What’s it about: When a group of Irving Braxiatel’s defence
mechanoids embarks on a kidnapping spree, Braxiatel denies all knowledge – but
his former associates Bev Tarrant and Adrian Wall suspect something else is
going on. They’ve been waiting for Braxiatel to show his hand for months now
and this looks like it. The only problem is Bernice Summerfield isn’t around to
help. She’s vanished. Her son, Peter and Adrian search for her on a craggy,
forgotten planet. Meanwhile Robyn, an android from the future is on a mission
to find out why Braxiatel wants her creators wiped from the timelines for
good. She and Bev team up to
investigate the kidnappings. What is Braxiatel doing with these people? And why
has Bernice Summerfield been important to these plans for all these years? In
a blurb which offers full disclosure inside this is potentially the most
appetite whetting summary for a Bernice Summerfield adventure yet!
Archaeological Adventuress: Bernice knows something big is
coming and that she is going to have to pool every resource she has to take on
the might of Irving Braxiatel. How like Benny to try and save an artefact even
if it means putting her life in danger. She proves an adept action heroine
(well she has seen plenty of action in her time) and last longer than most
would when trying to avoid being captured by the inescapable mechanoid. She
hates using guns, she prefers has wit and cunning. Somebody has to step through
the space/time fissure and prevent the Deindum from becoming the ultimate
menace and I began to realise with crushing inevitability that that person was
Bernice. That was what Braxiatel was saving her for all these years. That was
why he was manipulating her life. He wanted her to become his ultimate tool for
saving the universe from a scourge that could potentially rival the Daleks.
Something in her keeps the Deindum as they are and prevents them from becoming
more aggressive creatures.
Super Genius: Hass tries to explain why re-housing the
people of Maximediras would be wrong but Braxiatel has come too far and made
too many enemies to be stopped now. Besides he’s more interested in how his
hair looks before he addresses them. Braxiatel has a tendency to get his
way…and to getting things out of his way. He treats people as minor
inconveniences rather than individuals with rights. Braxiatel does care very
deeply about art but surely that cannot be his sole motive for causing such a
stir on a nameless, forgotten and populated planet?
Curator-Ex: Braxiatel simply knows Bernice too well for her
to surprise him and when she decides to go back to what she does best to put
him off the scent he is one step ahead of her and waiting. He even goes as far
as inventing an entire civilisation for her to unearth just so he can kidnap
her and keep her out of the way. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again –
he’s a wily bastard and no mistake!
Shaggy Dog: Amazingly Adrian has been developed from a one
dimensional builder to one of the most impressively heroic characters in the
range. Always ready to step into danger to protect the ladies in his life (and
his son) and never afraid to look death in the eye.
Angry Adolescent: Peter learnt a thing or two about survival
in his time away from the Collection (certainly in last seasons Absence) and
doesn’t appreciate Adrian taking his mothers stance of always trying to molly
coddle him.
Food Stains: ‘Working like a Doggles so to speak!’
Doggles is actually the first person you would expect to find in a secret
underground scientific facility run by Braxiatel and yet his sudden appearance
is still a shock because it is never even hinted at. Considering the last time
he saw Bernice he tried to rape her I was as taken aback at their
reconciliation as she was. Doggles sounds shamefaced when he also admits that
he has never forgotten what happened between them. Braxiatel wanted to drive a
wedge between Benny and Jason and convinced him to make some amorous advances
towards Bernice. Doggles owed Brax his life and felt that he couldn’t refuse.
He’s been given access to the most advanced technologies even beyond his
wildest dreams but he has been worked to the bone. He wants to stop thinking
and have a rest, to think normal thoughts again rather than the computational
meanderings of Braxiatel’s machinations.
Alien Gardener: Hass is clearly trying to make the best of a
bad situation and continues to work for Braxiatel but without any degree of
enthusiasm. He wont be used as an assassin but Brax states that he will have a
use for him in the future. Hass’ people don’t like to advertise certain things
about themselves because they aren’t aggressive…but they are dangerous.
If he takes off his protective suit he emits a blast of deadly radiation. He
waits patiently for his moment of revenge until everybody is off Maximediras
and informs Braxiatel that the very poison he utilised in the past is going to
be how he meets his end.
Smiley Ball: Joseph should not have been left behind on the
Collection. There I’ve said it. Of all the characters that should have gone
along with Bernice and Peter it should have been her faithful, luting-voiced
drone. The gorgeous vocal talents of Steve Wickham are put to good use as ever
and I have the same reaction to hearing his voice as I do to hearing John
Leeson as K.9 nowadays, one of absolute, unexplainable love. He’s just lovely.
Standout Performance: A spectacular full cast drama
featuring every character from the range that has managed to survive to this
point. What impresses me most about this cast when they are all brought
together is just how well oiled they are when you consider how they were
cohered. This was never a Star Trek style casting process where the regular
characters were scrutinised over months (probably years if I know Paramount) to
see who would work out with who. Each new character that has been added to the
ensemble was a serendipitous accident. Benny, Brax and Jason were created
during the New Adventures period. Joseph was added to the mix in the first
season when the range was re-creating some of the more popular NAs (Walking to
Babylon). Adrian joined in series two, supposedly a one off performance in a
lacklustre Mike Tucker script (The Stone’s Lament). Bev turned up in series
four in another (slightly better) Mike Tucker script (The Bellotron Incident).
Hass was the replacement gardener after Mr Crofton was killed in tragic
circumstances in the outstanding collection Life During Wartime and underwent a
transformation from a Martian to something altogether more alien in the reality
shifting Something Changed. Doggles was the result of an appearance in the
short story anthology Something Changed and just seem to stick when the next
audio came out. Peter was a result of the events in the two books The Squire’s
Crystal and The Glass Prison but only really made his presence felt amongst the
cast in series eight when he killed Jason and headed off into the universe with
his mother. And finally Robyn was added to the mix in the series ten climax
(Secret Origins). What astounds me is how this cast has been nutted and bolted
together over the years and yet at this stage feel as though this was how it
was always intended. The efforts of Bowerman, Richardson, Myers, Faulkner, Wickham,
Wolfe, Stevens, Grant and Berlyn should be applauded because together they make
the most engaging of ensemble casts that Big Finish has to offer. Robyn is
actually a lot more fun in this adventure, especially when she interacts with
Bev and jokes that when you are in pieces you have to take compliments where
you can get them. Its also worth noting that Berlyn has a much more relaxed
chemistry with Faulkner than she did with Bowerman which is odd because she
sounds an awful lot like Ayesha Antoine who plays Ruth in the current series
and has quickly developed a sparkling rapport with Bowerman.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Is this Braxiatel finally
showing his hand?’
‘The Earth’s moon?’ ‘I’ve never understood why it doesn’t
have a proper name. It’s like calling Peter child.’
‘Its awfully quiet major unrest’ ‘The windows are
soundproofed!’
‘Of course! Nobody does the things that I’ve done for
kicks!’
‘I knew I’d find somewhere else eventually. The Collection
is far to bijou.’
Great Ideas: Like getting a severe case of whiplash suddenly
all the complaints that I had last year dissolve away as the Bernice
Summerfield feels more epic and far reaching than ever before. We kick start on
an action footing with Dead and Buried and suddenly with Bernice out of the action
all of her friends come into play – Robyn, Bev, Adrian, Peter, Hass…and even a
few of her enemies like Doggles start to make themselves feel present again. It
looks like the whole cast has come together for one final, double length
curtain call that promises to reveal all about Braxiatel. To say that I had
high hopes for this ambitious adventure is rather an understatement! Bernice
visits Jevada on a lead from a Bandril (Timelash) trader. People are being
kidnapped by robots all over the galaxy and there doesn’t seem to be any
pattern to it. Brax is claiming that the mechanoids that are doing the
kidnapping are the ones that disappeared earlier in the year whilst defending
the Collection from an attempted terrorist attack. In other words it had
nothing to do with me. On a completely separate matter he has just
purchased the colony world of Maximediras to put on major public art displays.
Its well located with a surface of mostly water and for various reason its
impossible to develop. On the whole the people who live there were happy to
leave but it still leaves a few thousand who are clinging onto their lives in
the City and don’t want anything to do with Braxiatel’s reforms to the planet.
He knew this was going to happen and has a handy little law waiting that if
more than 10% of the population is involved in civil unrest he can send his own
private peacekeeping force to silence them. He thinks of everything. In
Secret Origins it was made clear that Robyn experiences the future backwards
and that is how Bev knows who are going to be the next victims of the BPM’s.
Suddenly these little hints planted last year are starting to bear fruit. Once
upon a time the capitol of the Moon Colony was the most exciting City in human
space but now its half a historical theme park and half a grimy port. How
wonderful to get a whirlwind tour of locations like this, filling us in on
astronomical locations in the future. The Dark Side used to artificially lit
and atmospherically supported but that was all turned off decades ago when the
population dropped too low to keep it viable. Now it’s a huge pitch black ghost
town. How awesome is that? A massive network of computers on the Dark
Side of the Moon where the kidnapped people are beamed to – what is Braxiatel
up to? All the people that are being kidnapped are having something taken from
their minds. Robyn used her databank to show Bernice images of the people who
made her. They are called the Deindum and they are creatures of blue-ish light
and devoted to the spreading of peace. Robyn’s people were created when some
biological material fell through a space/time fissure and came into contact
with a primordial soup on that planet. The genetic material was human beings
from Buenos Aires (see Secret Origins). The Deindum have reached back from the
future and deflected all of Braxiatel’s attempts to destroy them. Plan B is to change
them instead, to introduce new elements to their genetic structure from their
conception. They are hoping to engineer a future where the Deindum don’t discover
time travel. If nobody is sent through the fissure the Deindum will discover
time travel and become aggressive, paranoid and suspicious. Dominate other
species and enslave them to a harsh ideology. There’s a lovely Avon/Vila
‘Orbit’ moment where Robyn pursues Bernice through the corridors of the base
where you didn’t quite know if she was enemy or friend. Peter thinks if he adds
his genetic material to the Deindum they will be able to work out how to delay
the end of the universe by millions of years. Millions more years of life for
everybody in the universe. That’s what he saw in the machine. The Braxiatel
Collection isn’t where it is by accident. He sited it there all those years ago
because there’s a huge and extremely dense energy field in that part of space.
Its generated by interdimensional leakage so it just keeps on growing. Nobody
knows about it because nobody in this era knows that this kind of energy exists
at all much less how to look for it but also because Braxiatel has been making
sure that they don’t. He wants it for his people. They are doomed. But
he wants to bring them back. He’s discovered another race from the future that
could also make use of it and that’s why he wants to move it. He wants to move
the energy leak from their grasp right next door to Maximediras. Hass pushes
Robyn into the fissure instead of Bernice (to help create the race that wound
up creating her…oh my word I’ve gone boss eyed!).
Audio Landscape: The winds of Jevada, blasting open the
door, awesome mechanoid voices, Hass’ survival suit, a screaming crowd,
stomping mechanoid, booing and jeering, whipping up a riot, lasers, klaxons,
the terrifying brain munching machine.
Standout Scene: Braxiatel admitting that he has done all of
these terrible things to save to save his people from an awful catastrophe that
is to come. He knows about the Time War. He knows that Gallifrey is
going to be destroyed and he wants to do everything in his power to bring them
back. In a superb moment of character inversion Braxiatel goes from being the
ultimate super villain to a much more sympathetic character and one who is
trying his damdest to save his race from extinction. It ties this series in
with the TV series and with the Gallifrey audio series and manages to give us a
whoppingly satisfying reason for why Braxiatel has committed such appalling
acts. In the wake of such news the death of Jason, the manipulation of the
Cybermen, the Draconians and the Mim seem small scale and less important. It
doesn’t excuse what he’s done but it does put everything in perspective.
Result: ‘We’re changing the future…’ Exciting, epic
and bringing so much of the last ten years of adventures up to date and
relevant again, Resurrecting the Past had a massive amount to achieve and it
succeeds in pretty much all of its goals. You might think that this would wind
up being a box ticking exercise but this is anything but. We’re planet hopping,
privy to Braxiatel’s machinations, dodging BPM’s, reunited with this ranges
brilliant cast and introduced to a spanking new menace. It has that wonderfully
dizzying Army of Ghosts/The Stolen Earth/The Pandorica Opens feel of pulling
together many narrative threads into a cohesive and fulfilling opening act of a
finale without any of the messy business of having to tie it all up at the end.
The pace is relentless and its such a joy to be in the midst of adventure with
Adrian, Bev, Hass, Joseph and all the others. I’d be lying if I said that I
hadn’t missed them all. Robson very cleverly manuveres everybody into a position
so the plot can finally be spelt out but via three different speakers so Brax,
Doggles and Robyn it feels less like exposition and more like an exquisite
masterplan that is reaching fruition. The story is also injected with real wit
and creativity and the cliffhanger promises exciting things to come. On every
level this is the Bernice Summerfield range firing on all cylinders, aiming
high and shooting off into the stratosphere. I’m foaming at the mouth for the
conclusion: 10/10
No comments:
Post a Comment