The Revolution by: Nev Fountain directed by: Scott Handcock: Religion as Science

The Revolution stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Lisa Bowerman as Professor Bernice Summerfield.  It was written by Nev Fountain, directed by Scott Handcock, and released in June 2014 by Big Finish Productions in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: Volume One Box Set.

 

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.