The Revolution (audio story)

On the planet of Arviem 2, Bernice Summerfield has a lot of problems. Pursued by robots, maniacs and miracles, she has another issue to contend with. The Doctor's come looking for her – and he's not feeling himself.

Plot

Benny gets drunk at Renk Van Magnastein's themed bar on Arviem 2 and passes out, after which she notices that he seems to have changed his shirt and grown a beard. Inquisitor Xavier and a robot of the Faculty Police come to arrest her for blasphemy against science. Renk hides her by putting a blast visor on her and, once they have gone, Benny realises that the Doctor is hanging on the wall in suspended animation. He wakes up, not feeling himself, and leaves with Benny on Renk's hoverbike.

Chased by robots, Benny and the Doctor arrive at the transit port to fly to South Arvemia and find it empty. Benny exploits the robots' obsession with science by saying that they could disprove Schrödinger's cat by allowing her to leave alive, giving her the opportunity to shoot off their arms and flee with the Doctor. Dead frogs rain down from the sky, a rational explanation for which the Faculty Police promise to issue in due course, and Benny finds that Dr Geller has left her multiple voice messages; when she calls her back, she learns that her team have been walled up in a cave.

Benny returns to Renk's bar and, leaving the Doctor behind as she feels that he is getting in the way, heads to South Arvemia with Renk in his ship. The Doctor works on an apology with Trevor and transmats himself onto the ship by altering the bar's sobriety booth and changes the landing coordinates so that the Faculty Police will not be able to predict where they are going; this results in the ship crashing into an acid swamp and Renk going into a coma. Benny and the Doctor walk to the Temple of Groll, with Benny refusing to talk to her companion until they are kidnapped by a group of natives.

Benny tells the natives that she was brought to Arviem 2 to confirm that life was brought about on the planet by evolution. To keep the Groll religion from being outlawed and their sacred artefacts from being destroyed, she denied this and is now being targeted as, in the event of her death, her testimony will be invalidated and another expert can be summoned. The group decide to cut out her tongue to keep her from recanting her testimony, but they are scared away when the Doctor calls out for a miracle and Dr Geller arrives. Benny and the Doctor quickly realise that she is dead and has become a zombie.

Whilst Dr Geller fetches her colleagues, Benny and the Doctor try to escape by getting a pocket knife from the Doctor's jacket, but the jacket seems to come to life and abandons them. Xavier arrives, has his robots kill the zombies before deactivating themselves and is knocked out by a Serpentile grown from a dead frog which was in the Doctor's jacket pocket, revived by a magnatronic field which translates inert organic matter into living organisms. Benny and the Doctor join the Serpentile in heading to the heart of the mountain and find the TARDIS next to the skeleton of a dragon and rocks full of inert frogs.

Renk appears and reveals that he plans on turning the entire planet into a theme bar based on the natives' Book of Life. He explains that, after Benny passed out at his bar, the Doctor arrived in the TARDIS looking for her and he spiked his lemonade with a nanococktail to make him suggestible. He then got the Doctor to develop the mutation field, genetically engineer a dragon and develop embryos which evolve into Serpentiles before taking them back in time to create life on the planet, named Arviem 2 after his initials: RVM. Benny takes great pleasure in telling this to Xavier when he reaches them. His brain explodes when Renk activates a nanomine he slipped in his drink.

For drugging the Doctor and damaging the Web of Time, Benny punches Renk and leaves him unconscious. The Doctor remembers why he came looking for her and, planning on staying to clear things up and admonish Renk, tells her to take Renk's spacecraft and find Ace, who has gone missing. She sighs that she never received the cocktail she was promised.

Cast

Uncredited

Serpentiles - Alex Jordan (BFX: The Making of the New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield)

Crew

Cover Art - Tom Webster
Director - Scott Handcock
Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
Music and Sound Design - Steve Foxon
Producer - James Goss
Writer - Nev Fountain

Worldbuilding

Bernice orders a cocktail with an umbrella with a question mark handle.
The faculty robot plays "Greensleeves".
The registration number of Renk Van Magnastein's hoverbike is RVM3.
The people of Arviem 2 worship science and have outlawed all religion.
Miracles are a Category A science crime.
Benny and the Doctor go to South Arvemia.
Trevor's beer turns red. His wife left him for a lab technician.
Bernice refers to Renk's ship as a "pimp mobile."
Renk wears a kimono.
The Book of Life states that Arviem 2 was without form until Groll, a great fire-breathing dragon with yellow eyes and a pink tail, breathed life onto it 10,000 years ago. The rocks hatched and serpentile people burst forth and crawled upon its surface.
Dr Geller wears a wedding ring.
Arviem 2 joined the Galactic Federation three months earlier.
The Doctor claims that sentient clothing is very common on some planets.
The Doctor drinks lemonade. Renk spiked it with a nanococktail derived from the tears of Space Sirens from Alluris Delta.

Notes

to be added

Continuity

Benny tells the Doctor that she now has a family. (PROSE: The Glass Prison, etc.)
Bernice inquires after Ace, whom she last saw in Cheldon Bonniface in 2010 when she attended Benny's wedding and left with a clone of Jason Kane. (PROSE: Happy Endings)
Bernice refers to Schrödinger's cat. (AUDIO: Zagreus, PROSE: Time Zero)
The Doctor tells Benny that Ace is missing. (AUDIO: Good Night, Sweet Ladies) Benny would eventually find her on Skaro. (AUDIO: Random Ghosts)

External links

Official The Revolution page at bigfinish.com