Bernice Summerfield

#1.01. Oh No It Isn’t! ~ 9/10

◆ An Introduction

Before they were granted permission to make new Doctor Who adventures, BigFinish put all their resources into one of the most popular characters from the novels.

I was never that interested in the adventures of Prof. Summerfield, despite her range being the longest running series in the BigFinish catalogue. I’ve owned the entire first series since 2018, but never given it the time of day, until now.

Some of you would’ve expected BigFinish to play it safe for their first release, and you would’ve been completely wrong.

It’s time for a pantomime!

◆ Publisher’s Summary

"The King's balls get bigger every year!"

What could possibly go wrong on Professor Bernice Summerfield's investigation into the lost civilisation of Perfecton? Nothing, it seems – until they leave the planet and spot a dirty great missile heading towards their ship. But instead of oblivion, Benny finds herself plunged into the strange world of… panto.

◆ Prof. Bernice Summerfield

Lisa Bowerman hit the ground running, delivering a magnificent performance in her debut adventure.

Benny believes that you can always tell a deserted planet from the noises it doesn’t make; no whirring of motors, no dogs barking, just the call of the common-or-garden archaeology student. You can call her whatever you want to, as long as it’s flattering. Benny was conscripted straight out of the Spacefleet Military Academy, like a lot of people in the wars – she bailed out of a troop ship on the way to battle, joined a dig by faking her qualifications, and worked her way up to being in charge of expeditions. She gained her professorship on the run. Benny wakes up in a strange meadow and is convinced that she’s dead, so begins talking to her Goddess. Her reaction to seeing Wolsey is hilarious – he claims that she’s actually a fella, so she goes behind a tree to check she’s “not got an extra appendage.” She’s a professor of archaeology, not a soldier, and she doesn’t kill people. Marriage: Benny has been there, done that, painted the spare room, split up, got miserable, got drunk, and tried to seduce her students… she is not going through that again! I love that her way of trying to crack the Land of Pantomime is to declare marriage to about 90% of the guests during the King’s Ball! She’s far from happy that the Land of Panto has basically started censoring her whenever she tries swearing.

◆ Story Recap

Prof. Summerfield is leading a dig on the previously quarantined world of Perfecton. Whilst aboard her team’s mode of transport, the Winton, the crew discover they’re being boarded by fearsome squid-like data pirates, with a love of all things factual: the Grel!

That’s the least of their worries though, as the Winton is soon struck by a whopping great missile. It hits the ship, and Benny awakes in a beautiful meadow.

At first she believes this to be Heaven, then Hell… but the truth is far more disturbing. She’s been transported into the camp world of pantomime, and the Grel have been sucked into this domain too!

◆ Good Fact!

I hope you weren’t expecting anything particularly deep from this adventure, because it mainly consists of innuendos and Disney-esque sequences of actual madness!

Let’s kick things off by discussing the Grel: a race of data pirates who traverse the universe attempting to gather up all the facts in the cosmos. They absolutely adore data, practically gorging themselves on it like overgrown pigs… if pigs resembled deep-fried calamari!

These squid-like pirates take everything literally, which means they struggle when encountering fiction – as shown throughout this adventure, and also when they are found burning books by the Sixth Doctor and Charley in ‘The Doomwood Curse’.

The Grel are truly fascinating creations, which makes me oh so happy that they’ll be returning in Series Five.

◆ Sound Design

Considering this was the first adventure BigFinish ever released, you’d be forgiven for expecting a real hodgepodge of a soundscape. In reality, it’s actually aged like fine wine and cheese! Alistair Lock delivers something over-the-top and insane: it’s pure camp!

Power tools and hydraulic machinery are used to dismantle the base camp on Perfecton, as Benny and her students prepare for the journey back to St Oscar’s University. The slimy and slippery voices of the squid-like Grel. Wolsey miaowing at the door of Benny’s cabin aboard the Winton. The glorious tweeting of birds in the idyllic meadow. Harmonising blue-birds attempt to do the washing up. A sword fight erupts, with Wolsey and the Dwarfs taking on a platoon of Grel… before the forces of Prince Charming come to the rescue! The hissing of the audience as the King’s Vizier enters the scene. The grand and beautiful music played at the King’s Ball. The clocks strike midnight; the world of Panto begins warping around Benny as it struggles to cope with all the marriage proposals, struggles to cope with the lack of closure.

◆ Music

Lock is also handling the score, and it fully embraces the gloriously camp nature of a pantomime. A truly joyful suite of music.

◆ Conclusion

“Harmonising blue birds? I’m definitely on drugs.”

Prof. Summerfield has become trapped within the world of pantomime: a strange realm where her students have become the Seven Dwarfs, her cat speaks with the gruff tones of Nicholas Courtney, and a platoon of data pirates resembling deep fried calamari are hunting for more juicy facts!

‘Oh No It Isn’t!’ is a pretty strong contender for the most bizarre BigFinish release I’ve encountered, but it’s gloriously camp! If you liked the vulgarity and humour of something like ‘The Kingmaker’, then this is right up your street.

This story is absolutely bonkers. One can only imagine that, in 1999, the listening experience was less 'wtf this is the story that the beloved company Big Finish began with???' and more 'yayyy Benny from My Novels is now on audio! Hooray!!'

We find Benny on a ship, about to be swallowed by a supernova, only to be suddenly thrust into Pantoland. As a Brit, the Panto is a pretty fundamental core memory to be, though I can't help but wonder how anyone from anywhere else feels about all the classic pantomime tropes. I feel like the more seriously you try to take this, the less fun you will have, and that's a shame because this is a lot of fun.

Lisa Bowerman is an absolutely wonderful actor and she sparkles in this. You can understand why, when listening to any Benny story, the character has been so enduring, and a large part of that is down to Bowerman's performance. She is so wonderful.

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“OH NO IT ISN’T! – PANTO, PLOT TWISTS, AND PROFESSOR SUMMERFIELD’S GRAND ENTRANCE”

It all begins here – not with a bang, but with a pantomime. Oh No It Isn’t! marks Big Finish’s very first commercial audio drama, adapted from Paul Cornell’s 1997 Virgin New Adventures novel by Jacqueline Rayner. It introduces us to Professor Bernice Summerfield in her very own spin-off series, and as opening salvos go, it’s a surreal and chaotic mixture of genre pastiche, sharp wit, and gleeful absurdity.

The setup is relatively straightforward at first: Benny and her students are en route to an archaeological expedition, passing the time with drinks and banter aboard a spaceship. But the story takes a sharp left turn into madness when the ship is attacked by the war-hungry Grell – and Benny wakes up in a reality governed by pantomime logic, where her crewmates now play characters from classic fairytales.

What follows is a heady blend of Cinderella, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty and other familiar stories all mashed into a surreal, storybook-esque afterlife. It’s a clever conceit, but also one that assumes at least a basic familiarity with British panto traditions – those without that cultural background may find themselves scratching their heads during the more bizarre segments.

A FAIRYTALE FULL OF FANTASY, FARCE AND… FURRY FELINES?

There’s an odd tension in the tone – Rayner’s adaptation preserves the snappy dialogue and irreverent humour, but doesn’t shy away from a few surprisingly crude jokes that feel a bit out of place given Big Finish’s usual restraint. Still, the sharpness of the writing keeps things buoyant, even as the plot begins to wobble under the weight of its own madness.

Among the most bonkers moments? Benny breaking the fourth wall to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat with the audience, and Nicholas Courtney (yes, the Brigadier!) voicing Benny’s talking cat, Wolsey. If that sentence didn’t tip you off, this isn’t your typical sci-fi audio.

The rest of the cast is just as unexpected. Mark Gatiss shows up as a scheming Grand Vizier, Nicholas Briggs is Prince Charming, and the characters Benny knows in real life have now become exaggerated panto archetypes in this alternate world. It’s both disorienting and amusing, with Benny the only one aware that something isn’t quite right.

THE MYSTERY (SORT OF) UNRAVELS

Much like the world she’s trapped in, the plot loses focus as the story goes on. The mystery of where Benny is and what’s going on keeps things compelling for a while, but there’s little actual tension. By the halfway mark, the surreal setting begins to wear thin, and the momentum dips.

Still, the second half does course-correct slightly when Benny starts questioning the rules of the story itself – noting, for instance, that there aren’t enough songs or audience interactions for it to be a proper panto. Eventually, we get a sci-fi twist: the whole thing is a virtual reality created by a godlike genie-like figure. It fits the story’s tone, sure, but doesn’t exactly stick the landing.

The Grell – initially positioned as major antagonists – are also sorely underused. Their apparent plan to conquer the world with zany alien vices comes to nothing. But perhaps that’s the joke – the threat is never really meant to be taken seriously. This is comedy, after all.

BENNY TAKES THE STAGE

Lisa Bowerman makes her audio debut as Bernice Summerfield and feels right at home, even if she sounds startlingly young compared to the more seasoned portrayal we’d come to know. She carries the whole story with confidence and charisma, balancing the academic smarts and the sharp tongue that made Benny such a fan-favourite in the Virgin New Adventures novels.

It’s also great that the story leans into her archaeological expertise – she eventually figures out her situation because she recognises the pantomime traditions as part of Earth's cultural history. That’s a very Benny thing to do and a lovely character touch that sells her as a Doctor-ish protagonist in her own right.

📝VERDICT: 7/10

Oh No It Isn’t! is a charmingly chaotic first step into Big Finish’s world, as experimental as it is strange. The plot sometimes loses its way and the humour can be hit-and-miss depending on your familiarity with panto, but Lisa Bowerman’s performance, Jacqueline Rayner’s witty script, and the sheer audacity of the premise make this a memorable debut. It’s not perfect – more curious oddity than classic opener – but it’s a bold and fitting start for a character as unorthodox as Professor Summerfield.

Fun, flawed, and fabulously weird – and exactly the kind of gamble that would come to define Big Finish.

Pantomime is a bit rubbish isn't it? Thankfully the character of Bernice Summerfield is so well drawn, and so perfectly acted by Lisa Bowerman that this still holds up well enough. If you can put up with the dick jokes and painful innuendo.

I loved the side characters too (until we got sucked into the pantomime universe). The first 20 minutes felt surprisingly established. Luckily as the concept gets a bit dodgy Nicholas Courtney joins the mix - his performance is a total pleasure.

On the one hand it really is the oddest choice to start a new range of audios with. It’s camp, silly, packed with over-the-top performances and does rely on people being familiar with who Bernice is a bit too much.

On the other hand, it is actually a good example of what Benny does best - solving a mystery with the clues in front of her. The story actually develops at a really good pace (I do love that the cover boasts about the story being nearly two hours long) and it reveals it hand carefully and with Bernice working it out whilst having a fun time in the crazy world.

I know the panto stuff probably irritates some people but I’ve adored panto since I was a kid and I love the way it is woven into the story alongside general fairy tale tropes (another love of mine). It’s clever how the story shifts from one set of tropes to another and plays with the tropes a bit and the reveal that it’s all because of a dissertation on panto uploaded to a ship’s computer marries the weird reality and the ‘normal’ world of Bernice in a satisfactory way.

The over the top characters are huge fun and I adore Mark Gatiss channelling Kenneth Williams as the Vizier. Nick Briggs’ Julian Clary-esque fairy godfather is fun too. He also gives good Prince Charming and the rest of the cast are fun as various dwarves and dames.

Top of the list though are Lisa Bowerman and Nicholas Courtney as Benny and Wolsey. Nicholas Courtney is sublime as Wolsey, especially when he starts to have an existential crisis about not really being a talking pussy. He has a great line in dick jokes too.

But I think we undersell how brilliant Lisa Bowerman is in her first outing as Benny. She absolutely hits the ground running and owns the part. It really is no surprise that this series continues with Bowerman at the head of the ship. She is instantly likeable and pins Benny’s character immediately. She starts as she means to go on and I’m not sure she’s ever given a bad performance as Benny.

The Grel are a great creation too - all the ‘bad fact/report/query’ stuff is fun and I like the fact the script doesn’t try to force them into fairy tale roles but keeps them as outsiders like Bernice, but enlisting the help of villains to try to achieve their ends.

I think this is probably one of those stories you either love or hate and, you know what, I love it. 4/5