Monday, November 21, 2016

The Vault of Osiris by: Justin Richards directed by: Scott Handcock: Benny Summerfield, Sutekh Worshipper

The Vault of Osiris stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, Lisa Bowerman as Professor Bernice Summerfield, and Sophie Aldred as Ace.  It was written by Justin Richards, directed by Scott Handcock, and released in June 2015 by Big Finish Productions in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: Volume Two: The Triumph of Sutekh box set.

 

This set seems to have a problem with billing people who have nothing to do with a story on the front cover of the CD.  For The Pyramid of Sutekh it was Sophie Aldred, while for The Vault of Osiris it is Sylvester McCoy.  The Doctor, in true New Adventures style, is only heard in one flashback, explaining how Ace got hold of the TARDIS and how he is being the mastermind behind this part of the set, but other than that he doesn’t appear.  His presence is felt however which keeps the story on track, but it gets along without him really.  Justin Richards pens this story and to be honest it is one of his best works for the series.  Richards is a writer who has always suffered from writing generic Doctor Who stories, but for The Vault of Osiris he is writing not for Doctor Who, but for Bernice Summerfield and it shows.  Benny and Ace are the ones leading the story’s development which makes it feel like something that could have been published in the 1990s for the Virgin New Adventures line.

 

Richards has Benny and Ace spend the story bickering, but unlike a lot of the New Adventures, the bickering is done to be very friendly.  It’s more of a back and forth as they make their way through an espionage tale involving recovering the Eye of Horus from Egypt on Earth in 2015 after it was stolen by the Nazi’s during World War II.  Lisa Bowerman and Sophie Aldred really steal the show as they have some great cracks at each other which makes them feel like they are sisters that haven’t seen each other in a very long time and are trying to catch up over old times.  The scenes that stick out are the ones involving Ace Symmetrical the security guard and has Benny in the role of an actual professor for once in her career.  The story like the one before it is still a runaround with characters leading up to the big twist, this time that the Osirian Isis is behind all this and working for Horus to get Sutekh captured again in his tomb.  She is the one controlling the mummies in the story and leading Benny and Ace into the Vault.  It’s really a very fun story in the run of things with the villains being almost pastiches of cultists.  They are all worshippers of Sutekh which is something that really has a lot of potential as in today’s world we have people that worship ancient gods that couldn’t possibly exist in the real world.  Benny actually gets to play the one to seduce the villain and get some of the glory of the story.  The other characters in the story are actually portrayed by Nicholas Briggs and Guy Adams which helps save on paying out different actors.  Briggs we all know is a good actor and his Vasha is a good character who gets a very sticky end by the mummies who want them dead.  Guy Adams is actually a pretty good actor giving us a good villain for the story which at least allows us to have some fun with the acting for a lot of death in the story.  The body count really does help a lot of things work in the story as you get comedy, but you really feel the dread even if Gabriel Woolf is absent for this installment.

 

To summarize, The Vault of Osiris is a good little runaround story with very few flaws in it to be seen.  It allows us a really good look at a lot of the danger and the people who worship Sutekh which is a really good idea.  It is light hearted but manages to keep the tensions running high for the story to really work around some of the shot run time problems.  90/100

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