Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Mirror Effect (audio story)

Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Mirror Effect, or simply The Mirror Effect, was the fifteenth Bernice Summerfield audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. This was writer Stewart Sheargold's first audio story for Big Finish. It begins a very long character arc for Irving Braxiatel whose motivations are questioned throughout the course of this story and continue to develop through the Benny stories.

Publisher's summary
Do you believe in the mirror or do you believe in yourself?

Under the ice on a cold world lie the derelict remains of the lost Grid 4 Mining Station. Inside the station is a mirror, an ancient alien artefact, its existence known to few. Inside the mirror is one Professor Bernice Summerfield, and she can't get out. Trapped and alone in a place she cannot trust, with her friends distorted and turned against her, she is haunted by fears and reflections.

And inside Bernice Summerfield is a little baby creature that wants her to be mother.

Plot
Benny and Jason appear in an icy mining station and go looking for Braxiatel and Adrian, who have appeared in the base camp above and found a human corpse with a neck wound. Benny and Jason are attacked by the knife-wielding Dr Carnivel who stops as soon as she makes Jason bleed and claims that she knows the two of them, having worked with them on the expedition here before passing through a mirror. Copies of Benny and Jason returned, she says, and led to the team killing one another until only she was left.

Carnivel shows the mirror to Benny and Jason, who recognise it as the one that they passed through on the Braxiatel Collection to arrive here. Braxiatel makes contact with Benny and Jason through Carnivel's communicator and Adrian starts working on the lift so that they can regroup. Benny appears to Braxiatel at the base camp, but he soon realises that she is a reflection; she accuses him of engineering Peter's conception so that he could collect a human-Killoran hybrid and attacks him, but Adrian comes to his rescue and smashes her.

to be completed

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Irving Braxiatel - Miles Richardson
 * Jason Kane - Stephen Fewell
 * Adrian Wall - Harry Myers
 * Joseph - Steven Wickham
 * Doctor Carnivel - Beverley Cressman

Continuity

 * Benny does not want Joseph talking in baby-speak to Peter. (AUDIO: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Green-Eyed Monsters)
 * This audio is one of the first instances of Irving Braxiatel heavily manipulating the people on the Braxiatel Collection. Braxiatel's manipulations of people and time increased heavily over the years, culminating in events such as turning Jason Kane into a Cyberman in AUDIO:The Crystal of Cantus and the events with the Deindum in AUDIO: Resurrecting the Past.
 * Carnivel calls Braxiatel "Cardinal" which was the rank that he held on Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Inquiry, Pandora, et al)