What do you think?
Rate this book
Doctor Who: Big Finish novelisations #2
Doctor Who: The Chimes of Midnight
'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature was stirring...
But something must be stirring. Something hidden in the shadows. Something which kills the servants of an old Edwardian mansion in the most brutal and macabre manner possible. Exactly on the chiming of the hour, every hour, as the grandfather clock ticks on towards midnight.
Trapped and afraid, the Doctor and his companion, Charley, are forced to play detective to murders with no motive, where even the victims don't stay dead. Time is running out.
And time itself might well be the killer...
Featuring the Eight Doctor as played on TV by Paul McGann and Charley Pollard as played on audio by India Fisher, The Chimes of Midnight is the second novelisation of a Big Finish audio drama after Jubilee – also by prize-winning playwright and short story writer Robert Shearman.
But something must be stirring. Something hidden in the shadows. Something which kills the servants of an old Edwardian mansion in the most brutal and macabre manner possible. Exactly on the chiming of the hour, every hour, as the grandfather clock ticks on towards midnight.
Trapped and afraid, the Doctor and his companion, Charley, are forced to play detective to murders with no motive, where even the victims don't stay dead. Time is running out.
And time itself might well be the killer...
Featuring the Eight Doctor as played on TV by Paul McGann and Charley Pollard as played on audio by India Fisher, The Chimes of Midnight is the second novelisation of a Big Finish audio drama after Jubilee – also by prize-winning playwright and short story writer Robert Shearman.
209 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 9, 2025
19 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Robert Shearman
173 books226 followersRobert Shearman has worked as a writer for television, radio and the stage. He was appointed resident dramatist at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter and has received several international awards for his theatrical work, including the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the World Drama Trust Award and the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. His plays have been regularly produced by Alan Ayckbourn, and on BBC Radio by Martin Jarvis. However, he is probably best known as a writer for Doctor Who, reintroducing the Daleks for its BAFTA winning first series, in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award.
His first collection of short stories, Tiny Deaths, was published by Comma Press in 2007. It won the World Fantasy Award for best collection, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. One of the stories from it was selected by the National Library Board of Singapore as part of the annual Read! Singapore campaign. In 2008 his short story project for BBC7, The Chain Gang, won him a Sony Award, and he provided a second series for them in 2009.
He is now at work on his first novel.
His first collection of short stories, Tiny Deaths, was published by Comma Press in 2007. It won the World Fantasy Award for best collection, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. One of the stories from it was selected by the National Library Board of Singapore as part of the annual Read! Singapore campaign. In 2008 his short story project for BBC7, The Chain Gang, won him a Sony Award, and he provided a second series for them in 2009.
He is now at work on his first novel.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
October 31, 2025
The novelisation as art: a mature writer revisiting a story and its themes and finding more texture and depth in them. What was conveyed in performance and production is deftly replaced by the blend of dark comedy and horror that marks the best of Shearman’s prose work, with moments and lines that will stop you in your tracks even if you know the audio original back to front. I had to slow myself down in the last few chapters just to savour the experience: beautiful, terrible and as thoroughly satisfying and filling as plum pudding.
Chimes is now not only one of Doctor Who’s finest stories in audio, but one of its great prose works too.
Chimes is now not only one of Doctor Who’s finest stories in audio, but one of its great prose works too.
November 6, 2025
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.
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.
October 14, 2025
1906 - or is it?
It's definitely Christmas Eve, and the Doctor and Charley find themselves in a fine house, where the staff keep dying, over and over again.
Shearman has written a fine horror story, which adds a sense of Peter J. Hammond's 'Sapphire & Steel' to the 'Doctor Who' universe. The plot is intricate and draws the reader in, and there is both an uneasy sense of doom and a great sense of futility as the Doctor and Charley find themselves in the ultimate locked room mystery.
It's definitely Christmas Eve, and the Doctor and Charley find themselves in a fine house, where the staff keep dying, over and over again.
Shearman has written a fine horror story, which adds a sense of Peter J. Hammond's 'Sapphire & Steel' to the 'Doctor Who' universe. The plot is intricate and draws the reader in, and there is both an uneasy sense of doom and a great sense of futility as the Doctor and Charley find themselves in the ultimate locked room mystery.
December 22, 2025
J'ai absolument aucune objectivité sur cette histoire, la première fois je l'ai écoutée j'avais 17 ans donc ça me rend automatiquement mélancolique. Bref, c'était super la version écrite, je trouve pas les rajouts incroyables mais j'étais contente de pouvoir la revisiter ainsi. Bravo Robert Shearman, vraiment l'un des seuls à avoir des bonnes idées de ce qu'on peut faire avec un univers comme celui de Doctor Who.
December 25, 2025
My favourite Christmas story.
The original audio is brilliant for the first 2/3rds but the last 3rd is its biggest weakness. This book fixes that by improving it tenfold in execution and as a result it soars. The original comic horror comes through very well all throughout, the characterisation and the voices are on point, and the writing style is efficient and economical and yet effective and memorable. Great read over the day, can’t remember the last time I was this engrossed in a book.
The original audio is brilliant for the first 2/3rds but the last 3rd is its biggest weakness. This book fixes that by improving it tenfold in execution and as a result it soars. The original comic horror comes through very well all throughout, the characterisation and the voices are on point, and the writing style is efficient and economical and yet effective and memorable. Great read over the day, can’t remember the last time I was this engrossed in a book.
December 16, 2025
A Christmas mystery with the Doctor? What's not to love!
December 15, 2025
When this novelisation was announced, I was already familiar with the phenomenal story that is, The Chimes of Midnight. I first listened to it on the night of Christmas Eve in 2023, walking around my local area as I experienced this festive ghost story. It was a brilliant experience and the story is one of my favourites. As a result, I was very much looking forward to this novelisation.
I read this over the course of a day, contrary to what my "Date Started" says, but I wasn't particularly feeling like reading until this Sunday just gone. I enjoyed reading this novel, but I do think it was more so "I enjoy The Chimes of Midnight" than "I enjoyed this novelisation". That's not to say the novelisation was bad by any means, but reading it I didn't find the 8th Doctor very clearly defined in the dialogue, in fact I felt it could be any Doctor in his place.
Obviously at the time of the original being written, there wasn't many stories with the 8th Doctor to go off from but I would've liked this novelisation to have felt more 8th Doctor-y as without Paul McGann playing the part, something was missing. For the most part, the reason why I've given this novel 4 stars is just due to the fact that The Chimes of Midnight is a tremendous story no matter how you experience it. It could be told through a series of cartoon strips on the back of a cereal box and it would still be the same absurd murder mystery that, if it wasn't for the three penny piece within the plum pudding, would be complete and utter farce. Enjoyable still, but missing the gut punch the story delivers as if you were hit by a Chrysler, or perhaps a Daimler.
One thing I find a shame but not necessarily something I can fault the book on totally is the illustrations in the special edition of this book. The Chimes of Midnight is a story with such striking images. In the audio you have exquisite sound design and performances that make the macabre elements of the story all that more real. In this novelisation, you have grotesque descriptions that would lend so well to being realised through the illustrations that are scattered across the novel but they are few and far between, and a lot of moments that could be just that more heightened, such as The Doctor drowning in dust outside the manor, or the TARDIS interior falling away to be replaced with aspects of the scullery are forlorn for The Doctor dipping his finger in a jam jar.
Obviously, the illustrations and a little bonus for the 500 limited prints of the special editions so they're not going to be many, but the choices are rather bizarre.
I will say I am very glad that these novelisations exist as Big Finish have made some of the best Doctor Who stories of all time. Some people don't like audio dramas or can't resonate with them, so hopefully these books will be a way for people to experience the best of what Doctor Who has to offer. I may prefer the original audios but I won't say no to more novelisations in the future.
I read this over the course of a day, contrary to what my "Date Started" says, but I wasn't particularly feeling like reading until this Sunday just gone. I enjoyed reading this novel, but I do think it was more so "I enjoy The Chimes of Midnight" than "I enjoyed this novelisation". That's not to say the novelisation was bad by any means, but reading it I didn't find the 8th Doctor very clearly defined in the dialogue, in fact I felt it could be any Doctor in his place.
Obviously at the time of the original being written, there wasn't many stories with the 8th Doctor to go off from but I would've liked this novelisation to have felt more 8th Doctor-y as without Paul McGann playing the part, something was missing. For the most part, the reason why I've given this novel 4 stars is just due to the fact that The Chimes of Midnight is a tremendous story no matter how you experience it. It could be told through a series of cartoon strips on the back of a cereal box and it would still be the same absurd murder mystery that, if it wasn't for the three penny piece within the plum pudding, would be complete and utter farce. Enjoyable still, but missing the gut punch the story delivers as if you were hit by a Chrysler, or perhaps a Daimler.
One thing I find a shame but not necessarily something I can fault the book on totally is the illustrations in the special edition of this book. The Chimes of Midnight is a story with such striking images. In the audio you have exquisite sound design and performances that make the macabre elements of the story all that more real. In this novelisation, you have grotesque descriptions that would lend so well to being realised through the illustrations that are scattered across the novel but they are few and far between, and a lot of moments that could be just that more heightened, such as The Doctor drowning in dust outside the manor, or the TARDIS interior falling away to be replaced with aspects of the scullery are forlorn for The Doctor dipping his finger in a jam jar.
Obviously, the illustrations and a little bonus for the 500 limited prints of the special editions so they're not going to be many, but the choices are rather bizarre.
I will say I am very glad that these novelisations exist as Big Finish have made some of the best Doctor Who stories of all time. Some people don't like audio dramas or can't resonate with them, so hopefully these books will be a way for people to experience the best of what Doctor Who has to offer. I may prefer the original audios but I won't say no to more novelisations in the future.
January 7, 2026
I initially was inclined to give this a 5 star rating but I've rewritten this review and knocked it down to 4 stars on reflection, as the implications of the ending left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. It's hard to explain why without getting into spoiler territory but to summarise, Shearman evidently wanted to explore The Chimes of Midnight from a new angle with this novelisation, and has made some alterations from the original story, which is fine to do with this kind of adaptation, but not all the new ideas feel like they're well integrated into the source material.
The Chimes of Midnight is a beautifully spooky, surreal, twisted story which translates wonderfully onto the page for the most part, with most of the new additions, like a cooked turkey coming to life and escaping from the oven fitting in seamlessly with the overall tone. However this adaptation really ramps up the absurdity, especially toward the end with moments like Charley folding herself up and squeezing through a key hole, then it is strongly implied through the Doctor's conversation with Edward Grove that
The Chimes of Midnight is a beautifully spooky, surreal, twisted story which translates wonderfully onto the page for the most part, with most of the new additions, like a cooked turkey coming to life and escaping from the oven fitting in seamlessly with the overall tone. However this adaptation really ramps up the absurdity, especially toward the end with moments like Charley folding herself up and squeezing through a key hole, then it is strongly implied through the Doctor's conversation with Edward Grove that
November 15, 2025
Robert Shearman’s The Chimes of Midnight (BBC Books, 2025) takes the scaffolding of a Big Finush radio play, an Edwardian mansion, a string of murders, a companion trapped in a temporal puzzle and elevates it into something far more ambitious than its Big Finish original. The novel is ostensibly a festive ghost story, but beneath its surface it is a metaphysical detective tale, perhaps it’s too far to say a cousin to Borges’ labyrinths, but it’s a bloody good book.
It contains Plot as Allegory, Characters as Archetypes & is sprinkled with language & atmosphere. The murders that occur precisely on the chiming of each hour are not simply macabre set pieces. They echo the inexorable march of time, the tyranny of routine, and the way social hierarchies grind down servants into anonymity.
To call The Chimes of Midnight “just another tie-in novel” could be like calling Hamlet “just another revenge play.” Shearman has written a great book of genre and philosophy, a text where the grandfather clock is key, each chime a reminder of mortality and meaninglessness. It is a novel that dances between pulp and profundity, proving that popular pulp fiction can be as resonant as accepted literary books.
If Dickens gave us the ghostly morality tale of A Christmas Carol, Shearman gives us a postmodern inversion: a Christmas story where redemption is uncertain, time itself is suspect, and the only gift is the awareness of fragile existence.
This is a really great book. Up there with Interference as the best of Doctor Who writing.
November 21, 2025
For a Doctor Who novelisation, it may not get better than this. A writer still on top of his game adapting the (perhaps) greatest audio drama Big Finish ever produced for Who.
Despite not allowing for the brilliant sound design of the audio, the novelisation was quite right to come out around Halloween - the images it conjures are horrifying. I could hear the chimes and the screams just fine following the prose.
Doctor Who is not an adult drama, but a family show. It does, however, contain a lot of casual death (albeit mostly in a sci-fi/fantasy context). But it's 1990-2004 Wilderness Years were aimed primarily at an adult fanbase - you know, the ones who used to be kids when the series aired on the BBC. Shearman knows how to write for the older audience without getting too far away from Who's core soul.
This is a novel about class and societal roles, about life and love, and (mostly) about death. About how time travel and intervention affect each of these themes, and written to further explore the horrors which the audio could not possibly have allowed us to hear.
I'm still unsure how a casual reader would interpret this book, given that it does help flesh out Charley and the Eighth Doctor if you've heard their adventures from 20-25 years ago. But for this Whovian, this book was the perfect comfort read.
Despite not allowing for the brilliant sound design of the audio, the novelisation was quite right to come out around Halloween - the images it conjures are horrifying. I could hear the chimes and the screams just fine following the prose.
Doctor Who is not an adult drama, but a family show. It does, however, contain a lot of casual death (albeit mostly in a sci-fi/fantasy context). But it's 1990-2004 Wilderness Years were aimed primarily at an adult fanbase - you know, the ones who used to be kids when the series aired on the BBC. Shearman knows how to write for the older audience without getting too far away from Who's core soul.
This is a novel about class and societal roles, about life and love, and (mostly) about death. About how time travel and intervention affect each of these themes, and written to further explore the horrors which the audio could not possibly have allowed us to hear.
I'm still unsure how a casual reader would interpret this book, given that it does help flesh out Charley and the Eighth Doctor if you've heard their adventures from 20-25 years ago. But for this Whovian, this book was the perfect comfort read.
November 5, 2025
This is an interesting one. Few audiodramas are adapted into novels and fewer still are adapted 23 years after they were released. But The Chimes of Midnight deserves this honour. It's one of the best audiodramas ever produced by Big Finish Productions - and a personal favourite. It also serves as the prefect introduction to Charley as a companion, so anyone who's never had India Fisher and Paul McGann in their ears before won't be too confused here.
Robert Shearman returns to wrap prose around his script, which helps maintain the integrity of the characters and - in particular - the atmosphere that makes The Chimes of Midnight so special. Sherman has made some changes to the big reveal...I don't think this has any real impact either way.
I do, however, think that this is a story best suited to an audio-only medium. It doesn't feel quite so suspenseful in this form. But it's an excellent adaptation.
Robert Shearman returns to wrap prose around his script, which helps maintain the integrity of the characters and - in particular - the atmosphere that makes The Chimes of Midnight so special. Sherman has made some changes to the big reveal...I don't think this has any real impact either way.
I do, however, think that this is a story best suited to an audio-only medium. It doesn't feel quite so suspenseful in this form. But it's an excellent adaptation.
December 12, 2025
The Chimes of Midnight is maybe my favourite Doctor Who story in any medium. When I listened to the audio drama 8ish years ago I was blown away by it. Dark and twisted but funny and sweet. It has everything that Doctor Who is supposed to and more, and this novelisation by original scripter Shearman (best known for his work on Dalek, arguably one of the best on-screen episodes of DW) is no acception. Shearman takes his already complex story and deepens it with context and extra character. Never before seen visuals that would have been laboursome to achieve in overly discriptive dialogue in the Audio-Drama medium are here achieved with awesome prose. Loved seeing a shout-out to Stubagful in the acknowledgements too, as he was the creator who got me into Shearman's wider work. Fab bit of Christmas horror here.
December 9, 2025
2.5. This is such an unnecessary rehash of a great story that it just makes me upset. Not upset at Shearman, per se, because his prose is great, but at anyone thinking that moving an audio medium to a prose one and puffing out things with description would make any sense. Most of the pivotal points of the story read completely differently when the reader isn’t given the freedom to imagine what’s happening beyond the actors’ voices, which renders the unsettling feeling it’s supposed to invoke completely moot. If you haven’t listened to the audios, it won’t make sense, and if you have, you’ll just be desperately trying to piece together what’s new and what isn’t. Pass!
December 22, 2025
I was perhaps a little sceptical when I first heard of this, as part of the brilliance of the original is its utilisation of audio as a medium, and I had no idea how that might successfully translate to prose. Of course, I needn't have worried. Shearman takes the original and turns it into something both familiar and new, adding a rich history and depth to his characters and relishing more opportunity for absurdist horror. Despite having just finished this, it's already very tempting to re-listen before the chimes of midnight toll on Christmas morning.
December 25, 2025
Eine der besten Doctor Who Geschichten aller Zeiten gibt es jetzt endlich auch als Buch.
Wer das Hörspiel mochte, wird das Buch lieben. Allerdings steht das Buch auch gut für sich allein und es werden sogar ein paar mehr Hintergründe aufgegriffen um die Handlung etwas verständlicher zu machen, ohne dass man die vorherigen Hörspiele kennen muss.
Eine uneingeschränkte Empfehlung für alle Doctor Who Fans, aber auch für Menschen, die gerne mal eine etwas andere Weihnachtsgeschichte lesen möchten.
Wer das Hörspiel mochte, wird das Buch lieben. Allerdings steht das Buch auch gut für sich allein und es werden sogar ein paar mehr Hintergründe aufgegriffen um die Handlung etwas verständlicher zu machen, ohne dass man die vorherigen Hörspiele kennen muss.
Eine uneingeschränkte Empfehlung für alle Doctor Who Fans, aber auch für Menschen, die gerne mal eine etwas andere Weihnachtsgeschichte lesen möchten.
October 31, 2025
This was a really easy read. Sailed through it in a couple of sessions and really, really enjoyed it. Rob has a fantastic turn of phrase and a knack of mesmerising the reader on every page. This is the first Who book I’ve read that’s not a TARGET novel and I certainly chose a good one to dip my toe into.
The characters are a great bunch.
The characters are a great bunch.
December 22, 2025
The book adds some nice descriptions of the characters to reinforce their grotesqueness
I can hear the audio as I’m reading, so the flavour is there
I’m still disappointed that the paradox is weak. I’ve never really understood how the Doctor saving Charlie made such a difference compared to all the other companions transplanted from one time to another.
I can hear the audio as I’m reading, so the flavour is there
I’m still disappointed that the paradox is weak. I’ve never really understood how the Doctor saving Charlie made such a difference compared to all the other companions transplanted from one time to another.
November 21, 2025
A wonderful adaptation of the original audio. Despite it lacking the sound design and performances of the audio,it still manages to convey and tell the story in the same fashion. Excellent, highly recommend.
January 2, 2026
an excellent reworking of the original big finish audio.
November 26, 2025
Whilst well written, the story is not to my taste.
Neither was I a fan of the audio.
Don't let my opinion of the story affect the quality of the writing and characterisation.
Neither was I a fan of the audio.
Don't let my opinion of the story affect the quality of the writing and characterisation.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews