Tomb Raider: Dr Who book companion Benny Summerfield gets animated for her 18th
Jesus wept, is it really 18 years since Paul Cornell's gamechanging Love and War came out? Oh. Apparently it is. Right, now I really feel old.
For a generation of fans, the New Adventures novels were Doctor Who. And after a fairly shaky start with the Timewyrm and Cats Cradle sagas, they came into their own with Mark Gatiss' Quatermass homage Nightshade (you know, the one Scoopz Johnston insisted Tom Baker would be starring in a TV remake of during the season just past...) and Cornell's Love and War, which temporarily wrote out Ace and introduced the new companion of Professor Bernice Surprise Summerfield, 26th Century archaeologist. The prof survived 44 adventures with the Doctor, which included possession, infection, seeing her lover killed, meeting her long lost dad, marriage, and even boffing the Doctor before Virgin Publishing lost the rights to continue the TARDIS' adventures.That, of course, wasn't enough to kill her off though, with Virgin instead spinning Benny off into her own series of novels. Big Finish gave voice to those novels with a range of audios ahead of them getting the Who licence at the turn of the millennium, with former Casualty actress Lisa Bowerman landing the roll of the 26th Century Lara Croft.
And since then they've been merrily plowing away, first in audio, then with new books, and now back to audio again. Fair play to Big Finish - we're not exactly massive fans of some aspects of their work here at The Thumbcast, but they've kept the Bernice Summerfield franchise going very successfully over the last few years, and retained a loyal fanbase who've grown up her over that time. To mark the 11th series of Benny adventures, and incredibly the 18th anniversary of the character being create, the Big Finish team have created the first animated story for her - Dead and Buried. Happy birthday Bernice, and here's to many more new adventures in time and space...
