonnard [1867-1947] was a French painter and member of the group known as the Nabis (Hebrew for "prophets"), who helped establish a new, modern style of decoration that was important for the emergence of Art Nouveau in the late 1890s, and who was famous for the Japanese influence on his paintings. An example of one of his works can be seen at this page.
P55 - Sisterhood of Karn - A group of mystical women, based on the planet Karn, and entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the Elixir, a liquid used by Time Lords to help them through difficult regenerations.
P55 - Morbius - Lord Morbius was a renegade Time Lord who rebelled against the rules of Gallifrey and raised an army with which to over-run the Galaxy. In one of the most ludicrous of the Doctor's many tall tales, he claims to have been the so-called Supremo who led the forces of good against Morbius (Warmonger). Morbius was in any case atomised by the Time Lords upon capture. The Doctor in his fourth incarnation is rumoured to have stumbled across Morbius' still living brain. Iris fought against Morbius' machinations in the Death Zone on Gallifrey in "Iris Wildthyme in 'Seven of Twelve'".
P55 - Demon's Rest - a reference to the Doctor's adventure The Daemons.
P55 - Benton - A sergeant in UNIT. This is presumably this incarnation of Iris' first meeting with John Benton.
P55 - Bond Street - A street in central London.
P55 - "a packet of digestives" - Digestive biscuits are a British standard. Produced by McVities, they are very nice in pairs with butter and cheese.
P55 - "Iris has got us out of a number of awful scrapes" - Although this is this Iris first meeting with Benton and the Doctor was UNIT's Scientific Advisor until this point, it seems that Iris had done the British Government a favour or two in the past.
P55 - Mary Queen of Scots - Mary [1542-1587] was daughter of King James V and a major player in British politics in the 16th century, representing the Catholic Stuarts against Queen Elizabeth I (who finally had her executed in 1587) and Protestantism. For a wildly excessive overview of her life, see this site.
P56 - plastic daffodils - a reference to Terror of the Autons in which the Nestene inhabited just such artificial flowers.
P56 - "slinky version" of Iris - One of the incarnations of Iris whom Benton has met would seem to be the Jane Fonda one.
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Cabinet of Changes
synopsis
Cabinet of Changes is a sequel to the novel The Blue Angel and relates the story of the Doctor, a middle-aged gay man, following his discovery of the eponymous cabinet and his attempts to put on a magic show for his friends and flatmates.
In terms of its place in the general continuity of both Iris and the Doctor, The Blue Angel is the second part of the story arc which began in Interference in which the Doctor's companion, Compassion, becomes a timeship herself (with the Doctor's TARDIS being destroyed in the process), and the Time Lord President Romana attempts to track her down in order to breed baby timeships from her. Iris, in The Blue Angel, tries to hide the Doctor and his companions in the Obverse, peopling that space with thinly diguised versions of former friends and colleagues, and placing him under the medical supervision of one of his former selves.
The entire story, with the author's comments, can be read online at Phil's site, or the book in which it was originally printed can be purchased from the publisher. Many thanks to Phil for pointers regarding the text and the authorial intent behind elements of it.
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