Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Doomsday Manuscript (novel)

Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Doomsday Manuscript, or simply The Doomsday Manuscript, was the first full-length novel published by Big Finish Productions following their production of audio story adaptations of novels from the Virgin New Adventures range.

This novel continued to significantly develop the Braxiatel Collection which was first mentioned in the 1979 Doctor Who television story City of Death, though was not visited until 1994's Theatre of War, a New Adventures novel. Both Theatre of War and this novel were written by Justin Richards.

Publisher's summary
The Doomsday Manuscript: The key to finding the Lost Tomb of Rablev. Legend says that if the tomb is ever opened, the world will end.

The Braxiatel Collection: Home to Professor Bernice Summerfield, and the location of one half of the Doomsday Manuscript.

The Fifth Axis: A callous, aggressive force that is assimilating territory and acquiring art treasures and archaeological finds.

Kasagrad: The last neutral planet in the Assimilated Territories, strategically vital and protected from the Fifth Axis by its impenetrable defence systems.

With the party to celebrate the opening of the Braxiatel Collection and the new year still underway, Benny finds herself drawn into a web of mystery and intrigue that starts with death and gets more serious at every stage. Can she find the second half of the Doomsday Manuscript before it falls into the wrong hands? Can she trust her partner in the quest? What will she find on Kasagrad - the location of the Lost Tomb of Rablev?

And can she squeeze in another drink at Joseppi's - favourite haunt of black marketeers, spies, counterfeiters, Fifth Axis officers, and desperate archaeologists - before the end of the world?

Plot
Benny has lost her Braxiatel Collection security pass once again and delays her visit to the feared Ms Jones for a replacement by looking for Wolsey. Visitor Dr Josiah Vanderbilt claims to have found Wolsey, whose paw is injured, in a construction area, something which Benny uses as an excuse for having lost her pass as she knows that Ms Jones has a soft spot for the cat. Benny has a drink with Vanderbilt before he makes his excuses and leaves, bumping into Braxiatel on his way out. Braxiatel tells Benny that Vanderbilt is in his eighties and they check the security scans, identifying the visitor as the Fifth Axis' Kolonel Daglan Straklant.

The New Year's Eve party, also celebrating the opening of the Collection, is held that night. Benny and Braxiatel discreetly hurry away to the Archaeology Department when Braxiatel's intruder alarm goes off and see Straklant kill a man called Dale Pettit with his artificial hand. Straklant claims that he had gotten lost and had caught Pettit stealing a holosphere and Braxiatel decides to cover up the incident and investigate. After leaving the party, Benny returns to her room and finds that Braxiatel has gifted her with a porter called Joseph, just like the one she had at St Oscar's. This reminds her of her past and she thinks about Jason, trying unsuccessfully to find her favourite photograph of him.

Benny thanks Braxiatel for the present and, joined by Straklant, learns that Pettit was simply a research graduate representing the New Adventura Institute of Cross-Licensing and Print Merchandise. Straklant admits that he is not who he claimed to be and says that he was part of a movement which aimed to return the Fifth Axis' treasures to those from whom they were taken and had come to the Collection using Vanderbilt's name as no representative from the Axis had been invited. Braxiatel says that the holosphere, which is uncatalogued, is half of the Doomsday Manuscript which leads to the Lost Tomb of Rablev, which would allegedly spell doom for the universe should it be reopened. Straklant offers to track down the second half as does Benny, who has spotted Jason in a four-hundred-year-old photograph in the holosphere.

After tracing the second half of the Doomsday Manuscript to Milo Yendipp, Benny and Straklant visit him and learn that he had sold it to Munroe Hennessy in order to escape from the Axis, who had invaded his planet and killed his sister's husband. Milo also shows Benny holograms of Niall Goram and Matt Lacey, who had made the manuscript. Whilst Benny heads to the spaceport, Straklant claims that he wishes to apologise to Milo for the Axis' actions but instead stabs him in the heart, having been the one who led the cleansing of his planet.

Benny and Straklant visit Hennessy on his private asteroid; the aged actor believes that they have come to offer him a role in a film called The Doomsday Script. Benny finds herself locked in the bedroom that she has been given and learns from Joseph that somebody is in the editing suite making it look like she is a thief attempting to steal the Doomsday Manuscript from a digitally de-aged Hennessy. She reaches the editing suite and finds that Hennessy's caregiver, Fedora Bronsan, is directing Hennessy's comeback and, when Bronsan draws a gun, Benny electrocutes her with a cable. Bronsan had been temporarily distracted by the camera system being shut down, which it transpires was the work of somebody in a combat suit who had been trying to kill Straklant.

Hennessy tells them where in the library the manuscript is and, once Benny has left to fetch it, Straklant switches off his life support. However, the person in the combat suit switches the system back on and saves Hennessy's life. Bronsan is killed by Straklant, who crushes her with a camera after she becomes conscious again. Benny and Straklant leave, pursued by a ship which fires only warning shots, and Straklant flies them to Kasagrad, the location of the tomb, which Benny finds has been blockaded by the Fifth Axis. As an unaffiliated world in the Assimilated Territories, the Axis wish to conquer it, but are unable to due to its defence grid and have instead blockaded it to force the government to cooperate.

Benny and Straklant are forced to flee the ship in escape pods after the engine couplings are shot by the ship in pursuit; whilst Benny is able to board the ship in pursuit, piloted by the person in the combat suit, Straklant is seemingly killed by the Fifth Axis. Benny flies the ship down towards the planet's surface, having locked the pursuer outside of the control room, and completes the journey in an escape pod when the ship is damaged by the Fifth Axis. Without the Lacey half of the Doomsday Manuscript, which had been with Straklant, Benny waits for the inevitable invasion of Kasagrad.

Braxiatel discovers that Josiah Vanderbilt was murdered, likely by Straklant, before having his invitation to the Collection stolen.

Benny stays at Piccoloni's and tries to determine the location of the tomb using only the Goram half of the Doomsday Manuscript when she learns that Joseph had saved the other half into his memory on Hennessy's asteroid. Needing processing knowledge, she goes down to the bar but is refused any help from the young political agitants, who do not trust her. Marshal Raul Kendrick enters the bar but leaves angrily when pianist plays the Kasagrad anthem, destroying a robot waiter on his way out. Benny then notices one of the men from the four-hundred-year-old photograph with Jason in it but loses him in a crowd outside. Piccolini identified him as a regular and tells her that Georgia Salis will be able to help her with the Doomsday Manuscript.

Georgia tells Benny that the two halves do not match. Government official Herv Gresham barges in and has Benny locked away in a cell in the Citadel where she encounters the pursuer, who reveals herself as Luci Yendipp. Luci has been hunting Straklant and is working with the government to get rid of the Fifth Axis, Kendrick's murder of Ilsa Deveraux providing ample opportunity for rebellion. The military of Kasagrad do not know how to stop the invasion and wish to know why they want access to the tomb so badly. At Piccolini's, Benny learns that the man she had seen from the photograph with Jason was a drunk who had a photograph taken of him by a Fifth Axis officer a month ago.

Straklant confronts Benny and reveals that the photograph had been faked as a way to intrigue her and Braxiatel and to get them to assist him in locating the second half of the Doomsday Manuscript, but she is now a loose end. Benny escapes when one of the agitants attacks Straklant and Bryn Lavers, who informed on Ilsa, lets her escape. Straklant then has Lavers taken apart by the robot waiters.

Benny goes back to Georgia. Georgia confesses that she had altered one half of the Doomsday Manuscript for the Fifth Axis, changing some of the journal and helping with the doctored photograph. Upon reconstructing it, Benny learns that the tomb contains vents which allegedly transports the soul of the entombed to the next world; one of these vents leads to the Citadel and could be used by Straklant to switch off the planet's defence grid. She goes to warn Gresham of her findings.

Gresham has intercepted a coded message sent by Straklant to Kendrick and, whilst he cannot decode it, he can determine Straklant's location from it. This leads Benny and Luci to a cellar through which Straklant has accessed the tomb, which Benny learns from pictograms is a crashed spacecraft which was found by Rablev and could wipe out the world with radiation. Straklant, who tries to force her to open the tomb, does not believe her claims. She realises that the holosphere did not belong in the Collection, that Pettit was an innocent man, that Straklant had stolen her favourite photograph of Jason and that he had injured Wolsey. Outraged, Benny attacks him and Luci seals up the tomb at the cost of her own life, bringing down the ceiling with Straklant's detonation charge.

Straklant comes to, his body marked with radiation scars, and sees from his watch that he has been unconscious for five hours. When an angry commander enters with Benny as his prisoner and accuses Straklant of having betrayed the Fifth Axis, which has already experienced severe casualties during the failing invasion, Straklant reveals the command frequency with the hope of assisting the Axis and proving his loyalty. However, he then realises that his scars are fake and that his watch was wound forwards; the commander is actually Braxiatel. Braxiatel gives the frequency to Gresham, who uses it to win the battle. In truth, the radiation in the tomb had actually decayed to a safe level two hundred years prior and it proves to be no danger to Kasagrad.

Following the battle, Benny and Braxiatel return to the Collection whilst Straklant unsuccessfully tries to escape the planet and is captured by the very unhappy Kendrick. The Fifth Axis' Sixth Fleet has been wiped out and they will have to leave this sector of the Assimilated Territories. Straklant is labelled a traitor. As the forgery of the Doomsday Manuscript led to such a historical moment, Braxiatel says that it will likely be more valuable than the genuine article and pours himself and Benny some champagne.

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Irving Braxiatel
 * Kolonel Daglan Straklant
 * Joseph
 * Adrian Wall
 * Clarissa Jones
 * Mr Crofton
 * Wolsey
 * Broderick Naismith
 * Dale Pettit
 * Munroe Hennessey
 * Fedora Bronsan
 * Milo Yendipp
 * Luci Yendipp
 * Bryn Lavers
 * Georgia Salis
 * Marshal Raul Kendrick
 * Ilsa Deveraus
 * Herv Gresham

Art

 * Braxiatel owns champagne glasses moulded on Marie Antoinette's breasts.
 * Braxiatel has a replica of The Supremacy of Venus on the ceiling of his office.

Foods and beverages

 * Vendolusian plankton is poisonous until partially digested by the Vendolusian pond squwelch, after which it is served as a delicacy.
 * Braxiatel and Benny drink champagne.

Individuals

 * Benny's birthday is 21 June.
 * Adrian Wall is a Killoran.
 * Wolsey has his paw broken by Daglan Straklant and then fixed by Ms Jones with genetic binding ointment.
 * Irving Braxiatel gives Benny a Joseph to replace the one she lost.

Literature

 * Braxiatel has a copy of Stanoff Osterling's The Good Soldiers.

Continuity

 * Benny stands in awe in Braxiatel's Garden of Whispers, not for the first time, as this is where she first met Braxiatel. (PROSE: Theatre of War)
 * The Braxiatel Collection was first mentioned in TV: City of Death.
 * Who the Fifth Axis really are and who are behind them is revealed in AUDIO: Death and the Daleks.