'Oh No It Isn't' by Paul Cornell

Bernice Summerfield, erstwhile companion of the Doctor, has found a new life and a new job at St Oscar's University on the eclectic world of Dellah. However, Benny is no staid academic, and St Oscar's is no ordinary seat of learning. It is the twenty-sixth century, a time of great upheaval, where everything is up for grabs, allegiances are fluid, and no-one is quite what they seem.

Benny takes a party of academics on a field trip to Perfecton, a world which has exhibited no signs of life for five thousand years. As they near the planet, their vessel is attacked by a most unusual missile, which appears to warp reality to the extent that Benny finds herself in a world strangely reminiscent of twentieth-century British pantomime. Meanwhile, other scientists on the planet are discovering signs that rumours of the Perfectons' demise have been greatly exaggerated.

What links a long-dead civilisation and a rather unpleasant form of children's entertainment? Who is manipulating the expedition for their own ends? And why has Benny's cat started wearing clothes? Something very odd is happening on this supposedly dead world, and Benny is just the girl to find out what it is.


Publication Date:
May 1997

Notes:
*Featuring Bernice 'Benny' Summerfield, Wolsey the cat and Menlove Stokes

*First appearance of Joseph the porter

*A Virgin Books 'New Adventures' novel

*Also made available as an Audio Adventure from Big Finish Productions in September 1998, but which is apocryphal to the ‘Doctor Who’ timeline