Review: Goth Opera (2024)

    Once upon a time in the early-mid 2010s, Big Finish produced a range known as The Novel Adaptions, taking books from Virgin Books' Doctor Who ranges from the 1990s and turning them into full-cast audio dramas. Due to poor sales it wasn't to last, but in 2024 it has risen from the dead, for a one-off release celebrating 30 years of Goth Opera.

The era-appropriate variant of the cover art, designed by Sean Longmore.

 

    Full disclosure, I haven't read the original novel so this review will not look at how it fares as an adaption, but as its own story. Perhaps in future a comparative look may come to the blog but today is not that day.

    Originally written by Paul Cornell and adapted by Lizbeth Myles (who wrote personal comfort listen The Grey Man of the Mountain), the story features the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa taking some time to unwind in Tasmania, but another Time Lord - Ruath - seeks to bring back the vampires the Time Lords thought banished long ago in full force. Not only does the team have to stop Ruath and the vampires, but the Doctor and Tegan quickly find themselves in a race against time to save Nyssa before she's turned too.

    Peter Davison and Janet Fielding completely crush it with their performances, it must be surreal for fans of the original novel to hear it performed by the actors from the TV series and doing the material such justice. The two spend most of the runtime together so there's plenty of 1-to-1 interaction they don't always get otherwise and their worry for Nyssa comes across as so sincere. 

    Sarah Sutton is brilliant here as well, there is a lot for her to dig into here with Nyssa's struggle with vampirism and the way that affects her from the distress towards the situation, the way it weakens her and the moments where she seems to succumb to it.

    Ruath and Yarven are delightful villains too, both performances are great, each gets their share of more sympathetic moments and big villanous scenes and the characters are very well written. Micah Balfour is given a lot to work with throughout and there is a particular scene late into part two that he absolutely eats up. Natalie Gumede has the unique challenge of playing two incarnations of the same Time Lord, as Ruath regenerates in one of her first scenes and she handles this really well, it very much feels as though a switch has been flipped and she's able to sell that there's been a change, although having another actress briefly in the part may have been better.

    Though the issue with Ruath is that while she remains present, for much of the story she feels a bit pushed aside by Yarven, but in the third part she truly gets to shine with some incredible scenes played against Peter Davison. 

    Unusually, this story takes on the format of 3 hour-long episodes, rather than being further segmented into 6 as would be more traditional. Though this worked out for the best, adapting the story there may not have been natural moments for cliffhangers at these points and none of the episodes as they're formatted keep a really solid pace. The two cliffhangers we do get are incredibly strong, especially the first part's cliffhanger as the story's score itself smoothly transitions into the main theme.

    It's fortunate that Goth Opera was afforded a longer runtime than most previous releases in the range, which were typically two hours, as you would lose so much substance and the story would suffer for it. Due to interviews we know that at least one scene was cut at some point after the script was finalised, and Myles has mentioned liking a scene set on the moon absent from the story, instead just being referenced by Madelaine. Though this isn't something you notice listening, I certainly wouldn't have known without that prior knowledge, this is a testament to the editing or whatever adjustments were made while recording that this is seamless, though it makes you wonder if there are any other scenes that didn't quite make it and puts into perspective how packed a story this is even at 3 hours.

    Tonally this is quite different from your typical Big Finish story, leaning a little on the darker side as was the case with the Virgin Books novels, even coming with a warning that the contents may be inappropriate for younger listeners. Though I feel it strikes the balance really well, it still feels like Doctor Who. The scene I feel necessitated the warning is around the middle of the second part, involving an apparent cult and a group of would-be vampire hunters, it speaks to the quality of the sound design that it's taking what was probably a very visually descriptive and evocatively so section of the novel and selling all of it perfectly, it feels gruesome and I love that they went for it.

     At a couple of points in the third part where the action could be slightly unclear, neither can really be directly addressed without spoilers but it is a shame, one moment involves the evangelist and the other concerns a scene with the Doctor and Yarven. Another misgiving I had with this release was the way that the opening theme version of the theme is also used at the end of each part. At first I thought this was a strange stylistic choice but upon thinking about it further and the way it jarringly cuts to the cast credits I'm not sure it was intentional at all, which would make the second Fifth Doctor release this year to have an issue with its closing theme. If it's a stylistic choice, it's one that doesn't really work, if it's an error it's something you have to question how nobody seemed to have noticed at any stage before release. Neither of these issues are damning, but while I don't do numbered ratings on this blog, they do bring Goth Opera down just a bit from being an easy 5 star. 

    Once more we have another Fifth Doctor release without a music suite included and this is potentially the biggest sting yet. Tim Steemson provided the music for this release and it is perfect for this story. The previously mentioned cliffhanger transition wouldn't be possible without Steemson's work, but the music on the whole is very-non traditional for Doctor Who. I'm not the most musically minded, but there is a lot of violin and percussion, and the show's main theme appearing as a musical motif is nice. It's a brilliant score and I hope it's made available elsewhere.

Final Thoughts

    Goth Opera is brillaint, there's no two ways about that. It's no surprise that this story was able to get a whole range of novels featuring former Doctors off to a flying start, perhaps making it something of a predecessor to Big Finish itself, so it feels right to have it celebrated like this on audio. While Big Finish has been clear that this is a one-off release, and that The Novel Adaptions isn't returning, I hope this story performs well enough that they may reconsider, it'd be nice to be able to come back with another one in a year's time. Regardless of future possibilities, this is a story that deserves your attention and for this reviewer, definitely goes into the "favourites" pile.

If this review has sparked your interest, Goth Opera is available at https://www.bigfinish.com/