Hub - Issue 25 by Eric Brown / Alasdair Stuart / Scott Harrison

Author:Eric Brown / Alasdair Stuart / Scott Harrison
Format: epub

Reviews

Bernice Summerfield: The End of the World reviewed by Alasdair Stuart

28 Weeks Later reviewed by Scott Harrison

Bernice Summerfield 8.4 The End of the World

Written by Dave Stone

Starring: Stephen Fewell, Lisa Bowerman, Paul Chahidi, Caroline Lennon, Harry Myers and Miles Richardson

The Bernice Summerfield discs are a consistently frustrating experience to review, and the reason why is simple:

Babylon 5.

Babylon 5 was a hugely ambitious and wilfully complicated five year story that demanded total attention, rewarded it and whilst it had the odd bump in the road was, and is, consistently one of the most interesting, ambitious, intelligent pieces of popular science fiction in the last twenty years. No doubt some people will cite the dodgy special effects, occasionally stilted dialogue and the mostly poor final season but regardless Babylon 5 had a beginning, a middle and an end. It was joined up storytelling,it was great and it was next to impossible to follow if you weren’t IN AT THE GROUND FLOOR.

As Babylon 5, so Bernice Summerfield. So, in a desperate attempt to bring you up to speed…

Bernice is an archaeologist who travelled with the Doctor (Yes that Doctor) for a while and is now employed by the Braxiatel Collection. The Braxiatel Collection is run by Irving Braxiatel, also a TimeLord and possibly a direct blood relative of the Doctor (Yes that Doctor) and is dedicated to preserving dead and lost civilisations. A small planetoid, it’s home to Benny, Brax, the various members of Benny’s family and friends, her cat Woolsey and her ex-husband Jason Kane (Fewell). They’ve not had a good time of it recently too, with two warring enemies fighting over the Collection and as a result of this and several other events, Jason Kane is becoming suspicious…

This is an almost entirely Bernice-free Bernice story and Fewell revels in the chance to take centre stage. Kane’s always been one of the difficult characters for writers to deal with, his combination of feckless ineptitude, 20th century upbringing and bravery meaning he see-saws constantly between rogue-ish Captain Jack-esque sidekick and whinging, needy faux damsel in distress. Here though he’s in control, he has a plan and…it’s a really bad one. Fewell does a fantastic job here ofexploring how Jason has walked the thin line between total confidence and total, abject failure and the end result is a surprisingly brittle, desperate, oddly tragic figure. His interaction with his family is particularly well handled as is Kane’s growing frustration at the situation he’s in. Things SHOULD be different, he knows that and the frustration is all but killing him. Jason Kane should be a hero, instead he’s an afterthought and Fewell captures the quiet, desperate need of the man to step out of that shadow perfectly.

Here’s the other frustrating thing about reviewing Bernice Summerfield discs. Increasingly, to say anything about the plot is to give away almost every surprise and this disc takes that practice to the nth degree. What I can tell you is that Dave Stone’s story is filled with his trademark humour

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