Follow TV Tropes

Following

Recap / Big Finish Doctor Who 097 The Wishing Beast

Go To

The Doctor and Mel are on a journey. Recently he's received a message, but unlike the usual Distress Call this seems to be an invitation. Two elderly ladies, Maria and Eliza Applewhite wish to invite them to their home, a lonely asteroid by the edge of the galaxy. The Doctor scans the rock; at first it seems like a complete Death World with radiation levels beyond what humans could withstand, but as soon as he's scanned it... it changes.

Somewhat convinced, the Doctor and Mel step out of the TARDIS, and see a dainty little cottage up ahead. Soon they hear rustling in the woods behind them and they run towards the cottage. As Maria and Eliza let them in, they prattle on about how they are happy to have their special guest over, a hero of space and time. The Doctor, of course, feels flattered... er ... it's not him? It's Mel? Well, what do they have in store for her? Turns out they want her to meet the Wishing Beast, which will grant her dearest wish.

The Doctor slips back to the TARDIS to try to figure out what they were seeing earlier and is confronted with poltergeist activity. After a short (one-way) dialogue, he makes his way back to the cottage and confronts the sisters. And sure enough, they're interrupted by paranormal activity. A ghost tries to warn Mel away from the sisters, because they would all die, everybody would die. The sisters stop the ghost dead in its tracks by busting out a... vacuum cleaner. Only after they've dealt with the ghost does the Doctor reveal it's no ordinary vacuum cleaner. It's equipped with a so-called proton filter, which could vacuum the physical essence of anything if set high enough.

Forced to stay since something is keeping the TARDIS grounded, the Doctor sneaks out in the night, promising Mel that he'll return for her. He wanders out into the woods, where he meets another ghost. This ghost bears the name of Mildew, and shows him a village of people just like him, all at death's door yet unable to die. They are all previous victims of the Wishing Beast, all having fallen for the Schmuck Bait of their dearest wish. The Wishing Beast devoured them and left their ghostly remains stuck in phantom form, at least until it returns to feed upon that as well. The Doctor promises to help the ghosts, but chooses to stay put because he learns that the Applewhite sisters stop by the village on their way to the Wishing Beast, using the vacuum to capture some ghosts and feed what remains of them to the Wishing Beast as an appetizer.

In the meantime, Maria and Eliza wake and take Mel into the woods. Along the way they explain everything: the Wishing Beast is actually their brother Daniel, who, upon crashing into this asteroid, mutated into a golden dragon with shining scales, capable of granting people their wish, but at a high cost. They've been keeping him alive for centuries, and through him, themselves. As the sisters and Mel arrive at the village, the Doctor confronts them, but it is too late. The Wishing Beast approaches, and the Doctor, either out of desperation or with a long-shot plan, offers himself in her stead, but only if the sisters agree to his terms.

No more killing. No more torturing the poor ghost people.

They agree, and the Doctor confronts the Wishing Beast. And it devours him.

...Well, that was a bit anti-climactic, wasn't it?

........Okay, we all know he regenerates into that short bloke later on, so he wakes up. Inside the Beast. As he watches through the Wishing Beast's eyes as the sisters try to force Mel to take them to the TARDIS so that they can travel the universe with the Beast in tow, the Doctor meets another form. It's Daniel.

Turns out Daniel isn't the Wishing Beast. He's merely inside of it. Years ago when they first landed, Daniel was still a little boy. He found a glowing white box which promised that it could make his dearest wish come true. Daniel, who was the youngest of the three, wished to become a monster so he could boss his sisters around. He got his wish, but has come to regret it as innocent people have suffered. His sisters were the real monsters, keeping him alive in such a state against his wishes. He barters with the essence of the actual Wishing Beast to swap places with the Doctor, until the Doctor convinces him that he won't do it willingly. Daniel mans up, manages to take control of the Wishing Beast, and tells his sisters to back down.

But behind the sisters there's Mildew, who is brandishing the vacuum cleaner from earlier. He turns it on the sisters full blast until Eliza burns him with her eye beams, leaving them nothing but wraiths like the other villagers. Apparitions, half-people, echoes of their former selves. The Doctor manages to exit the Wishing Beast, having found its true core: a glowing white box. He traps the dragon inside, along with the two sisters. This lets Daniel pass on at last, and ends the existence of the ghosts in the village, which no longer suffer needlessly.

The Doctor and Mel decide to bury the box and the dreadful vacuum cleaner in the cottage, and the Doctor theorizes that as soon as they leave, the asteroid will revert to its Death World status, only being kept in its current state thanks to the Wishing Beast's influence. No one is left but them, but for most of the people in the story, that's a good thing.


  • Body Horror: The Wishing Beast. The description of what Daniel mutated into isn't pretty.
  • Clarke's Third Law: The Doctor thinks the ghosts (and the Wishing Beast) are magic. And all magic is, is unexplained.
  • Death World: The radiation levels are lethal to humanoids... at first.
  • Energy Beings: The Ghosts.
  • Eye Beams: Eliza has them as a result of the radiation.
  • Eye Scream: Eliza's eyes supposedly melted in her sockets when she first arrived on the planetoid.
  • Schmuck Bait: The concept of the wish. Luckily both the Doctor and Mel smell trouble.
  • Verbal Tic: Eliza tends to repeat the first or last couple of words in a sentence.
  • Vocal Evolution: Daniel. When he turns against the Wishing Beast, his voice suddenly drops a few octaves to indicate that he's maturing.

It hasn't been long since the Doctor and Mel had their encounter with the Wishing Beast; Mel is still scolding him for trying to pull a Heroic Sacrifice.The two decide to go to Salford for a little R&R.

As Mel pops into a shop to buy a chocolate bar, the Doctor tries to get a drink in a very busy local pub. Though his attempts to get a pint of blackcurrant squash are in vain, he can't help but overhear that there are some strange goings-on at a local hairdresser. As he eavesdrops on the local gossips, he runs into Mel, who's just seen a 56-year-old woman who looks like she's in her 20s.

There is something weird going on.

The Doctor employs the aid of a local gossipy neighbour, and he and Mel decide they need to infiltrate the hairdresser's. Since Mel looks too young...

The Doctor dresses in drag.

So the Doctor enters the Vanity Box (as the hairdresser is called), and the snooty French hairdresser says that the Doctor needs the treatment. Bad. He puts a strange (familiar...) white box on top of his head, and inside... the Doctor encounters the Wishing Beast. It does not recognize the Doctor, and the Doctor surmises that the Wishing Beast has been siphoning life off the ladies of Salford. He offers the Wishing Beast to feed on him. The Wishing Beast does, but it can't handle all the untold centuries of the Doctor's life, just as the Doctor had planned. The Wishing Beast turns inert, and the Doctor takes the box and leaves Salford with Mel.

The Doctor deposits the white box on a lonely asteroid where people won't go for millennia, and the Wishing Beast will forget its encounter with the nameless Time Lord over the years.Mel laments the fact that the Doctor put the box on the asteroid, resulting in their encounter with the Applewhite sisters and the lives lost due to Daniel's actions. The Doctor tells Mel he had to, because it's like wishing you could change your past, and they've already been through it. He comforts her, as they set off on another journey.

  • Have We Met Yet?: The Doctor recognizes the Wishing Beast, but not vice versa.
  • No Ontological Inertia: When the Wishing Beast leaves, its affects on the townsfolk dissipate.
  • Nosy Neighbour: One of the old ladies talks about hanging over her back fence to get a better view of salon's yard.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: The French hairdresser. Though it's a plot point, it happens after the Vanity Box has been short-circuited.
  • The Scream: Alerts the Doctor to the trouble at the hairdresser's.

Top