Doctor Who spin-off review: Bernice Summerfield: Dragons’ Wrath

Due to a considerably shorter length and issues of post-production, the final story of major Doctor Who character Bernice Summerfield’s first season, Dragons’ Wrath, might also be its weakest.

We reach the final story of the first season of Bernice Summerfield with Dragons’ Wrath. It’s an interesting way to end it. Especially with the audio’s release date: Sep 2000, over a whole year after the release of the previous story Just War! (To put this into perspective: Big Finish first started making Bernice Summerfield audios almost a year before they started making Doctor Who ones. And yet, by this point, there were 12 audios of the latter released already!)

Ah, Just War. A dark and challenging listen, that story was certainly the highlight of the season, and in fact, might be one of Big Finish’s strongest audios ever. So Dragons’ Wrath wasn’t likely to live up to that. However, even when taking it on its own terms, there are certain choices made with this story that makes it much weaker than it needs to be.

First of all, like the other stories of the first season, Dragons’ Wrath is a novel adaptation rather than an original story. However, since it was released on just one CD instead of two, it’s also considerably shorter. And honestly, it shows.

Dragons’ Wrath was Jacqueline Rayner’s fifth adapted script for Benny’s first season, which began with Oh No It Isn’t. But, due to a considerably shortened length, it’s also the weakest.

Image Courtesy Big Finish Productions

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Major issues

While Jacqueline Rayner tries her best at adapting Justin Richards’s novel to the audio medium, the story is given no room to breathe. We’re given a lot of twists and turns, but no character and no depth. Rayner has been generally excellent with each of these adaptations, but even she couldn’t make the considerably condensed runtime work.

This story also suffers from rather weak post-production. There are some clear problems in terms of the sound design that takes you right out of the story. A moment that particularly stood out was a sound effect on a character’s voice ending at completely the wrong place. However, this might have been an issue partly caused by the original production, such as two actors sharing the same microphone and making it impossible to separate their voices. If so, then it’s easy to see why actors later recorded in completely separate booths at Big Finish.

Dragons’ Wrath isn’t an awful story, but it is a disappointing one, both as an adaptation and as an audio production. It’s a real shame, too. The first season of Bernice Summerfield was generally pretty strong, surprisingly so, all things considered. The fact that its final story is also its weakest is a disappointing note to end on.

Have you listened to Dragons’ Wrath? Do you think it worked well as a story, or did its core issues hold it back? If you’ve read the original novel, do you think it was much stronger than its adaptation? Let us know in the comments below.