The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield – Vol 8: The Eternity Club 1 from Big Finish Review

With the sad passing of David Warner who had been paired with Lisa Bowerman’s popular Bernice Summerfield for many years, one might have wondered how the range would continue, luckily The Eternity Club 1 kicks off a brand new direction for Bernice and the range seeing Bernice stride out on her again, following a similar structure to her original series which launched Big Finish back in 1998. As a result, The Eternity Club 1 offers her new challenges and exciting new adventures told across two thirty-minute outings.

The first of which is James Goss’ The Armageddon Chair which has a lot of work to do not only introducing the new concept of the club but also introducing several new characters who will continue to appear across the series. When Bernice finds she can’t pay the full membership fee she has to do odd jobs around the club to help out and allow her to stay there.

Through that Goss expertly introduces us to the other characters, there’s a snobby Drahvin Queen Grizella, a Draconian Professor Altazar, a Sontaran, a sentient gas cloud and talking trees, but Goss is so adept at handling strange alien characters that none of them feel ridiculous.

Alongside Lisa Bowerman’s always excellent performance as Bernice Summerfield is Simon Kane’s excellent Cyborg 312 who begins the story not liking Bernice but gradually begins to warm to her as events force the pair together more and more. Goss also makes the interesting choice to have these characters already established and all of them know Bernice but she can’t figure out where from, throughout the next four releases we’ll find out what has been going on but it is a good choice to have Bernice on the back-foot.

From a story standpoint, Goss is making sure there is enough inner conflict to keep things going but it’s a good way of setting up the mystery at the heart of this series.

Something which is teased at the end with the introduction of the Club’s Oldest Member who tries to warn Bernice of something before she is taken away and while the plot may not be the strongest of Goss’ scripts, it’s a nice easy and enjoyable way of whiling away the time and a masterclass in setting up the mystery and effortlessly introducing the audience to the new status quo.

Triumph of the Drahvin’s sees Bernice and her friends away from the Eternity Club and on the mysterious planet Paroon where once again Goss decides to put Bernice on the back foot while Grizella leads an archeological expedition. Of course, she is getting it all wrong and ignores Bernice, but Goss makes sure this is Grizella and Bernice’s story as things begin to go wrong.

He weaves a very well-scripted and thought-provoking thirty minutes about the pressures and expectations faced by women in male-dominated spaces with Grizella’s idealism perfectly juxtaposed by Bernice’s blunt realism when she works out what had happened to people on that planet. It’s a plot thread that feels relevant and organic to today’s world.

While both stories might not be the height of Goss’ work, there can be little doubt that The Eternity Club 1 is an exciting and enjoyable kick-off to a new range of stories for Bernice Summerfield. Goss manages to expertly juggle introducing characters with new locations while always making sure that Bernice is the main character, even if in the situation she finds herself wondering what is going on.

And with a new and exciting mystery promising to be solved over the next upcoming releases, this promises to be an excellent celebration of Bernice!

You can pick up Doctor Who: The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield – Vol 8: The Eternity Club 1 from Big Finish now.