AustLit logo
The Evil Little Mother and the Tragic Old Bat single work   short story   science fiction  
Issue Details: First known date: 2005... 2005 The Evil Little Mother and the Tragic Old Bat
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'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

Notes

  • Doctor Who spin-off fiction. The Doctor is not a character.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Wildthyme on Top : A Short-Story Anthology Paul Magrs (editor), Maidenhead : Big Finish Productions , 2005 Z1780629 2005 anthology short story science fiction

    '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

    Maidenhead : Big Finish Productions , 2005
Last amended 8 Jul 2019 13:36:43
Settings:
  • c
    Greece,
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X