Minuet in Hell

Main Range #19

Released: 23 April 2001

Listened: 7/27/21

Let’s get this out of the way first: I’m an American, and I really don’t like this story. It’s probably my least favorite Big Finish of them all, although I generally don’t rank such things. The idea of the U.S. having a 51st state named after a circle of Hell is absurd, even if it is in the South and apparently run by evangelicals. None of the actors involved are American, so the accents are...well, not as bad as I’d previously believed. There are a couple of “Southern” accents that are just plain caricature, and the others vary in their accuracy, but they’re not entirely offensive. And that’s without getting into the unsavory activities of the Hellfire Club, which may be historically accurate, but not something I’m looking for in a Doctor Who story. And the Eighth Doctor suffers amnesia (as does Charley)...again...which admittedly hasn’t come up in Big Finish yet, but in the books, it’s something he’s known for. On top of which, it’s a terribly long story for a four-parter. On the plus side, it does have Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, allowing him to complete his streak of appearing with all of the Doctors. Nick Briggs also appears, playing a character who sounds exactly like Nick Briggs, which is fair because he wasn’t that involved with Big Finish at the time, but it’s still funny. As for Charley, she hasn’t been doing this very long, but she’s already starting to get tired of the imminent death everywhere they go, and she also gets a hint that something isn’t right with her, temporally. The Doctor’s amnesia lasts way longer than it really should, meaning he’s effectively sidelined for most of the story. There’s a lot of continuity references dropped in his delirium, but they’re really not necessary. So the action pretty much unfolds without the Doctor doing much of anything, and the bad guy fails because he’s arrogant and stupid, which does tend to happen in stories where demon-summoning is involved, but it’s not really compelling.