The second story in this 'advent' box set sees Benny, Jack and Peter head off to investigate a spate of missing spacecraft. After some spacey shenanigans they find themselves at a dockyard where there is only one ship, hundreds of life signs but no one around and one lone, terrified man, handcuffed in a room.

This is a Christmassy 'ghost story' with zombies. It involves an ancient race (doesn't it always) that inhabit inherently good artefacts to preserve them. Benny knows of this race and credits them as keeping relics safe for archaeologists to discover. There's some good detective work on the part of all three regulars (although Peter seems to know a lot about 20th century ships for a half-Killoran boy from the 27th century) and overall it's quite a satisfying adventure if, again, not particularly Christmassy.

You know when you listen to an episode and literally nothing happens for an hour, so you're like huh. What was the point of that. HMS Surprise is one of those episodes. Benny, Peter, and Jack get whooshed away to a shipyard where Benny meets some mystery guy in a lighthouse and Peter and Jack meander around and around some old ship.

And that keeps happening for an hour.

This episode isn't bad, not at all. The characterisation is fine, so Jack continues to be annoying and Peter's continued vendetta against his mother isn't particularly engaging either, and the concept of the story is fine. It's just boring. It's a nothingy story. They all wander about and get confused by things, and then it ends. Not a favourite by any means.