Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Grel Escape (audio story)

, or simply The Grel Escape, was the first audio story of the fifth season of the Big Finish Bernice Summerfield series. It featured the first use of Bernice and Jason Kane's Time Rings in a Big Finish original story, though they had appeared in the adaptation of Just War. It was also the first original Big Finish use of the Grel, who appeared in the adaptation of Oh No It Isn't!
Written by Jacqueline Rayner, this was her first Bernice Summerfield audio story that was not an adaptation of a novel. It was something of an homage to the 1965 Doctor Who television story The Chase, with several scenes throughout the story mimicking those that appeared in the precedent story.
== Publisher's summary ==
Young children can be difficult. Tantrums, toy-throwing, not wanting to go to bed, whisking their mothers on dangerous journeys throughout all of time and space...
Jason wants Benny's son Peter to have a normal childhood. Peter has other plans. And unfortunately, Peter also has Benny and Jason's Time Rings. And knows how to use them. Even more unfortunately, the fact-obsessed, tentacle-faced Grel have built a time machine, and they're after Peter.
So Benny finds herself on the run, landing in frightening festivals and deadly deserts, facing ridiculously inaccurate robot doubles and hideously accented tourists, in what can only be described as a sort of chase...
== Plot ==
Jason has Joseph track down 20th century Earth television signals to show Peter programme about zoos, funfairs, beaches and aeroplane rides and try to get him to use Benny's Time Ring in conjunction with his own to take them both to Earth, believing it to be important to restore a sense of normality following the Fifth Axis occupation. When Benny and Sophia arrive, Jason has Joseph change the channel; he tunes into a time machine on Grellor in 2648 and they watch as Grel head to the Braxiatel Collection to capture and study Peter. Before they can warn Braxiatel, Peter activates the Time Rings.
Benny, Jason, Joseph, Peter and Sophia appear at the dilapidated site of the Festival of Piranha, closed down because of the presence of flesh-eating Evadra Wraiths who were mistaken for ghosts, and they run when the Grel arrive in their time machine. They get onto a ghost train and Jason gets Peter to transport them to the seaside before the Wraiths can kill them, but they instead arrive near the Great Sphinx in Ancient Egypt. Benny takes Peter to see Khufu's pyramid and the Grel materialise beneath the surface, emerging from the sand and giving chase. They shoot Benny, who falls unconscious and dreams of Peter being judged by Anubis for his future actions and given to Ammit to be devoured.
Benny wakes up in a jungle with Jason, Joseph, Peter and Sophia, again transported by the Time Rings. Joseph deduces that the Time Rings are struggling to transport more than two people and Benny tries to take them from Peter, but they burn her. She offends Jason when she calls him deluded for thinking of himself as Peter's father and, at Sophia's suggestion, she goes to apologise to him after he storms off with Peter. She finds him with an unconvincing Grel duplicate of herself who tries to persuade Jason to hand Peter over to her, but she self-destructs upon realising that she has revealed that Benny and Jason will remarry.
The Time Rings transport the group to a volcanic formation in the Victorian era before whisking them away just before the Grel arrive and test their Great Grel Gun on two Victorians, reducing them to atoms. The group travel to various places, including a racetrack, a football pitch and the top of the Eiffel Tower before Peter becomes hot to the touch just like the Time Rings and rapidly ages. Benny takes the Time Rings from him and he tries to get them back by force, killing the Grel Tim, Sophia's son from the future. Sophia then uses the Great Grel Gun to destroy the Rings and restore Peter.
Shocked by the violence that Peter displayed, Benny and Jason vow to ensure that he does not grow up to become such a person, with Jason admitting that he wants to care for Peter as his own father never did for him. Many of the Grel time machine's circuits have been burnt out by the short time jumps, but Sophia is able to use it to take the group back to 2603. Benny apologises to Sophia for Tim's death and Sophia admits that the whole ordeal was likely her fault due to her having submitted information on Peter to Grellor.
== Cast ==
* Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
* Jason Kane - Stephen Fewell
* Joseph - Steven Wickham
* Sophia - Julia Houghton
* The Grel - Daniel Hogarth
* Peter Summerfield - Dacey Warriner
== Worldbuilding ==
=== Time travel ===
* Jason tries to get Peter to use his and Bernice's Time Rings.
== Notes ==
* This story is a homage to the Doctor Who television story The Chase, with several scenes mimicking the events of that story.
* Like several Benny audio titles, this one is a pun. In this case, it's an obvious play on , a film that was quite often traditional Christmas-time viewing in the United Kingdom.
* This story was originally released on CD and download. A download version is available.
== Continuity ==
* Jason and Bernice were given their time rings in PROSE: Happy Endings.
* The occupation of the Collection is mentioned. It began in PROSE: Life During Wartime and ended in AUDIO: Death and the Daleks.
* Sophia, Peter's godmother, first appeared in PROSE: The Glass Prison.
* This is the first time that Bernice has travelled through time since AUDIO: Just War.
* Benny is shown a violent future version of Peter who unknowingly killed Grel as well as hit his own mother. This is foreshadowing of Peter's violent nature, evident in actions such as brutally killing zombie like creatures in AUDIO: Beyond the Sea, becoming an aggressive chief of security on Legion in AUDIO: Vesuvius Falling and killing his father, Jason Kane, in AUDIO: The Final Amendment (although Braxiatel manipulated Peter into doing so).
* Jason exclaims that it isn't Cromer. (TV: The Three Doctors)
== External links ==
Category:Bernice Summerfield sources
Category:Series 5 (BFBS) audio stories
Category:2004 audio stories
Category:Stories set in 2022
Category:Stories set in 1900
Category:Audio stories set in Egypt
Category:Stories set in Paris
Category:Stories set in Australia
Category:Stories set in the distant past
Category:Audio stories set on KS-159
Category:Stories set in 2603
Category:One part audio stories