If you can count on Daniel O’Mahony for anything, it’s crazy sci-fi ideas wedded to strong character insight. His previous Bernice Summerfield audio drama, Timeless Passages, was one of the best, and I don’t think I’ve ever read a piece of prose by him I didn’t like. The premiere for Series Eight of Bernice Summerfield, The Tub Full of Cats, continues his trend of quality writing by introducing Benny and friends to the Mim-Draconian war.
It’s a little unclear to me quite how/why the Mim and the Draconians ended up at war — the only time we’ve really heard about the Mim before, in Old Friends, they were simply said to come from Draconian space — but this immediately raises the stakes for the Braxiatel Collection. But Benny, Braxiatel, and Maggie have to get back there first, and there are two blockades to run. Brax, of course, has his plans, and they mostly involve being dead while flying on a very strange ship…
The Tub Full of Cats gives us a slightly off-kilter world, albeit one a bit familiar to people (like me) who are fans of Cordwainer Smith. Cats in the vein of The Game of Rat and Dragon, of course, but there is also the idea of space as this strange place inimical to human life because of its sheer scale and incomprehensibility. This is a theme central to stories such as Scanners Live in Vain, but a thing many SF stories let us forget about too easily. This is a story about a small group of people lost in the middle of a vast infinity, and the bubble of it they are safe in could be popped open at any moment. It’s also a story about identity — how do we know who we are, and aren’t there times when knowing who we are is actually worse than not knowing?
The great thing about O’Mahony is that he keeps you grounded in the middle of all this. Benny, Brax, Maggie, and new characters Rogers and Chanticleer, they’re all people trapped in the middle of this terrible thing, each of them with their own agenda, own hopes and fears, and O’Mahony never lets you forget all that. Excellent performances by the ever-dependable Lisa Bowerman and Miles Richardson, of course, and I continue to be impressed by Louise Dann as Maggie. Sound design helps, too — David Darlington has always been one of Big Finish’s best, and like in so many Bernice Summerfield stories, he keeps things grounded and focussed and real.
It’s maybe not the total triumph that Timeless Passages was, but it’s a strong start for the eighth season of Bernice Summerfield, and thus a strong contrast to the openings of the last couple seasons. I can’t wait to find out what’s been happening on the Braxiatel Collection since we left it behind…
The Tub Full of Cats (by Daniel O’Mahony; starring Lisa Bowerman) was released by Big Finish Productions in February 2007.
