It’s the fall of 3598. The University of Vremnya is looking to expand its collection of resources for a course on the life of one Bernice Summerfield, famous archaeologist-adventurer and alumni of its Archaeology department…
Refracted Lives: Veritas Ante Omnia is a Bernice Summerfield fanzine celebrating Bernice Summerfield and her involvement in academia throughout the Dellah / Collection era. Our interest check will go live on October 13th, please follow our social media for future updates!
bev, here, is threatening her friend at gunpoint, having already kicked him down onto the ground, because she, from observations, had concluded that he's somehow hurt brax, gotten him to leave, and she fully believes that. she fully believes that, and she's threatening him at gunpoint, because she believes that she is avenging brax. avenging the person who gave her a home.
and that's- that's huge. we need to talk about what it means.
i mean, can we conclude that brax semi-intentionally molded her to do this? from the ending of the fifth axis arc, he'd had reasons to start manipulating the world more, to try and reach his goal to prevent anything that horrible from happening. and bev's a huge asset. and, remember, brax was the only one who trusted her in the beginning, to do missions that he sent her on. and that obviously meant a lot. having a famous art theif, who led a whole revolution for a year against the fifth axis, on your side and completely loyal because you're the one who gave her a home and believed in her to do things? someone who's never had a home? i'm not saying all of this was completely intentional, hell, not at all. i think brax only started doing things after he kept bev as his PA, so only the believing-in-her-to-do-things-she-wasn't-qualified-for was intentional and done to get her gratitude and loyalty, in a way. oh and also he was slowly molding her to be more... dignified, i guess, less unpredictable and unhesitatingly violent, more suited to his plans.
top five brax moments. y'know what alternatively top five benny moments, and also top five jason moments. top five bev moments . as you can tell i am very good at decision making and not indecisive at all. honestly just whatever, do whichever you wish
oh boy.... let's see if i can do this without spending 3 hours going back through my story reviews to dig up everything i love about this series. (also disclaimer that i've listened to everything in the series and read most of the The Important Books but i haven't read everything, especially most of the Seven-Benny VNAs)
update: i did in fact spend way over three hours going through story reviews and old books and experienced way too many emotions so..... all of this under a cut
top 5 Brax moments:
The Crystal of Cantus. listen. i wrote a whole novel length fic called And They Became Monsters, what do you want from me? of course The Crystal of Cantus is my favorite Brax story specifically how he narrates the story to Parasiel and this sharp transition (and great bit of acting) where it's revealed that Braxiatel has been the villain all along by just his line delivery of "Sit down, Mr Parasiel." and it never feels like a cheap reveal? for one, it's been built up in The Mirror Effect and a lot of short stories for years. and for two, it's not really about Braxiatel being a villain (at least in my mind). it's about him revising his own story that he's been writing and casting himself as a monster because it's easier to be a monster than to be a person choosing cruelty and the whole story walks that line so well and has become the foundation for how i approach writing Braxiatel (at least Collection era Brax).
trying to commit suicide in Five Dimensional Thinking. Life During Wartime is a great anthology for many many reasons but this story (along with Fear of Corners) will always have a special place for me. Braxiatel is written so well throughout but specifically his admission to Benny that he's horribly afraid that he's responsible for the Fifth Axis's occupation to the point of considering killing himself. absolutely insane.
Braxiatel and John finally meeting in Where Angels Fear. like the other stories i've talked about, i love Where Angels Fear for many many reasons but i remember reading it for the first time and being blown away by this exchange:
Braxiatel is a character obsessed with control and manipulation (not always bad manipulation but manipulation in the sense that he needs to be the one who knows what's going on and can't stand when others pull his strings) and this story (and this scene in particular) really represents the moment when he loses that control for the first time and realizes that he's lost that Time Lord objectivity he once valued so much. and to a lesser extent, he spends the rest of his life through the Collection arc struggling with this moment of being out of control, his relationship to his Time Lord nature, and making sure something like this won't happen again until he creates a self-fulfilling prophecy ensuring that it does.
4. Braxiatel talking to the Oracle in Tears of the Oracle. Braxiatel, even in the books, is so encased in performance and masks which makes him a fascinating character to study and as i said above, any moment of him falling out of control is absolutely delicious but this is one of very few scenes where Braxiatel has a genuine conversation about himself and specifically his carefully unnamed brother. Braxiatel is introduced to so many people as "the Doctor's brother" when that's not his narrative role – they literally have two stories together where they barely even speak. so it's fascinating to have this singular moment where Braxiatel is a brother even if it's just for a conversation and he gives us one of his most genuine insights into his past and personality beyond the masks he makes for himself. i always had an easier time writing Braxiatel as he cycles through his performances because that's so much of who he is so when i needed to write him without a mask, trying to figure out what his own identity is, i always came back to this moment to root myself.
5. honestly there were so many Brax scenes i started to think of to put here but i gotta give it to his first scene in Empire of Glass.
Braxiatel's art collection is obviously a huge part of his character and this is just such a great foundation of why that is and its articulated so well. and obviously Empire of Glass was written longggggg before Braxiatel's other appearances and the Collection arc but it's so wonderful to read his genuinely good intentions for his Collection (preserving the past, creating a collection of knowledge for everyone in the universe, and combating the censorship and erasure of knowledge and history) with the knowledge that it won't pan out that way. as he becomes more obsessive, he seeks to control the flow of knowledge on the macro level (his Collection always becomes for the elite, not for everyday people and he always has secret displays and Collections that he doesn't show people) and the micro level (him literally editing people's histories and memories as a means of controlling them) as he becomes the exact thing he hates so much here. (also why i need to write my fic about late Collection era Benny meeting EoG!Brax because yeesh they've got stuff to talk about)
top 5 Benny moments:
all of Year Zero. just. all of it. i'll forever stand by the fact that it's the best Benny story because of how it strips her back to the essentials after the Everything of the Collection arc with the way she uses actual archaeology & historical analysis to uncover the mystery of where she is and the broader themes about how one can never erase history because it's ingrained in everything around us no matter how hard fascists try to bury it. it's a familiar theme across all the Benny eras (and it's good every time) but this particularly story just... hits. i don't love how the Year Zero/history arc/Atlantis stuff ends but the beginning is sooooo good.
the moment in The Poison Seas where Benny starts talking about what a mess her life has become and how she could just run away and start all over again if she wants but she won't because "who would fight the monsters? who would be left to believe in the angels?" it's genuinely one of the best speeches in all of Doctor Who and it's CRIMINAL that no one talks about it. it's also such a wonderful to really accentuate the differences between Benny and the Doctor because they are very similar in a lot of ways – similar values, similar interests, the same curiosity and eccentric sense of humor – but the difference is that Benny chooses to stay. she could go and have a life like the Doctor and she'd probably be a lot happier for it but no, she chooses to stay and make a home and protect those she loves because someone has to.
it's not so much a moment but more of a facet of her character – the fact that Benny revises her diaries by putting sticky notes over the entries is sooo important. i genuinely don't know if it originates in Down but it's the first book i read that used them and while i have somewhat mixed feelings about the book, the reveal that Benny made up a significant amount of the story and inserted a simplistic action hero character because she couldn't handle the cognitive dissonance of ever believing a Nazi could do something good because "fascists know no redemption" despite her entire life revolving around uncovering the truth of history, no matter how hard it is. it's one of those moments that really wiggled its way into my brain and is foundational for how i view her character and was honestly kind of relatable? i'm not a historian but i have studied/do study history and it's tough to tackle the fact that the worst types of people in history aren't cartoon villains especially when it's easier to do so and makes a better, cleaner story (something that's tackled a lot in the series going forward!). you have to think of everyone as a three-dimensional person if you really want to know the truth and i'm always glad when Benny stories approach those sorts of topics with more nuance than the tv show ever will.
it's such a small thing and it's barely a proper Benny moment but for whatever reason the part of Where Angels Fear where the stakes as escalating as everyone is becoming more fervent about their worship of the gods and Benny is one of the few rational people left on Dellah and Shemda (the Grel who only seemed to exist for comic relief at first) declared to all of the Grel Master and the god Maa'lon and pointed to Benny and said "I believe in her." it's meant to be kind of a silly moment but when i first read the book, i was so gripped and into it that i just started crying and that was the moment that i knew i loved the Dellah arc.
disclaimer that i haven't actually read the book version of Beyond the Sun so i don't know if it's in there or just the audio version but Benny carving her code into a pendant that says: "Bernice Summerfield is a human being and as such she is all too capable of being cruel and cowardly and yet while she is often caught up in violent events, she endeavours to remain a woman of peace." is such an important moment for me and really clearly lays out so much of her character (especially since this was like the third Benny story i listened to so it really made an impact).
top five Jason moments:
everything in The End of the World.... tbh i first listened to the Benny audios without reading any of the tie in books (and not thinking that deeply about his character because i was 15) so i wasn't a huge Jason fan. i vaguely knew his backstory and that he had been through some shit but not the details so listening to The End of the World was like getting a bucket of ice water dumped on me (in the best way possible). everything about his character, including aspects that annoyed me on first listen, just slid into place and i realized "oh this is a brilliantly written character" so i'm gonna cheat and pick two moments from this audio – the moment when he's explaining what he's doing in relation to video game farming: "The thing about farming is that it was never meant to be a winning strategy. It was a strategy only ever meant to last just long enough. The job of the fighter guy is just to go in and hack and slash and flail about until… he died. He was never meant to win the game." because the Fewell's acting makes it so clear at the point in the quote where Jason realizes that he's talking about his life not just a video game and the absolute tragedy knowing what's about to happen is so delicious. and the second is obviously him remembering his sister and being disgusted that Braxiatel would take her memory from him.
the reveal in Suffer the Children that Jason wasn't collaborating with the Fifth Axis occupation but only pretending to so he could save all of the alien children because sacrificing his relationships and everyone's respect was absolutely worth him helping the innocent like this. all of Jason's interactions with kids and protecting them is soooo important to me and makes so much sense knowing the abuse he went through.
an underappreciated bit in The Crystal of Cantus where when Brax goes mask-off in regards to his intentions with enslaving Jason to be Cyber-Controller, the first thing Jason says is "you're ill, we can help you" and i just....... it's such a small moment that you can overlook but Jason has grown so much and become so empathetic that even when his friend reveals that he's been manipulating everyone for years and intends to kill Jason right here, the first thing Jason does is offer to help. it kills me that all the tragedy that happens on the Collection could have been prevented if Braxiatel only accepted his friends' help.
i'm trying to come up with a Jason moment to beat him pinning Braxiatel to the wall at the end of The Crystal of Cantus telling him to leave his family alone but i'm sorry, i'm predictable. it's also a great contrast to Jason's other immediate reaction to The Situation i listed above.
it's not quite a Jason exclusive scene but just the whole collection of Benny's pathetic men (Jason, Chris, Clarence, Brax) all scheming how to make sure she has a boring vacation so she won't leave them for better things in The Joy Device. it's trope-y but all the hijinks that ensue are so much fun and such a great breath of air for the last few heavy books.
top five Bev moments:
Bev essentially leading the resistance to the Fifth Axis occupation in Life During Wartime. i feel like it's easy to forget that Bev had only been on the Collection for a few weeks before the occupation, she didn't really have any loyalty to anyone on the Collection but she became the fiercest resistance and i just love her little introduction piece in A Life Worth Living that says "...you can see the scars from when she was tortured by the Fifth Axis. She gave nothing away."
Bev killing Ms Jones in Parallel Lives. i really didn't see this moment coming but it's such a wonderful way to resolve Bev's distaste of Ms Jones for being a collaborator while also showing Braxiatel's growing control over her, that he manipulated the situation because he knew that Bev would be the only one who would shoot her and to a certain extent Bev knows that but she never says it out loud until it's too late.
the way Adrian is struggling to propose to Bev in The Judas Gift and she goes up to him and says yes without him needing to ask.... i love Adrian/Bev a lot okay?
i'm blanking on a specific moment from a specific story but just the shift of Bev's in Collected Works in general where she suddenly has the literal weight of their world thrust on her shoulders and she tries to stay so strong while juggling 100 different plates. (also the note, it might be before Collected Works, where she starts wearing glasses so the other academics take her seriously <3)
not to be queer on main but her and Benny making out in Summer of Love. it's the type of queer women moment that's weirdly exploitative and fetish-y and the story.... is not great. but sometimes i need to turn my brain off and go :3 women kissing :3
