‘Ugh, it’s like a lazy Susan with you
lot these days. Which one are you?’
‘Oh you’re fun. Which one am I? The
wrong one.’
Tony’s not where he expected to be.
Big Finish has always
created Doctor Who stories for existing fans of the show, rather than the new
young audience that’s key to the success of the TV version.
The third Benny new
adventures box set takes place in a space and time defined by the power of
fandom squared, pairing a character who came to life in a Virgin New Adventures
novel and Big Finish audios with a Doctor who exists solely in a separate audio
universe, entirely conjured up to play with hypothetical scenarios contrary to
the TV version of Doctor Who.
What do you need to know?
Well, first, it’s Bernice Summerfield, played by Lisa Bowerman, so there’ll be
fizz and snap, realism, banter and a craving for shiny things, all given a
signature spin by Bowerman that keeps the listener moving forward while keeping
them engaged, waiting for the next thing out of Benny’s mouth. More than Paul
Cornell’s original, it’s the power of Bowerman’s performance that means we’re
still getting Bernice Summerfield releases in 2016. While Bowerman’s
Summerfield is in the universe – any universe – there’s joy, there’s
compassion, there’s fun, there’s glorious crossness and there’s by no means
being born yesterday. More from Bowerman’s Benny is always a good thing, so we
should probably stop writing now and you should go away and get it, and treat
your lugholes to four hours they’ll thank you for.
Alright, fine, you want
more than Bowerman’s Benny? This time out she’s not just in the Unbound
Universe, she’s in the chunk of it ruled by David ‘Makes Everything Three Times
Better Just By Turning Up’ Warner, as an alternative Third Doctor. He appeared
in two of the Unbound stories, Sympathy For The Devil and Masters of War, as
‘The Cautious Doctor.’ This box set explores what happens when a cautious
Doctor meets the irrepressible enthusiasm and clout of Bernice Summerfield. The
Unbound Universe is never going to be the same again.
There’s a blend of Classic
and New Who in the four stories of this set – each of them is technically an
alternative take on a Classic story, but you’ll be forgiven for spotting
similarities to New Who stories too. We won’t spoil the game for you here,
because the box set is not about the riffs on previous stories. They’re just
there for your Easter Egg enjoyment.
James Goss kicks us off
with The Library In The Body, giving us an uncomplicated pre-credits whisk of
Benny into the Unbound Universe and a story set in the last library in
creation. The universe is dying and the only currency is knowledge, so
naturally enough, anyone left alive flocks there, including some number-singing
space nuns (who come complete with space guns and fixations with a long-dead
party saint and cups of tea), led by their Mother Superior, played by another
‘Makes Everything Better’ actress, Rowena Cooper. Other Librarygoers include
the last Cyborg-King, the cleverest man in the universe (no, apparently, not
the Doctor), played by Guy Adams, annnnnd oh yes, a race called the Kareem who
believe knowledge is the root of all evil.
It’s fairly safe to say
they aim to misbehave.
When people start dying,
it’s a race to find out who’s killing whom and why, and by the end of the
story, what seemed senseless and creepy is rendered sensible. Still creepy, but
sensible. It’s Benny who works it out in this story, again underlining her
power and her personality, and what’s more, under her influence, the Cautious
Doctor begins to engage with his universe-saving instincts more than ever
before – he begins to become more like the Doctors our Benny is used to, across
a story that’s as mad as anything that ever happened on Peladon, but with that
special Benny banter to power it on.
‘The planetary equivalent of cabbage. Of
course we should go there.’
Planet X, written by Guy
Adams, is a more ‘Let’s go somewhere and have adventures’ story, the Tardis
showing just three planets it can reach, and Benny insisting on her choice –
Planet X, which the Doctor claims will probably kill them with sheer boredom.
Adams takes a couple of
premises – the mid-70s disappointment at boring subsidiary species of the week
(*cough, cough, Exxilons, cough) and something distinctly Seventh Doctorish
included – and extends them to their logical conclusion. Planet X is officially
the Planet of the Dull People, whether the people want it to be or not. It’s a
standard ‘dictatorship for the good of the people,’ but there’s lots of extra
bite in the way the situation on Planet X is maintained. While the Doctor
busies himself threatening the planet’s Prime Minister and being just a little
bit tortured, Bernice finds herself thrust into the role of protector of the
scared and the innocently interesting, helping at least one of the planet’s
little people to escape the greyness of its regime. Here the action feels more
equally distributed, Warner channelling some Capaldi scorn into his Doctor, and
Bowerman showing us Benny as the favourite aunt of the helpless, who leads them
into trouble, but then protects them all the way through to the other side.
There’s an altogether obvious note about Adams’ script, a sense of ‘why has no
one thought of this before?’ that brings a certain horrifying inevitability to
the action, but Planet X is one you won’t forget in a hurry – its premise and
its grimness, swirled through with comedy, won’t let you.
‘There’s
no time to lose. Summerfield, follow that unicorn!’
The Very Dark Thing, by
Una McCormack, is where things get extremely funny, and simultaneously,
extremely…erm…well, dark. It’s important to understand that there has been a
vast and terrible war in the Unbound Universe – not a Time War, because the
Daleks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be in this universe, but a Reality War,
between a vast and powerful empire and essentially everyone else. There are
dark and terrible weapons in a war like that, and one of them was used on
Tramatz, heart of the vast and powerful empire. It’s had cataclysmic
consequences across the universe, but here on Tramatz, everyone’s away with the
fairies – and whatever you do, you shouldn’t joke about the unicorns. Warhammer
meets My Little Pony, McCormack’s script is trippy, but it’s also, in the best
Who traditions, a dark satire on the willingness of humans to be distracted
from the terrible things they’ve done by any available fairy tale. Even this
Doctor, himself no stranger to terrible things, is lulled into the illusions of
Tramatz, leaving Benny to get volcano-cross, snap him out of it and again to
lead the innocent to the end of the world they know to find a better tomorrow.
Ultimately, it’s Benny’s
actions, and those of her charge, Megatz (played with heartbreaking innocence
by Kerry Gooderson), that bring peace and a kind of pricy resolution after a
devastating war.
‘That’s religion for you; it’s not all
singing psalms and turning the other cheek.’
The set is brought to a
suitably grandiose conclusion with Emporium At The End, written by Emma Reeves.
It’s the end of everything and the Emporium at the End Of The Universe is
offering everything you could wish for – including a ticket out of the
universe.
But there’s a price. A
price that could make you forget the things you never should. Memory for
survival – which would you choose?
Bringing the welcome
return of Sam Kisgart (ahem), starring here as The Manager, Emporium At The End
is a romp, with gorgeously over-the-top schemes, cybernetic sub-plots, heartbreak,
a little seduction, much wine, the return of the singing nuns of St Beedlix and
some top-form dastardliness, but more than any of that, there’s a defining
moment for the Cautious Doctor – a moment that helps explain at least some of
why he is the way he is, and what his life has cost him. What there isn’t is
any distinct resolution. Benny ends the box set still in the Unbound Universe,
still with the Warner Doctor. The extras (you’re going to want to listen to all
of the extras) make it clear that the go-ahead’s been given for more Benny
stories in the Unbound Universe, but that the next set will be very different.
Perhaps it will give some of the other Unbound Doctors a chance to experience
the Bernice Summerfield magic for themselves.
Volume 3 combines the
brilliance of Benny with the bonkersness of the Unbound Universe, but played
for drama, so the threats matter, the people’s lives are hard and the evil
goatee-wearing gits are bluntly cynical.
Bernice Summerfield can
make a difference to worlds like that – whichever universe they’re in.
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