Audio Drama

Doctor Who [Big Finish]
19x01 Minuet in Hell Part One

The fourth (and final) story in Big Finish's first 'season' of 8th Doctor adventures.

When BF started their Doctor Who stories, their stated aim was to re-create the style of classic Doctor Who in audio drama form, right down to the 25-minute episodes. Perfect for double CD, in many respects -- two episodes per disc making a standard-length Who story, hooray. Such constrictions went out the window right from the first release, of course: if you've got space on the CD for episodes up to around 40 minutes each, why force it down to 25? But by this release (which, as you can see, was only the 19th) it had gone so far out the window that Part One lasts just shy of 45 minutes -- a distinctly nuWho length (though the aforementioned revival was years away at this point).

Not a distinctly nuWho story, though. The deliberately oblique plot plods along, mired in implausible American accents and caricatures, before finally revealing itself to be somehow about a machine that can reprogram the human brain -- a bit of an unfortunate coincidence with which play I just listened to, that.