vivdunstan

On to the first in season 5 of Big Finish's Bernice Summerfield audios. And a rather unusual one, where at the start Benny's young son Peter activates Benny's time and space travelling rings, leading to a manic chase through strange times and places.

As with many Benny audios in this period this one calls back to old stories. The time rings that Peter uses to transport the group through time and space were a gift from the Seventh Doctor to Benny and Jason, in novel Happy Endings, and were also used as a plot element in a number of subsequent novels featuring Benny. Many of which were made into audios later by Big Finish.

But the story also calls back to the First Doctor TV story "The Chase". Which I haven't seen or heard, any more than I've read Happy Endings or read/heard the other time ring stories. There is even a Grel who seems to sound like William Hartnell's First Doctor early on in this audio, though I'm not sure if that was intentional! But at least I didn't need to know about the earlier TV story, even if it means I miss some of the connections.

It's a truly bizarre set of adventures, that's often extremely funny. The Grel chasing Benny and team are consistently good value on entertainment grounds. And the dialogue between Benny, Jason, their friend Sophia and robot assistant Joseph is also often laugh out loud hilarious.

Oh and I didn't previously know who the Grel were either - they first appeared in Doctor Who novel Oh No It Isn't, another Virgin New Adventures story Big Finish turned into an early Benny audio, that I haven't heard either! But the very useful Tardis Wiki told me probably all that I needed to know, with the description "Squid-like humanoid". And it was fine.

In a nutshell this was a lot of fun. It also creatively developed the ongoing story of Benny, young Peter and Jason. And I laughed a lot. Though I'm not a fan of the new Benny title music. The previous theme was much more fun. Also sounded a lot less like Space Invaders or Galaxian.

Delighted that my favourite game in this year’s very strong IFComp was the final winner. Dr Ludwig and the Devil is like a comic Hammer horror film in parser game form. The results were just announced in a Twitch livestream and the full final ranking will be on the competition website soon https://ifcomp.org It was an incredibly strong year for the competition, and all the entrants should be very proud of themselves.