HMS Surprise (audio story)

HMS Surprise was the sixty-fourth Bernice Summerfield audio story released by Big Finish Productions. It was the second story of the New Frontiers series.

Publisher's summary
Mortis Dock: the last manned shipyard in the cosmos...

Population: six thousand and two...

And now, not a soul in sight... at least, until Bernice, Peter and Jack are drawn off-course.

Where have all the workers disappeared to? Why is Jack behaving oddly? And what is the secret of the HMS Surprise?

Only a stranger in a lighthouse holds the key... but can he be trusted?

Plot
Peter invites Benny and Jack to travel with him in the Irverfield to a sector of space where spaceships have been vanishing for months. They pick up a recording warning them to leave and are almost immediately pulled into the orbit of an ocean moon and land at Mortis Dock. Peter explains that it was the last manned shipyard in the galaxy after all of the others were automated, but it now seems to be abandoned. Jack finds a mobile news droid from which they learn that whatever happened to the dock happened just over a year ago on 9 April 2618.

Benny registers hundreds of life readings around them, four of which are corporeal. She goes to investigate a lighthouse whilst Peter and Jack go to the last remaining ship, HMS Surprise, at the dock and finds Lucas Catch chained to a railing. He denies being the one who sent the signal and tells her that, one by one, the people of the dock were drawn to HMS Surprise and became zombies. She releases him against his will to take him to the Irverfield for his safety.

The captain's log of the HMS Surprise is missing a number of entries, with the last one being dated 4 December 1964, and the black box contains a recording of Captain Kincade on the day that the ship was due to be destroyed. Jack comes under the ship's control and Peter runs from him and the zombies. Benny comes to his help with Lucas and tells him that she thinks that the ship is one of the Healers, an ancient race born to embody and protect objects of a good nature. When Peter points out that HMS Surprise is a warship, she realises that the Healer entered the ship by accident and wants help.

Benny suggests that the Healer enter a living body and Lucas volunteers himself after it begins a countdown to self-destruct. The ship sinks and the Healer decides to stay at Mortis Dock whilst Benny, Peter and Jack return to the Iverfield and head back to Legion. Before they leave, the Healer tells Benny that she needs to heal Peter despite him not wanting her to, although she does not understand what he means.

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Peter Summerfield - Thomas Grant
 * Jack - David Ames
 * Lucas Catch - Geoffrey Breton
 * Captain Kinkade - David Benson
 * Beacon - David Selby
 * Mobile News Droid - Thomas Rees-Kaye

Worldbuilding

 * Lucas was a fire warden.
 * Lucas was born on 6 April 2594.
 * Isaac Summerfield II told Benny about the Healers.

Continuity

 * Peter notes that Benny never takes her own advice ("Stick together"). Recently, she failed to follow the advice ("Don't wander Legion alone.") that she gave to Ruth. (PROSE: Filthy Lucre)
 * Jack mentions "Emergency temporal shifts", a term first used by Dalek Sec in Doomsday.
 * Jack knows that Peter is the only person who can see Antonio. (AUDIO: Everybody Loves Irving)
 * Jack says that Portsmouth is a city on "Zordi- Earth. Whatever." (AUDIO: Dead Man's Switch)
 * Peter mentions travelling the cosmos with Benny. (AUDIO: Beyond the Sea, etc.)
 * Peter says that it would not be the first time that his Killoran side had overruled his human side. (AUDIO: The End of the World)