After weeks of London living, some of the TARDIS crew are finding it easier to adjust than others.
Liv has found a new friend, but Helen is worried about the Doctor.
And when a tragic crime takes place, the Time Lord must learn the limits of his powers.
Wild Animals contains examples of:
- Amateur Sleuth: The Doctor fails spectacularly at trying to convince the police that they need his help because he is one of these, with the officer telling him that just because he lives on Baker Street, he is not Sherlock Holmes.
- Caged Bird Metaphor: The Doctor applies it to himself, comparing his being stuck on Earth to the birds trapped in cages at a local zoo. At the end of the story, he breaks in and frees them.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: The Doctor, Liv and Helen realise that they are all suffering from this, putting themselves in harm's way out of sheer instinct. Liv gets shot by a burglar for her trouble.
- Cloud Cuckoo Landers Minder: Poor Helen has her work cut out for her just trying to curb the Doctor's more outlandish attempts at interfering with police investigations.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Tania provides the team with mobile phones, Liv rejects it, still a bit wary after her bad experience with one during "Absent Friends".
- Liv remarks that the last time she was shot she was able to just "shrug it off". Tania is very confused by this.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: The Doctor is completely lost being stuck on Earth. At least when he was with UNIT he had a job, but in this story he has nothing to keep himself going and he and Helen say outright that he can't function without some world-threatening crisis to solve. He throws himself into trying to catch Liv's assailant with such extreme enthusiasm that Helen is quite worried about him.
- Free-Love Future: Liv comes from far enough in the future that things like sexual orientation or gender identity are basically a non-issue. When Tania spells out to her that she is transgender, it takes Liv a second to understand that this is still an issue for some people in 2020. She reassures Tania that she has no problem with it whatsoever and happily agrees to go on a date with her.
- Healing Factor: Because of all the "extra stuff" in her DNA, Liv heals from her gunshot wound much quicker than a normal human and has to pretend to feel worse than she actually does so as not to arouse suspicion.
- Heroism Won't Pay the Bills: Liv takes a job at a newsagent's run by Aisha and Zakia's cousin, Sanjit, to try to keep food on the table. Helen is also attempting to hire herself out as a history tutor. The Doctor, on the other hand, is doing no such thing, spending most of his time standing around in a park.
- Hypocrite: The Doctor gives Helen a stern telling off for trying to chase down an armed robber, pointing out that alien invasions aren't the only threat in the universe and a normal man with a gun can kill them as easily as anything else. He then promptly throws himself into tracking the robber down. Helen calls him out on this and he simply waves her off.
- Insufferable Genius: The Doctor sees absolutely nothing wrong in presenting himself to the police officer as a self-declared genius who is much better suited to solving crimes than he is. This does not go over well.
- Mauve Shirt: Sanjit is introduced in this story as Liv's new boss at the newsagent and the cousin of her housemates Aisha and Zakia. He gets a few scenes to establish his personality and relationship with the other characters before he is abruptly shot dead by an armed robber.
- Mundanger: The "bad guy" in this story isn't an alien, or a warlord, or even a normal human bent on world domination, it's just an armed thief robbing the newsagent where Liv works. It's because of this that Liv and Helen think nothing of trying to stop him and Liv gets shot in the process.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: The story is unusual in that it does not feature any science fiction elements at all.
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Realism-Induced Horror: Just because the TARDIS team are stuck on earth and aren't fending off alien invasions every week doesn't mean that their "normal" lives are completely without danger. Liv tries to stop a common robber at her job and gets shot, as does her manager, who dies from his injuries. The Doctor makes a point of saying that with one bullet, a random thief came close to killing Liv, something even the Master and the Eleven couldn't manage. - Science Marches On: In-universe; Liv takes a job at a newsagent rather than applying for a job at a hospital because her medical training in the future is so advanced that she wouldn't be able to cope in a present day hospital.
- Trans Relationship Troubles: Tania nervously tells Liv that she is trans, anticipating that this might be an issue if they start seeing each other with the implication that this has been a deal breaker for her potential partners in the past. Liv doesn't see what the issue could be and agrees to a dinner with Tania.
