The Chimes of Midnight by: Robert Shearman

 

The Chimes of Midnight was written by Robert Shearman, based on his audio story of the same name.  It was the 196^th story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

It’s honestly a surprise that it took over 25 years for Big Finish Productions to novelize any of their audio dramas, especially since The Chimes of Midnight and Jubilee are two novelizations published not by Big Finish, but by BBC Books as part of their Doctor Who line proper.  The choice for the pair makes plenty of sense, they are both releases labeled iconic and from one of their best writers (and a writer who had written for the television series).  The tricky part about novelizing any audio drama is actually going to be the medium shift, while prose isn’t a truly visual medium there is a general convention that setting and character needs to be established in text and there isn’t always going to be apparent in audio where everything is soundscape and vocal performance plus whatever is used on the cover to represent the story.  Robert Shearman’s prose actually shines in terms of the descriptions, The Chimes of Midnight is a story that has one primary setting of the downstairs of an Edwardian house.

 

It’s a basic setting, Shearman knows this.  Much of the humor in The Chimes of Midnight comes from the fact that it is a simple setting and that the characters are stock characters.  The murder mystery at the center is intentionally stock, it’s all of course a smokescreen for a story celebrating life and how the lower class is overlooked in society because of their position.  There is something more evocative of the line “I am nothing, I am nobody” when it is in prose, the repetition becomes more notable as well as Shearman adding slight variations on the phrase or other phrases to evoke that idea of being nobody.  This is especially apparent because Shearman is continually bringing up the fact that this is a time loop with perspectives periodically from the servants dying and coming back at the strike of the clock.

 

Reading The Chimes of Midnight there is also this layer that while present in the original audio drama, feels brought to the forefront being in prose.  It’s an Agatha Christie mystery where at every chance possible the opposite choice is made: the setting being with the downstairs staff squarely places the crime among the lower class in comparison to Christie squarely taking on the middle and upper classes, the Doctor as a detective is initially squarely placed as part of Scotland Yard making him an authority when compared to Christie detectives like Poirot or Miss Marple who are amateurs, and the murders themselves are senseless suicides.  It’s all inversions of the classic tropes so much so that there is the chance that the butler actually did it, a trope that despite being omnipresent isn’t actually common.  While the characters here are stock, something explored far more thoroughly in the novelization is how they are compilations of people who Edith Thompson knew throughout her short life.  This allows Shearman to go further into the horror that he did on audio.  Similarly, there are some extra scenes that clearly wouldn’t play in audio such as the cooked turkey coming to life and running around the chicken and Charley getting her eye stuck in a keyhole.  These work because of the visual component of the prose, something that cannot be done on audio effectively.

 

Overall, The Chimes of Midnight is both darker and deeply funnier.  Shearman writing prose this way means that the story somehow hits all the harder in this interpretation.  Shearman’s experience as a novelist also shines through especially well.  It’s still one of the best Doctor Who audio dramas from one of the very best writers. 10/10.