Beige Planet Mars (novel)

Beige Planet Mars
Main character(s):	Bernice Summerfield
Featuring:	Jason Kane
Main setting:	Mars, 2595
Key crew
Publisher:	Virgin Books
Writers:	Lance Parkin and Mark Clapham
Release details
Release number:	16
Release date:	15 October, 1998
Format:	Paperback Book, 242 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20529-4
Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures
← Previous	Another Girl, Another Planet
Next →	Where Angels Fear

Beige Planet Mars is the sixteenth Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures novel. It features Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane. This is the first novel to feature excerpts of Jason Kane's xenopornography literature based on his experiences first mentioned in Death and Diplomacy.

Publisher's summary

"Professor Summerfield, your very presence here has raised this hotel's insurance premiums by seven point two percent."

It is the year 2595. Mars, once the distant target of humanity's ambitions in space, has been colonised for five hundred years. To mark the anniversary, the planet's university is holding an academic conference. Naturally, esteemed expert on Martian archaeology Bernice Summerfield is invited to present a paper based on her long career in this field.

But other matters distract Bernice from academia. Decades ago, hostile aliens invaded Mars. At their moment of greatest need, Mars' human population was betrayed by its leader. And although the occupation was swiftly ended, the anger of those who fought to save Mars still runs deep.

So when a veteran of the war is found dead, old wounds are reopened. Bernice finds herself investigating a murder with the least reliable of allies — and soon discovers that the consequences of the Siege of Mars are far from being ancient history.

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Bernice Summerfield
• Jason Kane
• Professor Megali Scoblow
• Isaac Deniken
• Skeez & Scoaz
• Professor Elizabeth K. Trinity/Karina Tellassar
• Gerald Makhno
• Phillip York & Christina York
• Saldaamir

References

Botany

• According to Jason, Professor Scoblow's tail smells of wood shavings.

Corporations

• Christina and Phillip York own YorkCorp (which owns most of Mars), but were facing a hostile takeover by the Bantu Corporation.

Foods and beverages

• Benny and Isaac drink RedStar (Martian Vodka).

Individuals

• Bernice Summerfield has sex with Jason.
• Benny knows how to dive.
• The last time Benny was on Mars was when she was twenty-four with a guy named Tim.
• In the last ten years Benny has rubbed the Droge of Gabrielides up the wrong way when she refused to marry him; insulted the Master of the Fifth Galaxy, and "that business" with Lord Herring on Sqakker's World.
• Jason Kane has sex with while he's at the hotel. He has been having sex with Professor Scoblow for a little while.
• Professor Megali Scoblow is a Pakhar. Her original Pakhar name was Sk'o'bel'ou.
• When Benny attends the opening parts of the conference, there is a reference to the Fourth Doctor, Romana II and K9: "She (Benny) negotiated her way past a curly-haired man, his blonde companion and their robot dog."
• Professor Elizabeth K. Trinity/Karina Tellassar is a very spry eighty year old.
• Tellassar is hated among veterans from the Daleks' attack as the betrayer of Mars.
• Gerald Makhno is a fan of Bernice Summerfield's work. He would like to (but doesn't) shag Benny.

Literature

• This is the debut of Jason Kane's xenopornography.

• Nights of the Perfumed Tentacle By Jason Kane

• Benny's sequel to Down Among the Dead Men is still called So Vast a Pile.
• Professor Elizabeth K. Trinity is a professor and writer of books about Mars, in particular A History of Mars (which Benny claims the author "treats her readers like morons").

Planets

• Isaac Deniken asks Benny about Tyler's Folly, as he spent some time there.
• Trinity and her academics debated economics in the shadows of the great spires of Denkam.
• Vandor Prime was the planet on which Claire Summerfield died.

Species

• Xlanthi are mentioned (in great detail); however the only one that actually appears turns out to be a guy in a high tech suit.
• Trinity asks Benny about the Argyre Clan. The nuclear explosion which wiped them out is also mentioned.
• Jeff Mett was killed by a Chelonian pilot smuggling drugs for genetic disorders. Scoblow and Trinity met on the ice plains of Prashant to discuss Chelonian floral culture.

Titles and offices

• Professor Scoblow is Emeritus Professor of Human History at the Santa Diana University on Mars.

Notes

• This novel was written basically because Rebecca Levene told Lance Parkin over lunch that they needed a Benny book in six weeks.
• Parkin has noted about the writing of this novel:
  "he (Mark Clapham) had this Benny plot and characters looking for a story and a setting, and I had a Benny story and a setting, but no plot or characters. And we slapped them together and that was Beige Planet Mars. I honestly can't remember who wrote some bits of it. We're on the same wavelength on most things. ...I really enjoyed it, but it was written quickly, it was written when we were both busy with a million other things. And we got to three chapters before the end, and then realised we had not even the slightest clue how to end the book. Which is readily apparent to everyone that's read it."Lance Parkin
• This novel is referred to in Oliver Morton's factual book, "Mapping Mars". A footnote on page 208 refers to BPM as "...a volume in the interminable 'New Adventures' series of Doctor Who spin-offs...".

Continuity

• Jason was a prostitute (among other things) before he met Benny in PROSE: Death and Diplomacy.
• Tyler's Folly appeared in PROSE: Down.
• Pakhars first appeared in PROSE: Legacy.
• The first stages of the Dalek's invasion of Mars were seen in PROSE: GodEngine.
• The Argyre Clan and the nuclear explosion, and how Benny knows so much about both (because she was around for most of it), is mentioned in PROSE: The Dying Days.
• Tim (Benny's friend) was first mentioned in PROSE: Lucifer Rising.

External links

• Beige Planet Mars at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Beige Planet Mars at The Whoniverse