Minuet in Hell
“…Britain turns out lots of weird things.”
Story 19
Written by: Alan W. Lear with Gary Russell
Released: April 2001
The final story of Paul McGann’s first series sees the Eighth Doctor united with one of the most (if not the most) beloved of companions, Alistaire Lethbridge-Stewart. The story sees much of McGann’s scenes set in an insane asylum so the meeting is rather brief in the end. Likewise, many of the late Nicholas Courtney’s scenes are spent speaking his emails as he types them into a PC while a lilting flute plays a jaunty tune. It’s maddening. The setting of Minuet in Hell, is the fictional 51st state of America, Malebolgia, a place apparently filled with cartoon characters including the great Yosemite Sam, taking time out from chasing his foe, the elusive Bugs Bunny.
The plot is just insane, if you’ll excuse the term.
It involves two threads that are equally absurd; an ambitious and offensive televangelist turned politician, Brigham Dashwood and the Doctor losing his memory and mind, ending up an asylum. In addition to his political ambitions, Dashwood also runs an insane asylum where a state of the art technique is developed to adjust the mental health of the inmates. The process is dangerous enough to bring Lethbridge-Stewart out of retirement as an agent of U.N.I.T. While investigating the Dashwood Institute, the Lethbridge-Stewart meets an old friend with a new face, the Doctor. However, the Doctor has lost his memory and thinks himself to be a mentally deranged vagrant. His personality has somehow been transplanted into another person, adding to the Doctor’s confusion.
The manner in which the story presents mentally deranged people is almost as offensive as the portrayal of Southerners. The asylum is the usual scary nightmarish setting where loonies bark at the moon and are treated like animals because they’re somehow subhuman. Somehow I expect a more sophisticated view on mental illness from Doctor Who.
The arrival of a camp devil-like creature almost seems perfectly reasonable after all the goofy characters and over-the-top situations. Additionally, the manners and speech patterns of the inhabitants of Malebolgia sound suspiciously from the 1950’s rather than the 21st Century when this story is meant to take place. I’m not sure if this was an intentional stylistic decision or if it’s just a misconception of Americans.
While Dashwood vies for power and his evil associate Dr Dale Pargeter runs both the asylum and the harem of the Hellfire Club (the Lovely Little Satin Bottoms) where the Doctor’s companion Charley has found herself in a tight spot. The Hellfire Club angle is played out in just as cartoony a manner at the rest of the story in Minuet in Hell and never feels anything more to me than a dirty joke. As you can see, several things about this story rankled my nerves from the corny voices to the offensive caricatures and the Doctor struggling to put his mind back together, a plot that should have been exciting but ended up feeling very over the top. The revelation that Becky Lee was a witch-hunter from the Order of Saint Peter was just the nail in the coffin for me. It’s all just far too silly.
Occasionally, the limitations of the Big Finish Productions show through and this is unfortunately a prime example. The background voices are often absurdly canned along with the music. The attempt to convey a large room of girls aghast at their indoctrination fails to make an impression, making the scene come off as silly. Likewise, the scenes in the Malebolgia fairground feels fake somehow, perhaps due to the strained American voices and the afore-mentioned Yosemite Sam-sound-alike, Senator Waldo Pickering.
It’s unfortunate that Minuet in Hell is so crass as this story does feature a fantastic performance by Nicholas Briggs (the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen in the new Doctor Who series).His delusional Gideon Crane is a charming and beguiling creation that sadly proves to be a dead end as characters go, when it is revealed how he ended up with the Doctor’s mind.
So far I have been overjoyed by Paul McGann as the Eight Doctor in the Big Finish series, thankful to find that he makes a worthy addition to the annals of classic Doctor Who. The only problem is that when a bad story such as this one comes along, it hurts what little dignity the Eighth Doctor has (in this format, I’m unfamiliar with the EDA line of novels).
It was of course lovely to hear Nic Courtney again, but I prefer his meeting with the Sixth Doctor in The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (another very goofy adventure involving demons that worked far better for me).
Doctor Who – Minuet in Hell can be purchased at local retailers such as Mike’s Comics and online from Big Finish.
The Daily P.O.P. 
Disappointing that mental illness is treated in such a flippant way. I’m interested in what modern dramas or comedies you feel treat southerners fairly or accurately, you know rather than as almost all whites being either psychotic rednecks a la Mississipi Burning (tho’ that was based on a true story and set in the early ’60s) or salt of the earth good ol’ boys. What is the atmosphere and racial mixture like where you live? It’s a pity that the writers settled for caricature here. I wonder, have you heard any of Randy Newman’s work? His early albums focus on the good and bad of the South (as does the later semi-autobiographical Bad Love), sometimes it’s grotesque (the outrageous Rednecks, which is about northern white hypocrisy from the perspective of a dumb southern racist) and at others romantic (Louisiana 1927). It’s good, strong (and occasionally harsh and politically incorrect) stuff.
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I’m not really familiar with the variations of Southerners in film, but it’s usually as offensive as the depiction of Bostonians (hard working, hard drinking regular guys who probably have a history of violence and crime they’re haunted by). The part of the South I live in is actually populated mainly by Northerners from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut (as well as Massachusetts), so it’s almost impossible to make a judgement call. But back where I was from, the general population was pretty closed minded on several things and has often be referred to as the ‘liberal’ part of the Nation.
As far as the depiction of the mentally ill, I quite like how in Silurians the Doctor treats the sick man drawing bison on the walls. The Doctor acts gently but not in a condescending manner. He even accepts the resulting attack and doesn’t blame the man because he’s ill. He can’t help it.
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Fascinating. Imagine someone coming to where you live expecting to meet people saying “I do declare” and “sho nuff” only to meet some guys from Jersey!
When I think of Boston I imagine St Elsewhere, Robert B Parker’s Spenser, M*A*S*H’s amusingly snooty bluestocking Charles, and Quint singing “Ladies of Spain” in Jaws, but thats just me!
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weird… that’s exactly what it’s like. 😉
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I knew it, buddy!
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