Big Finish Doctor Who/Recap/035 ...ish

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The Sixth Doctor takes Peri to a lexicographer's convention, where his old friend Professor Osefa is about to unveil the Lexicon, the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language ever written. While Peri hits it off with a charming young logophile, the Doctor discovers something far less pleasant-- Osefa has seemingly committed suicide in a locked room, but a suicide note riddled with misspellings and errors raises the Doctor's suspicions. Further investigation reveals that the professor may have stumbled across a word with the power to destroy language and meaning forever.

Tropes used in ...ish include:
  • Artificial Intelligence: Book and Warren.
  • Brown Note: The ...ish causes anyone who hears it to become mentally "stuck" on it and repeat it over and over.
  • Creation Myth: The natives of Xenocubis believe that the echoes of the Big Bang created the "first great Word," which gave rise to language. All languages are thus a corruption or fragment of the original Word.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The ...ish is a living, sentient word which literally eats meaning and can reduce humans to babbling zombies just by being spoken in their vicinity. In the end, though, it just wants to go home, which makes it one of the milder examples of this trope.
  • Separated by a Common Language: The Doctor and Peri argue over Americanisms, which the Doctor considers a corruption of the English language. Later, they use equivalent terms in American and British English to confuse the ...ish and send it into retreat.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Inevitable in a story about word-lovers. Six takes particular pleasure in showing off his vocabulary.
  • Sound Effect Bleep: Used in story as a means to keep Peri and Bob from hearing ...ish
  • Virtual Ghost: The Doctor brings Osefa back as one of these to investigate her alleged suicide.