Can Benny find the fabled crystal, rescue Jason, destroy the Cybermen and be home in time for supper? After this, things will never be the same again.
Can Benny find the fabled crystal, rescue Jason, destroy the Cybermen and be home in time for supper? After this, things will never be the same again.
The Crystal of Cantus
“We’ve all got to survive.”
Joseph Lidster kicks things off with one hell of a bang. In the first thirty seconds you are blasted with Bernice, Jason and Braxiatel introducing the concept of the play, setting out just how important this story is, setting out the theme of survival against the odds, before their narration is slowly drowned out by the haunting Cybermen voice chanting continuously their mantra: “We will survive, you will be like us.”
Usually this kind of group narration would feel odd, given how grounded the range tends to be (Bernice’s diary extracts aside) but the Cyrstal of Cantus actually uses this to good effect, making the use of sources and narrator reliability as a sort of secondary theme throughout. Nothing in the Crystal of Cantus actually happens as you listen to it, it’s all being retold back to the listener by various characters from several different later dates. And as Lidster points out a few times, you can’t exactly trust everything that they say, that goes for both Bernice, Brax and Jason.
Miles Richardson has been absent from the audios or a while, yet Braxiatel’s presence has never been felt more keenly in the books. In some ways this has shown some clever separation between the ranges, meaning that you’re not required to purchase both the spoken and written word to enjoy either material, yet it does mean that audio only listeners won’t realise the true extent of Braxiatel’s betrayal as depicted here. From an audio alone standpoint he’s only ‘really’ been misbehaving in the Mirror Effect, whereas avid fans of the books will remember clearly the incident with the Purpura Pawn and the Reality Bomb. Never the less, the only thing you really need to know for this adventure are the events of the Mirror Effect (and perhaps a passing reference to the Gallifrey audio series… Although this ties in nicely with that range, namedropping Darkel does stand out like a sore thumb in this otherwise 10/10 audio… Ooops, have I just spoiled my conclusions?)
In his time writing for Big Finish Joseph Lidster has always excelled at the personal, human driven dramas. Peel back the dance in his first offering ‘the Rapture’ and you’ll find a deep story about sibling love and rivalry. ‘Master’ is even more obvious in the way it plasters a human façade over its namesake and slowly peels it back to reveal the madness beneath. His previous short story for Clarissa Jones showed her finding love after a year of being an outcast, and slowly coming to accept her role in the Collection again (but if she was important then, why did she die now? Unless Braxiatel ‘wanted’ her to kidnap Peter to make a point to Bernice? I think that may have been an intention but its not been made clear…) This story harks back significantly to that short story, although knowledge of it is not necessary to enjoy this as everything is competently explained and serves a purpose.
Here the topic is friendship, betrayal and the need for survival. The first two you might recall from the end of the previous audio, where Bernice wondered if she could ever forgive her best friend for betraying her? That turns out to have been a magnificent tease for what Braxiatel had in mind.
Use of this theme, the ability of humans to make friendships and trust each other, is directly relevant to the plays ‘monster of the week’. The Cybermen have never been used quite so effectively, and this release covers more ground with them in one story than several television serials did. They’re described as logical, horrible creations and we get to fully explore the extent of their arrival on a new world, with frightening parallels of this planet to the collection bluntly restated by both Parasiel and Bernice with a session of ‘look around you’. Even so, they definitely play second fiddle to Braxiatel’s macabre revelations.
The story subverts expectation several times, casting Braxiatel alternately hero then madman. The way the plot hinges around Jason and not Bernice is also surprising. My one concern is that Braxiatel’s plan hinged around Bernice loving Peter more than Jason, and therefore leaving the latter to die. Admittedly he never planned on having her there at all, but to bet that she’d fly ‘all’ the way back to the collection before wondering what had happened to her errant ex-husband just struck me as a little off. Of course she was going to go back for him, right until the moment she ‘knew’ he was dead.
Despite the epic plotting though this story is full of small human touches, such as the voice activated doorbell that Jason and Bernice stumble into, the tears over the game of football, the pair of exploding Pakhar shoes or the ‘gorgeous hunk of love’ cameo from Stephen Wickham. Oh and an impressive shout out to Paul Bryant for bringing Parasiel to life convincingly.
There’s just so much going on here that is just ‘right’. From Bernice’s rant about ‘exciting adventures with the Cybermen’ (I’m now looking directly at you Silver Lining), Braxiatel’s futile attempts to surrender and finally the final confrontation in the office… A rare combination of both the writing, acting, even music and sound design being on top form (the scene with Bernice, Brax and Jason shouting, with the audio fading in and out to sample each of their dialogue is one of several strokes of brilliance) elevates this to a level the Bernice Audios havent touched since they left the two CD format behind. To be blunt this is the series finale we’ve been waiting for, a significant step forwards in the Collection’s storyline that ties up several loose ends but still leaves enough questions about what happens next.
10 / 10