The Winning Side (audio story)

The Winning Side was the sixty-ninth Bernice Summerfield audio story released by Big Finish Productions. It was the fourth story of the Missing Persons series.

Publisher's summary
Bernice is lost in the ruins of an alien world. Long ago, something arrived there. Something arrived and found an idyllic civilisation: a city of wonders full of artists and scientists and poets... Something came to this world and destroyed it.

Wandering the ruins, Bernice tries to solve the mystery. What came to this planet? What wiped out its people? Was it a plague? An alien invasion?

Bernice Summerfield explores all that remains of paradise. And she discovers the name of the creature that came and wiped it out...

'Bernice Summerfield'

Plot
''Benny's escape pod crashes into a planet and she wanders the desert. She comes across a ruined city on her third day and notices a statue of herself with an inscription calling her the Woman Who Killed the World. Around the statue are tablets and graffiti telling the story of how she arrived from nowhere.''

After falling from the sky as a result of a transmat, Benny is labelled a Sky Witch and taken to King Theon in the Planet of Eternal Dreams, who is advised by Meriol to burn her. He ignores him and they become close, but Meriol continues to warn him that they are doomed as a result of her arrival. When a plague breaks out, Benny decides to help cure it, in part to restore the reputation of herself and Theon, and traces it to a spaceship in the forest. She accepts Theon's offer of marriage and, after he dismisses Meriol, she takes him to the ship and explains that it is leaking fatal dallian radiation.

Benny builds a suit that allows her to enter the ship and finds medicine to cure the afflicted, but no way to stop the leakage without blowing it up for the moment. When the Garren attack the city with trebuchets, Benny goes to the ship with Meriol and uses its weapons to fire a warning shot and cause the Garren to retreat. Meriol then fires a shot which wipes the Garren out, pleasing Theon. Theon builds a tower for Benny and keeps her there to stop her from disabling the ship's engine whilst the city enters a golden age thanks to the technology they have found.

After months of captivity, Benny is visited by Meriol, who tells her to leave so that she will not be remembered or become a martyr, but she refuses. The medicine eventually starts to run out and Theon and Meriol fight whilst the people become sicker due to the shield around the engine having been removed. Theon tries to make more medicine with a replicator without success and is driven insane. He visits Benny after Meriol dies and takes her to the ship to turn off the engine, a task which is complicated by all of his people's meddling. Benny is forced to admit defeat after several hours' work so Theon sets the engine to explode, sending Benny through time.

''Benny assumes that this adventure must be in her future, but wonders how her foreknowledge will affect her actions and whether she will be able to change things. A spaceship arrives and the Epoch identify her, telling her that they have her son and her friends and ordering her to board their ship as part of their final scheme.''

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Theon - Hugh Skinner
 * Meriol - Geoffrey Beevers
 * First Yokel - Gary Russell
 * Second Yokel - Brett Underwood
 * Yokel Child - Katy Manning
 * The Epoch - Michael Thomson

Worldbuilding

 * Theon lives in the Planet of Eternal Dreams.
 * The Institute of Sciences look into the plague.
 * Benny calls Theon Germaine Greer.
 * The plague causes lesions and lumps.
 * Benny does not like pineapple.
 * Theon tries to use a replicator.

Continuity

 * Benny shouts that she is "down among the dead men". (PROSE: Love and War, etc.)
 * The Epoch have kidnapped Ruth, Jack, (AUDIO: Big Dig) Peter (AUDIO: The Revenant's Carnival) and Braxiatel. (AUDIO: The Brimstone Kid)