The biggest problem with Minuet in Hell is that there is so damn much of it. There are two schools of thought – that it is an epic classic or that it is a left over Audio Visuals script which was rewritten in a hurry (and under some kind of manic influence) when they realised they’d got McGann for something like a weekend and needed four scripts yesterday. There are far too many strands vying for our attention. Viz…

The Doctor has lost his memory and is in a padded cell with Nick Briggs who, echoing the Audio Visuals past, thinks he actually is the Doctor. This is easily the best part of the play as Briggs, for all that we may tease him, is a damn good actor in roles like this. We know that McGann is the Doctor but… well it’s good enough that we can almost believe that maybe…

The mental institute carrying out sinister experiments on patients is a well worn path but it ties in well with the McGann/Briggs thing. Even if it is two stays in hospital without knowing his name in just five stories.

The fifty first state of America has declared its independence and, although the accents are straight out of Dukes of Hazzard, the only geographical reference is that it is in or near Maryland. The state is so advanced that the most stereotyped Southern hick – Waldo Pickering – is a highly regarded senator. It is utterly pointless things like this which totally burst whatever suspension-of-reality bubble the excellence of McGann and Briggs had created.

The Brig returns because he’s an expert in devolution or something substantial like that. His inclusion in an already cluttered script smacks of overkill and a certain desperation to add something special to a season which, once the McGann effect wore off, was at best off-beat and at worst dull. We’re expected to be happy bunnies because Nick Courtney is it. They could’ve cast him instead of Gareth Thomas in Storm Warning and we’d get Courtney without finding a way to shoehorn the retired Lethbridge Stewart into a script.

But, in the words of American TV shopping legend Don West, THERE’S MORE!!

Naturally we need something for Charley to do so she gets kidnapped and becomes a sex slave.

The founding father of this new state just happens to be a descendant of the founder of the Hellfire Club and has opened a new chapter in Malebolgia. Only this one actually does raise devils and other hellish beasts.

Add political chicanery and espionage, possession and psycho-kinetic powers to the mix and you’ve got a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Minuet in Hell feels like Grussell chucked in everything he could think of to distract us from the fact that Paul McGann isn’t in it much. So rather than risk leaving the listener feeling short changed, they leave you feeling sick and bloated and vowing never to do it again.

CD Facts

Part 1 - Tracks 1-7

Part 2 - Tracks 8-13

Part 3 - Tracks 1-7

Part 4 - Tracks 8-15