Just War (1999)

The final instalment of this Time Ring trilogy is perhaps the most downbeat Bernice Summerfield story so far. Written by Lance Parkin (Primeval) this story takes place in occupied Guernsey. Now any story that features Nazis isn’t going to be a laugh a minute. The story takes place during 1941 where Bernice is (yet again) stranded from Jason. The story is basically that the Nazis have technology which would help them win the war and Benny has to try and stop them. Well it was never going to be that simple otherwise it would be rubbish. This story features Maggie Stables who would go onto play the lovely Evelyn Smythe alongside the Sixth Doctor just a short time after this was released.

Whereas the stories that we have had from this series have varied in terms of tone but they have all remained pretty well light. This story is very dark. It’s very grim at times and almost uncomfortably so. The thought of the main character being beaten up is not one that I would say is suitable for children. It was a brave thing to have the lead character actually murder someone. I know he was a Nazi but even so it was not something that I was expecting to happen. This story doesn’t hold back its punches which is quite refreshing.

The performances in this are fantastic from top to bottom with Lisa Bowerman giving her best performance to date. She plays the scenes where she is being held captive by the Nazi’s particularly well and shows that even when not being an archaeologist the character of Benny is a strong one. This isn’t the sort of story where she can be normal everyday happy Benny but she has to play the broken character and it’s clear that by the end of the story she has some emotional scars which may never heal. This is also Stephen Fewell’s best story so far as he is given the best stuff to do since he was introduced to us. As the stories have been developing, so has the importance of Kane. In this story we get to see both sides of Jason’s character and Mark Gatiss’ performance is also very worthy of high praise. As Standardtenfuhrer Joachim Wolff, he is pretty recognisable but his character was very good and it’s the same with the other Nazi characters.  Maggie Stables is very good in this and the character of Ma Doras isn’t too far removed from that of Evelyn Smythe. It’s always nice to hear Stables as she has a wonderful voice for audio and it works really well here.

I like that it seems it is the events of ‘Just War’ that persuade Benny to never use the Time Ring. It’s certainly sound reasoning and the horrors of this adventure would put anyone off.  Out of the three stories in the trilogy it’s fair to say that this is the best and it’s also fair to say that this is the best Benny story so far but I suspect that the final story of this opening series will have a hard job to avoid it coming across as mediocre coming right after this thoroughly enjoyable adventure.

Rating – 8/10