Nick WallaceCritiques

2

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3025488.html

I was not so impressed with Something Changed, the last collection of Bernice Summerfield stories I reviewed, but this is much better. Gender balance is marginally improved (two out of twenty-three stories by women, as opposed to none out of fifteen in Something Changed). Also, the stories seem to gel together much better, with a linking theme the visit of the mysterious alien Quire to the Braxiatel collection in the continuing absence of Braxiatel himself. They are all set during Season 7 of the Bernice Summerfield audios, which I listened to years ago but don't seem to have written up. If I had to pick three particular highlights they would be Jonathan Blum's "Lock", from Peter's point of view; Simon A. Forward's "Grey's Anatomy" with the return of Mordecan; and Phillip Purser-Hallard's running "Perspectives" which revisit the alien Quire at different points of the narrative. For once, an anthology that is more than the sum of its parts.½

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2251776.html

Next in the series of Big Finish audios featuring Quadrigger Stoyn, accidentally removed from Gallifrey with the Tardis by the First Doctor and here encountering the Second Doctor and Zoe. Unfortunately a story that didn't quite fulfill its promise - it's almost all Frazer Hines as Jamie v Terry Molloy as Stoyn, with Wendy Padbury as Zoe being allowed a few lines here and there; also I would have liked a bit more to be made of Stoyn's threat to reveal the Doctor to the Time Lords, since the story is set just before The War Games when the Doctor actually did reveal himself. But the central performances are delightful.

I've said it before (I think), but in any case, I'll say it again: the best Bernice Summerfield stories are the short-story anthologies. They're works of art, they are, taking shorts by various writers about various characters and managing to blend them into a coherent whole. Collected Works spans the events of the audio dramas in Bernice Summerfield's seventh season, picking up after the events of Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Crystal of Cantus, and ending around the time of The Oracle of Delphi. (See the timeline for more details.)

This book does everything I like about the Bernice anthologies, giving a strong, character-based focused to Benny and the other residents of the Braxiatel Collection, the fallout from The Crystal of Cantus proving a strong hook to hang a lot of stories from. I especially liked the renewed focus on Bev Tarrant (who has really benefited as a character in general from the prose anthologies) and, surprisingly, Parasiel. (Bev especially does well in "The Cost for a Collection" by Ian Mond.) As a result, it's hard to single out any particular favorites; it'd be like claiming chapter 4 was the standout bit of a novel.

That said, there are some strong ones: Wallace's frame story and "Work in Progress" provide a great start, the latter especially haunting in light of what I know is to come in the series' future. Simon A. Forward's "Grey's Anatomy" brings back Mordecan from Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Bone of Contention and  Doctor Who: The Sandman, who I like, and it was an enjoyable story in its own right. Eddie Robson's "The Two-Level Effect" is a fun look at Jason Kane with a cheeky Doctor Who nod, and Hass (the gaseous life-form turned gardener) gets a good turn in "Let There Be Stars" by Mark Michalowski. Dale Smith ties up many of the book's (and, in general, the seventh season's) threads with the chilling "Mother's Ruin." And, of course, I liked Philip Purser-Hallard's recurrent "Perspectives," about a strange group of futuristic historians visiting the collection, a whole lot. No one does this thing quite like Purser-Hallard can-- I like it when my aliens are genuinely alien, and these ones technically aren't even aliens!

Picking out favorites feels like cheating, though. This is another Bernice Summerfield collection with scarcely a weak link, and I continue to love the way the series weaves between media-- each format lends strengths to the others, and Collected Works plugs right into the heart of the seventh season.

The far future. In recent history, Earth has been occupied by an alien race, but the aliens in turn overthrown. A revived, strong, but paranoid human race reclaims the solar system. Mass fear of a second alien attack won't go away.

Four years hence, the Eighth Doctor and Fitz were supposedly killed when an explosion ripped apart a space station orbiting Jupiter. Anji, without the Doctor to pilot the TARDIS, is trapped in a time she doesn't belong. She decides to investigate the disaster, and, hitching a ride onto a shuttle, skydives in Jupiter to find the satellite has, incredibly, survived intact in Jupiter's upper atmosphere.

But there's someone else who's joined her down there. An elite soldier sent by Earth to investigate. A Professional, with a past linked with the station. And where is the Doctor?

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Enough dramatics. Let me just say that a few of the Doctor Who books I've read had been a bit pants. (still love 'em regardless!) but this one is different. I was hooked straight away, and the final twist totally caught me by surprise. I'd recommend anybody - not even Doctor Who fans especially - to read it.