Who Reviews Big Bang Generation by Tony J Fyler

Tony gets more bang for his buck.

The Twelfth Doctor meets up with Bernice Summerfield.

You need more?

Alright – take two Bernice Summerfields, a now version and a then version – or, depending entirely on your point of view in relation to the whole warp and weft of time and space of course, a then version and a now version. Both of them locked in a loop of cause, effect and dodging out of the way. And then add the Twelfth Doctor.

Big Bang Generation is what happens if you get Gary Russell, always a writer with a neat comic touch and an inherent wink, to throw Classic Who, New Who, the extended offshoot history of Benny Summerfield and every joyful piss-taking reference you can imagine into a blender, set it on high, and then get the apparently always awesome Lisa Bowerman to read it to you. Roll up, roll up, roll up, for time eddies, camp grasshoppers, dog-people, assassins in Stormcages, what happens when River Song's not where she's supposed to be, two or three Bennies for the price of one, a giant pyramid in Sydney Harbour where it’s most certainly not supposed to be, ancient aliens and bar-running hamster-folk.

If that sounds like it’s exhausting and you need to lie down, maybe Big Bang Generation’s not for you. If it sounds like a rollercoaster ride of ‘I must hear this now!’ then welcome – you’re in the right place.

There’s a sense in which this rich stew of ingredients, both serious and uproariously comical lends itself to another medium as much as, if not more than either prose or audio – you can distinctly imagine this story delivered as a comic strip or graphic novel, as Benny, whose last real experience of the Doctor was as a short, infuriatingly enigmatic, occasionally broody Scotsman, gets to re-encounter him as a tall, rangy, eyebrows-set-to-kill more viciously vocal Scotsman, as though someone’s fully inflated her version and made it cross. The imagery of an archeological dig on which she was never technically expected to be (Thank you, Professor Song!), but which has ghastly ideological underpinnings and a tag-along assassin with an interesting name, and which then goes irritatingly, time-knackeringly wrong feels like its natural home would have been in moody black and white artwork to counterpoint and highlight the comedy, but Gary Russell does an excellent job of weaving elements together to keep you guessing what the hell is going on, and Lisa Bowerman on reading duties is simply sublime, giving voice of course not only to Benny, but to the Twelfth Doctor and to the menagerie of people and creatures who make the story the busy, non-stop treasure-hunt it is.

There’s little of any particular angst or misery in this story, though it manages to treat some fairly serious story elements with their due weight while, for the most part, powering on with laughs studded along the way, both in the nature of the universe it inhabits – which, with the addition of Benny and her hamster pal Kerry becomes a little more wild and freewheeling than TV Who has been since the Graham Williams-Douglas Adams era – and the quick-witted banter than Benny always brings with her, the skewiff but realistic way she enjoys the ever-living hell out of life (and subsequently feels everything at elevated, hard-hitting levels too). This is a fun story, with lots of twanging about in time and space, Benny doing an Eliza Doolittle impression, occultish artefacts, Nazi archeologists and a Very Pompous Professor. As a result, it’s a fast listen in spite of its timey-wimey what-the-hellish story elements, that will make you smile far more than it punches you, and you’ll come out the other side of it looking for more and more from Benny, and the Twelfth Doctor, and actually, if at all possible, Benny and the Twelfth Doctor. Or Thirteenth, you won’t be fussy. More Benny in mainstream Who will be the thing you crave after Big Bang Generation. And that’s no bad thing to crave at all.