Bernice Summerfield

#3.03. Dance of the Dead ~ 6/10

◆ An Introduction

Returning to the main series now, we’ve got Benny’s first adventure with a bona fide alien from Doctor Who. Took them long enough to do something like this, but it’s time for our favourite Professor to make friends with a New Martian Delegate.

Otherwise known as an Ice Warrior…

◆ Publisher’s Summary

Illegally smuggled aboard a spaceship, hungover to the nth degree, all Benny Summerfield wants is to curl up in a ball and die. And it looks like she's going to get her chance.

When disaster strikes the ship – human error, or deliberate sabotage? - Benny barely survives. Banding together with a party of Ice Warriors and a laconic steward, a hazardous, arduous race is on to find a way out of the wreck before it breaks up all together. But are her fellow escapees all they seem? Benny finds that's hard to tell when your own mind's being hijacked by the memories and emotions of a dead alien – while a Martian Grand Marshall becomes your better half…

◆ Prof. Bernice Summerfield

Lisa Bowerman’s performance is decent here, when she’s not being possessed by memories.

Benny seems to specialise in places she shouldn’t be. She should be back on the Collection, with her son, and other animals! She tells Sstac that she spent a year on Mars, and three more in debt as a result.

◆ Story Recap

Following her brief adventure on Excelis, Benny found herself smuggled aboard the space liner Empress, which is currently calling on a hundred worlds to take delegates of a peace conference home.

She’s dealing with the mother of all hangovers, but soon finds herself dealing with the ship in bits… as it’s decimated by several large explosions!

Teaming up with Grand Marshall Sstac, of the New Mars delegation, the two must locate the ship’s saboteur… and stop New Mars falling into a state of all out war!

◆ Missed Potential

‘The Dance of the Dead’ is a script that reeks of missed potential, but let’s start off with the positive bits. I really enjoyed the friendship between Benny and Grand Marshall Sstac, and they work exceedingly well together (there’s clearly a lot of on-air chemistry between Bowerman and Brenher). It’s really saddening that we didn’t get to hear this pairing in action again.

With the positives now out of the way, let’s dive into the missed potential of this adventure… and its main MacGuffin. Steve Cole’s script revolves around the idea of two Kolgarian jewels. They contained a gas that would keep their memories and emotions, allowing them to live on after death. Benny and Sstac breathe them in, and start believing they are the Kolgarian delegates, Asnarbi and Musjarna.

I feel like we could have had these amazing dream-like sequences with Benny and Sstac, like an out-of-body moment where they experience these lost lives… we instead get scenes where the two just talk absolute nonsense! Such a shame.

◆ Sound Design

David Darlington returns, but his soundscape for ‘Dance of the Dead’ felt incredibly generic.

Clicking electrical instruments can be heard aboard the Empress, as Benny comes round from her hangover induced sleep. The babbling of the Kolgarian delegates. The Empress begins detonating and delegates start screaming, running round like headless chickens! Sprinklers spray the decks with cool and soothing water.

◆ Music

This score honestly sounds like a mosquito farting into a microphone… moving swiftly on!

◆ Conclusion

“Mayday! Mayday! From the space liner Empress.”

‘Dance of the Dead’ definitely had potential, but the concept of Benny and Sstac being possessed by memories and spouting nonsensical dialogue reminds me a little too much of the keyboard sneeze writing from ‘Venusian Lullaby’.

Once your script starts rambling like an incoherent moron, I am going to lose interest. That being said, I really enjoyed the friendship between Benny and Sstac, and it makes me wish he could’ve just abandoned his post on New Mars and become another resident of the Braxiatel Collection.