What a jolly Christmas feast....
Actually, despite some fantasic laugh out loud moents in Robert Shearman's novel adaption of his own script for this classic Big Finish production, it really is a pretty bleak affair. In fact, it remains the only Doctor Who adventure I can think off in which The Doctorwants to scarper in The Tardis, so dark is the situation him and Charley find themselves in.He really shocks charley when he suggests this possible course of action as she has never seen or heard him retreat from a desperate situation. This serves to highten the sense of jeopardy no end.
Robert Shearman's novel is rife with dark humour but also has a few disturbing twist and turns, dipping in directions Doctor Who normally skirts by. He holds it all together though and it is not hard to see why this story is so higly regarded among the fans. There are familiar rifts which occur throughout but these have more to do with mannered nineteen twenties crime stories, Agatha Christie in particular.The Chimes Of Midnight is not so much a base-under siege trope as a spooky sel-contained snow globe of a mystery.It mostly takes place in one location, the servant quarters beneath a big house, its nearly all Downstairs and no Upstairs. There is the kitchen, pantry, butlers room and not much else. An Underworld of sorts, with no innocents and some troubled spirits.
The Doctor does his best to help, off course. Its bleak, surreal and compelling. Christmas will feel even more Christmassey thanks to it, for this reader anyway.It did, off course, prompt a relisten to the original audio adventure and it does indeed still stand up well. The audio and sound production by the original team contributes to this in no small way. An adventure the listener experiences through the merits of some impressive sound engineering, its quite an achievement but Big Finish are masters at this sort of thing, having spent years refining their talents. This story was also released as a very impressive vinyl boxed set.
The Chimes Of Midnightr is an outstanding Doctor Who production, in any medium.
