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“NIGHT THOUGHTS – A FORGOTTEN EXPERIMENT WRAPPED IN GOTHIC RAIN”

A rainy experiment that just about lives… but only in the end.

Night Thoughts, Edward Young’s grim slice of gothic horror for Big Finish’s Main Range, sets its moody tale in a suitably remote Scottish manor, drenched in rain and foreboding. It’s an evocative location for a haunted house tale, brimming with psychological unrest and decaying academia. Originally penned as a potential story for the unmade Doctor Who Season 27, this audio marks Big Finish’s first foray into adapting a TV script-that-never-was—and the DNA of that era shows.

It’s grim. It’s quiet. It’s a bit too clever for its own good. And it's haunted by the ghost of what might have been.

HAPPY THE RABBIT WILL SEE YOU NOW

Perhaps the most unsettling presence isn’t the house or its guests, but a stuffed rabbit named Happy. Voiced by Lizzie Hopley through the character of the disturbed maid Sue, Happy sounds like he could have stepped straight out of Child’s Play. Hopley’s performance makes both Sue and her fluffy mouthpiece genuinely eerie—and later, heartbreakingly tragic. One of the few vivid elements of the story, Happy the Rabbit becomes the unlikely highlight of the piece and even gets the final grisly laugh.

Meanwhile, Hex hears strange voices and experiences visions, lending some tension to the proceedings. But for all the story’s talk of nightmares, visions, and philosophical dread, little of it lands emotionally. It tells us characters are disturbed, but rarely shows us why.

PART FOUR TO THE RESCUE

It’s not until Part Four that Night Thoughts begins to justify itself. Major Dickens (the great Bernard Kay, in his swansong Doctor Who role) is finally unveiled as the true villain behind a twisted experiment: the deliberate death of a child, orchestrated in order to prove that she can be brought back. It’s a horror conceit that’s genuinely arresting, morally complex, and fits the Seventh Doctor’s era like a glove. The Doctor’s ultimate choice—to travel back in time and persuade the academics not to go through with it—is beautifully in character, and a smart, non-violent resolution.

Dickens' comeuppance, delivered at the paws of a vindictive Happy the Rabbit, is darkly satisfying in its absurdity. It’s just a pity it takes so long to get there.

AN ATMOSPHERE LOST IN THE FOG

The first episode is all rain and shadows and cryptic dialogue, but little actual plot. The pacing stumbles often, and while the atmosphere starts thick, it grows thinner the more the story explains itself. By Part 3, once the pseudo-science behind resurrection is laid bare, the sense of mystery deflates rather than intensifies.

There’s also a tangle of indistinct characters—various aging academics who are difficult to keep track of and don’t do much to earn our investment. Philip Olivier’s Hex is given a fair amount to do, but Olivier himself seems oddly disengaged. Meanwhile, Bernard Kay—normally a scene-stealing presence—is surprisingly underused and gets lost in the shuffle until it’s too late to make his menace truly resonate. Joanna McCallum's Bursar similarly fades into the fog, offering a stiff performance that never fully connects.

GOOD INTENTIONS, GOTHIC EXECUTION

There’s a fascinating moral thread buried beneath all the rain and rabbits: the ethics of resurrection, the cost of tampering with life and death, and the temptation of brilliant minds to cross lines they shouldn't. All very Seventh Doctor. But the script is so tonally muddled and structurally slow that these ideas never come to life with the punch they deserve.

As a curiosity from the unmade Season 27, Night Thoughts holds academic interest. But as a standalone story, it feels more like a ghost of a better script, haunting the halls of a perfectly good concept.

📝THE BOTTOM LINE: 5/10

Night Thoughts promises spooky gothic horror and delivers on some fronts—Happy the Rabbit is terrifying, the setting is atmospheric, and the final act lands with some weight. But sluggish pacing, indistinct characters, and a clunky tonal mix leave much of the story feeling distant and foggy. Despite a strong finish, it takes far too long to matter.