An Autist Reviews: Night Thoughts (Doctor Who - The Monthly Adventures 79)

*This is a brand new review!*

*This is a Golden Age Monthly Adventure (1-100), and as such likely contains more mature and uncomfortable themes than later Monthly Adventures.*

*All Reviews Are Spoiler-Free Aside From Any Spoiler Sections*

*This review broke me, it’s mostly a stream of consciousness mess. I’m not sorry. Night Thoughts destroyed my brain. I will never be the same.*

Arriving somewhere mysterious, the Doctor, Ace, and Hex soon find themselves the honored guests of a group of academics in an old and well-secured manor. The academics are a taxidermist, a bursar, a deacon, an army major, and a professor of English literature. But not all is well in this comfy old manor, and these academics are hiding a terrible secret having to do with a tragedy 10 years ago and a fantastical machine. But Hex has had nightmares that relate all too well to what is happening, something terrifying is killing and horrifying the manor’s inhabitants, and it all has something to do with little Sue, who’s helping out around the manor with her toy rabbit, Happy. Happy loves to talk, he often does it for Sue, since she’s rather shy, but be warned, because Happy sure doesn’t live up to his name.

“Particulars are not to be looked at until we examine the whole.”

There will be a spoiler section for this review. It will probably be a mile long. But let’s go over the basics here, piece by piece. Reviewing this story was hard, as each episode had issues within it that come from the previous episode, but neither episode could truly be blamed since it’s only when put together that things begin to break down. I know I explained it poorly, but trust me, putting this review together has been a nightmare. My notes are a nightmare, and frankly, I plan to use them as little as possible because I just want this over with. The characters all sound unique, they all have their own voices, however, the character motivations and actions change with each episode. What is perfectly normal in one episode would be completely outlandish in another and vice versa. But then, which is the true character? Which deserves to be knocked down points? And does it really matter in the flurry that is this story? It all just vague makes sense unless you put too much thought into it. It feels at times like the writer slammed together a bunch of drafts and didn’t bother to make sure the characterizations still worked. The Major is the one who goes through the most character changes throughout the story, and as he’s a very important character who is the cause of a lot of the stuff that happens in this story, that’s not a good thing at all. Not to mention the way characters just sort of forgive and forget what others have done. The Doctor is ready to just walk away at the end despite the fact that parts of the mystery are clearly still unsolved. The murders really sort of get glossed over during the story. Still, the story is very well written, the dialogue mostly sounds natural, with only Sue’s dialogue often being rather poorly written. The pacing is frankly abysmal at times. Examples of this include the last 10 minutes or so of the story, a major reveal about O’Neill, and the use of the Bartholomew Transactor to change history. These all have such weird pacing and dialogue to them that it sort of makes the story float by. Which is just weird, man. The worst part of this story is how nonsensical it is while so much of it also makes sense. Different things make sense and don’t make sense each time you listen to it, and this results in me not being able to properly figure out what is and isn’t a mistake. I can say with certainty that what the Doctor says about the Major near the end is definitely a mistake, as it makes zero sense since the Doctor implies that the Major would have screwed himself over, but says what he says in a way that implies that it somehow wouldn't have. Remember when I said there’d be a spoiler section? Screw that. I literally couldn't explain this no matter how hard I tried. It’s too complicated and confusing. Here’s what I can say for certain. It has fluctuating pacing. So often it’s amazing, but sometimes it just fails and results in a floaty story or a rather sudden reveal of something. The whole ‘it’s amazing most of the time aside from the occasional points where it just fails to do what it should do’ thing goes for the dialogue and the exposition too. This story leaves you with 2 options as to what happened at the end, but then shoots itself in the foot by having, throughout the story and right at the end, made it clear what actually happened. It also often pulls cheap scares. Ace falling into a lake at the beginning of the first episode as well as the end of the first episode, for instance, feel like they’re just there to make the story scarier and tenser, while actually doing nothing. That said, though, they do have some importance in the end, but similar ideas could have been planted in a far better manner with ease. And similar things, although less annoying and more useless, continue throughout the story. Also, the beginning sets up a story where Hex is going to be very important and where the Doctor is, in all likelihood, doing something similar to what he does in The Curse Of Fenric, with him seemingly pointing things in certain directions and implying certain things, but this quickly gets dropped for, as expected, no good reason. The Doctor’s awareness of what is going on also seems to vary between scenes. This story also has some uncomfortably ableist moments involving Sue and Happy. Like, a lot of older stuff, even if it’s still 2000’s, will have stuff like this just there, and it really is uncomfortable. On top of that, the exposition about Gravanax, along with plenty of other expository moments, seem like they just come out of nowhere. It doesn’t happen a lot, none of this does, but it happens far more than it should, and the moments when it does happen will definitely take you out of the story, even if only for a moment. Also, just to reiterate, so you know that it IS in fact set in stone, the Major and others just change characters to an annoying extent throughout the story. Their written voice remains the same, but everything else feels like it’s often subject to change, and however much timey-wimey stuff is happening in this story, THAT is inexcusable and inexplicable.

“Will you walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”

I know this isn’t exactly useful, but the acting really is mostly good aside from the occasional moment where it falters. It usually falters when someone is calling out to someone else, and if I recall, the Major had a lot of less than great dialogue as well. Sue also had some stunted sounding dialogue throughout the story, but aside from that, everyone delivered their lines spectacularly. Sometimes things seemed rushed or a little pathetic, but it gets more than made up for by the utterly horrific screams throughout the story and the brilliant moments of begging, too. Honestly, Happy is the standout character of the story, with every line being just perfectly delivered.

The music is perfect; eerie when it needs to be, serene and beautiful when it’s called for, and always scene enhancing and pleasant on the ears. The transitions are also perfect, aside from a few at the end of the story, but that’s mostly the fault of the poor pacing, with the transitions still being pretty good, all things considered. Let’s talk about the background effects next; these are generally great, if not rather simple, but, like most aspects of this story, sometimes the background effects do leave you wanting. There are two very important places where the background effects are worse for wear. The first is within the first episode, and the effects leave much confusion as to where Ace is within the bathroom, whether she’s showering or whether she’s taking a bath, it’s basically just a mess. I think they wanted to portray her as drawing up a bath, but it just doesn’t come off that way at all. The other place is outside during episodes 2-4, as episode one’s outside effects are far better; you see, the wind outside is rather strong, and to show this the person doing the effects for this story decided that just adding a little ‘woooooo’ in the background every now and then was good enough. It’s not and it’s incredibly distracting and annoying. But, those two problems are the only ones I really have with the background effects. The actions are usually simple, but plenty enjoyable. You hear simple footsteps, simple door rustling, and all that jazz, but beyond those simple effects, you’ll often also get really great, detailed effects. The very very end of the last episode is a great example of this, but I won’t spoil how. Now, sometimes the simple effects are in fact too simple, with seemingly important parts of an effect completely missing. Such as a boat whirring away into the distance without the water below it making any noises at all. It’s unrealistic and just kind of strange. Episode 3 also has an annoying effect that is meant to be a large stone splitting in half, but it sounds like somebody dropped a plastic tube on the ground. Finally, we need to talk about the voice effects, and they are easily the worst effects in the story, even if they’re still usually great. So often in this story, somebody who is supposed to sound like they’re far away will just sound like they’re muffled, and people who should sound muffled just sound… well they just sound like there’s a really pathetic echo on their voices or something like that. It’s kinda pathetic whenever a bad voice effect comes up. That said, plenty of voice effects really are great, such as the voice effects used on whatever a tape recorder is playing.

The replay rating is high solely because every time you relisten to this audio drama, you will discover more, but be warned, while you’ll discover more, that doesn’t mean you’ll understand what’s going on any better. You’ll be as confused as ever, just in a new way. This confusion is why the re-enjoyment rating isn’t a 10/10, you will always be confused and it will always be annoying.

Jesus Christ, I am so glad this review is over. It’s not my best review ever, I know plenty of parts of it are going to be pretty bad, I wrote them, I recognize the issues, but I want this review over with. I want to go back to stories that make sense, I want to be free of this endless confusion and I want to never do another review of this mess unless I finally figure out what the FUCK is going on in the story. Every part of it is great, aside from the 1/10 of the time where it isn’t. Oh, and aside from the constant confusion. That will definitely annoy you while listening. Believe me. IT WILL. Relisten to this or don’t, it really won’t make a difference. I might have to change how I do reviews because of this monstrosity because I honestly feel like I’m not being detailed enough. Jesus this broke me. I am a broken man. It’s an 8/10, I refuse to ever give it a higher rating, I want to die, goodbye.

“You didn’t think you were doing the right thing… None of you actually did any thinking at all.”

             P1 P2 P3 P4 All

Total - 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 / 8 (Screw you, I am not giving this thing a 9/10, I have WAY too many problems with WAY too much of the story for me to go and give it that high of a rating! I don’t even understand the story! It’s incomprehensible! Why would I ever give it a 9/10???)

Plot - 9 / 8 / 8 / 8 / 9

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Story - 9 / 9 / 7 / 9 / 9

Pacing - 9 / 9 / 7 / 7 / 8

Dialogue - 9 / 8 / 9 / 8 / 9

Narration - NR / NR / NR / NR / NR

Exposition - 9 / 8 / 7 / 7 / 8

Enjoyment - 9 / 9 / 8 / 8 / 9

Twist/s - NR / NR / 8 / 8 / 8

Resolution/s - NR / 8 / 8 / 8 / 8

Ending/s - 8 / 8 / 9 / 9 / 9

Acting - 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 / 9

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MC/s - 9 / 9 / 10 / 9 / 9

SC/s - 9 / 8 / 9 / 9 / 9

BG/s - 10 / 9 / 9 / 9 / 9

Narrator/s - NR / NR / NR / NR / NR

Effects - 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 / 9

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Music - 10 / 10 / 10 / 10 / 10

Voices - 8 / 9 / 10 / 8 / 9

Actions - 9 / 9 / 8 / 9 / 9

Background - 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 / 9

Transitions - 10 / 10 / 10 / 9 / 10

Replay - 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 / 9

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Re-Enjoyment - 9 / 9 / 9 / 8 / 9

New Details - 9 / 9 / 8 / 9 / 9

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