The Doctor and Benny are on the planet Shanquis, trying to negotiate peace with their neighbours Esoria. The Doctor should be doing well, with words instead of weapons, but the odds are against him this time. Can Benny’s investigations of the Shanquin secret language help to stop the war?
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: BERNICE SUMMERFIELD AND THE CRIMINAL CODE
As the fourth series of Companion Chronicles progresses, the range grows ever more inclusive. The title implies what’s going on: “Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code” is the first Companion Chronicle to feature a character never seen on television. Not that Benny needs introduction: after featuring in dozens of novels and Big Finish’s oldest ongoing audio series, any Doctor Who fan with a casual familiarity with the spinoff material knows her well. And with a script from Eddie Robson, someone with a significant influence on the Benny range, you’d expect greatness – but like Big Finish’s other attempts at original New Adventures, it falls sadly flat.
I’ve often wondered if it’s even possible to create “new” New Adventures on audio, largely because of historical context. When the NAs were being published, they were the official ongoing story of Doctor Who, pushing the boundaries of the series beyond previously accepted limits and generally feeling fresh and experimental. The audio adaption of “Love and War” perfectly captured this feeling. But the previous offerings, “The Shadow of the Scourge” and “The Dark Flame” were dull, generic stories, and “The Criminal Code” follows in their footsteps. We hear early on that the Doctor is wearing his linen suit, and he’s traveling alone with Benny, so we know we’re in the NA era, and the Doctor is barely present in the first half of the story. Ah, he’s operating behind the scenes, letting Benny get the lion’s share of the action while he manipulates events, right? No, actually, he’s tied up at a negotiating table, so Benny wanders off to find something to do and gets involved in an archaeological mystery.
The plot is incredibly clunky, with Benny learning reams of tedious information about a forbidden language, then deciding with seemingly little prompting to overturn the laws and return the language to prominence. This decision was likely driven by boredom, as I certainly wanted something to do while I was listening. But then the first episode ends with terrible news about the Doctor, who’s barely been in the story at all – and then, when the cliffhanger resolves, it’s back to the forbidden language, then suddenly that part of the plot is over, and then we rush off to resolve the Doctor’s negotiations even though we’ve been given no reason to care about them. We’re also dropped into the middle of the story – but all the relevant information about what’s happened is delivered through endless expository paragraphs that bog the action down to a crawl.
The framing device appears to be nonexistent for most of the story, until the end reveals that Benny has been narrating to an unheard listener. Nothing is gained through this revelation. Furthermore, Benny seems awfully generic-companion for most of the story, though thankfully that’s in the modern rather than the classic sense. I understand it’s difficult to take the flagship character from one range and give them any sort of development in another, but there’s little here to convince someone like me who doesn’t listen to the Benny audios that the character is interesting. Lisa Bowerman’s great, naturally, but to what end?
The production is fine, with John Ainsworth directing and Jamie Robertson providing the sound design. But ultimately I don’t have much of anything good to say about “The Criminal Code.” Like so many other stories of its ilk, it’s competently made and provides some entertainment – it’s certainly not at the bottom of the Big Finish barrel – but there’s nothing stimulating about it. Three times, Big Finish has attempted to create original New Adventures-era stories. And three times, they’ve created successors to “Legacy” or “Zamper.” That’s nice and all, but if we’re going to do this, couldn’t we try for a little ambition?
Sigh.
5/10