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The Chimes

of Midnight

FEBRUARY 2002

(4 EPISODES)

Christmas Eve 1906. An old Edwardian house. This one is, without doubt, the very finest of the first six eighth Doctor audio adventures.

Writer Robert Shearman pushes all the right buttons here to create one of the most unsettling Doctor Who releases to date. A small cast of characters are all that he needs to tell his story, each more memorable than they otherwise might have been as they have become (and they become even more so, as the play progresses) hideous parodies of themselves.

The Chimes of Midnight also

works exceedingly well in the

audio medium. Had this one

been produced as television

serial back in the day, it could

not have hoped to posses the

same, unsounded atmosphere as it does on CD. It would probably have ended up looking like Ghost Light!

The way in which the episodes are structured is also incredibly clever. The first two episodes are, for all intents and purposes, a science-fiction whodunit, albeit sated with a bucketload of foreboding. By the time that the Doctor and Charley realise what’s happening, it’s too late for them to do anything about it, and they must rely on the character on Edith to put things right.

Edith is, in every sense, the heart of this story. This poor servant girl had never received any kindness from anybody in her whole life, and so when she served Charley’s family in 1930 and Charley reserved the odd smile or kind word for her, Edith become almost obsessively attached to her, and upon hearing news of death aboard the R101 became suicidal. But as Charley didn’t die as she was supposed to, Edith’s suicide in 1930 caused the paradoxical time loop in which the characters (including a younger Edith) are all trapped inside in 1906.

It seems that Charley cheating death on the R101 has sparked a chain of events that that will not end with this ‘Edward Grove’ paradox in 1906. Charley can still see the flames that she should have died amidst, and even the Doctor seems unduly concerned about the paradox, shrugging off Charley’s questions with an anxious “not now…”

Words like ‘absorbing’ and ‘compelling’ simply don’t do a tale like The Chimes of Midnight justice; in fact, I can only think of one that might: Shearman. All told, this is a truly wonderful play that deserves its lofty reputation.

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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