Doctor Who: How the Doctor Changed My Life by Simon Guerrier (ed.)

When Big Finish's license to produce prose Short Trips anthologies ended, they did a big sale to get rid of their remaining stock before they would be unable to sell it. I snapped up the ones that sounded interesting to me but had never gotten around to; over fifteen years later, I've finally read the last of that lot.

I went into How the Doctor Changed My Life feeling a bit nervous; over the past couple years, I've read three Short Trips anthologies and, to be honest, found my enjoyment of each fairly limited. On top of that, I knew the book was the result of a fan writing contest; Big Finish had originally reserved one spot in Short Trips: Defining Patterns for a previously unpublished writer, but had gotten so many good entries that they'd published twenty-five runners-up in their own volume. But if the three volumes of Short Trips by professional writers I'd read had been mediocre, what did I have to anticipate from a volume by people who'd never been professionally published?

Well, to my delight, the book not only defied my low expectations, but it turned out to be one of the very best Short Trips volumes I can remember reading. Surely it at least partially benefits from the fact there are so many stories here: with twenty-five stories in 184 pages, that means they average six-to-seven pages in length. So the good ones are punchy, and the bad ones are mercifully short! (Not that, however, there were honestly very many bad ones.) Additionally, the book very much benefits from the theme, which you can see right in the title: the stories had to be about the Doctor changing someone's life. This encourages perspectives from characters who are not the Doctor and his companions, and telling stories about key significant moments in those characters' lives, which plays to the strengths of the medium of the short story—no one here makes the mistake a lot of first-time Doctor Who short story writers do, and tries to cram a four-part 1970s-style serial into 6½ pages.

Doctor Who: Short Trips #26: How The Doctor Changed My Life
edited by Simon Guerrier

Published: 2008
Acquired: May 2009
Read: October 2025

I enjoyed a lot of these, as I said, so here I'll just try to gloss some of the ones I particularly liked and why.

Many of the stories focus on ordinary people who encounter the Doctor and find some kind of courage within in themselves, a trope that I think probably owes something to the original Russell T Davies television era (which this book came out during), but is here imported back into "classic" Doctor Who (at the time this was published, Big Finish's license only went up to the 1996 tv movie). It's a trope that works well, especially when it leans into one of my favorite things about the Doctor Who format, the juxtaposition of the fantastic with the mundane. Ones along these lines I particularly liked included "Change Management" by Simon Moore:

Fair enough, it would be bad for the economy if the Flux Beast was allowed to devour the tourist worlds, but there must be a better way of containing the Beast than trapping it in space and feeding it lots of poor people. Pip had been going to complain, but when the guy sitting next to him got vaporised while raising similar concerns, he decided to keep his head down. He would definitely do something about it if he ever got into management.

Along these lines, I also really liked "The Shopping Trolleys of Doom" by Caleb Woodbridge, where the Doctor intervenes when shopping carts begin attacking people; "The Man on the Phone" by Mark Smith, told from the perspective of someone working in a call center selling mediocre kitchens who accidentally dials the TARDIS; and "£436" by Nick May, about a cab driver who drives the Doctor and Peri around as they fight off an alien invasion.

(In one story, this even kind of happens without the Doctor turning up; in John Callaghan's "The Andrew Invasion," a guy named Andrew gets mistaken for the Doctor, and hilarity ensues. I think John Dorney's The Diary of River Song story "My Dinner with Andrew," about a guy who looks exactly like the fifth Doctor and is played by Peter Davison, is a stealth sequel to this story, but maybe I am crazy because no one else seems to have noticed this if so.)

Even though this is probably the book's most common approach, other stories go in different directions. I liked "Second Chances" by Bernard O'Toole a lot, which follows a maniacal mad scientist after he is defeated by the Doctor and Charley. How does an adult man move back in with his parents and rebuild his life after all his dreams of conquest have been crushed? Or there's Michael Montoure's "Relativity," where a kid loses his twin brother in a weird time accident thanks to the Doctor and Ace, but eventually has an even weirder chance to get him back. I also liked Violet Addison's "Those Left Behind," about one of Susan's classmates at Coal Hill School meeting the fourth Doctor. (One oddity of the book, if I'm not mistaken, is that among its twenty-five stories, it has one from every "classic" Doctor... except the first!) There's also "Evitability" by Andrew K Purvis, where the Doctor finds someone who's going to do a terrible thing as an adult and shows them the future as a child to help put them on a better path. Michael Rees's "Swamp of Horrors (1957) – Viewing Notes" is inventively told in the form of a blog post about a B-horror movie that costars the Doctor and Mel!

One of my very favorites was "The Monster in the Wardrobe" by James C McFetridge, about a man who dies every day defending his daughter from a monster in the wardrobe, but always comes back to life the next, when he always has a new job that he's not very good at but enjoys a lot, like ice cream taster or bikini inspector.

It feels a bit churlish to complain about ones you don't like, especially when they come from first-time writers, but I did find a few unsatisfying and/or undercooked: "Curiosity" by Mike Amberry and "The Last Thing You'll Ever See" by Richard Goff among them. The only outright bad one, though, was "Time Shear" by Steven Alexander, where two alien kids see their mother brutally gunned down in front of them, and the story and the character just shrug this off as a minor inconvenience in its rush to get to a happy ending.

If there's an overall fault to the volume, it's that, despite what Paul Cornell hopes for in his foreword, few of these writers ever went on to make many more contributions to Doctor Who; there were just two Short Trips volumes after this, and some contributed to one of those, and some others I think wrote for the Bernice Summerfield anthologies. Other than that, though, the only writer to go onto publishing more Doctor Who stories is LM Myles, who here writes the story "Child's Play," and has since written a number of Big Finish audio dramas. But that's not a slight on this book, it's a slight on the stale community of Doctor Who tie-in writers, whose bright young things of the 1990s and early 2000s have never moved on thirty years later.

Every three months, I read the unread Doctor Who book I've owned the longest. Next up in sequence: Prisoner of the Daleks

Doctor Who: Dalek Empire by Nicholas Briggs (ed.)

Doctor Who: Short Trips #19: Dalek Empire
edited by Nicholas Briggs with Simon Guerrier

Dalek Empire is a 2001-08 audio spin-off series from Big Finish (its first, actually, I believe), chronicling a Dalek invasion of the galaxy, focusing on the humans caught up in it when the Doctor's not around to save anyone. I picked it up in a sale a few years ago, but have never actually gotten around to listening to it; there is always too much new Big Finish to listen to first! The range engendered a tie-in of its own, the sixteenth volume of Big Finish's Short Trips series of anthologies, which was released between the third and fourth series.

Published: 2006
Acquired: July 2008
Read: December 2023

I haven't heard Dalek Empire, but I know the broad outlines of the plot; probably there's stuff here I'd get better having heard it, but I felt okay for the most part. Most of the stories here fall into two buckets. The first is made up of character studies of Dalek Empire's three human leads: "Kalendorf" by Nicholas Briggs and "Alby" and "Suz" by Sharon Gosling. "Kalendorf" takes place at the very beginning of the series, during the initial Dalek assault, while "Alby" and "Suz" take place later on, delving into the thoughts of those characters. They were all decent stories (I liked the horror of the Daleks in "Kalendorf") best, but also the ones that I suspect would most benefit from actually having heard the series.

Most of the rest of the stories are side stories to the Dalek invasion of the Milky Way, many of them including the Doctor in some capacity. But in these stories, he doesn't go around defeating dastardly plans; because the events of Dalek Empire already proceed without him, they're kind of what you might call "future historicals," featuring the Doctor on the fringes of future history, helping the little people, but not making any significant changes. My favorites among these included Ian Farrington's "Hide and Seek," where the third Doctor and Jo help a group of refugees evacuate; Farrington captures the Doctor and Jo particularly well.

The best of them as definitely Joseph Lidster's "Natalie's Diary," which is about a young woman named Natalie trying to stay alive during the Dalek assault on her planet, aided by the seventh Doctor, Ace, and Hex. As usual for Lidster, the strength of the story is in its characterization, as Natalie slowly discovers the hardness of the world she has come into. Ace and Hex aren't focal characters, but are deftly drawn, recalling one of Big Finish's best runs. The story is framed by a history student reading Natalie's diaries sometime later, which I think is set during the events of Dalek Empire III (when the Daleks return). The other ones are fine enough, though I found Ian Farrington's "Private Investigations" and Justin Richards's "Mutually Assured Survival" kind of pointless and dull.

There are two stories that break from this format. One is Simon Guerrier's "The Eighth Wonder of the World," which isn't a Dalek Empire tie-in at all, but a follow-up to the first Doctor serial The Daleks' Master Plan, featuring the sixth Doctor and Evelyn investigating what happened to a Dalek left behind in ancient Egypt during that adventure. Guerrier does his usual clever and interesting work, but it feels too fanciful in this context; Dalek Empire just isn't this kind of Dalek story.

The other is the volume's definitely standout, "Museum Peace" by James Swallow. Long after the events of Dalek Empire II: Dalek War, Kalendorf is retired and visiting a museum devoted to the Dalek War, contemplating how time has moved on. The Doctor is there, too (who he already knows; more on that in a minute), in his eighth incarnation, contemplating some terrible action against the Daleks. It's a deftly written, powerful story about grief and anger and moving on. Clearly when it was written, Swallow intended the eighth Doctor to be thinking about obliterating the Daleks, though subsequent revelations in "The Day of the Doctor" mean that can't be the case. But it holds up regardless—you can imagine the Doctor is at some terrible low during the Time War. (Or, in a very tenuous pet theory of mine, it takes place between To the Death and Dark Eyes, with the Doctor driven to despair.)

The book also includes the script for The Return of the Daleks, a 2006 audio drama that crossed the seventh Doctor into the events of Dalek Empire, as well as a sequel to the tv story Planet of the Daleks. (Hence, how Kalendorf knows the Doctor.) It wasn't a particularly great audio (I have actually heard it; it was a freebie for subscribers to Big Finish's main Doctor Who range), and reading a script is honestly never really that interesting. It feels like it's there to pad the book out—a whole forty pages! Given how many authors contribute two stories, one wonders if the volume was put together in a hurry.

(Despite the cover, the first, second, fourth, and fifth Doctors do not appear in this book.)

Every three months, I read the unread Doctor Who book I've owned the longest. Next up in sequence: Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership

Bernice Summerfield: In Time edited by Xanna Eve Chown

Bernice Summerfield: In Time
edited by Xanna Eve Chown

In Time was the last Bernice Summerfield book published by Big Finish in hard copy: evidently sales had diminished too much after this point to justify keeping the range going. By the time I went to buy my copy, you couldn't get one in hard copy even if you wanted to! There is not a hard copy to be had even on the secondary market, it was so rare. I had to settle for buying an ebook version, but I am keeping an eye out for a hardcover to complete my Benny books collection.

Published: 2018
Acquired: July 2023
Read: August 2023

The book was published in 2018, for Benny's twentieth anniversary at Big Finish, and it celebrates the complete run of the character, with stories set across the span of her life, from her young days at Space Academy to her time in the "Unbound Universe," and possibly even beyond that.

As a longtime fan of the character, I definitely appreciate the excuse for some nostalgia. Along those lines, my favorite story was certainly Simon Guerrier's "Benny and the Grieving Man," set during my favorite "era" of Benny, when she's based at the Braxiatel Collection, and indeed, set during one of my favorite Benny books, A Life Worth Living. The story is a human one, about Benny trying to help a man whose daughter died on the Collection... but is he all he seems? Like some of the best Benny stories, it engages in what it's like to live in a place that has undergone great tragedy and deal with the consequences, with the weight of histories, both public and personal.

Some of the stories are explicitly about Benny's history, instead of just set during it; this is particularly true of the two set in the Unbound Universe, traveling with David Warner's alternative Doctor (though of course he can't actually appear in this not-BBC-licensed anthology). "Legacy Presence" by Victoria CW Simpson has Benny meeting the ghost of someone from her time at Space Academy—in a universe where that person can't possibly have existed—and "The Death of Hope" by James Goss has Benny and the Mother Superior from the Unbound audios trying to see if there's any possibility of hope in a doomed universe. The former is so-so, much like the stories collected in True Stories (it could almost be a cut story from that book), but the latter is a strong piece of character writing, which gives us both nostalgia and its dangers.

Three stories I wanted to like more, but were just okay. Mark Clapham's "The Seventh Fanfic" (set during the Dellah years, shortly before Beige Planet Mars) has some neat ideas, but Benny feels mostly like an observer to them. I wish there'd been more recurring characters and such from the era; c'mon, where's Emile and Tameka? "The Bunny's Curse" by Doris V Sutherland (set during the Space Academy years) seems to give us the beginning of Benny's interest in archaeology, but that moment could have clicked more. "Old Ruins" by Peter Anghelides gives us an older Benny... but it's a dull story that goes on too long to too little effect, alas.

Two more were not very good at all. "Wurm Noir" by Antonio Rastelli fails to make much of anything interesting of Benny's time on Legion... but that's fair, neither could the writers of that actual era. Worst of all is Dave Stone's "Oh No, Not Again," which like much of his work (though not all!), is an unfunny joke stretched out far too much.

On the whole, it's not terrible, but it is one of the weaker Benny anthologies from Big Finish. This will remind you why you love the character (if like me, you do), but it won't make you love her. I'd have liked to have seen more stories like "The Grieving Man" and "The Death of Hope" that worked with the themes that really make Benny work, instead of adventures that just happen to be set during her past.

I read a post–New Doctor Who Adventures novel every three months. Next up in sequence: none!

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Since August 2015, I've been working my way through a collection of Virgin New Adventures, BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures, and various adjacent books, mostly featuring Bernice Summerfield. That began with Bernice Summerfield: Genius Loci, and eight years and twenty-seven books later, it has finally come to an end! It's been an interesting journey through some excellent (and some non-so-excellent) books. I've loved getting a better understanding of the VNAs, and getting to see more of my favorite Doctor in action in prose.

I had thought that I would circle back around and plug in some more VNAs and EDAs that interest me, but I decided that instead of buying more Doctor Who books I should focus on reading ones I already own, so—for a while at least—I'm going to start working my way through them in purchase order. First up will be Short Trips: Dalek Empire, which I got way back in July 2008!

Review: Bernice Summerfield: Present Danger edited by Eddie Robson

Reviewing a book tied into some audio dramas reminds me that I actually haven't cross-linked my audio reviews here of late; there have been three. "Flight into Hull!", a Doctor Who: Short Trip read by Camille Corduri, features Jackie Tyler and the "metacrisis" Doctor. The Root of All Rage is the second Star Trek: Prometheus audiobook, presenting the German 50th-anniversay special. And Jeremiah Bourne in Time is a new, original concept from Big Finish about a teenager travelling between contemporary and Edwardian London. (Quoth my editor when I submitted the last review: "'famous magistrate and infamous nudist' is a hell of a character description, I need to listen to these." Indeed he does and so do you.)

Hardcover, 208 pages
Published 2010

Acquired August 2015
Read October 2018

Bernice Summerfield XIV: Present Danger
edited by Eddie Robson

Present Danger fills in the gap between the audio dramas Resurrecting the Past and Escaping the Future. Partially it serves to just move characters into position (in Resurrecting, Benny and Hass are on Earth, but when Escaping opens, Benny is travelling through time to fight the Deindum with a restored time ring, while Hass is a Deindum prisoner on Maximediras), and partially it serves to dramatize the Deindum War more completely, since it's mostly off-stage in Escaping, but of great importance.

So, it's kind of like Life During Wartime, but it doesn't work quite as well. Life During Wartime felt like a novel by many hands, showing the progression of the Bernice Summerfield range's cast of characters during the months (and months?) of Fifth Axis occupation. Present Danger is more spotty-- it often feels like things that ought to have been dramatized are skipped over in favor of things that are less important. Like, there's no story about how Bev manages to take control back of the Braxiatel Collection, which ought to be a key character point, and the refugees crowding the Collection is referenced in Escaping, but that's dramatized here in only a very cursory way. It would have been nice to see this in Present Danger; instead, the most we get for Bev is a story by Niall Boyce, "The Empire Variations," where she witnesses a time travel adventure Benny has by seeing how works of art in the Collection change as history does. It's a neat conceit, but if the book was going to tell just one Bev story, it doesn't seem like this is the one.

This goes for a number of stories. Like, I enjoyed a lot of them, but they often seemed like sidebars to the Deindum War. It's neat to have a sequel to Battlefield in Jim Smith's "Excalibur of Mars," but should working Brigadier Bambera in really have been a priority of this collection? There are a few too many Benny-on-strange-adventures stories that are tenuously incorporated on the basis of Benny scouring time for weapons to use against the Deindum. That said, Jonathan Blum's "The End Times" is a great Benny-and-Peter tale in the way that only Jon Blum can do, and I was unexpectedly delighted by the return of the tax assessor from Venus Mantrap in Mark Clapham's "In the Ledgers of Madness," where a group of reclusive monks keep their books in an ancient, dangerous language so that anyone who tries to audit them will go mad.

The book's best stories are those that deal with the Deindum War and the characters more concretely. "Winging It" by Lance Parkin focuses on Braxiatel figuring out how to fight the Deindum through time, and it's a clever time war story that I really enjoyed. Kate Orman's "Don't Do Something, Just Sit There" of course is a winner, with Benny trying to protect an indigenous population as Earth and the Deindum duke it out. Simon Guerrier gives us some Doggles and Adrian in "Six Impossible Things," a potent combination given their history; there wasn't just the space for this reckoning in the audio dramas, so I'm glad to read it here. (Is Doggles the worst? Yes.)

LM Myles's "The Better Part of Valour," Oli Smith's "Digital Dreams," and editor Eddie Robson's Hass-focused interludes were among the other highlights. But if this collection was meant to make us feel the immensity of Deindum threat in preparation for Escaping the Future, it didn't quite accomplish that as well as it ought to have.

Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Alternate Timelines

Hardcover, 202 pages
Published 2006
Acquired February 2012
Read May 2012

Professor Bernice Summerfield VII: Something Changed

edited by Simon Guerrier

This Bernice Summerfield anthology has a somewhat odd premise: a man named Doggles brings a "history machine" to the Braxiatel Collection just after the emotionally devastating events of Parallel Lives.  At the end of the first chapter (Simon Guerrier's "Inappropriate Laughter"), the history machine malfunctions, and the devastating consequences are explored in the second chapter (James Swallow's "Siege Mentality"). But at the end of that chapter, everyone dies, and there's another second chapter (Joseph Lidster's "Dead Mice") where we pick up again in a reality where the machine malfunctioned in a different way.  And so the book goes again and again, sometimes picking up immediately after the malfunction, sometimes months or decades later, but always showing a different possibility.

What stops the book from feeling like a collection of pointless alternate-timeline stories is that they all use the premise as a way to create genuine insights into Bernice herself and her supporting cast. I didn't fully understand what was happening in "Dead Mice," but it was a great look into Braxiatel and his levels of manipulation, as is "Family Man" by Ian Mond.  Pete Kemphshall's "Acts of Senseless Devotion," where Bernice is blinded and her son is dying, showed the all-too-plausible depths to which Bernice might sink to save her son.  Jason Kane gets a good showing in Dave Hoskin's "Writing in Green," where he attempts to show Benny the depth of his love with the help of Hass, the Collection's Ice Warrior gardener.  Another dark story was Ian Farrington's "A Murderous Desire," where someone kills Doggles.  Very dark actions from all of our main characters, but seemingly all too plausible.

Of the stories that picked up much later, I most liked Eddie Robson's "Match of the Deity," where Benny and Doggles are reunited eight years later to try to return a religious artifact to an alien planet, with hilarious consequences.  But even though it's set eight years in an alternate future, it still tells us something of both Bernice and Doggles.

Some take odder approaches, but that's okay.  In Ben Aaronovitch's "Walking Backwards for Christmas," the history machine makes Bernice relive her own past, and thus we get a great story of the little-explored period where Bernice was at a military academy and subsequently went AWOL. It's neat to see a very different, but very recognizable Benny. I also liked Dave Stone's "There and Back Again," where Jason uses the constantly shifting timelines to try to help his other selves break free from Braxiatel's conditioning.  Poor guy.

A couple, though, I couldn't see how the worlds they showed were related to the premise at all.  Why is Bernice fighting with a fanatical resistance army in "The God Gene" by Ben Woodhams? No one really ever says. Or why is Bernice fighting for the Fifth Axis in "The Ice Garden" by Jonathan Clements? I have no idea (though it yields the excellent cover image).

Those are just two stories, though, out of an excellent bunch. Once again, Simon Guerrier has knocked it out of the park with a Bernice Summerfield anthology: we have here a collection of deeply character-driven, unique sf stories, which only an open-ended, multi-author series like this could do. A variety of voices and styles, all giving their perspectives on a small group of people, but able to do almost anything like them. Excellent stuff, which once again has me excited for the continuation of the Bernice line.

Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Novellas' Curse

Hardcover, 218 pages
Published 2006
Acquired February 2012
Read May 2012

Professor Bernice Summerfield VI: Parallel Lives

by Rebecca Levene, Stewart Sheargold & Dave Stone

Ms Jones, the Braxiatel Collection's venerable administrator who made the mistake of falling in love, is gone. Bernice Summerfield is sent out to track her down in an anthology that, like A Life in Pieces, is made up of three closely-linked novellas.

Well, sort of. The collection is bound together by some typically strong writing from Simon Guerrier, who writes a four-part story that precedes and follows each of the novellas. This leads into the first, "The Serpent's Tooth" by Rebecca Levene, where Bernice finds herself on an out-of-the-way planet where Ms Jones has been sighted-- a planet where women are required to cover themselves up completely and hide from sight. So, she disguises herself as a man and soon finds herself involved in a quest to win the hands of the daughters of the king. As you do. Levene writes a story that does what the best Bernice stories do, moving between light humor and dark implications, sketching in a commentary on gender relations that almost seems worthy of Ursula K. Le Guin. Levene was the editor of the New Adventures for much of Bernice's run in the title, and she clearly gets what makes the character work.

As in A Life in Pieces, the middle novella features Adrian and Bev Tarrant on their own adventure. "Hiding Places" is the prose debut of Stewart Sheargold, who wrote two crazy Bernice audios (The Mirror Effect and The Masquerade of Death), and his experimental tendencies turn out to be fantastic in novella format. As Adrian and Bev try to find Ms Jones in a strange hotel, he gives us great prose, terrifying events, and some great characterization for these two oft-underused leads. Between this and Sutton's novella in A Life in Pieces, these characters are being handled very well, and I hope the line keeps this up-- and that we get to see some of this depth given to the actors playing the characters in the audio dramas.

Lastly we come to Dave Stone's "Jason and the Bandits; or, O, Jason, Where Art Thou?" I wanted to like this story, I really did. It features Jason trying to catch up with Benny when he's heard of what's going on, but a series of increasingly unlikely events keep him away. It's a good idea and a really fun story, but it conflicts completely with the tone of the other two novellas and the linking material-- much as happened with Dave Stone's contribution to A Life in Pieces. You can have one oddball story in an anthology of dozens of short stories, but I don't think it works in a collection of novellas, where it means that a whole third of the book is off on a weird tangent. Especially when it it's the last novella in the book, coming just before the incredible climax.

For incredible it is. Guerrier once again shows his depth of understanding of Bernice and her supporting cast, and that last line is oh-so-sad, to boot...

Professor Bernice Summerfield in an exciting adventure with some Academics

Hardcover, 183 pages
Published 2004
Acquired January 2012
Read April 2012

Professor Bernice Summerfield IV: A Life Worth Living

edited by Simon Guerrier

This is the fourth Bernice Summerfield anthology, but it's the first to be edited by Simon Guerrier instead of the usual mainstay, Paul Cornell.  But just like all of Cornell's anthologies (bar the first one), it's an intelligent, charming, literate, thoughtful collection of sf stories.

The premise of A Life Worth Living is that, in order to help obscure the memory of the Fifth Axis Occupation from the minds of the Collection, Braxiatel opens it up to students-- and then asks Bernice to not go offworld for a year so she can live up to her teaching and other academic duties.  Of course I would be sold on it right away: it has to be the only sf book I've ever read that revolves entirely around the doings of academia!  But there's more than that.  Though the book involves a lot of academia, it could involve a lot of anything. It's a book about picking up the pieces, figuring out what you're doing and who you are, and getting back to work. Because even if giant, awful things have happened to you, life really does go on.

This is set up right from the beginning with Paul Cornell's lovely "Misplaced Spring," which is a series of moments across the Collection as the new students arrive and Bernice tries to remember what it's like to be in love again.  There are a lot of stories about relationships, actually, and most of them are quite good: "Welcome to the Machine" by the improbably-named Sin Deniz is about a desperately lonely woman being stalked, and it feels all too real. "A Summer Affair" is a charming but dark tale by (of course) Joseph Lidster that gives another romance to Ms. Jones. Man, that "woman of a certain age" gets around!

Probably the most fun of all these was Philip Purser-Hallard's "Sex Secrets of the Robot Replicants," where Bernice discovers that not only has Jason taken up writing xenoporn again, but that it's attracting rather a lot of academic criticism!  Hilarity ensues, of course.  I also enjoyed "Against Gardens," an Eddie Robson story about Hass the new Martian (not an Ice Warrior, honest!) gardener on the Collection, who turns out to be rather a fascinating character.

My favorite story, though, has to be "Final Draft" by Cameron Mason.  Here, Bernice has to write a keynote address for a conference in three hours when Hass tells her she's made a basic mistake.  And the closer the conference comes, the worse the situation gets.  Funny and it includes nice character moments for every member of the cast, what else could you want?

There's only one flat-out bad story in the collection, Richard Salter's goofy and far-fetched "Nothing up my Sleeve," where Bernice squares off against the Brotherhood of Magicians.  Good joke if you've seen Tomb of the Cybermen (I have, unfortunately), but little else.  Also, I think the Collection plays host to three conferences in the course of the book, which seems rather a lot for an institution that small.

Honestly, though I'd miss Lisa Bowerman, I wouldn't be upset if Big Finish chucked the novels and the audio dramas and just did Bernice as a series of anthologies. These are where the characters and writers really get their chance to shine.

I read this after Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Bone of Contention, which was the release order, but it appears that it actually goes before that story. This means that the order of the past few Bernice stories is:

• Audio 4.3. The Poison Seas: Bernice is summoned back to the Collection.
• Anthology III. Life During Wartime: Bernice returns to find the Collection occupied.
• Audio 4.4. Death and the Daleks: The Collection is liberated.
• Novel #6. The Big Hunt. Bernice takes a vacation after the recent stress.
• Audio 5.1. The Grel Escape: Bernice comes home to find that while Jason has been watching Peter, he's been playing with the Time Rings.
• Anthology IV. A Life Worth Living: Bernice spends a year on the Collection without leaving.
• Audio 5.2. The Bone of Contention: Bernice takes her first offworld trip in a year, to the Clutch.
• Anthology V. A Life in Pieces: Jason persuades Benny that they should take a trip together, as they have each had one of their own recently.
• Audio 5.3. The Relics of Jegg-Sau: You tell me, I'm only halfway through it!

I enjoy the fact that this series crosses media, but it can be tricky to stay on top of without a central numbering system!

Audio Catchup: Two First Doctor Companion Chronicles by Simon Guerrier

written by Simon Guerrier
directed by Lisa Bowerman
released November 2011

starring
Peter Purves as Steven Taylor
Tom Allen as Oliver Harper

Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles #6.05: The First Wave

Having enjoyed The Perpetual Bond and glorified The Cold Equations, you might imagine that I was a wee bit excited to get ahold of the final part of the Oliver Harper trilogy, The First Wave. As with the other two, this release was written by Simon Guerrier, directed by Lisa Bowerman, produced by David Richardson, and sound designed by Richard Fox and Lauren Yason. It stars, once again, Peter Purves as Steven Taylor and Tom Allen as Oliver Harper.

The First Wave isn’t quite as immersive in the 1960s as its predecessors were, but it still has a feeling of staunch emotional realism for all the characters involved, but especially Steven. Steven has rarely been treated so well as a character as in The Cold Equations, and that trend continues here. Once again, the characters are in a space environment that lets Steven shine but also feels utterly real — and completely resonant with the emotional tone of the story. The First Wave takes place on an mostly airless planetoid at the fringes of the solar system, and the starkness mirrors Steven’s mood. He’s seen Katarina and Sara die… and the Doctor too. How can he and Oliver possibly survive this one?

( Read more... )

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written by Simon Guerrier
directed by Ken Bentley
released January 2012

starring
Peter Purves as Steven Taylor
Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom

Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles #6.07: The Anachronauts

What was good? The three Companion Chronicles by Simon Guerrier about Sara Kingdom. What was great? The three Companion Chronicles by Simon Guerrier about Steven Taylor. So what could possibly be even greater except a Companion Chronicle by Simon Guerrier featuring both Jean Marsh and Peter Purves as Sara and Steven? Doctor Who: The Anachronauts, this year’s double-disc/double-voiced Companion Chronicle is exactly that, uniting the Doctor, Steven, and Sara in the gap in the middle of The Daleks’ Master Plan.

The story picks up right from the end of The Feast of Steven with the TARDIS crew celebrating Christmas when the Ship collides with another timeship in the Vortex. The crews of both ships are flung on an alien beach, beginning a journey that will take Steven and Sara into an alien jungle, the depths of the TARDIS itself, and East Berlin during the Cold War…

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It's Hard to Topple Governments When the Doctor's Not Around

Hardcover, 202 pages
Published 2003
Acquired December 2011
Read February 2012

Professor Bernice Summerfield III: Life During Wartime

edited by Paul Cornell

At the end of the previous Bernice Summerfield story, the audio drama The Poison Seas, Bernice received a message from Irving Braxiatel, telling her to come home to the Braxiatel Collection. Life During Wartime picks up almost immediately thereafter, with Bernice coming home to find the Collection occupied by the Fifth Axis, the Space Racists she'd thought defeated in The Glass Prison. Life During Wartime features little archaeology and little space adventure, instead telling the story of the months of the Fifth Axis occupation.

The first thing in Life During Wartime, as in most Bernice Summerfield books, is a little descriptive piece called "The Braxiatel Collection," explaining the series setup. This little piece explains succinctly everything that is wrong with the setup. There are potted backstories for Benny, Irving, Jason, and Adrian, which is fine, but it reads like it comes out of the series bible, and hence explains all of the jokes: we are told that Joseph the Porter is over-literal (but on purpose), what Collection administrator Ms Jones means when she puts on her glasses, how gardener Mister Crofton reacts to forgetting the "Mister," and that the public relations officer never actually turns up in stories (oh, the hilarity). Why do we need all these characters? Bernice Summerfield wants to be Indiana Jones in Space, but Indiana Jones just has Marcus Brody to report back to, not Brody and a lover and a rival and a department secretary and a janitor and a press officer. Why do you need such a large, uninteresting supporting cast? Even the one story largely set on the collection, The Squire's Crystal, didn't make a lot of use of them as I recall.

Life During Wartime doesn't mean that the unwieldy setup has been worthwhile all along, but it is used to maximum effect here. We just don't see what Bernice has to deal with (she feels compelled to play along with the Fifth Axis because she doesn't know where her son is), but how Irving Braxiatel deals with being surprised for the first time ever, how Jason Kane immediately gives in and defects to the Axis, how Adrian suffers as a worker, that Bev Tarrant can be something other than a thief, why Ms Jones fell in love with an Axis policeman, and what happened to Mister Crofton during the Dalek War. The range of characters has a range of reactions to the occupation, some trying to stop it at any cost, while the Axis itself tries to convince them that nothing has changed.

Suffice it to say that I liked this book a lot. It's technically an anthology, but it reads like a novel. Especially the early stories lead one right into the next. Paul Cornell keeps the book nearly seamless; with 22 stories in 200 pages, each story is around ten pages long, and thus no one voice is in play too long. The many-voice thing works, though; it feels like one author adopting a range of styles and approaches to convey one idea: the difficulty of maintaining your courage in a life during wartime. Some are just moments, with Bernice talking to Irving, or Mister Crofton remembering his past. Quite amazingly, not a single one is bad. Not a single one. The worst I could describe one as is "average," and even that is pushing it. If I just talked about the good ones, I'd be here far too long, but here are some favorites:

"The Birthday Party" by Simon Guerrier, where Bernice must help celebrate the life of a member of the resistance without offending Marshal Anson, otherwise many lives will be lost.

"Five Dimensional Thinking" by Nick Wallace, where Irving Braxiatel convinces himself that only a Time Lord could have beaten him, and that that Time Lord must be himself.

"Meanwhile, in a Small Room, a Small Boy..." by Robert Shearman, where Peter must try to occupy himself while his mother Bernice is gone... and he does so through self-destructive blame.

"Drinking with the Enemy" by Jonathan Blum, where Bernice, having sold out and resumed her relationship with Jason, now an Axis officer, has dinner with Ms Jones and her new boyfriend, an Axis stalwart. Curfew comes, no one can go home, they drink too much, and they all learn entirely too much about one another. The best story in the book, showing how someone can be a fundamentally good person and a fundamentally awful person at the same time.

"The Peter Principle" by Kate Orman, where Bernice finally figures out where she stands.

There's something intrinsically Bernice-ish about occupation stories; when I think of classic Benny stories, the usual suspects are Beyond the Sun and Just War, and there's also The Dying Days and "Kill the Mouse!" I think it's because for the most part, Bernice is a pretty Doctor-like character, swanning into sci-fi situations and solving problems through action/adventure and some good dialogue. But occupations play out differently for Bernice than the Doctor. I can't imagine the Doctor living for weeks or months under a dictatorship, unable to do anything but keep himself alive, but what else can Bernice do? It's an intrinsically (and exclusively) human problem, and hence what makes Bernice her own character, her own person, and very real. She's never cruel or cowardly, but when you can't swan into the occupation headquarters and destroy the government with five words, that's something it's very hard to keep up, making her a whole lot braver.

Dr Who and the Time Signature

Doctor Who: Short Trips #18: Time Signature

edited by Simon Guerrier

Hardcover, 215 pages. Published 2006.  Acquired December 2007.  Read January 2012.

When Time Signature was announced, I almost decided not to get it.  Its back cover doesn't raise a whole lot of interest, sounding like a really generic retread of Repercussions.  But eventually I learned it was nothing like Repercussions at all, and in fact it begins with the story "An Overture Too Early," which originally appeared in The Muses, being one of the better stories in that book.  "An Overture Too Early" sees the third Doctor encounter a companion from his future, a companion who has a snatch of music that can pierce into the time vortex itself.  But the Doctor can't do anything to help poor Isaac, and the Time Lords prevent him from investigating further.

Simon Guerrier wrote that story, and he takes on editing duties here, orchestrating (you see what I did there?) something that's more than an anthology.  Back when I read The Centenarian, I praised it for being (in theory) the best sort of tie-in fiction, the sort that tells a story that could only be told as a tie-in because of the way that it uses the history of the series.  Time Signature is the same, except that it delivers on its promise.  All the stories here stand on their own just fine, but as we move from story to story, we jump backward and forward in the Doctor's history, seeing different pieces of the puzzle slot into place.

It's astonishingly well done.  We move backward to the first Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara discovering a planet literally out of time in Philip Purser-Hallard's "The Ruins of Time," then forward to the sixth Doctor taking a new companion fishing in "Gone Fishing" by Ben Aaronovitch, then back again to the second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe hanging out at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Eddie Robson's "The Avant Guardian."  Each story adds a new piece to the unfolding puzzle, until we finally can see the entire story.  Time Signature is more like a novel than a collection in that regard, telling one tale, but out-of-sequence.  Though that's appropriate, as the Doctor encounters it that way too.

Maybe none of the stories here are amazing ("The Avant Guardian" is really, really good, though, but maybe I'm just a sucker for the early BBC), but almost all of them hit very well.  "The Ruins of Time" is atmospheric, and characterizes the first TARDIS crew spot on.  I also really enjoyed Ben Woodhams's "Resonance," where the fifth Doctor meets Isaac not long before he dies; it's kinda depressing in that way so many Season 21 stories were.

The only really weak entry here is Andrew Cartmel's "Certificate of Destruction," which has all the problems any listener of his Lost Stories would expect (i.e., comedy aliens, ineffective Doctor, stupidity), but even it, like all the stories here, is raised by its presence here, acquiring a bit of poignancy.  Time Signature has a clever conceit, but more importantly, it's a collection of strong stories that make an interesting mystery as they unfold.  Or rather, a single story written by ten different authors.

Archival Review: Doctor Who: Short Trips #15: The History of Christmas edited by Simon Guerrier

Hardcover, 192 pages
Published 2005
Acquired July 2006
Read December 2007

Doctor Who: Short Trips #15: The History of Christmas
edited by Simon Guerrier

Inappropriately enough, I got this book for my birthday in July of 2006.  Appropriately enough, I read it just after Christmas 2007.  The second of Big Finish's Christmas-themed Short Trips books, it was enjoyable enough, though towards the end I started to get tired of the Christmas theme coming again and again-- a problem that never afflicted me with Paul Cornell's A Christmas Treasury, despite the fact that that book had more stories!  I feel as though the earlier book had a wider variety of stories, but this book was by no means poor.  My favorite was probably Eddie Robson's "Not in My Back Yard", with Joseph Lidster's "She Won't Be Home" a close contender-- no surprise there, since they're both among my favorite Big Finish writers.