Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code

"It's a language... and it's illegal."

Writer: Eddie Robson

Format: Audio

Released: 31st January 2010

Series: Companion Chronicles 4.06

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Bernice

Synopsis 

The Doctor and Bernice Summerfield are on the planet Shanquis, where the Doctor is trying to negotiate a peace settlement between this world and the neighbouring world of Esoria. The Doctor should be in his element, in an arena where the fighting is done with words, not weapons.

Yet after days of talks, the situation is getting worse. The planets are on a war footing and the Doctor cannot break the deadlock. He'd planned to join Bernice at an archaeology conference on the planet, but she ends up going on her own in an effort to distract herself from the increasingly dismal situation. 

Whilst there, Bernice learns of the Shanquin "forbidden language", which it is illegal to read, speak or even think. As Bernice persues the root of this obscure, archaic law, she finds herself obstructed and threatened - and realises that her investigations may have given her the only hope of stopping this war...

Verdict 

Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code, an interesting title with its resemblance to the Target novelisations, was a fantastic Companion Chronicle audio! Lisa Bowerman narrated the story absolutely brilliantly and with this only being my second story to feature her as companion, I'm impressed with Bernice Summerfield and can see why she's been given numerous spinoffs across different formats. She was a highlight of The Shadow of the Scourge and as it should be in this range, she was the upmost highlight here. I really liked her twist on Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor with the calmness and Scottish slant coming through. Usually in the Chronicle stories the role of the Doctor is limited but here he was acting as the mediator, the "'middle man" as was said in the story and that was really great to see. I liked his attempts at preventing war between the species of Shanquis and Esoria, if there's one thing the Doctor loves to prevent it's death! And he was pulling out all the stops here trying any methods, whether it publicly or not, to negotiate a peace settlement instead of having a needless war. Bernice's relationship with the Doctor was a very good one and I liked the less aggressive theme, or scenes rather, that came with the absence of Ace. Having the Doctor travel with solely Bernice is a bresh of fresh air. I'm not a fan of Ace, she's loudmouthed, over aggressive and just annoying. As referenced, I think I need to delve into some Seventh Doctor and Bernice novels starting with Love and War. The use of a forbidden language was intriguing and I loved how determind Bernice was to discover why it was so feared despite the laws surrounding it being archaic. Something isn't as it seems if people can be prosecuted for just thinking the language! I was also intrigued by the heavy use of the TARDIS translation system in a pre-Ninth Doctor story. I'm not complaining at all, in fact I welcomed that things were made of the TARDIS ability prior to the RTD era. Gatlin was a good little character adding to the cast but as support casts go in the Companion Chronicles, this was a poor effort unfortunately and I think that's because the Doctor's role was unusually prominent in this range. I'd argue that they didn't need to include a second person to the cast members, Lisa Bowerman was so good that she could have done it all! Hell, why didn't they just throw in Sylvester McCoy for a range bonus? Not that it wasn't good, far from that, it really was excellent! The plot throughout was terrific with Bernice set on uncovering the secret language and the Doctor preventing war. The discovery that the language was actually English was very clever and tied in well with the TARDIS translation. Once things were advancing, the discovery of the planet's history with the wormholes and human settlement was tremendous and added to with the ability Bernice had by manipulating nature by the nanobots commanding them with the "forbidden language" that she was fluent in. The Doctor's heavy involvement right through to the climax was fantastic and despite myself being quite critical of the Seventh Doctor, without Ace he might not be so bad. Time to wap out the Seventh and Mel adventures I think... or advance on my knowledge on the brilliant Bernice. She really was superb in this. 

Rating: 9/10