'Iris is an enigma... She's an enigma wrapped in a mystery. With a shapeless, tasteless hat clamped to her head. She's an enigma wrapped in a mystery, with a shapeless, tasteless hat clamped her head and she's puffing on a gold-tipped black Sobranie. And she drives a big red double-decker bus, ostensibly bound for Putney Common.
Except it's not. She's been to Putney Common precisely once, and that was by accident. There she picked up Tom, who is now her best friend. Together they journey through the multiverse: boozing and fighting; righting wrongs and buggering things up again. Here, in their first exciting anthology of ludicrous adventures, they meet monsters, klllers, ambassadors, insect-things, detectives, weirdos, psychics, fiends and sundry perverts.'
Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/nw_n01.htm). Sighted 20/5/11
Iris Wildthyme is a spin-off character from the BBC's Doctor Who series. Iris first appeared in 'Old Flames', a short story published in BBC Books' anthology Short Trips, and has subsquently starred in her own series of short-story anthologies and audio adventures.
'Everybody knows that Medea killed her own sons to avenge herself against her faithless husband, Jason. Moments before she can do so, however, Iris Wildthyme shows up and offers her a way out. Torn between conflicting emotions, Medea allows Iris to transport her into the future, where she watches a number of plays telling the story of her life from different angles, and realises that the lines from the performances have been echoing in her mind all day, even before Iris showed up. Iris claims that the emotional pressure of the famous tragedy is reaching back through Time, influencing the real Medea's actions and driving her towards an inevitable outcome; if she goes through with it, she will become an archetypal character, freed from the bounds of real history but forced to re-enact her own tragedy from the perspectives of everyone with something to say about it. Iris offers her a chance to escape all that -- but Medea demands to know whether Jason's story has survived as well, and is infuriated to learn that he's regarded as a great hero, the star of a story in which she barely appears. Wanting her husband to suffer for what he's done, Medea demands that Iris take her back home, but Tom, furious, points out that her sons don't even get names in the play; they're just innocent bystanders in Medea's tragedy. Iris admits that she has tried once before to intervene in an archetypal tragedy, but young Juliet Capulet just wouldn't listen to her. Medea returns home, but rather than kill her children, she fakes their deaths and escapes with them on the bus. Jason still suffers in the belief that his children have been murdered, but they are alive and well, living anonymously with their mother in Athens in a different era. However, since the real Medea chose not to become the archetype, the archetypal Medea has sprung into existence on the bus, manifested by the Universe itself. Iris explains to the archetypal Medea that she's tired of having fluffy, small adventures; she wants to do big things, and she needs a big Character by her side if she's to do so. Medea thus agrees to go out into the Universe with her new companions and raise a little hell.'
Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/nw_n01.htm). Sighted 20/5/11
'Tom bribes Iris with a plate of rum balls and convinces her to let him drive the bus to the Hard Place Resort, a resort complex built on an asteroid in the heart of the Time Vortex and powered by energy drawn from the elemental forces underlying time and space. Moments after Iris steps out of the bus, however, a young man appears and apparently disintegrates both the bus and Tom with a blast from his magic wand. Iris finds the resort entirely deserted, apart from a lone grey wolf and the young magician, Suneku, who attacks her when he realises that she's not the one he's looking for. Iris evades him and searches the entire resort, hoping that whoever Suneku is looking for will prove to be friendly. She fails to find anyone else, but sees her bus trying to rematerialise in the resort, and realises that Suneku merely banished it back out into the Vortex and that it's trying to return for her. Suneku and his wolf then confront Iris again, but Iris' leopard-skin coat unexpectedly comes to life and attacks the young magician. The lights begin to go out in the resort, and Iris panics, believing that this means the Vortex itself is dying. However, the wolf transforms into another young man -- Suneku's partner, Urufu -- and reveals that, in fact, the elemental forces are tired of being used as a cheap source of energy and are striking back at the resort. Suneku and Urufu evacuated the staff and holidaymakers and have remained to calm down the angry elemental forces; they had placed beacons to warn new arrivals away, but the inexperienced Tom failed to recognise them. Once Suneku has assured the elemental that no one will ever return to the resort, he and Urufu summon back Iris' bus, allowing her to leave. Suneku and Urufu then depart, and the elemental manifests itself within the abandoned plate of rum balls and reduces the resort back to its constituent particles.'
Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/nw_n01.htm). Sighted 20/5/11
