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Night Thoughts was the seventy-ninth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Edward Young and featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace and Philip Olivier as Hex.
Produced three years before Big Finish began producing their range The Lost Stories, this is the first example of an unmade television story being adapted for audio.
Publisher's summary[]
"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 night-time 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 — she prefers 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...
Plot[]
Part one[]
The Doctor, Hex and Ace arrive on a Scottish island where Ace falls into the lake after going to investigate the source of the bubbles she saw. Once the Doctor and Hex help her out, Ace explains that she saw a woman drowning in the water and jumped in to help her, but then the weeds seemingly started pulling her down. They take her to a nearby house so that she can be warmed up.
At the house, the Doctor and his companions are greeted by Major Dickens who tells them that the house is heavily alarmed. As Joe Hartley runs a bath for Ace, she looks at a photo of a woman with her daughter which is taken by Hartley.
Hex is impressed with Major Dickens' collection of hunting trophies, which includes birds, fish and even a large stuffed bear. The Deacon tells him that Hartley is a taxidermist by trade before the Doctor starts telling a story about some people who experimented on a dying bear who did not dance to music.
Later that night, Hartley hears a voice calling for him in the cellar. As he goes to investigate, he is pushed down a flight of stairs and dies. His killer closes the door and walks away while whistling "Orange and Lemons".
The next morning, Dr. O'Neill introduces Hex to Sue and her toy rabbit, Happy who wishes to tell a story about a rabbit and a dog. Major Dickens soon informs everyone that Hartley has been found dead, seemingly from a heart attack. At 3 in the morning, Ace is woken up by Hex who has heard someone whistling "Oranges and Lemons". After Ace refuses to join him, Hex enters the kitchen to find the dead body of Hartley in the freezer with his eyes gouged out. After Hex hears the Doctor's voice emanating from a tape recorder, the hooded figure who killed Hartley approaches him whilst whistling "Oranges and Lemons".
Part two[]
Hex manages to get out of the kitchen and reunite with the others, only to find himself accused of murdering Hartley. The Doctor suggests that Hartley's body may be somewhere in the house.
The Deacon locates a locked fridge in the attic which she opens using a hacksaw. Horrified by what's inside the fridge, she hears the tape recording of the Doctor's voice and then says that she deserves to be punished, but begs for forgiveness. She is soon found dead after committing suicide.
Major Dickens activates his security system to lock Ace and Sue in the bedroom, but the girls manage to escape through the window and decide to go to a disused chapel that is half a mile away from the house.
When Ace and Sue get to the Chapel, they hear Hex calling out to them. After Ace leaves to look for him, Hex enters the chapel and tells Sue about the bear traps that Major Dickens has laid down to catch animals for taxidermizing. Ace hears Hex and Sue calling out to her and begins to make her way back to them, only to activate one of the bear traps.
Part three[]
While Sue and Hex return to the house for some torches, Ace is told by the Doctor that the bear trap closed on the cord of her dressing gown, but her right leg is in another bear trap and if she moves, she might activate it, resulting in her being crippled if she doesn't bleed to death.
Major Dickens says to Hex that he had no idea that the bear traps had been activated and only told them that in an attempt to scare them. He then goes on to explain the history of Gravonax Island. During the Falklands War, the island was used for experiments that involved the highly toxic Gravonax Gas, which slowly killed all life on the island. Even when the island was decontaminated years later, no one wanted to return, making the island the ideal location for the group's work.
Sue helps the Doctor by using a large stone to destroy the bear trap that Ace's leg is trapped in and the three of them return to the Chapel. Dr. O'Neil is allowed to listen to the tape recording that her foster parents gave her, which turns out to be the audio diary of a woman named Maude whose 17 year old daughter, Eadie, had passed away from drowning in the lake. Before Eadie's body disappeared into the lake, Maude sang "Oranges and Lemons". Sue tells the group that Hartley's taxidermy studio is attached to the back of the chapel.
The bursar reveals to the Doctor that she is actually a theorist named J.J. Bartholomew and Major Dickens insists that she has altruistic reasons for not telling the truth because she didn't want anyone interfering with her work if they discovered her true identity, which is why she wanted the world to think she had passed away. In the laboratory, the bursar reveals a device called the Bartholomew Transactor, which transmits sub-atomic particles back in time to a point where they are captured by similar pieces of equipment, provided the operator has a transactor that sends and receives the particle. The Major says that the first test was a failure due to a power cut that happened while it was being carried out. The device is turned on and the group hears Ace's voice saying "Marmaduke and Beech". Ace speaks the name of her childhood pet, Marmaduke, and the first road she lived on, Beech, into the device, and these are now embedded into a particle that the Major sends back into the past.
In the taxidermy studio, Sue tells Hex and O'Neil that she would watch Hartley taxidermize several animals, resulting in what she calls the Madame Tussauds of the animal kingdom. Noticing that there is no sign of decay on the taxidermies, the trio wonder what chemicals Hartley used to keep his projects so well preserved.
The bursar explains that ten years ago, a group of academics were presenting their findings to one another, only for Maude and her two daughters, Eadie and Ruth, to interrupt the meeting while sheltering from a violent storm. Eadie lost her sight as a result of what one of the academics called Gravonax poisoning. With no cure possible, Eadie was euthanized and her body was buried in secret, with her mother's drowned corpse later being found in the lake. where it remains. Her possessions were thrown into the ocean and were later washed up on a beach a few month later. It was also assumed that Ruth was also drowned in the lake, but her body was never found.
Hex compliments Sue for being so brave while listening to her mother's tape, then Sue talks about her father (in her Happy the Rabbit voice) and how he was assumed to have either gone abroad or passed away. Hex tells Sue that he never knew his father and was raised by his grandmother who he thought was his mother until he was six years old. O'Neil enters to find both Hex and Sue hugging and places the stone that Sue used to destroy the bear trap on the table. It turns out that the stone was actually the headstone for a gave that has the initials "E.O.", before revealing that he is Eadie's father, which he didn't realize until he heard his wife's voice on the tape. He also reveals that Sue's real name is Ruth O'Neil.
After being asked by Ace why the authorities weren't informed about Eadie's condition, the bursar confesses that she wasn't suffering from Gravonax poisoning, she merely had a simple eye infection that was misdiagnosed, prompting Maude to commit suicide, which prompted the group to remain on the island so they could undo their mistake. They intended to use the Bartholomew Transactor to send a message ten years into the past so they can stop their past selves from euthanizing Eadie. Dickens blows off the Doctor's statement that their plan will never work and says that the experiment was close to succeeding when he and his companions arrived. The bursar reveals some wounds on her legs that were caused by the Major's bear traps, rendering her unable to walk. Dickens assures her that once the experiment has been carried out successfully, none of the recent events will have occurred and their lives will be much happier. When the bursar refuses to go through with his plan, the Major threatens to lock the Doctor and Ace in the cellar with bear traps attached to their limbs, with any disobedience from her resulting in the traps' activation. The Doctor assures the Major that he can operate the machine himself, having read the bursar's thesis.
The Doctor uses the Bartholomew Transactor to send a message from Major Dickens back through time saying that the operation on Eadie must cease. The particles being fired back through time has a minor effect on the present time and the users merely feel such effects as a double exposure on photographs. In Eadie's case, her bones may twitch while the forces of time try to figure out if she's alive or not. Without any muscles or tissue, she will not come back to life, a scenario that causes Major Dickens to wonder if the body would come back to life if it's embalmed. The Doctor admits that if the body is embalmed perfectly, it will come back to life temporarily, but the Major should not try to carry it out.
The Doctor realizes that the taxidermist was imprisoned after he embalmed Eadie's body which may be temporarily returning to life in the coffin that it was buried in.
Sue and O'Neil dig up the grave of Eadie to find a coffin, from which they hear what appears to be breathing. After some effort, they open the coffin up and Sue screams in horror.
Part four[]
The coffin that Sue and O'Neil have dug up turns out to be empty, much to their confusion.
Hex finds both Ace and the bursar tied up in the cellar, the latter is unconscious either due to the drugs that the Major gave to her or shock of something in the cellar causing a pillar to topple. Hex sees the stuffed bear and then unties Ace, but they both agree to leave the bursar in the cellar where she will be safe.
The Doctor figures out the Major's plan to have Eadie's body embalmed so that it can come back to life in the future. Dickens tells the Doctor that he and the other academics' duty is to undo their earlier error and he had Eadie's coffin empty so that he could have her body nearby when she is resurrected. He also reveals that he was the one who misdiagnosed Eadie's condition and ordered her to be euthanized, as well as persuaded the Deacon and Hartley to imprison the bursar. He then calls Maude and her daughters urchins that would never be missed by anyone and says that he insisted that the Bartholomew Transactor was kept in the operating room so the experiment could be carried out in the future.
The Doctor realizes that the Major tricked him into sending a message back in time when he thought it was a simple experiment. Heeding the message will result in the creation of another timeline where Eadie is alive. He tries to interrogate the Major on Eadie's whereabouts, but the Major tells him that Hartley is the only one who knows where the body is hidden, before stating that he has been waiting for 10 years to be the first person to bring a dead person back to life, resulting in his name instead of Bartholomew being passed down through history and him being reinstated in the military with the opportunity to bring even more people back to life. Angered, the Doctor decides to travel back 10 years into the past so that he can undo the damage caused by the message while Hex knocks the Major unconscious.
To be added.
Cast[]
- The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
- Ace - Sophie Aldred
- Hex - Philip Olivier
- Major Dickens - Bernard Kay
- The Bursar - Joanna McCallum
- Dr O'Neil - Andrew Forbes
- Sue - Lizzie Hopley
- The Deacon - Ann Beach
- Joe Hartley - Duncan Duff
Worldbuilding[]
Individuals[]
- Ace's maternal grandmother, Kathleen Dudman, died in 1973. She remembered that her mother Audrey cried for days afterwards.
- Hex was raised by his father and maternal grandmother, the mother of Cassie Schofield whom the Sixth Doctor and his companion Evelyn Smythe had met on two occasions, in 1999 and November 2004. They witnessed her death at the hands of Nimrod on the latter occasion. Hex believed that his grandmother was actually his mother until he was six years old.
Cultural references from the real world[]
- Ace refers to the Doctor as "Batman".
- Ace asks the Doctor "What's up Doc?", while doing an impression of Bugs Bunny.
- Ace later says that the Doctor is "smarter than the average bear".
- Ace mentions late actress Thora Hird, in reference to a series of Churchill Stairlift advertisements which aired in Britain throughout the 80s and 90s.
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- Night Thoughts was originally a story considered for the 27th season of Doctor Who, had it not been cancelled after Survival. It would have been a three-part story.[1]
- An illustrated preview for this story appeared in issue 366 of Doctor Who Magazine illustrated by Martin Geraghty.
- This audio drama was recorded on 7 and 8 November 2005 at the Moat Studios.
- It was released on CD and download. It is now available as a download only.
- This story is set between Survival and the 1996 TV Movie.
- This story credits Edward Young, an 18th century Romantic writer. The audio drama was inspired by the poem of the same name.
Continuity[]
- The Doctor refers to Kathleen Dudman, Ace's maternal grandmother whom they met at Maiden's Point in 1943. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
External links[]
- Official Night Thoughts page at bigfinish.com
- Night Thoughts at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- DisContinuity for Night Thoughts at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide
