The Lights of Skaro by: Jams Goss directed by: Scott Handcock: Is It Some Thal Weapon?

The Lights of Skaro stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, Lisa Bowerman as Professor Bernice Summerfield, and Sophie Aldred as Ace.  It was written by James Goss, directed by Scott Handcock, and released in June 2015 by Big Finish Productions in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: Volume One Box Set.

 

I find it weird that The Lights of Skaro is counted as a different story.  It follows on directly from Guy Adams’s Random Ghosts, but is written by James Goss instead of Adams.  Goss apparently had the audio written first and Random Ghosts was written to flow nicely into The Lights of Skaro.  The story is again only an hour for a finale and for what it wants to do it has enough time as the plot is actually really simple.  So it turns out Ace had this little planet that she was allowed to watch over.  She did a good job looking over it, but then she went to her mother’s funeral and while she was away the planet was invaded by the Daleks.  In a fit of emotional rage, she goes back in between Genesis of the Daleks and The Daleks, puts Skaro into a time loop, and has caused the problems in the entire box set.  It’s up to Benny to put everything to rights which is really where the general plot ends and some of the deeper meanings begin.  As a plot it really is a back seat to these deeper meanings which I found a bit annoying as really it is generic and the twists you can really see coming a mile away.

 

The deep meaning of the story is about the Doctor, who is actually barely in this story, who due to his involvement in The Daleks is the main cause of the Daleks having to conquer.  He is responsible for all the deaths the Daleks caused which makes Good Night, Sweet Ladies an interesting example of Chekov’s gun for Benny.  She goes off on the Doctor for all its worth and it’s something that comes across very well on the audio as Lisa Bowerman is a great performer.  Her portrayal of Bernice Summerfield in this story is probably one of her best.  Benny has her emotional journey of the box set have to come full circle as she deals with her love affair with Klinus, who turns out to be a Kaled who became a Dalek.  She has to deal with the Daleks who are at the beginning and actually has a chance to save her mother, but she cannot bring herself to do it.  It’s catharsis for the character and is interesting to see her come fully to terms with her mother’s death, but it seems like an almost retread of Good Night, Sweet Ladies.

 

Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor actually stays in the background of the story for its majority.  Benny describes him as the worst Yoda ever.  It is a performance that does well at keeping the focus on Benny and when he does interfere it is for the confrontation, which of course is really all that he should do.  The same can be said for Ace as played by Sophie Aldred who actually disappears halfway through the story and comes back in near the end.  The script plays to Aldred’s strengths as an actress and she pulls herself through the story.  This doesn’t interfere and she could have been pulled out of the story after her explanation quite easily and without any real consequences for the quality of the story.  Goss’s writing is very strong, but he just isn’t interested in writing Ace into the story.

 

Goss is much more interested in writing the conflicts of the side characters as he uses Varna, a Kaled ghost who discovers the Daleks, and is horrified.  She thinks everything going on is all part of the Thal plan to destroy the world, and is tricked by Foster into repowering the Daleks.  The suggestion is that The Power of the Daleks is what is going to be coming next in the series and it’s a good idea as the scenes involving the Daleks are all very tense as it is possible that they don’t have to be awoken for the story to continue.

 

To summarize, The Lights of Skaro concludes the first set of The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield in a great way.  The story is definitely not as good as Random Ghosts, but still manages to keep up the quality of the set with an engaging story that retreads a bit of material that doesn’t have a lot to flesh out.  The acting is great if Ace is still sidelined for most of the story and really didn’t have to be there to keep the story moving.  Benny is still great in the story and the box is well worth your time.  90/100

Bad Therapy by: Matthew Jones: Hell Hath No Fury of a Peri Scorned

Having Roz die in So Vile a Sin left it up to the next author to deal with the aftermath for the characters.  This is a bit of a risky move considering the track record with death of companions in Doctor Who.  The original companion deaths of Katarina and Sara Kingdom in The Daleks’ Master Plan were handled very well especially for the era as the Doctor at least let it sink in for Katarina and The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve is a story with the main purpose of character catharsis.  The next death is in Earthshock but in Time-Flight the death is roughed off quickly to get on which is awful.  The final death of a companion was in Mindwarp which didn’t really have time afterward to reflect.  Bad Therapy is a novel that has to follow a sketchy track record and is from a first time Doctor Who author in Matthew Jones.  This has all the makings of a failure to show the gravitas of the death of a companion, yet Jones writes a story around the grieving period of the Doctor and Chris because of Roz’s death.

 

The novel sees the Doctor and Chris go to 1950s London where at a mental asylum a Professor Moriah has failed experiments of sentient mannequins, made of genetically altered human flesh, becoming therapists as a way to get his dead wife back, adapting themselves to what patients require to heal.  There is a sinister empty black cab prowling the streets and eating people, the Doctor is off to help a young man go through the grief of losing his partner, Chris is hooking up with a woman at a bar, and Peri Brown makes her way back to Earth to discover what happened to the first king of Kron’Tep. Yeah this novel juggles quite a bit in terms of plot and easily could have fallen flat if Jones wasn’t able to find a good balance between the many plotlines.  Jones however actually manages to accomplish it as the novel serves as a catharsis for the death of Roz.

 

Chris has the most outward reaction to Roz’s death as from the get go of the novel he is trying to bottle up his feelings, until the Doctor manipulates him into going to a bar.  The bar run by Tilda “Mother” Jupp, is where he meets Patsy, a woman looking for love after the death of her husband.  They form a connection because of how compatible they are, but as Chris isn’t allowed to be happy they get torn apart by the end of the novel.  It’s because of the way they’re torn apart that Chris is allowed to move forward from Roz’s death which comes across well.  Jones writes Chris as emotionally damaged and in denial about his feelings for Roz as they didn’t get their happily ever after moment.  Patsy is also an interesting character as the way Jones writes her may feel annoying, but it is purposefully so as to leave hints to the big twist at the end of the novel which really does feel really good.  Tilda Jupp is also a character who while holding a lot of the dramatic weight in the novel, has a lot of funny moments and things that makes her feel like comic relief.  She’s essentially a diva in charge of a little cabaret, surrounded by friends, getting drunk, and caring for people.  She’s got the best bits of the book which really helps sell the story to the audience as you can believe this woman is holding a little club with parties every night for people.

 

The Doctor gets his own little plotline to follow as he does a lot of the investigating and with that we actually get to see him emote.  While the Doctor was emotionally attached to Benny, Roz was his equal and now to deal with it he is getting his nose dirty without having a plan.  He gets wrapped up with gangsters who have been threatening closeted gay Jack Bartlett and of course the Doctor cannot stand for this.  He sees the injustice that they are blackmailing him with, a grainy photo that could easily be explained away as a misunderstanding, and decides for himself that he’s got to put a stop to it.  He also gets slapped by Peri, which is the first real time he has been held accountable for the fate of one of his companions.  Peri has had a very bad marriage and waited for the Doctor to come rescue him, but no he was too busy becoming Time’s Champion to even care what happened to Peri.  While the time travel nonsense involved in Peri’s fate makes there be several versions of the character, this one is hardened and ready for action, but her fate in the novel is best left up to the reader to discover.  I’ll say no more except that Peri does cause the only problem in the novel as she gets several interludes that really don’t go anywhere interesting and Jones tries to keep us in mystery, but the mystery really doesn’t work when he credits her as Queen Gilliam.  You know Gilliam as in Perpigillium Brown.  Yeah it’s an obvious shortening of Peri’s full name and the mystery is given up right on the first page.

 

To summarize, Bad Therapy is only bad for the villains of the story as it provides therapy for its characters all through a story that feels like Classic Doctor Who.  Matthew Jones does a great job writing this novel and should be commended for putting so much into it and getting such a good story out the first time around.  The characters are interesting, the ideas are puzzling, and there isn’t really a wasted page apart from the weird mystery around Peri and her fate which doesn’t work.  Now we can get to the ending of the New Adventures and of course see where the Doctor can possibly go from here.  90/100

The Plotters by: Gareth Roberts: Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

So Gareth Roberts basically just took The Romans and transplanted it to the backdrop of the Gunpowder Plot, adding in elements from The Crusade to sweeten the pot.  This should make me furious, but really I cannot feel angry as The Plotters is a novel that somehow captures the era of television, but could never be done on television.  Sure the sets would be very easy to pull off as it is a historical adventure, and the story is very dialogue heavy, but Roberts would probably be charged with treason as his story doesn’t exactly paint King James I in the best of lights.  Now I’m not really an expert on British History.  I’ve taken a European History course, but that really didn’t go into too much depth on the reign of King James, so I’m not sure how well he’s portrayed in the novel, but Roberts writes him as a gay man child.  James actually develops a sexual attraction for Vicki, whom he thinks is a boy, and Vicki has to avoid his advances while the Doctor is mischievously working to see the outcome of the Gunpowder Plot.  He’s at least a good character for the most part and the flamboyancy of his homosexuality is way too over the top in places.

 

Yes this story splits up the main cast into three main groups.  Barbara is captured by a Spaniard and taken to the lair of the titular plotters, Ian is searching for Barbara with a pair of comedy cobblers, and the Doctor and Vicki go to King James’s court to look on the translation of the Bible into English.  They’re all plots that Roberts has to juggle in between and he does an excellent job on that front of things.  He’s obviously having the most fun from the Doctor and Vicki whom he characterizes as mischievous schoolchildren.  The Doctor tricks Vicki into dressing up as a boy because why not.  He thinks it will be funny and allow her to be passed off as his ward Victor while he is a priest of all professions.  Really, the Doctor as a priest, that really would never work.  It of course attracts the attention of King James who falls for it and falls head over heels for her, which is a bit creepy in places, but still a bit funny.  The Doctor also has to take a stance on religious arguments which is just hilarious as he uses circular reasoning and avoids the questions like the plague.  Also he misquotes the Bible which I find quite humorous, as it feels like a classic Hartnell fluff that would have happened on television.

 

The plotline with Barbara is much simpler as it’s the basis for the background of the Gunpowder Plot.  She meets Guy Fawkes, and while of course realizing her love for Ian, she can’t help but feel a bit attracted to Fawkes after he is the one to be a gentleman to her after everyone treats her horribly.  Barbara is written not as a screaming wreck, but someone who is at least good in a crisis which helps in the believability of her character as she has to fend for herself in the novel.  Ian’s plotline, if you will excuse these plot related puns as Gareth Roberts started them, is the weakest of the three as while the comedy cobblers are good characters and examples of how diverse early England was, there really isn’t much to say about them.  The villains of the story, Robert Catesby and Hay the Spaniard are both good however as they feel like villains of old fashioned political drama.  Of course everything is written in a completely irreverent way for just about everything in the novel.

 

To summarize, The Plotters manages of course to be historically inaccurate and overall a comedy romp, but it emulates an era from the television program to an almost perfect tee as you have characters who feel as if they came from that era.  The Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki all get great characterization in the novel and King James while a bit irreverent in just about every way for the monarch is very enjoyable.  Don’t read however if you want historical accuracy.  90/100.

Random Ghosts by: Guy Adams directed by: Scott Handcock: A Life in Pictures

Random Ghosts stars Lisa Bowerman as Professor Bernice Summerfield and Sophie Aldred as Ace.  It was written by Guy Adams, directed by Scott Handcock, and released in June 2014 by Big Finish Productions in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: Volume One Box Set.

 

Telling a story out of order and through flashbacks where you can call into question just what happened in the story, is always a risk as the story could become convoluted completely or turn out to be brilliant.  Guy Adams’s Random Ghosts does this style of storytelling doing something close to found-footage on audio drama as the characters are on a planet which wipes everyone’s memory after twenty-four hours.  This allows Adams to write a mystery with a frantic pace as the listener has to attempt to keep track of everything while the characters choose to forget certain events could even have occurred.  Characters have affairs, the end is a twist, and the entire story is a comment on how people get attached to fictional characters in a twisted way and how they obsess over them.  They’re only people whom we see snippets of their lives and we feel as if we know exactly what they’re going through.  It’s an interesting idea to be sure and the short run time actually allows the comment to sink in as you listen and you deal with the characters changing personalities.

 

The planet is actually Skaro of course as this is a Dalek story, but Adams’s writing keeps you guessing through the story.  You want to figure out the mystery, why Ace is so determined to stay away from the city, what is with the expedition, why would the Doctor send Ace here of all places.  These questions are of course asked, but this is merely a lead in to the finale of the set, but on its own it still manages to be another emotional roller coaster.  Now Doc Oho aka Joe Ford often complains of Sophie Aldred’s acting style as she doesn’t really do well on audio.  I’ve never really seen that and I could use this story as an example as to how good Sophie Aldred is and how well she embodies Ace as a character.  She goes through Ace’s sadness and anger which is captured perfectly in the script, she becomes manipulative and deceitful, and does it all with a bit of humor that makes you realize that we’re dealing with a much older Ace.  She’s made it to the Time Lord Academy and it shows.  Aldred has a blast with the role and is really good in this section of the story.  I think it helps that the Doctor is nowhere to be found in this audio.

 

There are a couple supporting characters in this story as part of the expedition team who all work together to make the story work as a full plotline.  With the frantic and choppy style of the audio you see relationships change from happy, to sad, back to happy and then to the destruction of everything they held dear to them.  Klinus played by Matthew Gravelle, is a special case as he is one of the ghosts which is revealed in a twist while falling in love with Benny and toying with everyone’s emotions.  Could I forget how Benny is portrayed in this story?  Lisa Bowerman as Benny actually gets to have a lot to do as we start with her in media res which really makes the hour long story feel like a snippet in something that has taken much longer than we could ever really know.

 

To summarize, Random Ghosts is another piece of emotional turmoil from The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield Box Set to bring us close to the tense conclusion.  The acting is perfect, the direction and writing both are effective, and of course the way the story is told makes everything feel a mix of unique and familiar to really bring home the messages the story is trying to tell.  Bowerman and Aldred make a perfect team as companions and strengthen their character dynamics better than any novel ever could and having them without the Doctor has been a stroke of genius for the novel.  100/100.

Good Night, Sweet Ladies by: Una McCormack directed by: Scott Handcock: Hello Mother

Good Night, Sweet Ladies stars Lisa Bowerman as Professor Bernice Summerfield.  It was written by Una McCormack, directed by Scott Handcock, and released in June 2014 by Big Finish Productions in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: Volume One Box Set.

 

From the comedy romp that was The Revolution, Benny is thrown onto the Moon of Adolin where she has to make it through a maze before she can get the next clue to Ace’s location.  On the moon there is a crashed ship with two survivors and a Dalek there to cause trouble for her.  The plot of the second installment of the box set is nothing special on the surface, but it is the twist that really does drive the story home for what it means to Benny as a character.  The story’s two side characters are the nervous Steven and the headstrong Claire played by John Finnamore and Sheila Reid respectively.  Steven is really the only part of the story that doesn’t work as he just is there for comic relief and to have someone else to talk to as the story could have easily worked as a two hander.

 

McCormack puts Benny through the wringer in this story as she reveals that Claire is the ghost of Claire Summerfield, aged to her proper age, and sent there to test Benny.  Claire died trying to retrieve her daughter’s doll and was vaporized by the Daleks and bringing her back into Benny’s life causes a cavalcade of emotions to come to Benny all in one instant.  The scenes between mother and daughter are both especially touching as they have to reunite only to be torn apart at the end of the story.  It provides the same closure as Return of the Living Dad did for Benny, but with much more of an impact as they never really would have been together.  Lisa Bowerman pulls it off brilliantly in the audio as she brings the audience right into the emotions that Benny would be feeling when she meets her dead mother for the first time.  It also marks a change as the tone which until the twist has a sarcastic feel as Benny is cracking jokes at the expense of everyone while Steven freaks out and Claire just sort of looks on, and turns into something intimate.  Sheila Reid steals the show as Claire Summerfield as we really can feel for the fact that she lost her daughter and would be proud of the woman she has become.

 

The direction from Scott Handcock has to be mentioned at the very least as it allows the hour long story to go by with ease.  Handcock makes the dialogue feel very intimate as you are there with the characters playing off the base under siege feeling with a lone Dalek, which is really there because they are supposed to be the main villains of the set.  McCormack shows just how well she understands these characters which is a definite plus as the story could have easily failed.  The final scenes will bring you to tears as you see Benny at the end of her rope.

 

To summarize, Good Night, Sweet Ladies is a definite improvement over The Revolution.  It is a masterpiece that is brought down by some excessive elements and the fact that it could be its own little story.  The acting and direction are both great from the rather small cast and it really does allow for something to change within the characters.  This is a story that makes the purchase of the entire set worth it and makes up for any lackluster beginning.  95/100.

 

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.

 

So Vile a Sin by: Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman: Death at the House of Forrester

1996 brought the Eighth Doctor Paul McGann to Doctor Who, but as the plans for a television series fell through, the BBC decided to take back the license to the Doctor Who range of novels from Virgin books.  Virgin finished publishing stories with The Dying Days, a New Adventure to feature the Eighth Doctor and introduce the Bernice Summerfield range of novels, but that wasn’t the last one published.  So Vile a Sin by Ben Aaronovitch sadly had publishing delays after a hard drive crash lost much of the original manuscript.  The novel was handed over to Kate Orman to finish as she and Aaronovitch were good friends.  Off the bat this does cause problems with the novel as some of it feels like an Orman novel and some of it feels like an Aaronovitch novel.  This was always going to happen and it interferes much less than you might think as the two writers have very similar visions for the novel.  The actual plot is very convoluted through the two writers, but from what can be gathered the N-Forms are being used through psychic powers by the Brotherhood to show all the alternate futures that are possible.  It makes sections of the novel feel very surreal to read which is done really well throughout the book.

 

So Vile a Sin is a novel about war.  It presents just how horrible the Brotherhood are, how they are connected to the Forrester family, and how Roz Forrester loses her life saving the universe.  Yes this is the end of Roz and much like the end of Earthshock, we don’t see Roz actually die.  There’s the final charge and you know, she is gone and the Doctor cannot get her back.  The final fifty pages or so of the novel deal with the aftermath unlike Time-Flight.  Benny is called in and we get diary entries about what happened.  Chris loses it as he’s lost his best friend and the Doctor doesn’t know how to react to everything going on around him, going so far into depression that Kadiatu Lethebridge-Stewart has to snap him out of it.  Benny tries to cope while Jason is there to help her through it.  Roz’s family is an interesting beast as they of course are sad, but had her genetic material cloned into a sort of niece who in the story serves as sort of a legacy to the dead companion.

 

The novel is a very serious affair, but Aaronovitch and Orman bring in characters from SLEEPY and Transit to lighten the mood somewhat which is at least humorous, if it really doesn’t serve much of a purpose except to give some light onto those characters.  Really this story is about Roz growing up completely to face the consequences of her actions and her family which is done really well as Orman is excellent at writing character drama.  The conflict is caused by the Empress of the Earth Empire who is a slave to a computer and a puppet to the Brotherhood.  The war has just as many instances of horror as Just War.  We are introduced to Leabie Forrester, Roz’s sister whom she doesn’t get along well with.  Roz has always been presented as a rebel but in the novel we see just how much of a rebel she actually is with her family as they wished her to become a priestess, but she became an Adjudicator instead.  It’s an interesting way of doing a character arc as you have Roz who is a strong character, but her sister is even more interesting.  Leabie is just as difficult as the Doctor when it comes to master plans as she has her own ambitions as she is an aristocrat.

 

To summarize, So Vile a Sin is a very good book with most of its problems coming down to the fact there are two very different writers attempting to write the same story.  The plot is very scattered and the arc really doesn’t get a conclusion, but we do get to say goodbye to a great companion.  I’m still very glad this novel was able to be published and I can recommend it for these reasons but it is only worth 70/100.