Bernice Summerfield is
the character who started Big Finish Productions long line of audio dramas, but
after her own solo series came to an end in December 2013, and when Big Finish
realized that they would be getting an influx of listeners due to the Fiftieth
Anniversary of Doctor Who, they called for a soft reboot of the range. They would keep the Box Set formula for the
range, but they would bring it back into Doctor Who territory by having Benny
share a box set of adventures with the Seventh Doctor and Ace confronting the
Daleks together for the first time. The
catch is that while the Doctor and Ace appear in the stories, it is Benny who
is the star of the show. In this regard
the box set opens strong with The Revolution
a comedy romp to introduce the conflict that Ace has gone missing and the
Doctor wants to send Benny to find her.
This however is only in the last five minutes while the preceding
fifty-five minutes concerns their attempted escape from Arviem II. It’s a comedy romp from Nev Fountain that
delivers on the promise of making these stories Bernice Summerfield adventures
featuring the Doctor and Ace.
The comedy romp isn’t Nev
Fountain’s best story by any means, but the dialogue does give Lisa Bowrman a
good outing. Her scenes near the
beginning in the bar are quite humorous and the story only improves from there,
giving us a quick little outing before the dramatic weight of the Box Set sets
in the next story. Fountain has a blast
writing the two principle side characters.
Doctor Geller played by Nicola Bryant, is one of Benny’s team who turns
into a zombie for no real reason other than wouldn’t that be cool. Bryant is having a good time in the role at
least, but nothing special really comes out of it except, zombies are cool I
guess. The villain, you could say is
Renk Van Magnastein, who is just an egotist with delusions of grandeur and is a
bit fun, but the twist of the story really feels forced. He’s still a very fun character in the
beginning of the novel while he is talking to Benny in the bar and we get a
good set up for a twist that only works on audio. The story really didn’t have an ending so the
twist is put in the story as a way to get things working. There are two comedy robots who are really
fun but other than that the story doesn’t have anything else for side
characters.
Sylvester McCoy however
is really bad here as he has to play comedy, so he plays it over the top. Fountain is trying to do a subversion of the
New Adventures tropes simply by calling them out, but not doing anything
interesting with them. It causes the
story to suffer and as McCoy is doing over the top, the Doctor feels like an
idiot in this story. The ideas behind
the story are religion versus science and that could have easily been done in a
comedic style but the Doctor is more concerned with his master plan instead of
having the debate. It isn’t funny and it
makes the middle of the audio drama fall exceedingly flat as we reach the
ending which is a set up for the rest of the set.
To summarize, The Revolution is not Nev Fountain’s
best story as it tries to be tongue and cheek comedy, but falls flat as it
doesn’t understand really what it’s trying to satirize. Benny is really good as always and she is
trying her best to keep the script together from its disparaging parts and is
successful. Around halfway through is
really wen everything falls apart as we get a whodunit explanation and nothing
of consequence really happens. McCoy is
over the top and Fountain is more interested in side characters than his main
cast. 70/100.
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