Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Secret of Cassandra (audio story)

Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Secret of Cassandra, or simply The Secret of Cassandra, was the seventh Bernice Summerfield audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. It was also the first original audio story produced for the series. This was writer David Bailey's first contribution to a Doctor Who universe story; he continued on to contribute to a range of Doctor Who elements including further Bernice Summerfield stories and Doctor Who Magazine and Doctor Who novels.

For the entire guest cast, this is their only Bernice Summerfield audio story; they have all however appeared in other Big Finish audio story productions.

Publisher's summary
A vicious war between two nations is coming to a head, and the final movements are centred on the sailing ship Cassandra. Along with a very strange cargo, Cassandra carries Captain Colley, a man with his own sad burden, and the paranoid General Brennan, a woman convinced that her actions will end the war once and for all. Their grim mission goes entirely to plan, until the Cassandra gains an extra passenger - a shipwrecked archaeology professor by the name of Bernice Summerfield.

Sensing something is very wrong aboard the ship, Bernice's snooping brings her close to a terrible truth. Soon, Bernice doesn't know who to trust, and she can no longer be sure if anyone is who they claim to be...

Plot
Whilst holidaying on the Earth colony Chosan, Benny falls asleep on her yacht, which drifts into the path of a warship and is destroyed. She washes up on a small island and, after two days, rescued by Captain Colley and brought aboard the automated sailing ship Cassandra, although General Brennan is happy to leave her to die. When she wakes up, the Captain gives her a communicator and explains that he is ferrying Brennan to Calabraxia, a continent at war with Pevana.

Benny learns that the Captain is secretly working for both sides of the war and, in the morning, is attacked by Brennan and taken to the cargo hold where she meets Sheen, Brennan's prisoner. The Captain is informed of this by Cassandra's computer and has her released, telling Benny that the war will be over once Sheen arrives in Calabraxia. He explains that his daughter, Cassandra, programmed the ship's systems before joining the Pevanan military's neurotechnology division and disappearing in an attack on Glory Hill. Her loss drove his wife, Nadia, into an early grave and he now wishes to end the war at any cost.

Benny secretly contacts a nearby Pevanan ship and rescues Sheen from his cage with the help of Cassandra and one of her laser guns. He is initially hesitant to leave his cage and, when Benny takes him onto the deck, he powers up a staser cannon and destroys his people's ship despite Benny's protestations. Brennan suffers another headache and tells Benny that she has been working undercover as a scientist at Glory Hill since the Calabraxian attack and that Sheen was the head of a project which sought to create a superweapon. She captured him and is taking him for interrogation, but Benny believes that he and the Captain are in league.

Sheen admits he is responsible for Brennan's headaches. Her memories had been blocked, and it causes pain when she tries to remember something about Sheen. Sheen's eyes are covered in cataracts, due to an operation that turned him into the walking, living bomb which will destroy Calabraxia in ten hours' time. Cassandra removed the memory block from Brennan's mind.

Colley reveals that the whole time he was trying to avenge his daughter's death by killing the Calabraxians. Sheen then comes out with an even more shocking revelation, he is in fact the original Cassandra. She transferred her mind into the manufactured body of Sheen in order to continue working on the weapon. Upset and unable to handle this knowledge, Colley then shoots Sheen.

In order to dismantle the bomb inside Sheen, Cassandra uploads her intelligence into Sheen's body. She is able to do this because Sheen's AI network and her own were designed by the same person.

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Captain Damien Colley - Lennox Greaves
 * General Hannah Brennan - Sally Faulkner
 * Computer - Helen Goldwyn
 * Sheen - Robert Curbishley

Continuity

 * Bernice returns to Chosan in AUDIO: The Poison Seas.