30 Discs Hath November #30: The Tub Full Of Cats

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. 

30 Discs Hath November #22: The Empire State

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. 

30 Discs Hath November #21: The Oracle of Delphi

Bernice Summerfield 7.5:

The Oracle of Delphi

written by Scott Handcock

Well, I wanted more Jason Kane before he was gone and I'm getting it. Not un-coincidentally, the line “What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this with no clothes on.” is about the most Jason line ever written.

So, as this season of Benny audios becomes more and more serialised we have Bernice and Jason using their time rings to travel back to 430BCE Greece to asks the Delphic Oracle some questions. Naturally, Jason decides to have a bit of skinny dip in a sacred pool while Bernice goes to ask the questions (and find an empty cave for her troubles) and ends up getting hypnotised and kidnapped by some random woman. That's just how he rolls, go with it.

Incidentally, I have to wonder how much I'm screwing myself over by not reading the books because I was bloody sure the Oracle of Delphi or somesuch other future telling sort was actually present on the Collection. I thought she was why the Collection was where it was. Ho hum...

Anyway, the meat of the episode is Benny having a good old celebrity historical team-up with Socrates, a team-up started by her trying to tell him in broken Ancient Greek that she's looking for her husband and giving him the impression she's just looking for a man and wants to sleep with him. She later signs a note to him “Lots of sex, Benny.” I rather like this version of Socrates who gets annoyed at the very idea that Plato felt the need to write an apology for him and ends up putting Jason in a headlock.

I said I liked Jason, not that I didn't want him to get a sound beating every now and again. In that sense I feel a certain kinship with Benny herself.

There's the usual historical ticking time bomb in the form of the plague that's going to imminently sweep across Greece which means Benny really, really has to find Jason quickly. In this search she is helped by correctly identifying that where there;s an all-female cult with booze Jason Kane won't be far behind. Both characters get a chance to stand in the Athenian Assembly, a scene that Benny makes a magnificent hash up of whilst wearing a disguise the effectiveness of which is left as an exercise for the listener (personally I choose to imagine a fake beard augmenting her stolen robe).

As fun as it is, there is the feeling that at this stage the idea of writing for the arc is still a little new and fiddly for the series as the asking of the questions Bev wants answered (well, some of them) form a coda at the end of the story in which literally Benny and Jason have to backtrack from where they came in order to fulfill what was meant to be the whole point of the story. A minor issue in an otherwise enjoyable tale. 

I'm going to miss Jason Kane

[SPOILERS for the later seasons of Bernice Summerfield and the eventual fate of Jason Kane.]

Listening to these old Bernice Summerfield audios the last few days I've remembered how much I adore the audio version of Jason Kane. Back in the day when he was a character in the novels I never really cared for him. He was introduced rather quickly a whole book before marrying Bernice in what was meant to be her departure from the series. The publisher then lost the Doctor Who license and decided Benny needed to get divorced or risk being an uninteresting protagonist because...

Well, because the misogynist belief that marriage is somehow the death of all fun in a person's life, that's fucking why. Seriously, how is this a mainstream attitude to marriage and yet so many straight people want to keep the institution all to themselves?

Anyway, Jason and why I adore him.

I love his relationship with Bernice, the on-again off-again thing they have going for them that even when its on isn't 100% exclusive. That, Virgin Publishing, is how you allow yourselves to have the interesting character relationship of marriage (and it is interesting if you allow it to be) and still have on-off and temporary love interests when it'll serve the story.

I love that he is an absolute chancer always out to make a buck but with a heart of gold. During the occupation storyline and the brilliant short story collection Life During Wartime which was about the only Bernice Big Finish novel I ever read, he appears to have sided with Axis and become a collaborator. Eventually, though, it turns out he's been using his position to smuggle food out to an underground railroad for the Collection's children.

One thing I will say that actually encompasses the novel version of Jason is that I appreciate the attempt to portray a male survivor of child abuse. It rarely landed with any author besides Paul Cornell and Kate Orman but the effort was there to portray the character with sensitivity and reference to how he still deals with the memories as an adult.

That said, I don't think anyone ever addressed the fate of his sister.

Anyway, the reason for this post is I know that Jason is going to die. I know vaguely how it happens, even, since I picked up the box set series of Bernice Summerfield. I know this character I like is on borrowed time as I barrel through his remaining appearances.

That said, if they ever actually address the bloody cliffhanger from Missing Persons we might yet hear from him again.

30 Discs Hath November #20: Summer of Love

Bernice Summerfield 7.4:

Summer of Love

written by Simon Guerrier

I guess it was only a matter of time before someone wrote an actual, honest to goodness sex comedy for Bernice Summerfield. Bernice has returned to the Braxiatel Collection which has been falling apart recently (presumably in the novels which I never followed and would explain the introduction of Doggles, a character I'd never heard of before). For some reason people are shagging like rabbits and Ben Tarrant, former art thief and current head of the Collection, is wandering the grounds naked reprimanding students.

The punchline to it all is actually brilliant: this is a literal sex pollen story. I kid you not, an actual canonical sex pollen story which has both magnificent comedy potential and some very, very serious disadvantages where the issue of consent is concerned. The script absolutely leans into both aspects of the classic fan fiction trope and I'm not sure it entirely works but here we go.

On the plus side there's plenty of comedy to be had from Bernice watching the Collection descending slowly towards all-out gangbang whilst Jason is off-world. As she explains herself, she and Jason are hardly monogamous (“monogamous when they can be” is the phrase she uses) but she's obviously not in the mood to play away at this stage of their relationship. Unfortunately she has advances from Doggles, Adrian, Joseph the robot porter, the gaseous groundskeeper Haas (who I swear used to be an Ice Warrior, probably another event from the novels I missed), various students and even Bev to contend with.

On the down side, of course, are the consent issues which range from the merely bad (Doggles acting like a kicked puppy at his thwarted advances) to the downright repugnant (Haas engaging Bernice in an activity without telling her it'll give him a thrill). Its sort of impossible to do a sex pollen story without addressing this, at least if you want it to be anything other than masturbation material on a fan fiction site, but I'm not sure that Guerrier sticks the landing. I'm rather reminded of some of the more... unsavoury implications of his Graceless series but a lot milder.

Like, a lot milder.

The main joy of the story, aside from Bernice's constant need for a cold shower, is getting to hear Bev Tarrant lording it over the Collection as its nudist master which turns out to be less about sexual inhibition and more about treaty negotiations with a series of local worlds who are in real danger of invading the Collection now Brax is gone. I do wish this series spent a little more time at the Collection as I've always liked the cast, especially Adrian and Bev who appear to now be a couple which makes sense of why they're always mentioned together by Peter in the Legion-era box sets.

Next stop, according to the cliffhanger, is a Bernice and Jason story as they go searching for “advice” on how to keep the Collection safe. For some reason this involves the Oracle of Delphi. You've got to love anthology series.

30 Discs Hath November #19: The Worst Thing In The World

Bernice Summerfield 7.3:

The Worst Thing In The World

written by Dave Stone

Dave Stone is a funny one. I have a sort of love-hate relationship with his writing but not in the sense of some worked landing on one side and some on the other. That would be too simple an attitude to have towards The New Adventures' weirdest son, oh no. No, I tend to find his stuff a bit hard to get into but once I'm a few minutes/chapters in I start going with the flow and really enjoying it. Thus it was when I originally bought this CD: I got a couple of minutes into the Eastenders parody that opens the disc and gave up.

Then, when it was getting on for two o'clock this afternoon and I still hadn't written anything for this 30 Discs series and nothing was really grabbing me so I thought “Sod it, might as well get this one out of the way.”.

Whatever else I have to say about the story it made me realise how much I miss Jason Kane and hope that we get to see him again some day, an idea that was briefly mentioned at the end of the old Bernice box set series before they went back to being an explicit Doctor Who spin-off. I love that old chancer and his on-off relationship with Bernice that actually manages to be as entertaining whether its off or on. In this story he's being interviewed for galactic television as the director of a “xeno-porn bondage” movie because that's just the sort of thing Jason gets involved with when Benny isn't keeping him in line.

Anyway, he's being interviewed on “the Drome”: a massive self-contained corporate eco-system entirely dedicated to producing television shows. Everyone is part of the show there with actors doubling as audience members in other shows. Its all the brainchild of Marvin Glass whose brain patterns power the massive “transputer” that runs the Drome and who is inconveniently murdered a few minutes into the story providing us with plot and Jason with a reason to call in the expertise of his ex-wife.

It also gives Bernice a chance to escape the chaos of the post-Braxiatel Collection. I don't really remember the all the context (this has been sitting to one side for quite literally a couple of years) but it turns out that Bev Tarrant is not enjoying running the place after they kicked the boss out and Benny is extremely keen to have an adventure that's just fun and has nothing to do with anything.

The story that follows is one of the more batshit installments in Bernice's series as she and Jason find themselves dawn into various TV parodies as characters between more straightforward scenes of them going undercover to investigate Marvin Glass' murder. Your mileage will probably vary on this story depending on how much you enjoy really comical parodies such as, say, Bernice waking up as the heroine in a bodice ripper period drama and really, really living up to the name of the genre. Its the sort of over the top weird that one expects from Dave Stone which is either a massive selling point or a big strike against the story, in my case kind of both since it first stopped me getting into the plot and then was what kept me listening.

The end of the story promises that Benny and Jason are on their way back to the Collection to deal with ongoing plot which I am rather looking forward to because I do miss the Collection cast and I think I'll spend these next few entries polishing off season seven as listening to Ruler of the Universe reminded me how fun the Bernice Summerfield series is. 

30 Discs Hath November #4: The True Saviour of the Universe

Doctor Who: The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield volume 4

Ruler of the Universe: The True Saviour of the Universe

written by James Goss

I feel there's something of an injustice with the Big Finish Masters. Obviously Beevers is delightful and I won't hear a word against MacQueen but Sam Kisgart's interpretation deserves more love than it gets, I feel. Of course, this is only the third time he's played the Master in nearly fifteen years but there's a lot to recommend it.

For one thing, Kisgart does a fantastic line in snobbery. His scene where he takes Benny out to tea and complains as she pours in the milk before the tea is pitched brilliantly. Later on he mistakes a Spider-Man quote (you know the one) for Machiavelli with just as straight a face (well, the tone of the straight face, you know what I mean). He spends a lot more of the story interacting with Benny than he does with the Doctor and, as it was in the last box set, there's some serious flirting going on between the two of them which is both disconcerting and entertaining.

Given the differences of the continuity, Kisgart's Master and the Doctor don't seem to have as much animosity between them as the relationship is usually played. It also helps that this time round Kisgart has the Missy version of the character to influence him, at one point dismissing a murder attempt as how he says hello.

That having been said, the story does revolve around the classic Master plot of there being a doomsday weapon and an ancient evil to be raised and all that. It plays out much as you'd expect given the Master's fantastically bad and yet incredibly consistent history with those sort of things. Kisgart also gets to do some fantastic scenery chewing during the climax after a whole story of calm, quiet and urbane seductiveness.

The whole plot of the collapsing universe continues with the Doctor unsure of whether he can make his own plan work, a sense of self-doubt only enhanced by impeachment proceedings and the influence of the Master. The Master's entry into the world of politics is explored with all the subtlety of a brick through a window right down to the obvious Kelly Ann Conway analogue doing spin for him on the news. If this is the final hurrah for the Kisgart Master its at least one that does interesting things with the character, things that probably can't be done with the “proper” Master without effectively ending the character.

And if its the end of David Warner's Doctor? Well, that's a lot less cut and dried as the ending leaves him open to return in future box sets or not depending on what Big Finish decide they want but I certainly wouldn't object to more stories where he gets to act as the Doctor on adventures rather than the Doctor trapped and confined by politics.

As a final note, the last scene gives me hope that some day soon WE'LL BLOODY FIND WHO PETER MARRIED!

NEXT EPISODE: Helmstone

30 Discs Hath November #2: Asking For A Friend

Doctor Who: The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield volume 4

Ruler of the Universe: Asking for a Friend

written by James Goss

I do like a good psychiatrist's couch story. One of my favourite Spider-Man stories ever is that Ultimate Spider-Man issue with Aunt May going to therapy. Genuinely, one of the best stories in that entire run. Anyway, this time its David Warner's Doctor (aka President of the Universe) on the couch.

This is also one of those box set stories that does the mini-episodes thing to give you an idea of the status quo before, presumably, blowing it all to hell. Its not quite as good as having the actual room to craft a status quo but its probably as good as the box set format is ever going to give us. BF no longer have the freedom (whether by choice or commercial reality) to spend season after season crafting a setting like the Braxiatel Collection so here we are with the Doctor's therapy sessions interspersed with mini-adventures as he holds passive-aggressive press conferences, gets drunk with Benny and foils robot invasions.

Now those ones, those are the fun ones, the ones that feel like the Doctor and Benny having adventures like the old days. There are other ones, of course, darker ones that get to the heart of what the last story began to hint at: the slow erosion of the Doctor's character under the pressures of ruling a dying universe. He's in a position where he has to deal with dictators diplomatically instead of just toppling them and letting others deal with the consequences. As the Doctor says himself he's never been one for consequences or sequels but that's all he has to think about as president.

Speaking of which, I liked (and this is MAJOR SPOILERS TERRITORY) that as the story goes along the therapist seems more and more sinister but that gets turned entirely on its head. In fact the therapist even has a chance to reinforce some actual (albeit brief) insight into how this should go if the Doctor were actually serious about the whole therapy thing: he can't cheat. He uses the TARDIS to go to his sessions out of order, to try to skip to the end and his therapist calls him on it.

Speaking of consequences, we get a small glimpse of whatever passed for the Time War in the Warner continuity, one that proves even more terminal to the Time Lords than the television one. Walking through the ruins of Gallifrey we get perhaps the best glimpse into this Doctor's psychology we've had to date as he yells to the heavens the one thing he's wanted to say to the Time Lords since “the Great War” broke out:

“I TOLD YOU SO!”

Its a bleak story, all told. There's hope in there and wins for the Doctor but at the end it the impression that he's lost his way, always a running theme of the Unbound stories, is stronger than its ever been. He seems less to mourn the Time Lords than resent their absence because of how it puts responsibility on him. He interferes in a woman's life without her consent as a “nice gesture” and utterly destroys her sense of self.

Ultimately the therapy storyline calls out a lot of problems with this Doctor (and the Doctor as a larger entity, Warner has never been a better stand-in for “Benny's” Doctor than he is here) and even some of the issues Benny has been wrestling with. Halfway through a box set isn't the time for answers and I hope some of this gets addressed as we hurtle towards The End.

Next Episode: Ruler of the Universe: Truant

30 Discs Hath November #1: The City and the Clock

Digital media is a horrible, horrible thing. Physical media takes up space, it sits accusingly on your desk in a pile demanding your attention. Digital media you pay for and it sits silent and invisible on your hard drive five folders deep and it gets even worse when you pre-order things because then by the time it reaches you you've basically forgotten the pain of paying for it and any sense of real urgency goes right out the window.

So as I knuckle down to some intense hobbying in this the most dreary and dull of months I've decided to address the backlog somewhat. Be aware, this is me so these aren't reviews, they're just me jotting down anything interesting that occurs during the listening.

Doctor Who: The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield volume 4

Ruler of the Universe: The City and the Clock

written by Guy Adams

First of all let me get the moan out of the way: I miss the days when Bernice Summerfield was her own act without having to have a Doctor or a Doctor Who logo on the front cover to sell her adventures. That being said, if we must live with this compromise then David Warner's “Unbound” Doctor is definitely the best option. For one thing he's incredibly fun, especially here as he tackles paperwork and moans about in-flight entertainment and how he hates forms of transport that obey the laws of physics. There's also the fact that, from the fan point of view, he's not as important a character as Benny who has decades more history and dozens more stories behind her. For once, the Doctor is a not only sidekick to a more established character but in a way that works.

As to plot, we return to the setting of the last New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield box: an alternate universe that is dying and the Doctor has been elected President of the (remaining) Universe in order to fix it. He's dealing with the day-to-day, soul-grinding bureaucracy and he's sent Benny to an archaeological dig to investigate an artifact called the Apocalypse Clock that might be able to save them all if it exists.

Its nice to see Benny in her element again, digging things up and having trouble with the locals and the hidden truth behind the myths.

Both characters are clearly at the end of their rope. Benny misses her son and her friends and her universe perhaps more than she fears the destruction of the universe she's in. The Doctor, a character not built for the day-to-day, sounds gleeful when he thinks he's been summoned to the dig to deal with a mysterious death or doomsday weapon only to find out everything's going according to plan.

One day we'll find out who Peter married, I hope.

What else? The subplot with the locals who object to the dig is both a bit bare and a bit horribly stereotypical. It could have stood to come off a bit more sympathetically in light of recent events such as the DAPL pipeline. Instead we get a rather spare tribe in (to quote the Doctor) loincloths and carrying spears as they dance and chant in toothless protest at the edge of the dig. A lot of time is spent talking about the past of this world, describing the ruins of the city Benny has uncovered and some local legends, but the tribe are described as “traditionalists” with one more progressive local character acting as Benny's guide and no real exploration of the difference between the two. There's limited time on a single disc story, I know, but its a pity the idea goes largely unaddressed.

The meta-plot of the box set seems to be settling on a theme of how far from the standard template of the Doctor (i.e. Benny's Doctor) Warner has deviated and whether he really is the Doctor anymore. Its not even just a question Benny is asking but something that seems to be bothering the Doctor himself.

Next Episode: Ruler of the Universe: Asking For A Friend

Positive Things: How to be a spin-off with Professor Bernice Surprise Summerfield

(Spoilers for Bernice Summerfield 5.1: The Grel Escape)

Funny thing about the Bernice Summerfield range: for a Doctor Who spin-off it is terrible at being part of the Doctor Who universe. There was this period about the third and fourth seasons of the Benny audios when Big Finish did a lot of stories with her meeting classic Doctor Who monsters: the Ice Warriors, the Rutans, Draconians, Sea Devils, the Daleks...

(As an aside, no attempt to “do it again, but better” has ever been more pleasing to me than giving Benny a second shot at the Daleks in The Lights Of Skaro after blowing it in Death And The Daleks.)

It put me off, I don't mind admitting. I basically dropped the range until the Epoch box set promised me (not entirely honestly) a fresh jumping on point.

Now, this isn't me saying Benny doesn't work in the context of Doctor Who. That's flat out absurd: a Doctor Who companion doesn't get eighteen years and counting of solo adventures if they didn't work in Doctor Who to start with. She even continues to work in Doctor Who with the novel adaptations and The New Adventures Of Bernice Summerfield box sets returning to her old role as companion.

But in her own range it never seemed to work. Certainly the sales exercise aspect of it was part of what put me off but, ultimately, I think that Benny is a strong enough character that cutting and pasting her into a Doctor Who plot will never be as fun as seeing her in a Bernice Summerfield plot. She's just too distinct an individual.

Which brings us to Jacqueline Rayner's The Grel Escape, Benny's fifth season opener, a story that has a very different approach to Benny's status as a Doctor Who spin-off.

The Grel Escape is, top to bottom, a parody of the Doctor Who story The Chase. It features the fact-obsessed Grel, Benny's first solo adventure villains from way back in Oh No It Isn't, who have invented a time machine and are trying to abduct her infant son Peter. They might not be her definitive enemies like the Daleks are to the Doctor but they are her first so that works.

Rayner also pilfers and twists several of The Chase's set pieces: the time travelling group (Benny, ex-husband Jason, Peter and Peter's Grel godmother) interrupt a football match, they end up on top of the Eiffel Tower and the ending is very familiar but in a way that just serves to highlight how different Benny and Jason's fractious relationship is to Ian and Barbara's.

Part of this just continues themes from the days of Benny's creation. The Grel Escape is both funnier and more serious than The Chase, which was one of Terry Nation's lazier scripts. Themes of motherhood, both in Benny and another character who'll go unnamed, crop up and are dealt with seriously. Benny, by her nature, is just a little bit smarter than Doctor Who. She always has been, in many ways that's what she was created to be: a new sort of companion (or, alternatively, a very old sort of companion updated) who could act as a protagonist in her own right and stand up to the Doctor.

So, yes, I picked up the fifth and sixth seasons cheap at a charity shop and I'm glad to see they got smarter after I gave them up (and that I didn't waste £20 here). It also proves something everybody should have learned about the time Frasier became a hit: spin-offs are better using the unique traits of what people are demanding being spun-off rather than just trying to give them a second series of the original show. It worked for Frasier, which is very different from Cheers and outlived the original show by years.

At this point I have to, sadly, admit that the solo Benny series is dead but at least now I have seven seasons worth catching up on.