The Novel Adaptations range at Big Finish has always had a chequered history. Listeners with a long history of connection to the novels that in a very real sense kept Doctor Who alive in dark days tend to love them and hold them dearly to their hearts, because they feel like content that connects with that time of poverty and uncertainty when the novels were diamonds in a desert, and yet they’re updated for the way in which the biggest and boldest expanded universe content exists today.

To younger fans that never lived through the so-called “wilderness years,” they’re probably less significant, and probably less loved, with the result that they’re a niche market within the already fairly-niche Big Finish market of hardcore fans with money (Keep in mind, there are still people paying for River Song box sets, and preparing to spend money on a Fugitive Doctor box set).

Paul Cornell’s Goth Opera has always been a favourite among the fanbase elderly enough to have experienced the novels on release, and there are several solid reasons for that. 

Firstly, the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan make for a strong Tardis team, the absence of Adric bringing them closer together, and if we’re being brutally honest, making the storytelling mathematics work more smoothly. 

Secondly, it gives Nyssa quite a lot to do, which is notable and impressive simply by virtue of its rarity value. Thirdly, it takes the opportunity to delve back into the Great Vampires and their complicated history with the Time Lords, in this case extending the canon surrounding that relationship. Fourthly, it gives us one of the Doctor’s old Gallifreyan connections, and has them talk about those days, again extending the canon of, for instance, why the Doctor and Susan ran away from home in the first place.

Fifthly, it was originally written by Paul Cornell, which is a recommendation in its own right. 

And finally, perhaps as importantly as any of those things, it gives us Mancunian vampires. 

The world is just inherently better with Mancunian vampires in it. If you need proof of that, take a look at all the fuss over the reunion of Oasis.

The excitement stoked by the release of the Goth Opera Novel Adaptation is therefore based on a lot of solid footing.

So why doesn’t it – quite – work?

Well first of all, in a lot of ways of course, it does. Probably the biggest ways in which the audio version of Goth Opera is a triumph come back to that tightness of the Fifth Doctor team here – decades down the line from their weekly TV appearances, all three of the Tardis team actors handle their characters and the dynamic between them in a way that’s appropriate for the novels, which always sought to go beyond the boundaries imposed on the TV format. Davison, Sutton and Fielding here not only eat up that slightly more grown-up sensibility with every available spoon, they serve that altered sensibility incredibly well.

Then there’s the “giving Sarah Sutton something to do” element. She was, unfortunately, regularly served mediocre writing for her character in her time on screen, and the nature of her character as relatively upbeat, obedient, clever and wise tended to fade her out perhaps more than other members of the team in terms of having the lead in the action. Occasionally vibrating an android to death or curing a plague was all very well, but the character was rarely understood well enough by the TV writers to give her a starring role.

Cornell suffered no such lack of understanding, and neither does Lizbeth Myles, who adapts Cornell’s novel for the audio release. Together, they prove one thing above all else – throw Sarah Sutton some red meat, and you’ll get a hell of a performance out of her. 

It should, essentially, be possible to stop writing there – Sara Sutton rocks the vampire chic, go away and listen to Goth Opera. That’s a perfectly honest capsule review, and you’re welcome to follow its advice, should you wish.

Where Goth Opera begins to run into issues though is in the fairly sprawling and epic nature of everything else it’s trying to deliver and do justice to. That includes a pre-credits monologue by Rassilon, a search for the bones of an ancient vampire who’s the source of all Earthly blood-drinkers, the Manc vamps, as promised, and a plot that goes completely tonto in its constant “Aha! But also, there’s THIS!” quest to one-up itself as it goes along, to the point where you have to actively listen to every second of the audio because guaranteed, if you blink twice or move from room to room, the nature of the plot and the threat will have changed about three times in the interim.

Everything we mentioned is here – the Gallifreyan friend of the Doctor, the dubious connectivity between the vampires and the Time Lords, an evocation of Rassilon’s devious gittery over the power of regeneration, which either chimes with or inspires storylines like The Timeless Child. It’s all here, and it’s all, as far as it goes, excellent. But it gets repeatedly lost in the story’s attempt to both one-up and undercut itself. 

Will Nyssa be turned into a forever-vampire? Will she be allowed to leave if she chooses not to embrace the gift? What role exactly is the Doctor supposed to play in the machinations at work? Is the MacGuffin of a temporal device to create an eternal night overthought and maybe, when you get right down to it, a bit silly? Does anybody, by the end, especially care about the Mancunian vampires? And between Gallifreyans and Vampires, who, ultimately, is zooming who, and how, and wait, what happened to that other thing…?

We won’t give you answers to any of those questions – your mileage will inevitably vary in any case. But what we can tell you is that the novel adaptations tries to deliver all the answers, and it’s actually in the sheer weight of combining it all that Goth Opera begins to creak at the seams. 

The story by the end feels so incredibly far from where the story starts that you feel like you’ve been on what is almost a series-long arc, but everything depends on everything else, so you have to keep every storytelling marble in your hands and every story-thread in your head simultaneously, and you may well struggle to bring that level of hardcore concentration and mental separation to the story.

At which point, keep your ears on Sarah Sutton, on Peter Davison, and on Natalie Gumede as Ruath. Those three will give you enough storytelling to deliver all the complexity and emotional heft you need to get a satisfying Doctor Who story out of audio version of Goth Opera. There will be other things going on left, right, centre and beyond, but keeping your ears focused on those three characters will pull you through and give you a great time in the endless dark. Tony Fyler 

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