Beige Planet Mars (novel)

Beige Planet Mars
Main character(s):	Bernice Summerfield
Featuring:	Jason, Scoblow, Saldaamir
Main enemy:	Phillip and Christina
Main setting:	Mars, 2595
Key crew
Publisher:	Virgin Books
Writers:	Lance Parkin, Mark Clapham
Cover by:	Mark Salwowski
Release details
Release number:	77
Release date:	15 October 1998
Format:	Paperback Book, 242 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20529-4
Virgin New Adventures
← Previous	Another Girl, Another Planet
Next →	Where Angels Fear

Beige Planet Mars was the sixteenth Virgin New Adventures novel. It featured Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane. This was the first novel to feature excerpts of Jason'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.

Chapter titles

• Prologue: World of the Wars

1. Planet of War
2. Lobby Politics
3. On the Internal Dynamics of Parties
4. Wake Up, Sweet Benny
5. The Past Catches Up
6. Interlewd
7. Drunk in Charge of an Imbecile
8. Kane Unable
9. Whizz Kids and Gratuitous Nudity
10. Pensioner Mugged by Lizard
11. Benny Comes to an Interesting Conclusion
12. Mutually Assured Destruction
13. Catch
14. Implausible Deniability
15. Fish and Ships
16. Apocalypse Wow

• Epilogue: If You're So Rich, Why Aren't You Clever?

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Bernice Summerfield
• Jason Kane
• Seez
• Soaz
• Professor Elizabeth K. Trinity/Karina Tellassar
• Professor Megali Scoblow
• Isaac Deniken
• Gerald Makhno
• Phillip York
• Christina York
• CATCH
• Saldaamir
• General Keele
• Ellias Cromwell

Worldbuilding

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

• Benny has sex with Jason.
• 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.
• During a hangover, Benny recalls using the word "clitoris" on the previous night, but could not remember the context.

Literature

• This is the debut of Jason Kane's xenopornography, inluding Nights of the Perfumed Tentacle.
• 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.

Planets

• 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.
• 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...".
• 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." The story also references the 42nd Doctor and his wife Iffy from Parkin's deleted epilogue to The Dying Days.

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 invasion of Mars were seen in PROSE: GodEngine.
• The Argyre clan and the nuclear explosion, and how Benny knows so much about both, is from PROSE: The Dying Days.
• Benny's friend Tim 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
• The Cloister Library: Beige Planet Mars