The Eighth Doctor meets his old friend the Brigadier in America but the Brigadier seems not to know him. Meanwhile, Charley has lost her memory.
The Eighth Doctor meets his old friend the Brigadier in America but the Brigadier seems not to know him. Meanwhile, Charley has lost her memory.
MINUET IN HELL
It’s impossible to expect excellent production every time out from any Doctor Who medium. The superb Telos novella range had a couple of bad releases, and I’m confident not every new series TV episode will be regarded as a classic of modern television. However, it is entirely reasonable to expect basic competence in every release, a goal at which Big Finish fails so miserably with Minuet in Hell that words are almost insufficient for the purposes of description.
The Inside Story is rife with stories of the production of Minuet in Hell, describing in detail how all involved were aware of the shaky, overlong nature of the script. It is my belief that BF would have been better off paying everyone involved and not bothering to actually record the play, for what was released is an absolute travesty of recorded drama. Alan W. Lear’s script (apparently heavily rewritten by Gary Russell) is laughably bad — we’re talking “Plan 9 From Outer Space” bad, with absolutely ludicrous dialogue and inane, ignorant plotting. The central conceit of the play is excellent in concept: the Doctor, amnesiac and imprisoned in an asylum, is confronted with another man convinced that he is, in fact, the Doctor. Unfortunately, this is stupidly executed, with Paul McGann playing the Doctor and Nicholas Briggs playing the impostor Gideon Crane. The result of this casting? There is absolutely no confusion over the true identity of the Doctor, and the resultant exploration of the situation over 140 minutes becomes mind-numbing.
The other primary plot of the play, that of the new state in the American South, Malebolgia, and its internal politics, is, quite simply, stupid. Why is there a new state? Why is it called Malebolgia? Wouldn’t the population of the most intensely-religious part of the country possibly object to their new state being named after the *eighth circle of hell*? Is there even a single unique thing about this interpretation of the Hellfire Club? Could this be the most clichéd portrayal of the South in the entire history of fiction? Is there anything good to be said at all? (No.)
I’m not quite sure how Paul McGann was eager to continue working with Big Finish after being subjected to this nonsense. His character is almost totally sidelined in a situation sapped of any drama or intrigue by terrible structuring. McGann’s performance is uneven, as though he’s unsure of his character’s situation or motivation. Many people like the “everyone in the universe is the Doctor except for me” scene; I think it’s cringeworthy. Of course, Nicholas Briggs also gets to spend time as “the Doctor” — he’s not bad, but the entire thing smells of self-indulgence to me.
This production, surprisingly, is the least annoying outing of the first four for India Fisher’s Charley, mostly because it almost totally sidelines her. Of course, the usual problems are present, as she completely fails to flinch in the face of a threat from an honest-to-god demon and throws sarcastic comments around, but at least she’s somewhat subdued when she does so. The continued hints about her “condition” are nice, but they’re very small diamonds in a very large rough patch.
Nicholas Courtney returns to the role of the Brigadier for this production, and he turns in his usual assured performance. Of course, the concept of his character’s involvement is, as always, a bit questionable, but he handles it well. Courtney even manages to convince during a blatant expositionary scene involving emails — shame the director decided that his contact on the other side could read and respond to those emails at the speed of light, thus stripping the scenes of any sense of realism. Lear’s original idea was for the Brigadier never to know that McGann’s character was the Doctor, which is an interesting conceit, but this was vetoed in favor of embarrassing scenes of McGann and Courtney slobbering over each other like schoolgirls once the Doctor’s identity is revealed.
Of course, no discussion of Minuet in Hell would be complete without an excoriation of the supporting cast, easily the worst ever assembled for a Big Finish production. The script makes the common mistake of setting the story in America, putting the actors behind the proverbial 8-ball, but there’s nothing even attempted in the manner of overcoming this challenge. Robert Jezek’s idea of an accent is half-Brooklyn-half-Southern, and his performance as Dashwood strikes exactly one note: clichéd lunatic. I gather that Morgan Deare is actually American, so of course he decided to play Pickering as Colonel Sanders rather than as, say, an actual Southerner. His turn as Marchosias is insulting to the intelligence: the demon stomps around tossing off “witty” (read: terrible) quips and insults at the regular characters. “Here I am, eight foot of red sweaty demon” indeed. Maureen Oakeley sounds like she stopped by the studio for five minutes on the way to the store with all the effort she puts into Pargeter. But the worst of all is Helen Goldwyn, whose performance (for lack of a better term) as Becky Lee Kowalczyck easily ranks as one of the worst in the history of performed Doctor Who. She embarrasses herself with the accent while simultaneously investing the character with the worst sort of chirpy arrogance. Of course, the character itself is idiotic, the perfect representation of the perception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by people that hate Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Perhaps the only highlight of the play is William Allen’s unique musical score. Nicholas Briggs’ sound design is adequate, representing the “desperate BF” style that bears itself out as lots of confusing loud noises. The work on the whispering voices at the play’s open is very nice — too bad it’s a minute and a half long for no reason. It’s impossible to comment too much on Briggs’ direction, as the only wise decision he could have made as director would have been to throw the entire thing in the trash.
Some may say that this review is unnecessarily harsh; I assure you that it is not. I have listened to Minuet in Hell exactly two times, once when I bought it and once for this review, and I will never again put it into a CD player. Not only the worst BF production, this is arguably the worst Doctor Who story of any medium. Execrable stuff that, by all rights, should never have been made in the first place.
Don’t buy it. If you already did, throw it away.
0/10