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Bernice Summerfield Audio Dramas #1.1
Oh No It Isn't!
"The King's balls get bigger every year!"
What could possibly go wrong on Professor Bernice Summerfield's investigation into the lost civilisation of Perfecton? Nothing, it seems - until they leave the planet and spot a dirty great missile heading towards their ship. But instead of oblivion, Benny finds herself plunged into the strange world of - panto.
NOTE: This story is based on the original novel of the same name that was the first in the series of New Adventures released by Virgin Publishing Limited.
What could possibly go wrong on Professor Bernice Summerfield's investigation into the lost civilisation of Perfecton? Nothing, it seems - until they leave the planet and spot a dirty great missile heading towards their ship. But instead of oblivion, Benny finds herself plunged into the strange world of - panto.
NOTE: This story is based on the original novel of the same name that was the first in the series of New Adventures released by Virgin Publishing Limited.
Audio CD
First published September 1, 1998
1 person is currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Jacqueline Rayner
133 books168 followersJacqueline Rayner is a best selling British author, best known for her work with the licensed fiction based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.
Her first professional writing credit came when she adapted Paul Cornell's Virgin New Adventure novel Oh No It Isn't! for the audio format, the first release by Big Finish. (The novel featured the character of Bernice Summerfield and was part of a spin-off series from Doctor Who.) She went on to do five of the six Bernice Summerfield audio adaptations and further work for Big Finish before going to work for BBC Books on their Doctor Who lines.
Her first novels came in 2001, with the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel EarthWorld for BBC Books and the Bernice Summerfield novel The Squire's Crystal for Big Finish. Rayner has written several other Doctor Who spin-offs and was also for a period the executive producer for the BBC on the Big Finish range of Doctor Who audio dramas. She has also contributed to the audio range as a writer. In all, her Doctor Who and related work (Bernice Summerfield stories), consists of five novels, a number of short stories and four original audio plays.
Rayner has edited several anthologies of Doctor Who short stories, mainly for Big Finish, and done work for Doctor Who Magazine. Beyond Doctor Who, her work includes the children's television tie-in book Horses Like Blaze.
With the start of the new television series of Doctor Who in 2005 and a shift in the BBC's Doctor Who related book output, Rayner has become, along with Justin Richards and Stephen Cole, one of the regular authors of the BBC's New Series Adventures. She has also abridged several of the books to be made into audiobooks.
She was also a member of Doctor Who Magazine's original Time Team.
Her first professional writing credit came when she adapted Paul Cornell's Virgin New Adventure novel Oh No It Isn't! for the audio format, the first release by Big Finish. (The novel featured the character of Bernice Summerfield and was part of a spin-off series from Doctor Who.) She went on to do five of the six Bernice Summerfield audio adaptations and further work for Big Finish before going to work for BBC Books on their Doctor Who lines.
Her first novels came in 2001, with the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel EarthWorld for BBC Books and the Bernice Summerfield novel The Squire's Crystal for Big Finish. Rayner has written several other Doctor Who spin-offs and was also for a period the executive producer for the BBC on the Big Finish range of Doctor Who audio dramas. She has also contributed to the audio range as a writer. In all, her Doctor Who and related work (Bernice Summerfield stories), consists of five novels, a number of short stories and four original audio plays.
Rayner has edited several anthologies of Doctor Who short stories, mainly for Big Finish, and done work for Doctor Who Magazine. Beyond Doctor Who, her work includes the children's television tie-in book Horses Like Blaze.
With the start of the new television series of Doctor Who in 2005 and a shift in the BBC's Doctor Who related book output, Rayner has become, along with Justin Richards and Stephen Cole, one of the regular authors of the BBC's New Series Adventures. She has also abridged several of the books to be made into audiobooks.
She was also a member of Doctor Who Magazine's original Time Team.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
May 27, 2024
After finishing the book today, a relisten on the very much loved audio.
A massive chunk of the book was missing but properly due to the time-limit but still much as good fun with Wolsey and Benny and the pantoland. I completely forgot Mark Gatiss was in this too as he's later in the Unbound Benny boxset so that was a nice rediscovery!
Still much loved audio that never fails to make me laugh :)
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Relisten on 14/05/2021-
Sometimes I just really miss Bernice Summerfield and company and I really miss big finish investment with this range.
A massive chunk of the book was missing but properly due to the time-limit but still much as good fun with Wolsey and Benny and the pantoland. I completely forgot Mark Gatiss was in this too as he's later in the Unbound Benny boxset so that was a nice rediscovery!
Still much loved audio that never fails to make me laugh :)
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Relisten on 14/05/2021-
Sometimes I just really miss Bernice Summerfield and company and I really miss big finish investment with this range.
September 23, 2020
First off, a disclaimer, let me just offer that I’d received this as a promotional giveaway from the publisher. Now that that’s out of the way ... I’m not really sure what to say. I know pantomime is not something that Americans have much experience with, so that undoubtedly has colored my reactions. But once I got over the whole talking cats and fairytale references being tossed off as absurdly as Disney on peyote ... I mean this was just weirdly bizarre, with no end of the puns and hysterical laughs. Although I have to admit that I could totally see Nicholas Courtney as a human sized cat (which makes me think, maybe he should have been in the film adaptation of Cats, and this makes me think that maybe the reason so many Americans think so poorly of that film {and I’ve seen an awful lot of films much worse than that musical absurdity} might have something to do with Americans not really being able to grok the concept and get into pantomime) and I’m not sure what that really says about me. In any case, the absurdity and the surreal nature of this story totally works. There’s no end of silliness and no end of chuckles. And it was awfully audacious of Big Finish to offer this up, back in the day, as their launch for the Professor Bernice Summerfield range. There’s also a much deeper layer to this, and a lot of the puns play off that, which reveals much of what is really going on inside this absurd fairytale mashup/parody/tribute (and that actually reveals a lot of what is going on in Doctor Who particularly the Steven Moffat years). So, apparently, a listener’s enjoyment really depends on both their ability to suspend their disbelief AND their ability to recognize the multiple layers of narrative humor as much as their ability to recognize an enormous number of popular culture references. Very entertaining and very clever stuff.
Oh yes, it IS!
November 26, 2022
It started off slow and not so interesting, but became more intense as time went on. I'm not a fan of panto but I liked this.
May 5, 2022
Singing and Panto. Not my cup of tea at all. Abandoned once the horror started...
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April 8, 2009http://nhw.livejournal.com/976612.html[return][return]very brave to start with a story that starts as a standard archaeological dig and then converts the cast into pantomime characters - but it works really well. And Nicholas Courtney as the cat is lovely too.
October 8, 2022
I have been listening to the Bernice Summerfield Audios since the 5th release (Just War) and it has taken me until tonight to finally listen to this play all the way through untill the end 20 some odd years later. The acting is great, same with the music. I am even fine with most of the panto. This play has a really boring first half and a pretty good second half. It is not the worst Big Finish has put out not the best either. I don't know if I would have continued the range if this was the first Benny release I would have listened too. Luckily I started with Just War which is not just the best release of the first series of audios, but one of the best things Big Finish has done.
September 11, 2020
Available now on digital, so my first chance to listen to this :) Not the first time encountering Benny in Big Finish Audios, but the first Bernice Summerfield one I have listened to, and this was a great start. Just plain fun, but with some good character interactions and a few moments of poignancy. Lisa Bowerman is very good as Benny, and a nice treat being able to listen to Nicholas Courtney as well. The plot itself isn't the most intricate, but is an enjoyable, fun one and I look forward to future adventures with Benny :)
September 12, 2023
It all started so well... on a mysterious extraterrestrial archaeological site, reminiscent of the setting of the excellent 'Love and War' by the same author.
Unfortunately, the characters become stuck in panto-land for most of the story, a high-concept that really rankled with me.
Still, it was lovely to hear the mellifluous voice of Nicholas Courtney once again as Bernice's cat. Yes, an actual cat.
This was a free download promo copy from Big Finish. I have not read the original book this is based on.
Unfortunately, the characters become stuck in panto-land for most of the story, a high-concept that really rankled with me.
Still, it was lovely to hear the mellifluous voice of Nicholas Courtney once again as Bernice's cat. Yes, an actual cat.
This was a free download promo copy from Big Finish. I have not read the original book this is based on.
April 4, 2024
The plot was interesting if not a little bit too long. It could have been cut down by about 30 minutes and it would have flowed better. You can tell this is the first recording by Big Finish as the quality of some of the voices are a bit off. The lack of music and minimal special effects are jarring if you are familiar with later releases. Overall it's not terrible but it is a little rough around the edges. 3/5
December 16, 2020
Bernice gets trapped in a pantomime. I thought starting at the beginning would help clarify things with the Bernice series but I was incorrect. Apparently there are characters and plots that have already been established prior to this series.
January 22, 2021
3.5 - Y'know, I really love the Doctor Who EU. One day I could be listening to a tense Gallifreyan political thriller, the next listening to a Victorian murder mystery with a gay lizard woman, and the next I could be.... listening to a cat making dick jokes in a pantomime AU?
February 1, 2022
This was a surprisingly engaging audio. A bit more mature than Doctor Who. There is a fairytale/Disney feel to it. Halfway through, I wondered if the Master of the Land of Fiction was involved. It got pretty meta, which worked well with the humor.
December 10, 2025
I feel more time should have been focused on Bernie here as this is THE first story. The only problem I have is that too many other characters take away from the main character, Bernie. This should have been in the middle of the season.
September 3, 2020
This was such silly fun, full of british seaside end-of-the pier jokes and innuendo. I loved it. If you like Pantos, talking cats and, Archaeologists then you’ll love it.
September 14, 2020
I wouldn't say that every joke from 1998 held up, but this was a funny story, even to someone who is only loosely aware of Panto's tropes.
November 4, 2020
A mad cap story with a mixture of fables and fairy tales come to life. Bernice Summerfield's first adventure.
January 8, 2021
Nick Courtney makes for a rather nice cat.
January 10, 2024
Started out so slow I almost gave up on it, but it did pick up later. It's like some kind of warped Disney, which is fantastic once it gets far enough in.
April 27, 2008
For their first Bernice Summerfield audio drama Big Finish chose the peculiar, but perhaps somewhat obvious choice of Oh No It Isn’t, competently adapted from Bernice’s creator and Who scribe Paul Cornell himself. Like its counterpart, the first of Bernice’s independent books, the first audio drama draws most of its inspiration from the shamefully neglected art of pantomime.
It’s a comedy, a farce and a deeply meaningful drama all at the same time. That’s to be expected, and well explained in a plot which makes the most of the freedom of doing things in audio that would never work on television. Or perhaps they would, because the effects are meant to be ‘false’ looking or ‘stage managed’. But even in the ‘real’ world where the story starts and ends Bernice’s Sci-Fi world is quick to start. Bernice is introduced to us by her observations of the world around her; which includes an archaeology dig on a world who’s star is about to explode, complete with a student who has become infatuated with her, mad axe wielding librarians and an alien who refuses to talk to any of them because they are all ‘human scum’.
The cast clearly relish the mad, brave comedy in both its panto and straight form. With a lesser cast it would be easy for them to be too self congratulatory but instead everyone acquits themselves beautifully. Lisa Bowerman makes a strong, independent, smart, yet sympathetic, professor and she promises to make a brilliant central character as the series progresses. However the story is stolen by the series ‘other’ regular, although I doubt we’ll ever hear his voice again.
Wolsley, Bernice’s cat, is her guide and travelling companion throughout the majority of the book and he is voice delightfully by Nicholas Courtney. Nicholas steals most of the best lines and spends less than half of the story trying to convince Bernice that she is a man. It’s just a shame that, as Cats don’t normally talk, we’ll never get to hear his wonderfully silky tones again. As a bonus, most of the emotional impact of the drama comes from his plight.
As for villains the Grel are delightfully ridiculous, played for laughs but with enough consistency and charm to delight listeners. The effects on their voice is good enough to make them sound faintly ‘squiddish’. Their plan to gather data by murdering Bernice’s crew is fairly menacing however absurd. However the Grel are not the main threat of the story, which is in fact nothing more than a race against time and a strange inversion of the Grand Vizier, all too similar to Jaffar in Aladdin and the Lamp.
Perhaps the one weak link, at first, is James Campbell who doesn’t that different before or after the pantomime begins. That is a small gripe though, as it takes less than ten minutes before the transition and the aptly named Professor Candy only has one scene before transforming into the much more aptly styled Dame Candy. That and Lisa Bowerman’s misguided attempts to seduce one of her students which perhaps isn’t the best first impression of the shows main star. Again these complaints are minor and it doesn’t take long for Bernice Summerfield to perfectly slip into the audio medium.
To complement the exemplary acting is an almost flawless theme music, with a brilliant futuristic-yet-retro instrumental theme for Bernice consisting of brass and glockenspiel. The sound design all round is fantastic, atmospheric without ever getting to intrusive unless strictly–pantomime-style, helpful to the plot. There are even a few brave attempts at improvised songs.
Oh No It Isn’t! is hilarious, consistent in quality and well served by both script and cast. The story is nearly flawless and the only complaint is that perhaps, it doesn’t take itself seriously enough and perhaps Big Finish will struggle to maintain the quality of this release. Only time will tell.
It’s a comedy, a farce and a deeply meaningful drama all at the same time. That’s to be expected, and well explained in a plot which makes the most of the freedom of doing things in audio that would never work on television. Or perhaps they would, because the effects are meant to be ‘false’ looking or ‘stage managed’. But even in the ‘real’ world where the story starts and ends Bernice’s Sci-Fi world is quick to start. Bernice is introduced to us by her observations of the world around her; which includes an archaeology dig on a world who’s star is about to explode, complete with a student who has become infatuated with her, mad axe wielding librarians and an alien who refuses to talk to any of them because they are all ‘human scum’.
The cast clearly relish the mad, brave comedy in both its panto and straight form. With a lesser cast it would be easy for them to be too self congratulatory but instead everyone acquits themselves beautifully. Lisa Bowerman makes a strong, independent, smart, yet sympathetic, professor and she promises to make a brilliant central character as the series progresses. However the story is stolen by the series ‘other’ regular, although I doubt we’ll ever hear his voice again.
Wolsley, Bernice’s cat, is her guide and travelling companion throughout the majority of the book and he is voice delightfully by Nicholas Courtney. Nicholas steals most of the best lines and spends less than half of the story trying to convince Bernice that she is a man. It’s just a shame that, as Cats don’t normally talk, we’ll never get to hear his wonderfully silky tones again. As a bonus, most of the emotional impact of the drama comes from his plight.
As for villains the Grel are delightfully ridiculous, played for laughs but with enough consistency and charm to delight listeners. The effects on their voice is good enough to make them sound faintly ‘squiddish’. Their plan to gather data by murdering Bernice’s crew is fairly menacing however absurd. However the Grel are not the main threat of the story, which is in fact nothing more than a race against time and a strange inversion of the Grand Vizier, all too similar to Jaffar in Aladdin and the Lamp.
Perhaps the one weak link, at first, is James Campbell who doesn’t that different before or after the pantomime begins. That is a small gripe though, as it takes less than ten minutes before the transition and the aptly named Professor Candy only has one scene before transforming into the much more aptly styled Dame Candy. That and Lisa Bowerman’s misguided attempts to seduce one of her students which perhaps isn’t the best first impression of the shows main star. Again these complaints are minor and it doesn’t take long for Bernice Summerfield to perfectly slip into the audio medium.
To complement the exemplary acting is an almost flawless theme music, with a brilliant futuristic-yet-retro instrumental theme for Bernice consisting of brass and glockenspiel. The sound design all round is fantastic, atmospheric without ever getting to intrusive unless strictly–pantomime-style, helpful to the plot. There are even a few brave attempts at improvised songs.
Oh No It Isn’t! is hilarious, consistent in quality and well served by both script and cast. The story is nearly flawless and the only complaint is that perhaps, it doesn’t take itself seriously enough and perhaps Big Finish will struggle to maintain the quality of this release. Only time will tell.
August 4, 2012
Crack. But very well done crack, in which all the characters find themselves as characters in panto with a reasonable explanation why. Really.
Thoroughly enjoyable and haven't laughed so much in ages.
Thoroughly enjoyable and haven't laughed so much in ages.
January 21, 2016
Interesting adventure. She is no Indiana Jones but she isn't Lara Croft either. I loved it. Bernice Summerfield is my new favorite archaeologist.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews