The Chimes of Midnight

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without my plum pudding!

Story 29
Written by Robert Shearman
Released February 2002

The Doctor and Charley arrive in a dark old house in 1906 to find that time has stopped. None of their actions seem to have any effect on their surroundings, yet Charley is slowly becoming enthralled by sounds from the kitchen and a haunting memory from her childhood. Trapped in a temporal paradox, the Doctor and Charley are witnesses to a series of brutal murders, though the diminishing staff of the house insists that they are suicides. The Doctor’s whimsical interest in the anomaly turns to anxiety as Charley becomes part of the repeating events, with a death occurring at the chimes of midnight.

Robert Shearman is an excellent writer, contributing several fan favorite scripts for the audio range of Doctor Who in addition to the 2005 classic Dalek. In addition to his grand ideas, his masterful touch at combining science fiction concepts and drama along with deeply emotional elements make his stories memorable. Even so, I had difficulty in connecting to Chimes of Midnight. Using time travel concepts in a brilliant manner, Shearman’s script is an inspired adventure that feels more at home in the world of Sapphire & Steel (a compliment in my book).

The house is populated by a staff that are not only limited in their dialog but also in their very character. They cannot understand anything outside of their world but neither can they address their confusion to out the Doctor for the stranger that he is. They are strands of a trap that entice the Doctor and Charley into their fiction. The cook only wants to talk about her plum pudding, the lady’s servant moans about having to do the work of the scullery maid who had killed herself, the chauffeur can’t figure out what model car he drives and the butler vehemently refuses to let the Doctor go upstairs. And none of them want to talk about the body that the Doctor and Charley are fussing over as Edith was a nothing and a nobody.

The story’s temporal anomaly insisted that the same event kept occurring over and over while refraining from explaining the mysteries of what they meant. At first I found this intriguing but it soon became grating. The emotional tumult toward the conclusion as Edith and Charley both yearned for death while the house itself rallied to live was a bit too much for me but I may have been exhausted from listening to the same thing happen over and over as the Doctor struggled to unravel the riddle of what could have caused the anomaly and who was controlling it. When it is revealed that the house itself is alive and coldly causing the deaths of its inhabitants, I was surprised but ready for the road to that revelation seemed far too long.

McGann and Fisher are once again excellent and one cannot help but think to the Tom Baker/Lis Sladen combination when listening to them in these adventures. They clearly enjoy each other’s company and make for one of the most memorable Doctor/companion matches in the program’s history. The over-arching story regarding Charley’s death on the R-101 is like a peek into the future of the BBC Wales series that still uses a single plot to thread throughout a set of tales. In this case it is intriguing and also speaks to the Doctor’s character as he stubbornly refuses to leave her to die as he loves her too much. The romance up to this point (I have yet to hear Scherzo) is very well told. The Eighth Doctor is a deeply passionate individual but also unable to relate to humans in a romantic manner, at least in a fashion that would resemble the Tenth Doctor’s teenage trist with Rose years later. In short, I quite like how the production team chose to tell this kind of story and wish that the modern TV program had learned from Big Finish’s successes. As Davies was such a follower of the audios, I cannot see why this didn’t happen.

The Chimes of Midnight is held in high esteem by fans and there is a lot in it that earns that respect. For myself I found it a bit slow moving but even so I highly recommend it.

Doctor Who – The Chimes of Midnight can be purchased at local retailers such as Mike’s Comics and online from Big Finish.