Goth Opera
sees the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan after the events of Snakedance recovering from Tegan’s possession at a cricket
tournament on Earth. Of course Tegan is
immediately annoyed at their present location and within her first line of
dialogue Cornell nails her character perfectly and you immediately feel for her
as the novel goes on while absolutely horrid things begin to happen to
Nyssa. The plot gets going when a renegade
Time Lady Ruath from the epilogue to Blood
Harvest tracks down the Vampire Messiah and gets a vampire to bite and
convert Nyssa into one of the undead.
Yes this novel sees Nyssa and even later the Fifth Doctor bitten by
vampires and start to turn into the bloodsuckers. How do they get around this you may ask? Well Cornell takes a solution from ancient
vampire myth and the way it is done is quite sublimely and actually manages to
satisfy the need for a thrilling conclusion.
The plot itself is interesting with the Doctor and Tegan trying to find
a way to save Nyssa from her conversion and trying to stop Ruath’s plans of
making trouble. Along the way there is a
group of radical Christians and a cult whose main chant is the funeral
procession is “Requiem for Evita” from the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Evita.
So yeah even with a rather dark subject matter Cornell can’t help but
put in a little bit of humor to liven the mood.
There’s even a little detour with Romana getting stuck in a miniscope on
the ship of Sabalom Glitz which while it is a distraction, it is great fun for
the novel and seeds some seeds of Romana possibly going higher in Time Lord
Society.
Cornell also nails the
characterization of his regulars. The Fifth
Doctor, who has always been one of the weaker Doctors for me as he was too
human, uses his human caring to motivate him to go to any lengths to save
Nyssa. He even allows himself to be
bitten by a vampire in a last ditch effort to stop the vampire’s plan. Moving right along to Nyssa who spends the
majority of the novel in a trancelike state as she is losing her humanity and
begins craving blood. She slowly loses
her sanity as well trying to stay human.
What makes her descent into darkness even more tragic is she was bitten
by a vampire baby called “The Child” who knocked on her window and almost
enjoyed being bitten. Outside of her
trance near the beginning of the novel she gets to have a great argument with
Tegan. Remember this is right after Snakedance so Nyssa wants to try and
help Tegan recover from being possessed by the Mara a second time. There is also implication that she feels guilty
about Tegan being possessed. This brings
us to the brilliant way Tegan was portrayed by Cornell in this novel. She states flat out that the Mara is still in
her mind and she is wrestling every day to keep it suppressed with the Doctor’s
head. She fears being taken over a
second time yet doesn’t really want to open up about her feelings to Nyssa who
genuinely wants to help her. Once Nyssa
becomes a vampire she is scared as she knows what it’s like to not be yourself
and knows how much pain Nyssa is in as she isn’t herself.
Now on to the villains of
the piece. First up is Ruath who has a
surprising history with the Doctor. Now
if you don’t want spoilers, first off don’t read reviews of novels that are
nearly twenty years old and second look away now just read the book. This has been your final warning. When they were young, Ruath was going to
accompany the Doctor in the stealing of the TARDIS and go with him and Susan,
but the Doctor left her behind. This has
made her extremely bitter towards the Doctor as she had almost fallen in love
with him and fueled her desire for research into the undead. When the actual reason she was left behind
was to try and get Time Lords in the Academy to think for themselves and it
becomes a really tragic story. The other
villain of the piece is Yarven (who was turned into a vampire in Blood Harvest) who is nearly as
manipulative as the Doctor. He manipulates
Nyssa into compliance by promising her that he can help and she falls for it
hook, line and sinker. The final
important characters of the novel are Jake and Madeline who are two vampire
lovers who end up surviving the story and living on. They are almost like Sweeney Todd as you don’t
want to sympathize with them for all the horrid things they do yet you find
yourself hoping they survive the rapidly approaching bloodbath. That’s really all there is for characters, yes
I mentioned a couple in the introduction and while they are integral to the
plot there isn’t much more I can say except they were good for their purpose.
To summarize Goth Opera is what many opera’s excel
at, a character piece. It delves into the
minds of its characters and puts them through a lot of hellish situations. Everything about the novel is perfect even
the few distractions that Cornell threw in to keep things going. The question is when is this going to be
adapted for an audio drama? Well Big
Finish still haven’t announced how many novels are going to be adapted next
year, but I hope that this one and Blood
Harvest are on that list. As the
first in a hopefully brilliant line of Virgin New Adventures Goth Opera gets 100/100.
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