Nightshade written by Mark Gatiss (adapted by Kyle C Szikora) and directed by Scott Handcock

What’s it about: Professor Nightshade - tea time terror for all the family, and the most loved show in Britain. But Professor Nightshade's days are long over, and Edmund Trevithick is now just an unemployed actor in a retirement home, fondly remembering his past. It's the same through the entire village of Crook Marsham - people are falling prey to their memories. At first harmlessly, and then, the bodies begin to turn up. The Doctor and Ace arrive on the scene - but, with the Doctor planning his retirement, it may be time for Professor Nightshade to solve one last case.

The Real McCoy: Whereas Ace finds it grim, the Doctor considers the North characterful. The TARDIS food dispenser is all very well but sometimes you can’t beat a good British cuppa. The Doctor is starting to think that he is a selfish old Time Lord that is keeping Ace from better things, an ironic statement given what is about to happen in their lives. There’s not a day that passes where he doesn’t think of Susan. He’s in a wistful mood, thinking about settling down and retiring. Just for a few centuries, somewhere away from death. He calls his adventures ‘aimless wandering.’ Much like Peter Capaldi’s Doctor in his first season, he questions whether he is a good force. It’s great to hear the usually sanctimonious and heartless NA 7th Doctor questioning whether he has the right to interfere as much as he has been. It’s Ace that snaps him out of that thinking, and it’s Ace who will condemning him for those faults in the not too distant future. He generally describes Gallifrey as a dreary hole. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare but its hearts are in the right places. How strange to hear the Doctor saying there is nothing he can do to help…could it be that he really means it when he suggests he’s ready to put down roots and stop meddling? He can’t quite help himself when a body presents itself. He’s terribly irritable at times, unusually so with Ace. He’s a scientist, philanthropist, explorer and general do-gooder. Waltzing in and telling people what to do is the story of his life. He’s furious when Ace comes blundering in with her nitro nine just as he was beginning to understand the creature they are facing. The Doctor agonises about getting involved again, about letting people down and getting them killed. There is a real feeling of the universe weighing heavily on him at the moment, almost as if he knows the momentous and out of character role he is going to be forced to play as Times Champion. It’s gorgeous listening to McCoy playing the ‘one day I will come back’ scene from The Dalek Invasion of Earth. He can’t seem to tear himself away from being the Doctor. He helps people, that’s what he does.

Oh Wicked: It’s interesting that they chose to adapt Nightshade because it marked the beginning of the end of the Ace that we recognise from the TV series before Love & War drove a huge wedge between her and the Doctor that never truly healed. Beyond the opening four Timewyrm books, this is probably the closest you can get to the Ace from the Big Finish audios normally. That’s because Mark Gatiss had no real interest in the ‘adult’ innovations that were occurring in the novels at the time, he just wanted to tell a damn good Doctor Who story. She thinks of the Doctor as her mentor, someone who is helping her to grow. She doesn’t mention the very strange way he goes about it. Discuss it with a therapist, love, they might say it is emotional torture rather than education. When you see that kind of treatment as cruel to be kind you have question the sort of bloke that Ace will end up with. She has to believe in the Doctor otherwise there is no point in going on. Like those Agatha Christie adaptations on television, the decision is made to remove the original ending of Nightshade and replace it with a much happier one where Ace leaves the Doctor to stay with Robin. It’s well set up, well written and well played. It’s entirely wrong when you try and fit it into NA continuity (or even if you want to listen to these adaptations in order) but as a statement of Ace’s growing maturity and the Doctor’s wiliness to let his friends go but continue travelling it is really nicely done. I never thought I would say this but I was rather touched by the idea of Ace leaving (something I have been asking for for ages!), and how maturely they both handled it. Sophie Aldred gets to really show how far Ace has come.

Standout Performance: A round of applause for Samuel Barnett, who has received plaudits for his work for Big Finish elsewhere and made a name for himself front lining the short lived by unforgettably bizarre Dirk Gently series in America. He’s fantastic as Robin, very different from Ace’s other squeezes (James Redmond’s Jan and John Dorney’s Henry) and yet shares natural chemistry with Sophie Aldred. He’s one of those characters that you could describe as sweet and down to earth but without the irritation and blandness that can come with those descriptions. Probably a little too safe ultimately for Ace, but for a while I was convinced this might actually work. And with only two hours to tell this story, that is mostly down to the actors.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Soon the people of this village are going to know fear…’ – listen to how McCoy says that line. Sometimes he can really get under my skin.
‘Sonic screwdriver! It screws things. Sonically.’

Great Ideas: I thoroughly enjoyed the excerpts of Nightshade that were scattered throughout the story. They are lovingly created to capture the feel of those old pulp classics like the early Quartermass serials. At first I was wondering why on earth the story was opening on such dated and bombastic music but everything was soon made very clear. A being of incalculable age that the Earth may have formed around. Running through the planet, like a virus feeding off energy. It can’t feed directly and so it latches onto memory. Emotion makes the ghost creatures come to life. Just because it is torturing people, it doesn’t mean it isn’t just trying to survive like the rest of us. It’s just that it’s method or living and ours isn’t mutually compatible.

Musical Cues: An authentic season 27 score (can I say that?), Blair Mowat realises the best of the music from the late eighties (the emotion and excitement of scores like Greatest Show and Fenric) whilst completely avoiding the techno horror of other stories (the disco friendly McCulloch scores).

Isn’t it Odd: I can understand why people grew a little weary of listening to this one if they are used to the more robustly plotted nuts’n’bolts Doctor Who that Big Finish usually delivers. I reached the 30-minute mark and little had happened in terms of plotting. It’s very much a case of setting up the location, introducing the characters giving the limelight to the Doctor and Ace. In terms of events occurring there is little beyond someone watching telly and friends eating a fry up. In the novel the way that people’s memories were twisted and made black was quite graphic and disturbing, especially since we had gotten close to the guest cast and understood why the reappearance of those people were so torturous. It was what they wanted more than anything, and it was being used against them. In the audio we have barely begun getting to know the same people and whilst the visitations are still realised in a creepy way, they have none of the impact. I’m not sure we needed the hope in the TARDIS in the coda to explain away the fate of the creature. It’s gone, that’s enough. It’s a whole bunch of technobabble of the sort that the show really wasn’t interested in in the late eighties.

Standout Scene: It’s a long time coming to reach a moment of real terror, but by golly that cliff-hanger is worth waiting for. Those screams. It’s a shame that Carole Ann Ford is advertised on the cover because her involvement would have been a complete surprise to those who haven’t read the book. It’s one of the best scenes in the book, Susan’s surprise re-appearance, and it proves to be the case in the audio too. Torturing the Doctor with the regret of leaving his granddaughter. Sylvester McCoy unleashes a relentless anger at the climax and is quite brilliant. Who knew he had it in him?

Result: Nightshade felt like the most truncated adaptation of all for me, so it loses points for gutting the novel of some of its more emotional moments but at the same time it felt exactly how the series might have done had it entered a 27th season, continuing the more down to earth feel of the previous season. So, it gains points for that. It was certainly far more involving and authentic the Lost Stories 27th season and I think that came down to Sylvester and Sophie and the director. What is it about these adaptations that they bring the most convincing and mature performances out of the regulars, in a way that the main range only very occasionally does? Is it that Sylv and Soph understand the importance of these novels to the fans and give it a bit of extra welly? The secondary characters lose much of their empathy and starkness in this version of the story, but the Doctor and Ace are superbly characterised throughout. What’s interesting is that even though the supporting characters like Robin and Edmund pale compared to their print counterparts, they are still a cut above what we would normally get in the main range these days. And the guest cast is excellent, doing some sterling work, especially in the second episode. I’m not sure if it is because some of the work is done for the person adapting the script already but there is an atmosphere to even the weakest of these NA adaptations and an excitement to hearing them brought to life. Scott Handcock has got a tricky script to bring to life here, one which has had a lot of the emotional power of the book excised and yet he goes for broke with his direction anyway, and the whole piece is dripping with an atmosphere of regret and remorse. It’s tangible. I really enjoyed the Ace/Robin pairing and don’t really have a strong opinion about the altered ending. I’m not sufficiently invested in the NAs to consider this sacrilege. I’m sure there’s a really good Big Finish audio out there waiting to be told about a Doctor Who actor who is dragged into a Doctor Who style plot and having to face Doctor Who style villains. That’s essentially what happens to Nightshade here. Although I suppose that idea was perfected in Galaxy Quest. Nightshade was far more interested in being a Doctor Who story than an NA, and usually I would say that is a good thing but having to structure this to fit in a recognisable Doctor Who narrative loses the fact that so much of the original novel was character driven. And ultimately there isn’t much plot, but there’s plenty of atmosphere and I was carried by the mood and the central performances quite a long way towards enjoyment: 7/10