The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

"You're going to cut up my brain - that's not really for my own good, is it?"

Alan W. Lear and Gary Russell's Minuet In Hell marks a significant event in the world of the Big Finish audios for it is the final story of the McGann 'season' 27, and as such it is fitting that this season concludes with a bang. This story, which like The Mutant Phase and Sword Of Orion, is based on an old Audio Visual story, starts off with both the Doctor and Charley separated and without their memories. The Doctor, unaware of who he is, finds himself in a medical institution, where the patient next door seems to know far more information than he should. Charley fares no better, press ganged into working as a hostess at the local Hell Fire Club. Meanwhile Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is in America helping to oversee the creation of the Fifty First State, unaware of his friend the Doctor's nearby presence, although the presence of the Brigadier has another more covert purpose to do with the Institute's new PSI Regenerator, which serves as a device to help patients whose psychosis are beyond the help of the usual drug or hypnotherapy techniques and where cerebral surgery poses problems to the patient as hazardous as their trauma themselves.

Throwing the listener straight into the story the way that Lear and Russell's story does is an effective way of bringing great mystery as to what is happening. How has the Doctor lost his memory? How did he find himself in a mental institution? How is it linked to Charley's memory loss? All of these questions inevitably are answered throughout the story, but in terms of beginning the story, creating this sense of mystery is very effective and instantly draws the attention of the listener as to what is happening.

The plot of Minuet In Hell is probably one of the most complex ones that Big Finish have attempted, and with a running time of just under two and a half hours (don't let the cover's approximate running time of 130 minutes fool you) it is certainly one of the longest that they've done. In this case the extremely long length of the story is not a problem as the story is so well told and acted that the fact that it lasts so long doesn't matter as it draws the listener so completely into the story that the length doesn't detract from the quality of the story.

Paul McGann's involvement in the early episodes is kept to a minimum, but in the scenes where he is involved he is quite excellent as the man without his memories and the scene where the Brigadier meets him but is unaware of who he is, is splendid. The scenes with the Doctor and Nicholas Briggs' character Gideon Crane work well as Crane torments the Doctor about him being in his own personal hell. These scenes in particular show McGann's brilliance as the Doctor as he begins to doubt who he really is in the face of Crane's claims and superior knowledge.

One of the real stars of the McGann season has been India Fisher as Charley Pollard. She's brought a real enthusiasm to her part as the self styled Edwardian Adventuress and its really showed in her performances which have been full of life and gusto. This continues here in Minuet In Hell, with another spirited, lively performance which shows how much fun Fisher must have had making these audios.

Nicholas Courtney's performance as the Brigadier is, as ever, superb. Courtney could play the Brigadier in his sleep and still make it interesting and the script serves him well here. I do have one minor complaint though about part of the story concerning the Brigadier. The setting for the story is the start of the twenty-first century, and it also relies on the Brigadier not recognising the Doctor and seems to establish that the Eighth Doctor and the Brigadier have not met before. Big Finish have usually been careful not to contradict the established continuity of the Virgin New and Missing Adventures or the BBC Eighth Doctor and Past Doctor Adventures in the past, but this is clearly at odds with what was established about the Eighth Doctor and the Brigadier in The Dying Days. There it was established that the Brigadier had met the Eighth Doctor on at least two occasions, once in 1988 and then again in the story itself in 1996. But the quality of the story is enough to excuse this minor continuity error.

Nicholas Briggs's performance as Gideon Crane is very good, and must rank as his best in all of the audios that he has appeared. The build up to the cliffhanger at the end of episode 2 is possibly one of the best ones out of all of the audio productions produced so far. There is a real sense of drama when Briggs's character proclaims that McGann's isn't the Doctor, but he is.

Robert Jezek manages to shake off the flippers of Frobisher and establishes his Dashwood character well. I was quite pleased about this, as after listening to Jezek's performance in Red Dawn after hearing him as the definitive Frobisher in The Holy Terror, his penguin performance overshadowed his previous one and I ended up picturing his Red Dawn character as a penguin which didn't help relistening to Red Dawn at all. Here though, the slight change in his accent helps to establish this character as something different, but his performance here is excellent.

Season regular Helen Goldwyn plays Becky Lee who befriends Charley in the Hell Fire Club, who has a power of turning people's fears against themselves which is rather reminiscent of Vincent's power in Andrew Cartmel's 'War' trilogy of New Adventures, but thankfully this power is used infrequently. Goldwyn herself has been one of the most consistent of the supporting players and her role here as Becky Lee is no exception. Some of the American accents aren't particularly convincing with the southern accents of Morgan Deare and Maureen Oakeley being the most noticeable as they sound cliched. This detracts a little from the overall quality of the production, but it is a minor complaint.

Minuet In Hell is an epic production, which is without doubt one of the best that Big Finish have produced. The quality of the script here is excellent with many of the lines being very memorable and this contributes to the overall excellence that is exhi bited here. McGann is superb as the Doctor, being particularly convincing without his memories, and the scenes where Gideon Crane is trying to convince him that he isn't the Doctor are very powerful and sound fantastic. Minuet In Hell's complex plot does mean that it requires a greater degree of attention than some of the other audios, but it's worth it as the story is really excellent. With an excellent script, and good performances from McGann, Fisher, Courtney, and Jezek, it manages to be a complex, but very entertaining production. Minuet In Hell even manages to tie up the loose ends of the Ramsey the Vortisaur mini-arc in a way that's important to the story. With the script being written under difficult conditions, it is a credit to writers Lear and Russell that the finished product is so good.