Willkommen was the first story in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield audio anthology Blood & Steel, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by James Goss and featured Lisa Bowerman as Bernice Summerfield and David Warner as the Unbound Doctor.

Publisher's summary[]

Why do the Cybermen wish to save the people of Berlin?

Plot[]

Benny and the Doctor follow an energy signal to the Eclectica in 1930s Berlin and are removed on the Compère's orders because of the noise made by their detection device. They hear screams and find evidence of three people being dragged away, something that does not interest a potentially-hypnotised policeman, and they use the TARDIS to try to locate the signal's source only for the source to start scanning the ship. After failing to get any information from the Compère, Wulf, a waiter, chases after Benny to tell her of a rumour he has heard from the homeless and the Doctor visits the Conformity Institute.

Wulf takes Benny to the Grunewald where they find that a camp of the homeless has recently been abandoned and food left behind with drag marks indicating that the people were taken away. Following the tracks, they see people being rounded up by Cybermen of varied designs and are forced to flee upon being detected. Men from the camps help the Cybermen look for stragglers with dogs and Wulf gives Benny away in the hopes of being spared, which he is not; all of those who have been captured, including those who reject the Cybermen's offer, are to be converted.

The Doctor meets Julia Luthe, director of the Conformity Institute, and notices that the mathematics students are solving an equation far beyond the understanding of 1930s humans, prompting him to request a meeting with the one responsible for the syllabus, which he finds is a Cyber-Planner. The Doctor gets the Cyber-Planner to switch its emotion chip off temporarily and Luthe is disturbed by its cries of pain, disrupting her conditioning, after which he kills it using his sonic screwdriver and leaves with its processing core to prevent its restoration.

Benny and Wulf are put inside chambers in an old railway tunnel and the conversion process begins, with Benny being in a more advanced one which injects her with painkillers whilst Wulf endures more pain. The Doctor, accompanied by the Compère, gets to the railway tunnel on a sleigh and places the adapted processing core into the convertor, releasing random information into the Cyber-Mainframe and stopping the conversion chambers. The Cybermen are shut down permanently by their emotional inhibitors because of the sensation and the Doctor helps Benny back to the TARDIS. She has, however, forgotten about the converted Wulf.

Cast[]

• Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
• The Doctor - David Warner
• Wulf - Jack Forsyth-Noble
• The Compère - Andrew Pepper
• The Director - Aletta Lohmeyer
• Hannah - Vanessa Milchrahm
• Policeman - David Menkin
• Teacher - Wolf Kahler
• The Cybermen / Cyber-Planner^[1] - Nicholas Briggs

Crew[]

• Script Editors - Scott Handcock and James Goss
• Senior Producer - David Richardson
• Director - Scott Handcock
• Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
• Music and Sound Design - Steve Foxon
• Writer & Producer - James Goss
• Cybermen created by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis

Worldbuilding[]

• Wulf is a waiter.
• Helga performs with a monkey and a sword.
• The Nazi Party have just gained power.
• Benny sees swastikas, some of which are defaced.
• The Compère has cabbages delivered.
• The Compère asks for milk.
• The Conformity Institute has copies of Magic: History, Theory and Practice, Purity of the Aryans, Wagner's operas, Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century, Searching for the Demon Seed, The Secret Theories of Madame Blavatsky, Friedrich Nietzsche's Man and Superman and Looking for the Vril: The Ancient Super Race.
• The Doctor mentions Finn Family Moomintroll.
• The Conformity Institute has a soup kitchen.
• The Conformity Institute has radiators, of which Luthe is proud.
• The Doctor mentions dark matter reactions.
• Wulf compares the Cybermen to golems.
• The Doctor confiscates the Cyber-Planner's processing core.
• The Compère sends money to their father despite him wanting nothing to do with them.
• Benny has had fillings.
• Benny and Wulf are injected with neural-programming nanites.
• Wulf is in love with Heike.
• Whilst using a sleigh, the Doctor calls himself Santa Claus.

Notes[]

to be added

Continuity[]

• Benny has encountered Cybermen before. (AUDIO: Silver Lining, Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Crystal of Cantus)
• Benny deeply loathes Nazis due to their ideology and her past experiences. (PROSE: Just War, AUDIO: Just War)
• Benny mentions having lived in a forest. (AUDIO: Ever After Happy)

External links[]

• Official Willkommen page at bigfinish.com