‘WISH YOU WERE HERE’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

Dealing with Lakksis on Nestra with the Sixth Doctor

This story called ‘Wish You Were Here’ is by Guy Clapperton. It features the Sixth Doctor. Apparently, in 2005, Guy Clapperton was sent to Cardiff by the Radio Times to co-write the 16-page special that launched Series 1 of the new ‘Doctor Who’ TV series. It must have been a great time for him. 😀

In ‘Wish You Were Here’, the Doctor visits the tourist planet Nestra, run by the Thetrans. He meets Janis Carma, who is pretending to be a tourist but is actually a Thetran agent. The Doctor is searching for an old friend of his named Korriklimm, who created the robots to serve the tourists on Nestra. 😐

There’s an audiobook for ‘Wish You Were Here’ read by Colin Baker, which is available in ‘Tales From The TARDIS: Volume One’. Unfortunately, like ‘Old Flames’, ‘Stop the Pigeon’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Glass’, it’s an abridged audiobook reading, as the prose version doesn’t match to Colin’s audio reading.

The audiobook reading does allow Colin the chance to do a variety of voices for characters e.g., giving the Doctor’s old friend K’tarth an Australian accent and the robot Lakksis their American accents. It was so amusing to hear Colin do those voices when listening to the abridged audiobook. 🙂

I’m pretty sure the robot Lakksis must come from the same future that my story ‘The Space Hotel’ comes from. 😀 This is because a Lakksis can do quotes from characters like Marvin from ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, Manuel from ‘Fawlty Towers’ and our very dear Laurel & Hardy. 😀

The story does end on a rather shocking note. Janis Carma destroys the Lakksis robot to stop it preventing people who are sick from getting better. A Lakksis-2 is built and just as the Doctor leaves in the TARDIS, Janis is about to get ‘drilled’ by Lakksis-2, as it recognises her for killing its ‘brother’. 😮

‘Wish You Were Here’ rating – 8/10