The premiere of the third season of the Professor Bernice Summerfield audio dramas sees everyone's favorite archeology professor headed to the Gigamarket to excavate some ancient latrines. And not to purchase shoes, oh no. If you think this is the beginning of numerous obvious jokes about how women love shoes so much you might be right.

Other than that, though, there's a lot to like about The Greatest Shop in the Galaxy. No sooner does Benny reach the shoe section than they begin to transform into the cows they used to be made of. Something is wrong with time, and things only get worse from there, as Benny must run for her life from rampaging hordes of aliens while also fending off the unwanted advances of Keelor, the Gigamarket's representative, and avoiding being slobbered on by Joggon, an alien businessman. The plot is somewhat simplistic-- there's an awful lot of running, and Benny doesn't do much of her own deduction-- but it's entertaining enough. Some of the time travel conundrums were on the verge of feeling derivative to me, but there was just enough new wrinkles to spice them up a bit.

Though The Greatest Shop in the Galaxy is enjoyable and diverting, it falls prey to the flaws of many of the stories in the second season, being just a little too lightweight for its own good. The drama's not dramatic enough, and you can't depend on the jokes if a lot of them aren't actually funny.'

You can read a longer version of this review at Unreality SF.

I really liked The Greatest Shop In The Galaxy. Perhaps it helped that, by total coincidence, I was wandering around a supermarket myself while listening to it, but I felt the balance of humour and drama, of life-threatening horrors and time paradoxes while at the same time not taking itself too seriously, worked really well. Tremendous fun. ( )