Oh No It Isn't! (novel)

Bernice Surprise Summerfield is settling into her new job as Professor of Archaeology at St Oscar's University on the planet Dellah — one of the most prestigious centres of learning in the Milky Way. She wants to put her past, especially her failed marriage, behind her.

So she's glad when she gets the chance to take her tutorial group to investigate the lost civilisation of Perfecton. Three whole weeks of archaeological research in the field. The perfect way to forget your worries.

She doesn't bank on three things.

That Menlove Stokes, Professor of Applied Art, and various other academics would be along for the ride. That vicious alien marauders would decide to explore the planet at the same time. And that a reactivated Perfecton device would plunge her into a situation that can only be described as — panto.

Chapter titles

Porterhatch Blues
New Adventures, New Danger
A Comedy Tonight
What Kind of A-Z Would Get You Here?
Beauty and Bernice
A Whole New Ball Game
Fairy Stories
Another Break in the Narrative
Just Deserts and Deeper Plots, and Deadly Danger Looming... Lots!
Raiders of the Seven Dwarves
'Scuse Me While I Rip the Sky
Imminent Destruction Grief
A Cat in Hell's Chance
Epilogue: Moments of Pleasure

Plot

Benny, now holder of the Watkinson Chair of Archaeology and Rector of Garland College at St Oscar's University on Dellah, is due to take a number of students to Perfecton, a planet soon to be destroyed by a supernova and which has been under quarantine since the mysterious disappearance of the Perfectons. Before leaving, she agrees to read through Professor Archduke's thesis on 20th century theatre as a favour after he finds Wolsey and ignores two men who come looking for her, claiming to be on a mission from God.

Accompanied by several other members of staff, Benny and her students travel to Perfecton on the Winton and begin their excavation. After several days, Benny invites one of her students, Michael Doran, to her rooms for brandy due to her feeling undesirable following her divorce from Jason, whom she misses, and downloads Professor Archduke's paper to read before deciding that it will make her seem old. The two men on a mission from God enter instead of Michael and a Grel ship attacks, hitting the Winton before it is seemingly destroyed by a missile.

Academics Stokes, Otterbland, Singh, Hettie, Lucinda, Epstein, Owl, Blandish, Wagstaff, Warrinder, Janes and Farouk are outside when the Winton is attacked and flee from the Grel craft to the Perfecton city. There, they fall into a hole and meet Thooo, the last of the Perfectons, who explains that the Perfectons' guns transport their targets into the Green, a world which they had hopes to escape to in order to survive the supernova.

Benny finds herself in what she initially believes is heaven before encountering Wolsey, who is now humanoid and keeps calling her Dick Whittington, her students, who are dwarves, and Professor Candy, who is a pantomime dame. They are saved from the Grel by Prince Charming and Benny faints after realising that she has been wounded. Prince Charming takes her to the castle, where she recognises King Rupert as Captain Balsam of the Winton and is told that she will select her husband at a ball. However, the suitors are all women and she senses that there are forces trying to bring an end to her story; to avoid this, she accepts each and every proposal.

At midnight, Benny's clothes turn into rags and leaves, meeting a horse inside of which the two men on a mission from God have been hiding from the narrative. Her Fairy Godfather appears and Benny wishes to see the unseen people to whom the Fairy Godfather keeps talking, allowing her to see a huge audience of Perfectons and leave the stage. She arrives in her bedroom from when she was a child and finds an alien control unit which turns into a magic ring when she takes it back onto the stage. After hypnotising Wolsey, she realises that they are all inside Archduke's manuscript and fetches a genie's lamp from a cave for the Vizier.

After finding the lamp, the Grel take it from them and are subsequently destroyed by the genie, which then breaks the fourth wall and allows the audience of Perfectons to enter the world. She takes the lamp to her chambers, having determined that this was the narrative before the Grel's interference, and is told by the men in the pantomime horse that they were sent by the computer of the Worldsphere to ask her to join the Tiny But Interesting Interest Group as an agent of the People. She agrees to consider this and learns from the leader of the Perfectons that the missile was theirs and was intended to make a ship dimensionally transcendental for them to make their new home.

The genie, representing the original programme, intends on destroying this world of pantomime, which was accidentally created when the missile pierced Archduke's thesis, and restoring Perfecton. Benny tricks it into returning to its lamp and rubs her magic ring which, actually being a control unit accidentally sent into the Green by Stokes, summons Stokes, who unwittingly reminds her of the magic words which will take them back to Rupert's castle. The Perfectons try to kill Benny to prevent her from putting the magic lamp on its pedastal, but Wolsey holds them off long enough for her to do so.

The Winton is restored and Thooo uses a Perfecton gun to return his people to the Green before taking the academics to a viewing pod to watch as the planet is destroyed. They are saved by the Winton and they all return to St Oscar's, where Thooo is offered a position. Benny wonders if Archduke had intentionally brought about the pantomime world by planting a homing device in his data module, a charge which he denies. In the night, however, the data module flies into his hands.

Characters

Worldbuilding

Books

Benny accidentally gives Michael Doran a copy of Make Dangerous Love to Me - The Erotic Poetry of Carla Tsampiras.
Benny is still working on (and trying to get out of writing) her sequel to Down Among the Dead Men with the working title So Vast a Pile.
The library on Dellah contains the Book of Lies.

Culture

Benny uses Ah: A Perfume For An Alien or Human.

Individuals

Dr Follett is the Head of the Department of Archaeology at St Oscar's University.
Bernice Summerfield is the Edward Watkinson Chair of Archaeology at St Oscar's.
Benny has the name Dick Whittington in the panto reality.
God sends members of the Tiny But Interesting Interest Group to contact Benny about becoming an agent for them.
Wolsey is transformed into a seven-foot-tall swashbuckler with marked propensities for singing, tap-dancing and rude jokes.
Menlove Stokes is professor of Applied Arts at St Oscar's University.
Joseph is Benny's robotic porter, who looks like a hovering sphere about the size of a billiard ball.

Locations

Benny usually tries to get a word out of the Goll security who guard the Advanced Research Department, but she speaks very little Goll.
St Oscar's University is located on the planet Dellah. The Sultan of Tashwari was the original founder of the university.

Species

The Grel's afterlife is called Slawcor.
The Perfectons are small blue humanoids.

Cover Gallery

Cover
Textless cover
Sketch
Sketch
Sketch

Notes

The novel's title is a reference to a traditional audience participation line common in pantomime productions. Whenever a character on stage says "Oh no it isn't!" the audience calls back "Oh yes it is!" and vice versa.
The story started life under the working title Behind You in 1996.^[1]
This novel was adapted by Jacqueline Rayner as the first Big Finish audio drama (see Oh No It Isn't).
Wolsey confirms Benny's suspicions about human-cat relations when he refers to her as "servant-woman".
The image on the cover of this novel actually happens in the novel.
This is the first novel published by Virgin following their loss of the Doctor Who licence (it returned to the BBC and they began publishing their Eighth Doctor Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures). As such in this range no direct references are made to BBC-copyrighted elements such as the Doctor or the TARDIS. However, any characters and other elements could be licensed from their creators, as such multiple characters and other elements that previously appeared in other New Adventures appear in this novel and the rest of the BNA range.

Continuity

Benny was taken to Dellah by the Eighth Doctor at the end of The Dying Days.
Benny first met God in The Also People.
This novel introduces Marcus Krytell; Benny meets him in Ship of Fools.

External links

Footnotes

↑ The Big Finish Companion: Volume 1

[1] The Big Finish Companion: Volume 1

[1]