Bernice Summerfield: Epoch
Like The Last Adventure, this is a four-story set sold as a single item, and I'm going to handle it the same way I'm handling The Last Adventure, so this post will be just about the first story:
Bernice Summerfield: Epoch: The Kraken's Lament
Starring: Lisa Bowerman as Bernice Summerfield
Format: 1 full-cast CD (or download) with no internal episode breaks, disc 1 of 4 not sold separately
Silly? The superficial setting is silly, and Bernice spends most of the story interacting with it on that level, but the silliness is clearly a facade to be pulled away in later episodes.
Standalone? It's not an ideal jumping-on point for Bernice's continuing drama, but it's an acceptable one.
Recommended? The Kraken's Lament isn't sold separately, and I can't say whether I'd recommend Epoch as a whole just from this one episode.
My reactions to this story contain spoilers for itself and mild spoilers for the status quo of Bernice Summerfield continuity immediately preceding it.
Before listening
Bernice Summerfield was created as a companion for the Seventh Doctor in novels after the TV show ended. Doctor Who Magazine, eager to be able to say that Doctor Who was still a thing that was actually happening and moving forward, treated her just like a television companion, hyping her up and putting her into comics, and so the existence of Bernice Summerfield is corroborated across different media in a way that isn't true of most non-TV companions. (On the other hand, unlike chainsword-wielding Dalek killer Abslom Daak and some of the Eighth Doctor's audio companions, Bernice has not yet actually been referenced on television.)When BBC withdrew publisher Virgin's license to print Doctor Who novels, Virgin kept their novel series going by shifting the focus to the solo adventures of Bernice Summerfield, using elements original to Virgin-published novels and keeping references to the TV series vague enough to not infringe on BBC copyrights. Years after that, when Big Finish were just starting out and didn't yet have a license from the BBC to produce Doctor Who audios, Big Finish licensed Bernice Summerfield from Virgin and/or Bernice's creator Paul Cornell to produce Bernice Summerfield audios, first adapting a few novels and then releasing original stories. Bernice Summerfield is thus Big Finish's oldest series, predating even their flagship Doctor Who. Her actress Lisa Bowerman has also gone on to work for Big Finish as a director, most notably having directed almost all of the Jago & Litefoot series while also playing Jago's favorite barmaid Ellie.
The initial contracts regarding Bernice Summerfield audios did not allow Big Finish to release them as downloads. Bernice appeared in a couple crossover audios that were downloadable, but it wasn't until over a decade later that Big Finish became able to release downloads of the Bernice Summerfield series itself. As of this writing, that permission is not yet retroactive, and the first eleven seasons of Bernice Summerfield are still CD-only.
Epoch is, for a listener in the USA who's unwilling to pay CD shipping charges from the UK, the first available jumping-on point for Bernice Summerfield. From what I recall, it starts in a sort of amnesiac state where Bernice is as unsure of what's going on as a new listener would be, then brings in bits of Bernice's backstory one at a time as they become relevant.
I think I listened to Epoch once, in a rapid-fire binge in which I didn't distinguish clearly between episodes. I enjoyed it, but I don't remember anything about The Kraken's Lament specifically as distinct from the rest of Epoch.
After listening
As I'd recalled, the story begins in a semi-amnesiac state. Bernice is on a suspiciously Greco-Roman planet in a city called Atlantis. She remembers her life up to and including some events from her somewhat recent past (including what I assume are some flashback scenes from the final season of CD-only Bernice Summerfield audio), but her very recent memory has a gap. She knows a storyteller named Acanthus is looking for an assistant and arrives at his house asking for the position, but doesn't remember how she knows this or how she got here.Bernice remembers that the planet was less Earth-like originally and that she was told it was "reassigned Atlantis". Archeology is outlawed, and Atlantis's recorded history only goes back fifty-seven years to "Year Zero". Bernice, normally an archeologist by profession, knows enough Earth mythology to realize that this world, with its kraken and minotaurs, is unnatural and obviously based on Greco-Roman tales. Acanthus seems to concur that the world is wrong, but is largely unwilling to speak of the wrongness for fear of arrest and execution.
Looking for answers, Bernice decides to investigate one specific mythical event: a giant destructive "kraken" has been repeatedly approaching the palace, then leaving as soon as guards arrive even though it could easily overpower the guards. The kraken doesn't match Bernice's expectations for a kraken, which is singularly odd since other mythological elements such as minotaurs and pegasi do.
Incidentally, Bernice doesn't point out that Pegasus and the Minotaur were unique named beings in the actual myths. I don't believe this to necessarily be a writing error, since the planet is overall more of a theme-park understanding of Greco-Roman lore than an accurate reconstruction, and pegasi and minotaurs as kinds instead of individuals fit that paradigm. Either Bernice has figured out that whoever made the planet this way was going from a pop-cultural understanding, or Bernice's own understanding is more pop-cultural than properly archeological (or maybe it is actually a writing error after all, or the myths in Bernice's timeline are different from real-world ones).
The kraken story resolves itself in a mythic fashion, without Bernice learning anything about where the power of the gods really comes from. The episode then ends on a cliffhanger: history has been rewritten slightly and Acanthus never existed. Bernice still has a scroll he gave her, containing only the words "The sky's no limit," words that come into play in later episodes of Epoch.
The only other piece of pre-existing Bernice continuity to mention here is that she has a son Peter, who Acanthus describes as "of two worlds" (he's half-alien), and her biggest motivation to escape the Atlantis planet is to reunite with Peter. From what I recall, she doesn't actually get to see Peter again until a couple seasons later.
This story does an okay, but not great, job of being a fresh jumping-on point for Bernice Summerfield listening. Performances and sound design are good, the setting mystery is reasonably intriguing, and the kraken story is a good take on mythological elements. I do feel like I'm missing a little for not having heard the preceding CDs (one is even titled "Year Zero"), but once the story gets moving the details of exactly how Bernice got there don't need dwelling on. I have no trepidation about Epoch coming up on my Randomoid Selectortron again in the future. Looking at the summaries on the Big Finish website and cross-referencing against my vague memory, I think the next episode of Epoch is the one where Bernice breaks the Greco-Roman facade, then the other two are about surviving the death throes of what lies behind it and getting off the planet.
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