Start to Finish: 4.06 - Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Professor Bernice 'Benny' Summerfield has a long history with Big Finish, a company originally formed to make audio plays based on her adventures in the Virgin New Adventures series of novels (with the Doctor surgically removed) and her solo spin offs. She has appeared in a couple of monthly releases which align slightly bizarrely with the main range, including the excellent Company of Friends, featuring four stories with different companions of the Eighth Doctor - Benny from the Virgin novels, Fitz Kreiner from the BBC Eighth Doctor range, Izzy Somebody from Doctor Who Magazine and Mary Shelley from a reference in an earlier Big Finish story - and now in a Companion Chronicle. Throughout she has been voiced by one-time cheetah person Lisa Bowerman, who has been more often involved with the Chronicles as a director.

The Doctor is mediating a failing peace summit on Sanquist, while Benny attends an archaeological conference on the same world. When Benny hears of a 'forbidden language', she is intrigued, but then the Doctor is kidnapped and she has bigger fish to fry.

Godlike machines and malevolent misconceptions are the backbone of Eddie Robson's Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code. It's a conceit from the New Adventures to have the Doctor throw himself so publicly front and centre, and the result is a very subdued Seventh Doctor who plays little active part in the story, even by Chronicle standards. Joining Bowerman is Charlie Hayes as a young archaeologist named Gatlin, whose job is mostly to offer exposition and at one point to turn up with a car. As occasionally happens, the second role is not well-integrated, which is a shame.

Overall, The Criminal Code is a partial success. Bowerman is very good, and the second half of the story, where the energy picks up and the Doctor gets his game on. Bowerman does not provide a particularly strong McCoy, or perhaps it's just that the writing is so far downbeat of his usual performance as the Doctor.

Next up, a double-length Chronicle, with Maureen O'Brien and Peter Purves running a double act as Vicki and Steven in The Suffering.