1.4 - The Dread of Night

Creepy and perhaps best of the volume.

The Doctor, Chris, and Roz find themselves at an old house just before the turn of the Century where the Mistress of the House has died, and her youngest daughter lies ill and an atmosphere of suspicion hangs over the house and a mysterious creature is roaming the halls.

Overall, this is a superb episode. The guest cast are all great and the plot actually has a few surprises in it. The atmosphere is truly unnerving and as he wont to do, the Seventh Doctor makes things feel more sinister and scary before he actually discovers and confronts the underlying problem.

As some point it called to mind the Main range release, Night Thoughts. However, this particularly benefits from its shorter length and not having to maintain the atmosphere for only about an hou.r. Overall, a very well-done suspenseful Doctor Who story.

'Dread of Night' finishes off the set in true horror fashion with the Doctor and co. brought to Northumberland 1899 in the middle of a stormy night. A nearby family is grieving for the recent loss of their mother and the illness of one of their children and this brings the Doctor, Chris, and Roz into a dark situation involving mysterious hauntings, disappearances, and suspicion around every corner. There are dark secrets around every corner and the TARDIS team is caught right in the middle.....This story is pure Doctor Who horror in the best possible way. It's chilling, complicated, and extremely interesting with more than one inspiration from other sources such as "The Conjuring" (especially when one of the characters is named Annabel) and even"The Sixth Sense" especially with where the narrative ends up taking you. Many of the script elements by Tim Foley seem standard and stuff we've seen before on the surface but here they are used to their utmost potential in delivering and supporting some truly surprising twists and turns. It also does a genuinely great job with its soundscape in scaring the daylights out of you and even had me jumping out of my proverbial chair more than once with its setup. But it also doesn't give anything away immediately and the pacing forces you to be patient while everything is revealed piece by piece rather than blowing everything in one expositional montage. In terms of performance and cast, this is another story where Chris and Roz take charge of the human element while the Doctor slinks into the shadows with his own investigations and agenda. However, the horror setting lets the grounded dynamic between Chris and Roz shine far better than in any of their other audio stories thus far and Seven gets to be in his sinister "Curse of Fenric" zone working behind the scenes while still caring what's going to happen to these people. This feels like the best that this team has to offer when written properly especially when combined with great supporting characters and cast members as this one has. Combine that with a truly affecting family dynamic, some beautiful insights into grief and the greyness of depression, and a surprise reveal/chase scene that ends rather explosively and it's hard to find a flaw with it. This makes "The Dread of Night" not only my favorite story of the set by far but personally one of the best Seventh Doctor stories we've had in a long while. It honestly makes the rest of the set worth the purchase and stands up there along with other great spooky stories such as "Night Thoughts", "Master", and "House of Blue Fire".