The Monthly Adventures #79 - "Night Thoughts" by Edward Young

Where to start with Night Thoughts? A story that is widely loved, uses my favourite TARDIS team and has a synopsis miles up my alley and yet is bizarrely one of the worst Monthly Adventures I’ve come across so far. Originally conceived as a story for the show, this missing adventure was adapted into an audio drama years before The Lost Stories range was ever launched and honestly, I think it should’ve stayed on the shelf. If I had to describe Night Thoughts with one sentence it would be: imagine an author with no talent tried to write The Chimes of Midnight.

In a remote manor, a group of old friends gather to complete an experiment a decade in the making, but old secrets threaten to get in the way. Stranded by a violent storm, the Doctor, Ace and Hex find themselves isolated with the strange group, and at the mercy of a killer in the night.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

All the pieces were in place for this one to be a born and bred classic - there was nothing that should’ve held it back. A fantastic, isolated setting that gives way to a creepy murder mystery with some pitch perfect atmosphere; what could possibly go wrong? Night Thoughts is one of those stories that just feels disappointing because it had so much promise. The actual concept of it all is brilliant and by far the best thing about it: a group of scientists trying to make up for a past mistake gather every year in a remote manor, but this year, there’s a killer on the loose. Simple yet astonishingly effective. Throw in some great imagery, and this was shaping up to be something truly magnificent. And really, there is some genuinely creepy stuff here. The hooded killer using a tape recording of the Doctor to trick victims into a false sense of safety was a stroke of genius and led to the bone-chilling Part One cliffhanger that instantly set the tone. For the first half of this story, the atmosphere was truly on point and I was decently immersed. And then it got worse. And it got worse. And worse.

Let's start with the characters; every murder mystery hinges on its cast, the whole plot surrounds working out which one is the killer after all. Night Thoughts dares to offer us a roster of one-dimensional cardboard cutouts that either lack any kind of character at all or are painfully melodramatic. I think the worst offender is our main antagonist - General Dickens - who is both somebody who possesses a single character trait and is also laughably bad as a villain, feeling like a pantomime character got trapped in a horror story (seriously, listen to how many f**king times he talk about bear traps, it’s hilarious). Any good part that may have been hiding in our cast is, however, pretty quashed by one of two things: for one, the dialogue is terrible. Not astonishingly bad but it's got that amateurish feel a lot of the audios have, where characters will just narrate everything around them really unnaturally so as to convey things to the listener. Secondly, nearly every single action taken by any character is completely senseless.

It’s going to be hard to describe to you just how moronic of a script this is because you can find an example of something dumb in every clichéd, boring scene in this supposed “horror story”. I think the first time I realised just how bad it was going to be was when a character was killed and we jumped confusingly to after they had already discovered the body off-screen, where two characters were casually talking about how it was annoying they had to put it in the freezer. A man has just died and that’s what you’re worried about? This story makes zero sense, it changes plot on a dime and acts like the viewer can just guess what’s happening. Scenes are presented muddily, it’ll just throw random details in without set up and characters will act in completely illogical ways that somehow conveniently work. There’s a weird obsession with eyeballs that’s never properly explained, there’s a scene where Hex gets trapped by a stuck door that then it resolves by being magically unstuck, Ace gets a dressing gown cord stuck in a bear trap and then puts her leg in one, but light enough so that it doesn’t go off. Don’t know what bear traps activate when fabric touches them but not when stepped on but oh well. There are a hundred different moments I could touch on like this that just completely lost me, I had no idea what the story was about by the end.

Not to mention the tonal disparity. I said before that the plot changes on a dime but I don’t think I expressed that well enough. One second it’s a murder mystery, the next it's a really dark story about time travel and euthanasia, the next second we’re chasing a zombie dressed in bear skin around a Scooby-Doo house. It really wants to be a serious and grim chiller but then is so ridiculous and clichéd it feels like a bad b-movie. I was laughing out loud listening to this and know for a fact that was not the intention.

The final act is probably the worst. I haven’t really touched on our main cast yet but they’re all awful; Ace and Hex are written as if Young’s only experience with them was somebody else’s poor description and McCoy is putting in a really bored performance for a Doctor that feels strangely flat. The absolute worst scene however comes in the third act; it’s revealed that a decade ago, the scientists accidentally euthanized a girl they thought was dying but was actually recovering and have been trying to send a message back in time to stop themselves. It gets overly convoluted with stuff about some of them actually knowing she was well but that doesn’t matter, the girl dies, they try to avert it. And lo and behold we have yet another f**king web of time argument, because we haven’t gone through that ten bajillion times already. And what’s worse is we get a scene of the Doctor callously trying to murder a little girl with carbon monoxide. He eventually doesn’t go through with it, but the one-dimensional performance mixed with the overall lack of subtlety mean it just looks like children’s hero The Doctor tried to suffocate a 10 year old.

Night Thoughts was a brilliant story written by the wrong person. What should’ve been a chilling horror story ended up being a tonally confused, indecipherably written and embarrassing mess that hits just about every problem you can get in a Big Finish audio drama. The only thing saving it is promise; even within the story, the first part consisted of decent set up, just a shame it was so mind-numbingly confusing and botched from then on. A really disappointing listen overall, if you want a creepy Doctor Who murder mystery, just listen to The Chimes of Midnight.

3/10

Pros:

+ Builds a fantastic atmosphere in the first half

+ The initial conceit and a few ideas are fantastic

Cons:

- The dialogue needs work

- Every action every character takes is illogical

- The sidecast is either bland or melodramatic

- The script is confused and mind-numbing

- Our main cast is at their worst

- Tries to be dark and serious but is utterly laughable