Bernice
Summerfield 8.1:
The Tub Full
of Cats
written by
Daniel O'Mahony
Okay, I'm
bored of GW stuff, so let's end this catch-up series by resolving
something from earlier: did the cliffhanger from The Empire State
lead to a good season opener in this or is it going to be completely
incomprehensible because the resolution was in a random novel I don't
own?
Surprisingly
between series four and this one Big Finish seem to have learnt their
lesson. This story picks up pretty directly from The Empire State
with Bernice and and Braxiatel's cloned daughter Maggie dragging Brax
back to the collection. For various reasons, including being a cheap
bastard and only wanting to pay for two full price tickets, Brax has
put himself into suspended animation in a coffin and is getting
himself shipped home as cargo. Brax picked the ship and so,
naturally, we're in one of those stories where he's got himself a
deal with a hell of a downside. If nothing else its a good nostalgia
trip for those who missed the character,me included.
Its
a trippy sort of story with regular cutaways to an old time American
astronaut called Anthony Rogers, cutaways in which Brax is a waiter,
Bernice is the former First Lady and Maggie Matsumoto is the
personification of death that Rogers keeps being racist about.
Its
a race against time for everyone to get back to the Collection where
the Draconians and the Mim (the latter who I vaguely remember from a
Companion Chronicle) are blockading the place and getting ready to
shoot at each other. The ship has a secret, of course, a particularly
nice science-fiction-y secret that involves the ship being absolutely
infested with cats. I finally looked up what happened to Wolsey and
its nice to hear Benny doting over a cat again, even if I seem to
remember references to Wolsey still being alive when she's moaning
about the people she doesn't know the fate of in Legion.
For
my money, the most interesting parts of the story are the
interactions between Brax and Maggie. Brax is still being charming
and urbane, or trying to, but Benny is having none of it after the
things he did to Jason and Maggie is just angry with him for a whole
host of reasons starting with being an absent father and moving up
from there. Its certainly more interesting than the fictional history
of late twenty-first century space travel. That whole thread comes to
an interesting and tragic conclusion but the reason I'm going back to
listen to the stories from the single release era is I miss the
Collection cast.
Speaking
of which, now that Brax is back on the Collection I'm looking forward
to hearing the fireworks fly when he gets the necessary
confrontations with Bev and Jason.
But
that's not for tomorrow, maybe not even for the day after, I'll get
to it I'm sure but that's the last of my thirty discs in thirty days.
Its been fun, apart from I Scream.
No comments:
Post a Comment