The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Professor Bernice Summerfield

"The next time you volunteer me for an undercover, counter-terrorism mission can you make sure it isn't happening several hundred metres below sea level?"

The fourth series of Professor Bernice Summerfield audio plays has been notable for reviving at least three long-forgotten monsters from Doctor Who, but it is also turning into the season of sequels. Trevor Baxendale's The Draconian Rage was a follow-up to The Dark Flame, the final play of the season The Axis Of Evil by Paul Cornell is a continuation of the story begun in the short story anthology Life During Wartime and likewise David Bailey's The Poison Seas finds Benny revisiting the planet Chosan - the setting for Big Finish's first wholly original audio play in the series The Secret Of Cassandra way back in 2000 where she found two warring factions locked in a brutal and unending conflict. Four years later since she helped bring peace to the planet, Benny is back covertly investigating a threat from resentful parties opposed to a recently established colony of Sea Devils. But, as usual, the true danger is yet to be revealed…

There is something particularly familiar about Bailey's script for The Poison Seas, as Benny's visit to the planet - ostensibly under the guise of visiting a friend - uncovers an ancient and unforeseen malevolent force waiting for its moment to strike. Aside from obvious parallels to the basic plot of his second Benny script, The Skymines Of Karthos, this type of storyline has become almost a convention of original Bernice Summerfield fiction throughout its different forms. Given that it does not try and break this standard, The Poison Seas lacks the ambition to break new ground or innovate but it still remains a success because of the style and verve with which it is done.

Benny's first scene establishes that she has been 'volunteered' by Braxiatel for an undercover mission to prevent Calabraxian terrorists from destroying the newly established Sea Devil colony, which immediately seizes the attention of the listener but the potentially intriguing prospect of Benny acting as a spy is soon dissipated by the fact that she starts telling everyone about her mission as soon as she arrives - including, rather troublesomely, the terrorist's inside reptile! But this no compromising approach is very symptomatic of the lightning fast pace of the script that in turn, thanks to the skilful momentum of the direction, makes the drama thrilling due to its relentlessness.

The Sea Devils appeared twice on television, with both stories revolving around attempts to take back Earth as their home. Rather than try and rework the same idea, Bailey opts to reverse the situation, with them being the interlopers on a newly established home and it is the old guard that are trying to oust them from their new home of Chosan. This idea of belonging is a key theme to the play, influencing all of the motivations of the characters. The Sea Devils want to find a home of their own and see the oceans of Chosan as a place they can live within but can they thrive there? Or is indeed good enough for them? The Calabraxian terrorists, represented almost entirely by a particularly vile character named Joanne Caver, believe that they should not have to have all these aquatic interlopers foisted upon them, as their planet should be theirs.

This is a sentiment that this time's ancient and powerful evil shares too but it applies it to the entire planet. While it is hard to get excited about ancient evils given how common they have become recently, Bailey puts an interesting spin on this one by tapping into the idea of the elementals. The Sea Devils have discovered that the water of Chosan contains a protein that is instigating an evolutionary change within them, altering them from who they are and by including this aspect, Bailey ensures that The Poison Seas - like other Earth Reptile stories before him - is concerned with the nature of evolution and how creatures must adapt to survive. The idea that the environment itself is actively seeking that change is certainly a novel one and when the elemental force of the water itself is revealed as the villain of the piece, it is a remarkably intriguing spin on what could have been just another dull ancient evil from beyond the dawn of time.

Benny sometimes seems a little detached here, but she is involved in all the important parts of the play and Bailey's script gives Lisa Bowerman plenty of microphone time that she uses to deliver another decent performance. Benny's natural sense of justice appears here as despite knowing exactly how involved Carver is with the terrorists, she takes it upon herself to taunt the young Calabraxian and test her resolve, which is like a red rag to the control freak Carver. This spikiness, which is well played by both actresses who really go for it against each other, makes the scenes between Benny and Caver great fun to hear as the good Professor manages to draw out some of Carver's background and how she came to choose a life of terrorism against the Sea Devils.

Bailey also includes a very defining scene for Benny where she launches into a philosophical diatribe about the nature of her life and how the home that she has built up around her on the Braxiatel Collection is worth fighting for. It's very well written and extremely well performed but it seems out of place because Nedda, whom Benny is addressing, doesn't especially need to be convinced about the importance of home and how it's something that should be protected as shown by her simple and understated reaction that they will stop the creature. It is almost as if Bailey, obviously aware of the theme and plotline of the following anthology/novel, had decided that Benny needed to show how strong her attachment was to her home before the safety of it is brutally shattered. A good idea in principle, but rather heavy-handedly done here as it needed a better justification for the inclusion of this self-important scene.

Carver's attitudes define her, as she believes that Chosan should be for the benefit of humanity only, overlooking the fact that they too were once newly arrived colonists. It's a credit to Jenny Livsey's superb performance that she can draw some degree of understanding out of this young girl who has been raised to fight and hate for years while the war on Chosan raged between her people and the Pevena, then forced on cessation of hostilities to embrace the people who had killed her parents and her friends with open arms. This is where the advantage of setting The Poison Seas in the same place as The Secret Of Cassandra really pays off because the listener is already familiar with the issues that Carver has been dealing with as we have experienced the conflict already. It's an interesting idea that if someone has been ingrained to hate and kill yet suddenly finds that the war they were prepared for gone, can they ever be normal again? Or will their hate find new - and innocent - targets? These questions are raised but not really answered by Bailey's script, leaving the listener to reflect upon the issues, as he's more concerned with keeping the speed at which the plot is developing going. This shows some of the limitations of the single-CD release format as often it means that stories cannot be explored as deeply as they might have been as there simply is not the time to do them justice and tell an exciting story simultaneously and Bailey unashamedly chooses the latter.

The cast is completed by its collection of Sea Devils. Led by Principal Lurnix, played by Ifan Huw Dafydd, the opening speech from this character at the beginning of the play disorientates the listener, preparing them for the forthcoming story as it talks about acceptance into the ocean and yet suddenly turns very nasty - foreshadowing the fact that Lurnix isn't everything he appears to be. Dafydd is persuasive as the leader who believes that his people are too good for their new home but where he really impresses is in his performance as the creature Lurnix becomes as he is mutated by the sea around him, which is towering and makes him one of the most memorable antagonists the Benny range has seen for quite some time. That said, there is one scene where Dafydd's presumably natural Welsh accent seeps into his performance quite noticeably for a line or two of dialogue which is quite distracting considering the nature of his part. Nicky Goldie takes on the role of Nedda and chooses to the play the role very delicately which works to an extent but does tend to make the Clinician seem rather, ahem, wet. What is interesting about the character of Nedda is her reaction to the death of one of her colleagues. While Benny is insistent that they need to move on, taking the death in her stride almost, Nedda gives ironically a very human reaction by worrying about what will happen to the people who had a relationship with the deceased, his partner and how she will cope. It is a surprising moment but effective at showing how unused to violent death these Sea Devils are and it also illustrates how despite her perception of the more immediate danger, Benny has become acclimatised and somewhat immune to the horror of death.

The raspy, hoarseness of the performance of the Sea Devils recreates them excellently, but the harshness of the modulation used to achieve the effect unfortunately has the consequence of sometimes making them rather unintelligible - particularly when there is significant background noise. Attentive listening can help to overcome this problem though, and given the amount of dialogue given to the Sea Devil characters close listening is almost a prerequisite anyway. Aside from this, David Darlington's postproduction work is of his usual high standard with the sound design and music both giving a layered sense of a closed, underwater environment for the colony base. One scene does stand out as being slightly underdeveloped though where the concealed Carver cries out "She knows!" in a very loud voice while Benny, Nedda and Lurnix continue talking as if nothing has happened. Darlington has overseen some very effective change of viewpoints through sound in the past (the early scene in Nekromanteia where Rom discretely observes Harlon and Cochrane springs to mind as perhaps the best example) and so it is a pity something similar was not tried here to cover up this slight oversight in the direction.

The Poison Seas is a very straightforward but exciting adventure that benefits from a fast-paced script that ensures the momentum builds steadily until the resolute conclusion. Despite the problems with the occasional incomprehensible Sea Devil dialogue, the actors convince in reviving Malcolm Hulke's creations and because of the more sympathetic viewpoint afforded to them by Bailey, this is arguably their best performed story as it plays against type. And with just enough subtext to keep things interesting without becoming dominant, The Poison Seas is an exhilarating and highly entertaining romp with enough twists on a familiar formula to make it a novel, if not particularly innovative, adventure.

And the deliciously cryptic message at the conclusion sets things up brilliantly for Life During Wartime…