Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Green-Eyed Monsters (audio story)

Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Green-Eyed Monsters, or simply The Green-Eyed Monsters, was the twelfth Bernice Summerfield audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. This was writer Dave Stone's first audio story.

Publisher's summary
It isn't all fun for a new mum.

Not only do you have to deal with the lack of sleep, the occasional embarrassing leak and the constant round of unexploded nappies — you have to deal with a couple of testeronically-charged idiots who won't get it through their skulls that you don't want either of them to be the Dad. Even though one of them technically is.

So when Benny gets the chance to skip off for a while, heading into a Goronos System packed with duplicity and peril to authenticate certain highly significant artefacts and totems, she doesn't have to think twice.

Only, sometimes, as she'll learn, when heading into duplicity and peril, it's not a good idea to leave a hostage to fortune behind...

Plot
Having decided to maintain a holostatic diary, Benny has Joseph record a message for Peter to view in the future. She is interrupted, however, first by Adrian, who has brought a stuffed bunny for Peter despite having claimed that Killoran males have nothing to do with their young, and then by Jason, who starts an argument with Adrian. She kicks them out and is contacted by Lady Ashantra du Lac of Goron IV; a number of artefacts and totems have been unearthed and Ashantra wants to hire Benny to identify them.

Benny has Jason and Adrian meet her at a bar and hands Peter over to them for the next few days. Accompanied by Joseph, Benny takes a shuttle rather than the Goronian spaceship she was offered and learns about the Goronos System from GalNet; the system is made up of five warring planets who believe that they were once ruled by twin kings with eyes that glow green in the presence of certain artefacts and who will be reincarnated to rule once more. She arrives and is welcomed by Ashantra, who expected her to have brought Peter, as well as identical twins Prince Ronald and Prince Boris.

Jason and Adrian are attacked and Peter is kidnapped. When Jason becomes conscious again, he checks the Collection's transit database and, determining that the kidnappers must be locals, goes with Adrian to meet with Sloaty and threatens him with the piratical Plague Dogs into returning Peter.

In her room, Benny tries and fails to contact Braxiatel to ask him to keep an eye on Jason and Adrian. She is immediately called by Ashantra, who asks how she is settling in and whether her call was important, making Benny suspicious and leading her to get Joseph to find a frequency unknown to the Goronians. She quickly finds that the artefacts that were found are in fact forgeries or entirely worthless and confronts Ashantra, learning that she spread the false legend of the Twin Kings and intends on using implants to make Ronald and Boris's eyes glow green. To ensure Benny's cooperation, she shows her a holo-recording of Peter.

Peter is returned to Ms Jones in reception and Jason and Adrian give him to Braxiatel to look after before heading to Goron IV. On the way, Adrian confesses that Killorans mate for life and that he cannot put an end to his feelings for Benny, which Jason agrees to keep secret, and they detect Joseph's beacon. Homing in on it, they interrupt Benny as she is being forced to partake in Ashantra's deception of the Goronians. Ashantra gives Ronald and Boris permission to attack Benny, but Joseph saves her with weaponry that he had earlier claimed he no longer had.

Ashantra is arrested, the truth revealed to the Goronians and Benny returns to the Collection. She is soon joined by Jason and Adrian, who argue about their respective roles in Peter's kidnap and rescue whilst Benny tries to stop the baby from crying.

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Jason Kane - Stephen Fewell
 * Adrian Wall - Harry Myers
 * Joseph the Porter - Steven Wickham
 * Lady Ashantra - Maria Darling

Crew

 * Cover Art - Adrian Salmon
 * Producer & Director - Gary Russell
 * Executive Producer - Jason Haigh-Ellery
 * Music & Sound Designer - David Darlington
 * Writer - Dave Stone

Worldbuilding

 * Jason buys a boilermaker, which is made of liquor and beer.
 * Goron IV is on the other side of the Proximan Chain.
 * Benny has Joseph access GalNet for information on the Goronos System.
 * The Goronos System was colonised during the initial expansion from Earth, but contact was lost during the Earthline Collapse and diplomatic relations with the rest of the galaxy were non-existent for three centuries.
 * Ronald and Boris are the Princes Royal.
 * Ashantra has savings with the Galactic Central Bank.
 * Raghi Ano is a swamp goddess who cut out the insides of the All-seeing Celestial Father God Whapo and wound them around a stick to make the galaxy's spirals.
 * Benny finds a consecrated sigil of the Potentates of the Monastery of Wom.
 * The Book of Dreams was published by the Apocryphal Publishing Consortium.
 * Nix is a lymph-sucking Viceraptor from the Soul Reaver dimensions.

Continuity

 * Benny and Jason both reference how Benny was possessed by Avril Fenman when Peter was conceived. (PROSE: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Squire's Crystal)
 * Benny mentions Peter's screams being able to destroy buildings, as happened to the Glass Prison in Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Glass Prison.
 * Joseph mentions the Garazone Bazaar, which first appeared in Sword of Orion.
 * Jason spent years away from Benny. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods, etc.)