Braxiatel 101

(Alternate titles for this post: Braxiatel: The Owner's Manual; The Complete Idiot's Guide to Irving Braxiatel; The Care And Feeding of Your Braxiatel; Braxiatel for Dummies.)

The problem with fangirling an obscure tertiary supporting character is that only a handful of other people know who you're talking about.  Which obviously makes your wee corner of fandom that much more exclusive and fabulous, but you run the risk of boring and oppressing everyone else.  So this is a post to explain the who, what, when and why of Braxiatel, and just why the hell I like him so much.  It comes complete with audio clips!  Which are uploaded to my box.net, so you can just stream them instead of downloading and stuff.  Used, obviously, purely for demonstrating awesomeness and why you should buy Big Finish audios and stuff.

Anyway.

Just Who Is This Braxiatel Person Anyway?

Braxiatel, who claims the human monicker "Irving" for reasons best known to the Virgin writers, is a Time Lord.  Like the Doctor, he is interested in aliens; unlike the Doctor, he's more concerned with saving their cultural artefacts than the actual people.  He turns up in various spin-off media, and is usually portrayed as a shadowy, semi-ambiguous figure with fingers in many pies and agendas of his own.  He has particular ties to the Doctor, Romana, and Bernice Summerfield.

Also, he is like Chuck Norris, in a way.  ( The rest of his post has spoilers for the Benny Summerfield and Gallifrey series, among others. )