https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3105136.html

A set of short stories about Bernice Summerfield's life before she joined the Doctor. Most of them are OK; the first ("Biology Lesson on Mal Oreille", by Xanna Eve Chown, a Malory Towers spoof)) and last ("Thirty Love", by Eddie Robson, in which she tries to explain tennis) are rather good; the second last ("Blood On The Tracks", by Andy Lane) is an outstanding tale of searching for an artifact which turns out to be more than we have been told, at least for Benny. For Benny continuity buffs really, but enjoyable. ( )

After Genius Loci and the general quality of Big Finish's Bernice Summerfield anthologies, I really wanted to like Missing Adventures. Unfortunately, I found most of the stories somewhere between frustrating and pedestrian. These stories range across Benny's early life, from her childhood in boarding school up to the day before she met the Doctor in Love and War. I wanted a sense of Benny's development as a person, but I didn't really get that-- in most of these stories, she's just kind of generic goofy action Benny, not the well-rounded character she is when at her best. Unfortunately, given Genius Loci, Ben Aaronovitch's "The Evacuation of Bernice Summerfield Considered as a Short Film by Terry Gillam" is one of the most inexplicable of the lot. Beyond that, I don't really have strong impressions of anything here, except for the last story, Eddie Robson's "Thirty Love," a cute story about Benny's 30th birthday that brings back a lot of characters and concepts from Benny's original introduction in Love and War.

Best story: The Library of Books. ( )