For my totally official and planned and not something i came up with on the fly after noticing I did two reviews after each other on the first and the second of the month 31 days of December reviews I’ve been missing a few days. Now, this was planned, to allow for me to listen to and review all of my first foray into The New Adventures Of Bernice Summerfield, starting with the latest release, the Eternity Club. I’d been pondering buying these for a while already, but after reading a certain very interesting spoiler with recommendations on top of that, i broke. Gave in. Bye bye money, and hello Benny. Time to do this review thing now.

This new series of adventure is half-hour episodes. Reminding of Big Finish’s The Confessions of Dorian Gray, that have a similar length. Big fan of those too, me. But the way these short episodes are approached are very different. Confessions tries often, regardless of its short length, to tell either big epic stories or dramatic character pieces or both at the same time. It uses the shorter length to push the quick bursts of drama so fast to have it almost gain shock value. Here in the Eternity Club though, we find the length being used to tell lighter, sitcom-esque stories. There is no drowning the listener in melodrama, but a straight-man approach to the crazy world of Doctor Who. Bernice doesn’t go around fighting monsters, but is cleaning and helping an amnesiac member. The thirty minutes are for the more casual things, and used to bring us a look at this universe from a different perspective.

What I want thou to remember most absolute, is that when I speak of ‘sitcom-esque’, I do not mean that this is merely a simple comedy with aliens. Structurally it is not more a sitcom than half of the writing found in the television series of the Eleventh Doctor Who, I ought to say. Even aside from the mysteries and hints at continuing storylines that have been dropped, there is a lot of interesting things to be found here. One that I was most appreciative of, was the slight satirical nature of it. The lack of a good ending, the irony of the situation Bernice has to solve plus the social commentary, bring tonally almost a less cynical version of the writing of the great Guido Martina or remind of people like Evert Geradts and even Giorgio Pezzin (this is my review, and after thinking for way too long, I’ve decided i can draw any comparison that i like). It also doesn’t shy away from more introspective moments, and even deconstructing the characters a little, which I am enjoying a lot as well, though this will come to its conclusion later in the series of course, but the ground blocks laid have already been very strong.

Another quite impressive part is the naturalness of the introductory parts. They are sewn well into the main plot Goss wants to tell this episode. The fact that some scenes very much have an introductory purpose is quite obvious, but still it is that they do not feel out of place.

I feel like there is more to say about this story, but I’m afraid of being redundant by mentioning a lot of specifics, mostly because I won’t currently be able to do it the right way. Comments about the general series itself I do have though, but I have such a feeling that those might be better saved for the other reviews. I already fear the proportions of length are going to be most inconsistent as is. So I’ll just stop and think about structuring my next babble about feminism and history.