Secret Origins (audio story)

Secret Origins
Main character(s):	Benny
Featuring:	Peter, Robyn
Main enemy:	Irving Braxiatel
Main setting:	Buenos Aires
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Eddie Robson
Director:	John Ainsworth
Producer:	John Ainsworth
Music:	Thea Cochrane
Sound:	Thea Cochrane
Cover by:	Adrian Salmon
Release details
Story number:	48
Number of parts:	1
Release number:	4
Release date:	September 2009
Format:	1 CD
Production code:	BFPCD48
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-423-8
Bernice Summerfield audio stories
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Bernice Summerfield
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Secret Origins was the forty-eighth Bernice Summerfield audio story released by Big Finish Productions. It was the fourth and final story of the tenth season.

Publisher's summary

Bernice Summerfield wakes up in hospital on Earth, in the ruined city of Buenos Aires. She is relieved to find her son Peter by her side. Frost, the man who kidnapped Peter and has terrorised this city for centuries, has long been thought immortal: but now he's dead. Everything is fine.

Or is it? As Bernice tells Peter how she rescued him, she questions why Frost went to such lengths to kidnap Peter in the first place. Frost is one of two people she's met here who claim to have known her for a long time: he seemed to have a grudge against her, whilst the other, a young woman named Robyn, claims to have worked with her for many years.

As Bernice recuperates, the memories of this time start to come back to her. She remembers new adventures stretching back many, many years. She and Robyn have defeated Frost countless times before. How can this be right? Are these memories real? The answers lie in the origins of the feud between Bernice and Frost — but is Bernice paying too heavy a price for remembering?

Plot

Benny wakes up in a hospital bed in the ruins of Buenos Aires and is told by Peter that she was brought there by Robyn after she rescued him. Although Benny does not immediately recognise the name, she remembers arriving in the city after receiving a message from her and how Robyn claimed to have known her for years.

Benny accepts Robyn's help in rescuing Peter from Samuel Frost and learns that they apparently worked together in Buenos Aires until Frost, using a serum to make himself indestructible, took over and sealed the city off with an impenetrable barrier. In addition to kidnapping Peter, he also killed President Summerfield purely to send a message. Accessing a temple a millisecond in the future using her Time Ring, Benny acquires the Amulet of Irony to use against Frost at Robyn's suggestion and the pair are then admitted through the barrier. She enters Frost's chamber alone, learns that he considers himself to be her arch enemy and then hits herself repeatedly, the amulet's power causing Frost to do the same. His super strength leads to his death and Benny collapses as she is reunited with Peter.

In the hospital, Benny wonders if being knocked out had jogged her memory because she is starting to feel as though she did know Frost. When Robyn visits her, she remembers an expedition that the two went on to the planet Quaresma and what happened on their return journey through space.

Lambton places a label on a sample of gel so that it is not opened until the expedition return to Earth, but the palaeontologists start analysing it regardless. Robyn alerts Benny when Lewis starts behaving aggressively and has to be locked inside a testing room, where he removes one of his hands with an electric saw without reacting and places it in the internal mail. It arrives in the mess hall where it moves independently and attacks Santos, after which it stops moving, Lewis is left braindead and Santos acts oddly. Frost is found trying to steal an escape pod and reveals that he has been hiding on board, having secretly funded the expedition to gain the thought-eating gel that has now left Santos to feed on Austin.

Benny recounts a conversation between Robyn and Lambton about a secret that Robyn was keeping from the Company and from Frost. Robyn remarks that she should not know about this conversation as she was not there and chalks it up to memory leakage. She then orders Benny to forget that part.

Lambton agrees to act as bait to lure the entity, which Frost describes as a ghost, into an escape pod. As Lambton is an android with a part-organic brain, he is able to generate reams of random data when the ghost enters him, preventing it from devouring his mind and keeping it trapped so that Benny can release the escape pod into the orbit of a forbidden planet. Benny had not previously known that Lambton was an android and Robyn explains when asked that she worked it out because her father makes androids for a living.

Peter is confused when Benny says that this adventure happened in 2212 but not whilst she was time travelling and by how Benny has never mentioned Robyn to him before. He speaks with Robyn about it whilst Benny rests and points out that she has been living with him rather than in Buenos Aires. Robyn claims that something important is going on and asks for his trust, which he gives despite not knowing why. He returns to Benny with a parcel containing the Right Hand of God, which is useless without the Left Hand of God which she has in her possession.

In 2002, Benny enters a tomb with Robyn, kills a creature by analysing its movements and shooting its weak point and then swings and climbs her way to a pair of locked doors. They pull the handles of each door simultaneously to open the way and cross a bridge over an abyss to reach the Left Hand of God. When Benny removes it from its plinth, she and Robyn fall into the abyss, only for the two of them to return to the bridge whilst the Left Hand returns to the plinth. Although Robyn does not seem to have noticed that anything happened, Benny has déjà vu and this time ensures that she and Robyn are able to get away once the Left Hand is removed. The Frost-backed archaeologist Sebastian, however, forces Benny to hand the relic over at gunpoint and attaches both hands to a statue of the Atlantean god Arinsius which comes to life and offers him power. Sebastian turns into a giant beetle.

Benny starts to get confused and notices that she has been remembering Sebastian with Lambton's voice. She falls unconscious and Robyn revives her with a resuscitator, after which she admits to Peter that she is responsible for what is happening to Benny. Peter kicks her out and tells Benny that what is happening is her fault, but Robyn returns and insists that Benny continues to remember Frost and how they first met in 1937.

Racing Captain Strasser, Benny saves the captive Robyn from his men and arrives at Mount Edad Oscura, only to find that Strasser has beaten them there. A creature attacks them and Robyn freezes time. She is, she admits to Benny, an android from the future who experiences time backwards and was sent back to stop the destruction of Buenos Aires. Whilst the real Benny is in a hospital bed, Robyn has been generating a solid projection of Benny who must find what it is that is hidden inside the mountain and learn who made it. Benny goes on with Strasser, the creature having apparently killed everyone else after unfreezing, and opens a door to a cryogenic unit using the logic game found on Braxiatel's hard drive. They hide when a time machine materialises and watch Braxiatel awaken Frost.

Frost is, Braxiatel explains, an ageless creation of his whom he wants to destroy Buenos Aires. Braxiatel has been attempting to stop a time fissure from opening in the city in the late 25th century and transporting dozens of people to a distant planet over a hundred year period and now plans to have Frost destroy the city to ensure that nobody is taken. After Braxiatel leaves, Strasser fails to get Frost, whom he believes to be a superman, to join the Nazis and then attempts to acquire the technology that made him, but Frost sets it to self-destruct. Benny runs away and finds that Robyn has survived and convinced the creature, a failed genetic experiment, to keep Frost busy whilst they escape.

Robyn explains that Benny is exhausted because Robyn has been drawing on her consciousness to send a projection of her back in time whilst feeding the memories back to the real version. Benny had previously wondered why there were so many people in and outside the hospital and now has it confirmed that Buenos Aires is safe; as Robyn works backwards, she had the effect that she wanted and had to go back to fix the sequence of events to ensure it. The people who fell through the time fissure died and triggered the development of life on the distant planet, causing the existence of the people that sent Robyn back to save them. Benny decides that it is time for her and Peter to go back to finally deal with Braxiatel.

Cast

• Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
• Peter Summerfield - Thomas Grant
• Robyn - Donna Berlin
• Agent Green / Lambton / Sebastian / Captain Strasser - Duncan Wisbey
• Samuel Frost - Doug Bradley
• Ghost / Soldier - Alex Mallinson

Uncredited cast

• Irving Braxiatel - Miles Richardson

Worldbuilding

• Benny knows a handful of Welsh words.
• Owen Parry went on an expedition to Buenos Aires in 1884.
• Dr Matthews works at the hospital.
• Robyn buys Peter a muffin.
• Arinsius is a forgotten Atlantean god whose avatar is a beetle.
• Sylvia works for Sebastian. She serves champagne.
• Kirsten and Dönitz are two of Strasser's men.
• Himmler went on a wild goose chase to Tirumala.
• Robyn claimed to be from Chesterfield.

Cover Gallery

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  Cover

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  Textless Cover

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  First Concept sketch

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  Final sketch

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  Thumbnails

Notes

• This story was recorded on 10 January 2009 at The Moat Studios.
• A download version of this story was released on 23 May 2022.

Continuity

• Robyn mentions that she got reports on Buenos Aires from Panthea Vyne on the Depository. (AUDIO: The Diet of Worms)

External links

• Official Secret Origins page at bigfinish.com
• Secret Origins at the Doctor Who Reference Guide