Archeological Adventuress: We seem to have stumbled into a
world (or possibly even universe given the meddling that Brax and his cohorts
did to the timeline in the last story) where archaeology is outlawed and the
very idea of studying the past is considered a crime. For Benny, this leaves
her academically up shit creek without a paddle especially as she is trying to
figure out the rules as she goes along. The law enforcers describe her as
innocent whilst condemning her as guilty, she’s proud of her career and doesn’t
understand that any knowledge pertaining to it is outlawed. To be as dislocated
as Bernice is here must be very frightening, everything she understands has
vanished and been replaced by universe whose rules she doesn’t understand. And
most frightening of all, this isn’t some alternative reality that will shift
back to the comfortable universe that we know and love at the end of the story.
These things are here to stay and so Bernice has to adjust. When she is
described as being poisonous they don’t know how close to the truth they might
be, in order to protect the universe from the Deindum (of which nobody has ever
heard of so let’s assume that that at least was accomplished) she had to infect
reality with a fiction that has had an adverse effect on everything. As Bernice
is trying to figure out the universe, her captors are trying to figure her out.
Suddenly she isn’t a comfortable archaeologist anymore but a reactionary, a
transgressor, a purveyor of forbidden knowledge. It’s a great way of putting
her in a dramatic scenario just for being herself. Bernice tries a little CBT
on Pallis, getting her to approach the idea of uncovering the past not as
archaeological research but deducing a mystery. In a wonderfully written
sequence she exposes her skill at her craft, taking a can fizzy pop and
applying rigorous archaeological deduction to explain much about the culture
that created it. Pallis hits the nail on the head when she says that Benny has the
ability to make things that we already know look interesting and new, she’s
been bewitching her audience like that for 20 glorious years. Its like having a
conjurer in the room. By the end of the story Bernice has hooked up with the
historians and has a collection of mysteries to try and solve. They couldn’t
have kicked off this new phase for her character on a better footing.
Standout Performance: If the last two stories were an
ensemble piece that showed what this series had to offer from its cast as a
whole, then Year Zero brings the focus right back on Benny and gives Lisa
Bowerman the chance to show how she has been managed to keep her audience
interested for so long. In a story that nakedly captures Bernice’s skill as an
archaeologist, Bowerman approaches the material in a clinical and yet
passionate manner that makes the intelligent dialogue flow like a fine wine.
She’s a touch of class and no mistake.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Mix it up for a few generations, switch
people around, deny them any knowledge of the past and pretty soon everyone
will forget everything that you don’t want them to know.’
‘This isn’t a can of fizzy, it’s a Rosetta stone. Its proof,
if ever proof was needed that you can’t hide history.’
Great Ideas: Given this is the first story that takes place
in the wake of the game changing events of Escaping the Future its quite
refreshing to find Bernice, like ourselves, in an unspecified location and
having to start putting together her surroundings again. Anything could have
happened after Bernice and her friends were forced to rewrite history, and it
looks as though one of the effects is that Bernice’s friends and family no
longer exist. If Eddie Robson was going for a new broom approach then deleting
the universe of Bernice Summerfield as we know and replacing it with another is
as dramatic a way to go about these things as any. There seems to be no record
of the Collection or the Earth and Benny is trying to get back to either,
anywhere that feels like home. One of the most intriguing pieces of this
narrative puzzle is held in the title, its almost as if the whole universe has
rebooted again at Year Zero. Some event caused the calendar to reset and we’re
now half a century on in the year 54. The mystery of what occurred in Year Zero
looks set to be at the heart of the series now, something so catastrophic that
the time before has been erased from history. There only seems to be a few
dozen stars in the sky but otherwise the sky is completely absent of stellar
bodies. Have they affected the lives entire worlds the universe over? The only
way to get from one world to the next is to be frozen in stasis. You might try
and suppress history but it is all around you all the same, even the light in
the sky is from the distant past. In the past 54 years all the books have been
burnt and carefully censored, all the songs vetted and newer, safer material
has been published in its place. Gormune believes there is an elite team of
crack historians waiting to break Bernice out of custody. He’s paranoid that
simple exposure to Benny means that they have also been infected y historical
curiosity and they will be interrogated and charged themselves. Suddenly this
story takes on a deeper, more insidious level of paranoia. What is the Great
Leader hiding? What happened at Year Zero? What is the relevance to the ‘Sky’s
No Limit’ song?
Audio Landscape: Dogs barking, intercoms, typing, phones
ringing, rain sluicing down, singing crickets, police sirens, alarm bell,
exploding car.
Standout Scene: Bernice manages to pull together a mass of
information about this world and the universe she has found herself in via
nothing more than an everyday can of fizzy pop. She deduces the materials that
are available, other cultures that went into making it, their exportation
methods, their levels of technology. By the end of her many conversations with
Pallis she has treated her like a piece of unearthed history, analysing her
character and revealing some very personal home truths. That she only hunts
down the historians so she can join them. This is very smart investigation and
some of Benny’s best ever work. She’s given practically nothing and she manages
to bleed answers from that.
Result: Its extremely refreshing to have Bernice so
dislocated from everything she recognises, a real fish out of water in a
universe that she doesn’t understand. Its precisely what they tried to achieve
in the past two seasons with moderate success writ large. Jonathan Clements
approaches the near impossible situation of having to reboot the entire Bernice
Summerfield universe by having the character and the audience unravel the
mystery at the same time. It’s an interrogative story, mostly constructed out
of two hander scenes and flashbacks to Benny committing the crime that she is
accused of. What I particularly enjoyed about this release is that it isn’t
your standard Big Finish release that is buoyed up by a persistent musical
score and wealth of soundscapes. Everything is cut right back to the bone and a
lush production is replaced by intelligent dialogue and the discussion of some
formidable ideas. Thus it might not be to everyone’s taste because you can’t
just let it wash over you, you really have to concentrate to get the most from
the accomplished examination of ideas. There’s a whopping great mystery at the
heart of the story (Year Zero itself) and it’s a clever conceit to allow for
some imaginative restructuring of the universe as we understand it. And the way
that Bernice reveals her ability through something as innocuous as a can of
drink is inspired, by the end of the story she has deconstructed this society
through what little exposure she has had to it. Absolutely beguiling if you
give it the attention it deserves and the third classic of the season: 10/10
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