Bernice
Summerfield 7.6:
The Empire
State
written by
Eddie Robson
Why do I get
the awful feeling that I'm eventually going to spin the disc that
opens the next season and find out that the cliffhanger and the whole
situation on the Collection was resolved in a novel that's probably
out of print?
I know this
is a very specific whinge but I do find it irritating how the novel
and audio series were intertwined and neither was exactly the primary
source for major events. The box set era had novels, which I did
read, and those were all side stories to the events of the audio. You
could happily ignore the books and you'd get a complete experience
just from the audio stories. In this era, not so much. I'm
practically certain Doggles appeared in Summer of Love
for the very first time in the audios but we're supposed to know him
because he was in the books.
Right,
now I've whinged about the overall structure of the Bernice
Summerfield series in this era let me get on to my whinge about the
overall structure of the audio series in particular because that's
sort of where that all came from.
If
this is a season finale then I'm a Dutchman (I'd say Chinaman but a:
racist and, b: actually some distant Chinese heritage on my father's
side so not the best way to make my point). We carry on from Summer
of Love and The Oracle
of Delphi as Bernice goes to dig
up the Stone Of Barter that she found out about from the Oracle under
orders from Bev at the end of Summer of Love.
So far so good, halfway decent structure. Unfortunately this mission
takes her far from the Collection and into a rather separate adventure that only really gets back to the point at the end without
taking us back to the Collection and the situation this has all been
intended to resolve.
I
just know its going to have been dealt with in a bloody book.
Anyway,
the Stone Of Barter was meant to be in a place called the Empire
State, a lunar colony that was wiped off the map by an explosion a
century or so back. As the story begins, Bernice finds herself
disorientated and standing in a suddenly revived and fully populated
Empire State. Bernice is confused and looking for a women called
Maggie with whom she was working on the dig to find the Empire State.
Maggie, meanwhile, has struck up a friendship with a man called Rand,
the person who originally blew up the colony. Its not that the
mystery of how the colony came back is uninteresting (though the
presence of a magic stone at the centre of it means it isn't the most
complicated mystery either) but the very tight continuity of the last
two stories rather led me to believe the season would conclude with a
conclusion.
However,
much like The Oracle of Delphi,
this story contributes to the general arc of the season only at the
very end after a pretty much separate adventure concludes. Well, that
and in various video messages from Jason Kane updating Benny on the
situation back at the Collection.
A
situation I can only hope, but do not necessarily expect, to hear
resolved when I get to season eight.
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