Bernice and Maggie race back with something that may just help bring an end to the war. That something is a man. His name: Irving Braxiatel.
Bernice and Maggie race back with something that may just help bring an end to the war. That something is a man. His name: Irving Braxiatel.
The Tub Full of Cats
The Empire State ended of a very unusual cliffhanger. It threw Bernice and Braxiatel together in a room, stood back to let the fireworks go off and then…
Well, we never get to see what happened because Daniel O’Mahony’s story picks up some time later with Bernice and Maggie on their way back to the Collection, where things are apparently getting out of hand. Brax’s situation is later explained, and he does have some lovely scenes here that both Miles Richardson and Lisa Bowerman extract for all their worth, but we’ve no idea what happened to Saf, which is sad because I really liked him.
However once you get over the leap in the narrative you begin to enjoy something truly original. Chief among the cast is He/She ship captain Chanticleer, who is the only one able to offer them a way home. There’s something slightly strange and frightening about Diane Fletcher’s performance, with presumably some voice modulation just rounding out this very confused character.
Yet Chanticleer isn’t half as strange as Nigel Pegram who fires on all cylinders as ‘Captain Anthony Rogers’. What at first feels like it might wander into the Brian Blessed field of overacting eventually turns into the most surreal psychodrama imaginable. It takes a long time to explain why the story, which builds along nicely, keeps being interrupted by a mad, raving, American spaceman, but the answers are truly shocking when they come. There are some concepts here we’ve never touched on in the Bernice Summerfield before, but its all handled with such a deft lightness of touch that Daniel O’Mahony perfected with his prior flawless release ‘Timeless Passages’.
This story probably won’t be to everyone’s tastes, it’s just a little too weird and too macabre to be considered mainstream. It ticks every box needed though, moving Benny and Brax’s story forwards (back to the collection), giving the character Maggie a terrible send off (terrible as in her fate, not in terms of the story quality) and telling something completely new and unique at the same time.
Heartily recommended.
9 / 10