The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Professor Bernice Summerfield

"Ah, the indefatigable Profesor Bernice Summerfield. Asking awkward questions until the end..."

There's something symbolic about the union of the Professor Bernice Summerfield audios and the UNIT series on the latest Doctor Who Magazine free CD as it represents both Big Finish's oldest range and its newest. As Adrian Salmon's splendid cover shows, the common denominator for these plays is the return of an old monster. While the inclusion of Silurians in The Coup proves an unexpected treat because of their context, the appearance of the Cybermen in Colin Brake's Benny short Silver Lining proves more disappointing. It's just the latest in a long line of plays (which stretches back to 2002's The Dance Of The Dead) to repeatedly pit the former holder of the Edward Watkinson chair of archaeology against an old Doctor Who monster and this play shows that these encounters are becoming increasingly passé.

With the recent resurgence in publishing Benny books, Big Finish's audio series is looking progressively ever more marginalised with stories tending towards the formulaic and lacking importance. Most of them revolve around Benny asked to investigate a remote situation due to her position as a notorious archaeological authority rather than focus upon her relationship with the large cast of supporting characters Big Finish has afforded her, which seems to be the preserve of the written word. In a way this harks back to the style of adventures that Benny had when she first went solo back in 1997, but given how the fictional fabric surrounding the character has moved on considerably since then, it seems a squandered opportunity to develop Benny both in print and in drama. Without that, the audio plays here feel like little more than filler material until the next collection of stories can move Benny's story along again in a different direction. Silver Lining is a perfect example of this. Given that the play is free with a magazine, it's targeted obviously at new listeners, but its slavish commitment to the formula by having Benny called in to investigate a recently unearthed entrance to a tomb on the remote planet of Tysir IV makes it feel very familiar and ultimately very predictable.

This is Brake's first foray into the audio related worlds of Doctor Who following two novels for the BBC (it won't be his last either as he's written next year's Doctor Who audio play Three's A Crowd) but the biggest problem with his script here is a lack of substance. As with Jacqueline Rayner's The Grel Escape, this is a Benny story that is highly reminiscent of a 1960's Doctor Who story and while this is not as direct homage as Rayner's comedy take on The Chase, the parallels between Silver Lining and The Tomb Of The Cybermen are all too clear. And there simply isn't enough of Silver Lining to make it distinct in its own right.

With essentially only two characters for each phase of the story, there's little intrigue generated as it's either Benny and her employer, or Benny and a Cyberman, and all it's really concerned with is getting Benny into the tomb and then getting her out again. When the solitary Cybermen does appear, Brake never really captures the spirit of the creatures that well nor does he exploit the potentially interesting idea of an enforced alliance between it and Benny which would have improved this story no end had it been the main focus of the plot rather than something dealt with off hand in the last ten minutes.

Lisa Bowerman's performance is as lively as you'd expect which ensures that Benny is always eminently listenable, even in an unsatisfying sketchy plot such as this. Nicholas Briggs takes on the dual role of Benny's employer Lynton Jellis and the Cyberman, and ensures the former seems rather inconspicuous and irritating which suits the script as it makes his villainous turn seem more surprising than it might have been. The attempt at satire behind his motivation is rather clumsy and out of place given it comes out of nowhere with no attempt to build up to it.

On a dramatic level, Silver Lining has nothing to distinguish it as it offers nothing new and is instantly forgettable. But if part of the purpose of these DWM freebies is to introduce these audio series to a wider audience, then it is more successful as it is a very straightforward story that is extremely representative of the recent offerings from Big Finish in the Professor Bernice Summerfield range. In the wider context of the series though, the fact that Silver Lining seems so formulaic and banal highlights the need for reinvention within the audio line at least if it is to revive its flagging fortunes. Old Doctor Who monsters, both famous and obscure, may sell well but a more varied mix of originality blended in with the nostalgia would be far more satisfying than the gluttonous feast of indulgence these Benny plays have become.