Talk:Bernice Summerfield

Timeline question
Where's this idea...
 * This section alludes to a timeline in which Bernice Summerfield travelled with the Doctor. Due to the intervention of Irving Braxiatel, who she met later, this timeline may no longer exist.

...from?

Bernice alludes explictly to her time with the Doctor in her most recent novella collection and both of her two most recent audios refer frankly to the events of that time.

Whatever changes have been made to Benny's life, this doesn't seem to be one of them. --Richard Jones 20:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


 * No idea (have removed it anyways). She also refers to the Doctor by name and Heaven in Death and the Daleks (and there's plenty of references back and forth throughout all the novels and audios). --Tangerineduel 06:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks so much! A case could be made that references like the Death and the Daleks one happened before Brax's time-tweaks but that fact that she still remembers the Doctor in The Wake, which is for now the end of the EvilBrax arc, is absolute proof that Benny's time with the Doctor is still intact. --Richard Jones 21:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Benny's age when her dad disappeared / when her mother died Impossible to pin down, is my thesis. Benny's always maintained that Isaac disappeared when she was 7. We know that Claire was alive at the time (The Evacuation of..., in which Isaac has been gone for not more than six months, and Claire has just died; Return of the Living Dad, in which Isaac is unaware of Claire's fate). Benny has sometimes said that she was orphaned at seven (in Return of the Living Dad and Love and War), but in The Extinction Event she states that she was eight when her mother died.

I think that the best reconciliation is that Claire Summerfield's death ocurred after Benny's eighth birthday, but not long afterwards. From grown-up Benny's point of view, there's not much difference between being (say) 7.9 years old versus being (say) 8.0 years old; Benny may not have really started thinking of herself as an eight-year-old yet. Nightsky 20:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

What are YOU doing this weekend?
Benny married Jason in the village of Cheldon Bonniface, England, on 24th April 2010. The wedding was attended by a host of guests from all space and time. (PROSE: Happy Endings). Anyone up for a party this weekend?ReTardis 17:10, April 22, 2010 (UTC)ReTardis

Dead and Buried?
Shouldn't we have a page for the upcoming animation and add some info on this page?

Image
Since Irving Braxiatel's profile picture is taken from Dead and Buried, I propose the same be done for Benny's picture. It's the closest either character has ever come to being onscreen. Slughorn42 ☎  13:31, August 11, 2014 (UTC)
 * The image you uploaded before was deleted for not having a license, but even so, it violates Tardis:Guide to images. We prefer infobox images to be closeups of the character's face. If you can find a closeup, you can post it here for consideration. Shambala108 ☎  15:18, August 11, 2014 (UTC)
 * Benny Infobox 1.jpgBenny Infobox 2.jpg think it's about time Benny's infobox image was updated as well. How about one of these two images? I'm partial to the first, but its perhaps a bit too dark.  P&amp;P  talk   contribs  17:29, August 11, 2014 (UTC)
 * I prefer the second one. Slughorn42 ☎  18:19, August 11, 2014 (UTC)
 * Looking again, the second one is brighter and works better on a small scale. I'm going to go ahead and use that one.  P&amp;P  talk   contribs  19:30, August 11, 2014 (UTC)
 * I've reverted back to the original while the discussion is ongoing. Policy dictates that we don't make changes until the discussion is concluded. Shambala108 ☎  19:34, August 11, 2014 (UTC)
 * It's been almost a month, can we move forward on this?  P&amp;P  talk   contribs  16:22, September 1, 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with this as it represents the character more to the actor than a 20ish year old picture. also Peter Summerfield's and Bev Tarrants pages also use dead an buried images. Personally I would prefer an image of Lisa Bowerman, but since we have a more in universe picture than the covers of the CDs, we should use the second picture, as I believe this is the policy regarding images taken from visula epps rather than covers of cds. Adric♥Nyssa∩Talk? 17:18, September 1, 2014 (UTC)

I know that somewhere on this wiki is User:CzechOut's rationale for the current image. I haven't been able to find it, so I suggest one of you ask him directly on his talk page to visit this discussion. In the meantime, the original image stays. Shambala108 ☎  02:13, September 2, 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've left a note on Czech's talk page.  P&amp;P  talk   contribs  02:24, September 2, 2014 (UTC)


 * In point of fact there probably isn't a place where I advocated the use of this current image. Basically the infobox here was changed quite some time ago by User:OttselSpy25, who correctly noted that a promotional image was inappropriate.  It had previously borne that hoary old image of Bowerman in a hastily-bought fedora up against a tree somewhere close to the BF studios. This, of course, violated T:IUI, and OS25 logically went back to some of the original source material for an in-universe image.


 * All that I did was to replace it with another image from the stories of that era that had her in a better closeup.


 * Personally, I vote to keep that image, because the character has more of a comic history than a video one. The video has turned out to be a flash in the pan, really, whereas there is a kind of "Benny era" in DWM comics — one that is, I think, longer than the Martha and Donna eras combined. May be wrong on the details of that comparison, but I'm at least approximately right.


 * What I'm saying is that she was legitimately a comics companion of the Seventh Doctor in the pages of DWM, and that's what the infobox honours now, and what I personally would like to see it continue to do. I'm completely unmoved by the logic that "if Brax has an image from the video, so, too, must Benny". Benny has a much longer history than Brax, so she has more from which to choose.  Besides, in the entirety of DWU fiction, Benny is far more important than Brax.  We, as a wiki, have a greater duty of care to ensure that we are using imagery that educates and surprises our readers.  We should be stressing the inequality of Brax and Benny, because the video gives a highly mistaken impression of the two characters' relative importance. Having a comic image up of Benny says, "Hey this character is about more than what you think, if you're only going off a 10 minute video."


 * Besides, guys, the solution is perfectly obvious. Just add the whole video of File:Bernice Summerfield Dead and Buried to this infobox, and that way we get both the comic image and the latter day animation.  19:58: Tue 02 Sep 2014
 * There. Added the video. Now the box has both the earliest and the latest in-universe images of her. Easy.  20:06: Tue 02 Sep 2014


 * Benny has appeared in 8 comic stories, but almost a hundred novels. If we want the infobox image to really represent her history, how about this one from one of the VNAs? It's from one of the illustrations in Lucifer Rising. It looks less "cartoony" than the Pureblood one, and its looking left.  P&amp;P  talk   contribs  17:08, September 3, 2014 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't be in favour of that image because it's a unique, atypical look. She has dreadlocks in exactly one story, and this is the only image of that phase that exists.  And "looking left" is not an absolute requirement. Nice if you can get it, but far better to get a high quality, representative, closeup image of the character.  Ironically, DWM 199, which contains the Lucifer Rising prelude, also contains an episode of Emperor of the Daleks!, a Benny comic, and she is much closer to the image in the current picture: short hair, big earrings.  I honestly think that File:Benny Lucifer Rising.jpg is the most un-representative image that could be chosen for the infobox.  That said, I think it needs to go on the page, with an explanation that, for a brief time, she had dreads. (So if you're the uploader, thanks for finding this helpful image!)


 * As for your numerical comparisons, there may be more prose stories than comic ones, but there are many more comic images of her. And of course we exclude covers in this search, because we only resort to covers when there are no other possibilities.


 * Stlll, for the first decade of the character's existence — mostly, but not exclusively, the pre-Bowerman era — she was drawn as depicted in DWM. I mean, she's pretty well consistent from her introductory Love and War cover through to the cover for Parasite and even into the first part of the audio era.  Heck, the cover for the audio Oh No It Isn't! is practically ripped from the pages of DWM!


 * So, look, I know that if you come to this character here in the 2010s, Lisa Bowerman looms larges in your mind, and you're just not going to like this DWM-centric approach to the character. But the bulk of the in-universe, visual representation of this character really is driven by 1990s DWM. And for the infobox not to reflect that is to give a mistaken impression about the character to our readers.  17:25: Thu 04 Sep 2014

So, now that Benny has been in live action, should we put a picture from Transmission from Mars in the infobox? (video link removed by admin per Tardis:Video policy)


 * Based on CzechOut's comments above, it doesn't sound like this one video merits inclusion in the infobox. If it's only one video, then Benny is still visually depicted far more in the comics, per CzechOut's argument. Shambala108 ☎  01:44, June 13, 2015 (UTC)

Makes sense.69.143.223.170talk to me 02:25, June 23, 2015 (UTC)

Image revisited
The most logical image to use would be an illustration from the Prelude short stories, which tie into the novels and are where Benny first appeared. Summerfield is a novel character before anything else, and I'm against using an image from the comics because they rarely capture the likeness of the character at all. Also, Summerfield had few comic appearances, and appeared more in almost every other medium. I've suggested the right image, as it captures her "adventurous spirit" and what not, unlike the doey faced main pic we have right now which makes her look like she just did some kind of hard drugs. T:GTI makes it clear that personality in images comes before all else, and I can certainly say that this image gets that down more than any comic image could even try to. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 22:30, September 8, 2015 (UTC)


 * Never the less, I will start hunting through DWM comics to try and find an image other than this from the magazine that resembles the character in any way. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 22:39, September 8, 2015 (UTC)
 * Arguably, we should use an image from Emperor of the Daleks!, as that was the only story with her in DWM with art by the man who designed her, Lee Sullivan. The problem with this (and the "use DWM images" argument) is that there are very few close-ups of her alone within the comics. So when you get an artist who can competently capture her there's few few frames that come close to being fit for info-box... OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 00:02, September 9, 2015 (UTC)


 * (I added a heading to separate this discussion from the previous one, as they deal with different issues.)


 * First, Tardis:Guide to images never states that personality comes before all else. With regard to the issue in question, the key phrase is "Where possible, you should go with the an extremely tight cropping of a person's face." Since it is possible to have a tight cropping of Benny, that is what we require.


 * Second, of the images you've proposed, only "Younger and Wiser 1" comes close to being cropped tightly enough, though an argument could be made for "Emperor of the Daleks 1". The other images could be placed elsewhere on the article, but they will not be considered for the infobox. Please note that the debate over Ten's image established just how tightly we want images cropped. Shambala108 ☎  02:41, September 9, 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes it does.


 * "But this particular sly expression conveys the character's central duplicity, and thus overrides other concerns."


 * Second off, when I say that there aren't a lot of strong choices from the comics, I'm not opening declaring that every image I chose was a perfect fit. Yet every image here is far superior to the one we use now because none of these capture the character under a state of mind not usually occupied by the character (in the one we're using right now I believe that she's being hypnotized) and all of these are drawn by artists who got far closer to what the character was meant to look like. We wouldn't use a TVC comic drawing of Sarah-Jane in an infobox, now would we? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 13:59, September 9, 2015 (UTC)


 * Hold on a moment. Your quote comes from the Eyes section, when describing whether an image should be left-looking. The issue with your Benny images comes from the Tight focus section, which says, "Where possible, you should go with the an extremely tight cropping of a person's face." There are multiple images of Benny, so it absolutely is possible to get a tight cropping. Also note in the tight focus section that the right image of Four is rejected as being not tight enough focus, even though it does a great job of showcasing his personality. So personality does not outweigh tight cropping. Shambala108 ☎  03:19, September 11, 2015 (UTC)

If there are no objections, I'm going to be changing the info box pic to File:DWM 305 Bernice 7 1.jpg in a couple days. In fits all the criteria that was layed out in favor of the current pic, bit it actually looks like Bernice. Plus the inclusion of colour which is arguably not a bad thing. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 18:41, September 10, 2015 (UTC)


 * I object. I don't think it's a good idea to have large speech bubbles in character infobox images. If the character is a minor one and we don't have a choice, OK. But as I mentioned above, we have plenty of images of Benny. Find one as tightly cropped as the current one, preferably without any speech bubbles, and post it here for consideration. Shambala108 ☎  03:19, September 11, 2015 (UTC)

This work for you? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 19:19, September 11, 2015 (UTC)
 * I reverted the addition of that image to the page because there has been little discussion on this — just you and I — and it was an issue of interest just last year. Let's give it some time for others to add their input. Shambala108 ☎  03:07, September 15, 2015 (UTC)

It's super frustrating that we have such limited discussion on this site now. This is meant to be, like, the most popular Wikia site right? Or at least up there. Barely anyone edits, and no one contributes to discussions anymore. At best you'll get two people and one admin who just pops in every once to tell people to play nice.

For anyone who finds this discussion in the next ten years, here are the options to replace the current image: OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 18:28, October 16, 2015 (UTC)

There, a little crude but I did my best. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 03:19, November 1, 2015 (UTC)

Last round, hopefully
Ok, I've narrowed the choices down to three, and I'm including them here. If you have a particular favorite, please say so here, and we'll see if we can get some kind of consensus. I've left the original numbers for convenience.

I don't really have a strong favorite, but I'll state the pros and cons of each one. Shambala108 ☎  16:23, November 10, 2015 (UTC)
 * 5 — looks left, but has too much shadow and too much white space
 * 6 — in color, but not looking left (which, as I've stated before, is preferred but not required)
 * 7 — tightly cropped, but also not looking left.
 * * Five I agree is very flawed. I would go with 6. 7 is just just captures the character too poorly and is furthermore from a scene where she is being hypnotized. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 16:34, November 10, 2015 (UTC)
 * * Seven is the best of these in terms of pure layout, but it also has a distinctive historical advantage. This is the original look of the character. And there's nothing in the cropping to indicate that she's being hypnotised; you're projecting your knowledge of the comic's storyline onto the image, OS25. The average reader wouldn't do that at all.  21:09: Thu 12 Nov 2015
 * Well it could be argued that since 6 was illustrated by Lee Sullivan, who actually designed the "original Bernie look" you keep mentioning and made most of the covers featuring her. If anyone should know what she should look like it's him, and not (at least as I would argue) the artist who drew our current image. Furthermore I think that the image taken from the comic far more accurately captures her character than the doe-eyed puffy-faced hypnotism pic, where she does look stoned out of her mind and totally outside of her character design which, yes, Lee Sullivan created. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 22:07, November 12, 2015 (UTC)

Wow, almost a year later and not a single further comment. It's so hard to get real discussions done on this site.

To clarify, I wasn't projecting some sort of vast knowledge about Bernice Summerfield comic stories to make my choice for the main image. I was projecting my knowledge that the picture we currently use is a terrible drawing that looks goofy as hell and shouldn't be taken seriouslyas a depiction of the character that Lee Sullivan basically fully designed.

Because not only is File:BennyPureblood.jpg a terrible representation of Bernice Summerfield as a whole, it's also a retched example of what she was supposed to look like when she first appeared in comics and novels. File:The_Last_Word_Bernie_Best_cut_out.jpg might be from an anniversary comic instead of an actual 1980s black-and-white strip, but it at least isn't totally off-model, and represents the original released images of the character that keeps being brought up. OS25 (Talk Page) 02:18, November 8, 2016 (UTC)


 * While it can certainly be said that "the character has more of a comic history than a video one", the comics are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Benny's character. Benny is primarily a prose and audio character and the infobox image should reflect that. In general, I do not believe that pre-Lisa Bowerman images of Bernice are a good overall representation of the character. As are early Bowerman images such as the ones on the covers of The Dead Men Diaries and The Shadow of the Scourge, for that matter.


 * Take a look at Iris Wildthyme. The character has had a few image sources that are a bit more "in-universe" than CD covers that date to before Iris appeared in audio, but Katy Manning has associated herself so closely with the character that it would be nonsensical to have the infobox feature anyone else.


 * Actually, perhaps the Iris infobox is the way to go with this... Have two images: one of the Emma Thompson Bernice and one of the Bowerman Bernice. There's certainly lots of image-less text below the infobox, meaning there's room for a slightly longer infobox. Something like the infobox on my right is IMO the best way to go.  CoT     ?  03:52, July 29, 2017 (UTC)

"[The laptop] was flashing up pictures of 'Bernice Summerfield', one every few seconds. Almost all of them were women with short dark hair. In most she was wearing hoop earrings, like the one sitting on the cushion. But, after that... well, she was tall, she was short, she had a round face, a sharply pointed chin, her hands were large, they were tiny, she was flat-chested, had an ample bosom, she looked anaemic, she was coffee-skinned, her body was almost androgynous, it was curvy and sensuous, she had a long nose and a tiny bump. 'All Bernice Summerfield,' Gould said. 'All of them when she was about thirty years old.'"


 * I too have come to question the judgement that we have to find a worthy image of Bernice from this very specific era of DWM comics. Hell, if we're trying to illustrate the character as she would have been percieved in the 1990s, then the clear choice is to just use one of the cover images from the Virgin novels. (speaking of which, now that you can see what Bernice was supposed to look like, I hope you can understand how the DWM illustration of her looking nothing like that simply isn't acceptable.) OS25🤙☎️ 13:38, July 29, 2017 (UTC)

This image discussion was never closed. What are people's thoughts on File:Love and War Bernice.jpg and the other suggested images? --Borisashton ☎  13:29, December 17, 2017 (UTC)

How about this image? It shows Bernie as adventurous and wild. User:Jantoshipper 09:39 January 28, 2018

Now, how about this image? User:Jantoshipper 23:57 March 26, 2018


 * Please read Tardis:Guide to images for details of what we want in an infobox image. Your suggested image is not cropped closely enough. Thanks, Shambala108 ☎  00:07, March 17, 2018 (UTC)


 * In addition, images from audio covers are expressly prohibited by T:IUI for characters with comic and video images available. Amorkuz ☎  00:12, March 17, 2018 (UTC)

I quite like the Love and War image. The only problem is she is facing away from the text but I still think it is better than the current image. What does admin think? LauraBatham ☎  01:04, March 17, 2018 (UTC)

Actual last round
So! Two new facts have emerged. First, a recent Panopticon thread ruled that in some cases audio cover images were acceptable; being an audio cover is now "a point against", but it can and should be weighed against concerns such as "does the comic image give an accurate idea of how the character is usually depicted" and "is it the character's primary medium of appearances". In Benny's case, I am not sure this is decisive, because certainly she is as important to the VNAs as she is to Big Finish. But I just wanted to clarify that fact. Second, WC:A Visit from Prof. Summerfield has just been broadcast. I think it's a very very attractive candidate for a "consensus" option, because it's simultaneously a BF product that uses the likeness of Lisa Bowerman, and unambiguously an image from within a narrative rather than a cover. It's even drawn in an "illustration"-esque artstyle, so it might be argued that it even gives an amalgamation of Benny's various appearances all in one. …However, weighed against all this, I must note that the lighting is a bit diffuse, which could be counted as a point against. Therefore, here is again the gallery of candidates:

If anyone has an illustration from a Big Finish booklet accompanying an audio story, that would also be a very appealing candidate. However, and despite the lifting of the blanket ban, we will not be accepting submissions of audio story covers at this time. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  12:55, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I did search through Transmission from Mars for a good image, and while I did find a particularly nice one, the file size far surpasses the Wiki image policy's maximum file size of 100kb. I tried to compress the image, but it was a pixelated nightmare.
 * So, my personal preference is image #5. While Benny did originate in the VNAs, I do not feel as if that is how she is remembered nowadays - Lisa Bowerman's portrayal is iconic, and she's made the role her own. Epsilon  📯 📂 14:24, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I personally like image #4. While I agree with Epsilon that Lisa Bowerman has become the far more recognisable face, image #5 is actually my least favourite out if these choices, purely because of the terrible lighting. LauraBatham ☎  03:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, a month or so later, none of the current images in the gallery are particularly satisfying - please could we use a pic of Benny from and audio cover? Please? They're all so nice, and the proposed images are from ~30 year old books, and low quality snippets from webcasts, which aren't favorable. Epsilon  📯 📂 12:55, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Nope. I'm sorry, but asking nicely isn't going to change the policy here: Benny is as much a VNA character as a Big Finish character, so the audio covers don't get the "primary medium" advantage to overcome their audio handicap.
 * Again, what would be ideal would be a booklet illustration from a Big Finish story, as opposed to a cover. Does no one here own physical copies that could contain such things? Scrooge MacDuck ☎  13:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I did find an image in the booklet of The Company of Friends, but it's not the best. I've added the image to the gallery. Epsilon  📯 📂 13:41, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Since I do not own any kind of Big Finish or other audio products, I would like an explanation of how a booklet for an audio story could be considered in-universe, and how/why it is considered different than a cover. Shambala108 ☎  17:50, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * As booklet illustrations pretty much always depict a scene from the audio story, without any sort of the massive looming head in the sky problems audio story cover art has. Epsilon  📯 📂 17:54, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes — the booklets contain illustrations of specific scenes in the story, meant to be viewed as you are listening; they're no different from full-page illustrations sprinkled throughout a printed novel, which are unquestionably part of the novel even though you wouldn't instinctively expect an image to be part of a PROSE work. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  17:56, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Just realised that AUDIO: Shadow of a Doubt provides an image of Benny, though it still isn't great due to being available at a whopping 480p resolution. 📯 📂 13:29, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Scrub that last bit, I found a higher resolution version. 📯 📂 13:43, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Is that an AI upscale? If so I really don't think it should be considered - apps like Remini don't just generate a higher-res version, they also introduce significant distortion, more than enough to compromise the image's status as an official illustration. Gowlbag ☎  00:06, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Nope - it came from Paul Cornell's website. Funnily enough, I did use Remini on a cropped screenshot from the webcast, as a bit of an experiment, and boy was it awful. 📯 📂 00:27, 30 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Adding a new image. While it isn't of Bowerman's Benny, as it is from Human Nature, I feel it is probably one of the better non Big Finish era images of Benny that are usable.
 * Additionally, would images of Bowerman's Benny from the Big Finish books be acceptable? 📯 📂 20:44, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

It's a good one. At this point I think we should give a week for any objections or comments on #8; after that if there is enough consensus we'll go with that one. It's well-cropped, in color, and as a bonus, looking slightly left. Shambala108 ☎  02:47, 12 August 2022 (UTC)