Doctor Who spin-off review: Beyond the Sun is a character focused story for Bernice Summerfield

Featuring a couple of notable Doctor Who actors, Beyond the Sun is a highly character-focused story for Professor Bernice Summerfield. But it also has something lost in translation, too.

After kicking off with the extremely entertaining story Oh No It Isn’t!, the first season of Bernice Summerfield continues with something a little more serious and character-focused. Beyond the Sun initially begins with Benny looking for her kidnapped ex-husband, Jason. But it slowly becomes more of a hard sci-fi story with a lot of depth – one that’s in some ways more reminiscent of Star Trek than Doctor Who, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

What stood out to me the most about this story was the depiction of its central civilization, the Ursulans. We’re presented with a culture that has very different views on what freedom is. They don’t believe in marriage or family. They’re even born in such a way that they have no family ties to worry about.

This depiction of a culture extremely alien to our own is fascinating to explore – particularly with the character of Scott, an Ursulan who helps Benny and her friends in this story. In some ways, this exploration of both the race and the characters is rather central to the story, and this aspect is handled extremely well.

Oh No It Isn’t! did a great job of seamlessly adapting the source material for audio. But is the same true for Beyond the Sun?

Image Courtesy Big Finish Productions

Lost in adaptation

What arguably doesn’t work quite as well is the Sunless. The Sunless are the main antagonists in this story, and yet they have very little presence. We hear about them more through other characters, particularly the Ursulans, than from them directly.

This is clearly something that’s been lost in adaptation. When reviewing Oh No It Isn’t!, I mentioned that it was extremely difficult to tell what had been cut or changed from the original novel. This is not the case here, sadly. It’s clear that the original novel is very dense, so much so that a good chunk of it had to be cut out.

For the adaptation of his own novel, writer Matt Jones decided to focus more on character exploration than on the main enemy. While I’m not saying that this was the wrong choice to make, it’s clear to see that the Sunless lack the strong presence that they would have had in the original novel.

Benny at work

That’s my central criticism of the story, and it’s a significant one, to be honest. But at the same time, there’s still plenty that I enjoyed about this audio. One thing that I particularly enjoyed was getting to see a lot more of Benny’s archaeological skills in action.

What’s so fantastic about Benny is that, despite the fact that she’s always working on alien worlds, she still feels extremely believable as an archaeologist, and that’s definitely true in this story. We see her get to teach a couple of reluctant students, who she brings along for the ride. We also get to see her display both her knowledge and her skill, especially towards the end, when she gets to show off just how great at her job she really is.

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Notable casting

Lastly, this audio features a couple of cast members extremely notable for Doctor Who fans. Anneke Wills (best known to fans as Polly from the First Doctor’s era) plays Doctor Kitzinger, one of the Ursulans who helps Benny in this story. But perhaps more interesting is the casting of Sophie Aldred as Miranda. It’s a little strange hearing the voice of Ace as a villain, but it also works. Aldred has a lot of fun with the part without coming across as too over the top.

Overall, Beyond the Sun is a pretty solid story, one that’s been well-produced and cast, even at this extremely early stage in Big Finish’s long history. I strongly suspect that I’d enjoy the novel a lot more, as what’s missing from the audio with the Sunless is extremely easy to see. But as an exploration of both an alien culture and of several characters, it does work extremely well overall.

Have you listened to or read Beyond the Sun? If you’ve enjoyed both the novel and the audio, which did you prefer? Do you agree that something was lost in adaptation for the audio? Let us know in the comments below.