Night Thoughts

"The more things change, the more they stay the same..."

Writer: Edward Young
Format: Audio
Released: February 2006
Series: Main Range 79

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Ace, Hex

Synopsis

'I warn you, things could get very nasty here before they get better.'

A remote Scottish mansion. Five bickering academics are haunted by ghosts from their past. Reluctantly they offer shelter to the Doctor and his companions Ace and Hex.

Hex, already troubled by a vivid nightmare, is further disturbed by the nighttime appearance of a whistling, hooded apparition.

Ace tries to befriend the young housemaid, Sue. Sue knows secrets. She knows why the academics have assembled here, and she knows why they are all so afraid. But Sue's lips are sealed, preferring to communicate through her disturbing toy, Happy the Rabbit.

And then the killing begins. Gruesome deaths that lead the Doctor and his friends to discover the grisly truth behind the academics' plans, and, as the ghosts of the past become ghosts of the present, to recognise that sometimes death can be preferable to life.

Verdict

Night Thoughts was an excellent audio adventure and is definitely the best Main Range audio from Big Finish that I have listened to in quite some time! Now I fully acknowledge that my listening of this range has somewhat stalled in recent months with finishing my second year of university and getting into a relationship but I do hope that in what remains of my summer I can fit in quite a few more of these audios yet. I'm on quite the audio run and I really am enjoying the format lately so after a disappointing day of football I had to get back on track and this story really was superb. It was so close to full marks but I couldn't quite give it. It wasn't very far away though and that was brilliant to listen to. It had been a while since I heard the trio of the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex but despite not being the biggest fans of the first two mentioned on television, I have found myself really liking them on audio and with Hex as an addition, they work really well together. I thought this was probably my favourite performance from Hex thus far since his arrival in The Harvest and I really enjoyed how he got to show off his medical ability and knowledge. Despite the Doctor being present, it seemed that the academics in the house turned to Hex when it came to needing medical treatment or expertise. The Doctor was the one with the answer, especially when it came to time travel. I really loved the setting of a remote mansion and the atmosphere was superbly presented which can be quite difficult on audio. It was eery and tense and it actually probably helped that I was listening to the story quite late at night. I thought Sylvester McCoy gave a stellar performance as the Seventh Doctor and he really does seem to be a better Doctor on audio than he was on television. That's actually probably down to the style of his era on TV rather than the actor himself. It's no secret that I'm no fan of Ace but I thought she was pretty good in this adventure. Her relationship with Hex was very good here and I'm liking the pairing as companions. Sue was a wonderful character and her story was actually quite emotional. Her finding it a somewhat necessity to carry around her toy bear Happy was very intriguing and creepy. At the start of the story, I didn't think that bear would be so significant to the plot but I did think something was up with the way Sue was talking when in its presence. Major Dickens was a good character too and his obsession to change the past was great. I really liked the idea of time travel in this story and it really did feel like a real world effort with the use of particles and mentions of the War. The revelation regarding Dr. O'Neil was excellent and the realisation he had when he found out that Sue was actually his daughter was brilliant. It really was quite emotional which is something I always welcome in a story. The Deacon and the Bursar were also great characters and their role in the story and particularly in the past with their efforts to keep a child alive was very good indeed. The Doctor going back in time specifically to kill a young girl seems like a shock but he needed to ensure that history remained on the right course. Of course, he couldn't do it but Dickens through his own evilness ensured that history was back on track. I liked the ambiguity surrounding the story's conclusion and overall, I thought this really was a superb audio adventure!

Rating: 9/10